Levi Lusko - It's Happening

I want to begin today with a question, and the question is, what are you waiting for? What are you waiting for? Is it a job? Is it provision? Is it a position? Is it clarity? Are you waiting for healing? Are you waiting for guidance or navigation? Are you waiting for wisdom? Are you waiting for a spouse? Hello, single and ready to mingle! Today, what are you waiting for? Are you waiting for a word from God? Are you waiting for the next thing that He has for you? What is it today in your life?

I want you to think about it. I want you to pull it into your mind. You don’t need to answer it out loud, but what are you waiting for? You could even jot it down if you have it so specific. It’s like, I am waiting for this. I think about, in my life specifically, I’m waiting to see my daughter again. She would be 17 if she were still on the earth. This is the last year of her life. This is Lena. She, at the age of five, went home to be with Jesus, and she has spent the past 12 years with Jesus in glory. So, very specifically, I’m waiting to see her again. We’re waiting as a family to be with her again. Maybe you would say, «Levi, if I’m honest, I’m not waiting for anything,» and I would say that’s an answer too.

Maybe you would say, «I’m not waiting for anything because time waits for no man, and neither do I.» Right? If I know I need to do something, I do it. I’m waiting for nothing. You know, regardless of how you feel about the subject of waiting, none of us can get out of life without enduring some of it. In fact, they say in the average lifetime-this is a shocking statistic-the Los Angeles Times published this, so it has to be true; obviously, they wouldn’t put anything in that newspaper that’s not true. But I found it interesting; they were tabulating based on averages the amount of time during a human lifetime that you will spend waiting in line, and the answer, shockingly, was five years of your entire life waiting in line.

Waiting in line to go, waiting in line for your turn, waiting in line to check out, waiting in line for a table. And we will do anything to avoid waiting, right? We will do dumb things. Like, in the grocery store, you’ll eye the line you’re in, and you’ll think, «This is a slow line,» and you’ll think, «That’s a faster line,» and so you navigate over there, only to realize that this is a person who only had a few items, but had as many wits to match the items in their cart. So they were going to, you know what I’m saying? I’m just-I’m not saying that’s a Christian thing to say; I’m saying that’s a Levi thing to think in the moment. And right, we’ll do anything to get out of a line.

I was listening to a podcast. My family and I were on a little road trip, and we listened to this podcast where a guy was saying that he bought a motorcycle only to avoid lines because he was living in California at the time. And you can split lanes in California. He said how much of his life he was spending while he was going to physical therapy school in line. So he was like, «I bought this motorcycle just to avoid lines,» and you know what happened? He wrecked! And you know what happened? He ended up having to go get some physical therapy! Hello, somebody, because he was trying to get out of waiting in line! We will-if we’re at theme parks, they have the regular price now, and now they know they’re going to get us. They have the price, «Oh, do you hate waiting in line?» This is the price for those who hate waiting in line. For just a little bit more, you can wait just a little bit less.

But I want to show you from God’s Word today that, regardless of how you feel about this subject of waiting, that when done correctly, it can be one of the most powerful things you will do in your entire life. Do you believe it? Even before you’ve heard the rest of the message, are you willing to say in faith, «I believe that waiting could be valuable, that God could potentially work in my life»?

Now, I know some of you are not clapping for that. You are not amening. You are like-like me. I was reticent to preach this message because I dislike waiting. I loathe waiting! Right? In my family, there are sort of two camps. We jokingly refer to ourselves within the family as the «Sharks» and the «Minnows.» If you are not a shark, you are a minnow. If you don’t know what you are, you’re probably a minnow, right? We jokingly say the minnows. But when I say «minnow,» I mean like Clover and I-we’re going to seize the opportunity. We know where we’re going; we have a list; we’re there to conquer! Right? But then Daisy and Jenny would be for sure in the minnow category, right?

We get done with a long bike ride, and we’re like, «Where are they? Where’s Daisy? Where’s Jenny?» Clover and I are like, «We are on a seek and destroy mission. We will get to the finish line!» And Daisy and Jenny pull up hours later, after we almost deployed a search and rescue for them, and they’ve got a bunch of flowers sticking out of their baskets on their bicycles. What they were doing- such a minnow thing to do! Right? You can’t be picking flowers at a time when there’s a non-competitive event taking place that has somehow arbitrarily become a competition as to who is the fastest. Right? What a bunch of minnows! Right?

And so I hate waiting. I miss so many great moments in life. I miss so many flowers that are there to pick and things that are there to drink in because it’s always on to the next thing. Like, if it’s a day off, I’ll tell Jenny, «On this day off, here’s the 17 things I think we could get done,» and she’s like, «I just want you to go out of town so I can have a day off where we don’t do anything!» Right? That’s my idea of a day off. But out of all the things that you will wait for in life, whether you choose to or you choose not to and you end up doing it anyway, because a lot of times when we try and work hard to avoid waiting, we wait even longer in the process, the most important thing you will ever wait for is not something; it’s someone. Do not wait for something but to wait for someone. The title of my message today is «It’s Happening.» Could you say it aloud with me, but could you say it kind of slow and warm? «It’s happening. It’s happening. It’s happening.» I dare you to believe even right now-it’s happening!

Isaiah chapter 64, just one verse today for your consideration: «For since the world began, no ear has heard and no eye has seen a God like you who works for those who wait for Him.» You’ve probably heard it said that God helps those who help themselves, which feels almost biblical, right? It’s got that King James kind of taste on it, you know what I’m saying? But let me tell you, that was Ben Franklin, not Jesus Christ, okay? This book, nowhere inside of it, does it say that God helps those who help themselves. The truth is God helps those who can’t help themselves. That’s our God. Our God is here today to help you! If you feel like you have no power, He gives power to the weak. We learned it last week: the weaker we are, the stronger He will be on our behalf as we rely, as we trust in Him. So no, God does not help those who help themselves, but this scripture does tell us that God works for those who wait for Him. God works for those who wait for Him.

Think about who works for who, right? We spend a lot of time in our culture thinking about pecking order, thinking about how we stack up, how we stand up, how we’ve made our way up the hierarchy of the ladder, right? Who’s more important? Who’s more noteworthy? Can you ever be in a conversation with someone, and you can just tell they’re looking over you the whole conversation? Because they might be talking to you, but they are scanning the room for someone with more clout to talk to than you! It feels terrible when you can just-you almost just want to like, «Okay, I’ll just let you go. I’m clearly a barrier to the VIPs that you are here to mingle with.»

I met a friend once for lunch, and he and I were getting in his car. He had someone else there who worked for him. We were getting in the car, and I assumed he wanted to sit in the front seat. Right? He wasn’t driving his car; his friend was driving his car. I assumed he wanted to sit in the front seat of his car, not in the back seat of his car. So, I went to the back seat of this car, and he goes, «No, I was actually going to sit there.» I said, «Oh, you want me to sit in the back?» And he goes, «Yes.» He said, «If you see a general and a lieutenant, the general’s never in the front seat!» I was like, «Oh, okay! Hey, wow, big shot, coming through!» Right? He said, «I’m being chauffeured, and I’m being chauffeured from the back!»

How interesting is it that this verse tells us that when we wait on God, God works for us? Who’s working for who here? God wants to work for you. That’s what the scripture says, and we have something to say about that experience of Him. Though He is the general, though it makes no sense, He takes on the position of service. Though He is our King and our Master and our Sovereign, He is the one who is willing to stoop down, humble Himself, and wash our feet. We would say to someone who works in that capacity, «That person is working on us hand and foot.» Waiting on us, hand and foot. And that’s what Jesus says He wants to do for you if we are willing.

It’s never been seen since the history of the world that a God wants to wait for and wait on and work for us, and He does so in response to us waiting on Him. Now we’re in a series of messages; if you’re just joining us now, welcome! We’re so glad you’re here. It’s called Welcome the Wind, and we’re in this season in the life of our church examining what it means to open our lives up to the influence of the Holy Spirit. Because if you go to Harbor, you will see just boat after boat after boat- sailboats everywhere-and they’re stationary until they open their sails up. So that’s what we’re trying to discover: what does it take to open up our sails to the wind of the Holy Spirit? How do we welcome the wind?

It would be criminal for us to engage in a study on the Holy Spirit without bringing up the subject of waiting because the Holy Spirit of God and waiting are inseparable. Let me show it to you. On the day the church was born, Pentecost, the disciples, we know, were standing in an upper room-gathered in an upper room, reclined perhaps, worshiping-they were waiting on the Holy Spirit. They had been waiting for a period of 10 days between the Ascension of Jesus and the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Ruach of God, the breath of God, the wind of God that came to fill the sails and fill the souls of all those who were willing to receive the promise, who were willing to wait for that promise, who were willing to experience that promise. And then, all of a sudden, you have common, untaught fishermen turning the world upside down. Why? They had been with Jesus, and Jesus had told them, «If you wait, the Father will come. If you wait, the Father will come through the gift of the Holy Spirit. I will come make my home inside of you. I will move through you; I will live in you; I will come upon you.»

In fact, it was some of the final words of Jesus before He ascended to Heaven, which, by the way, He will come in the same manner in which He went. How did He go? He ascended into the clouds, and the clouds received Him. And the Bible says that He will come in like manner. So if it’s a cloudy day, you best be saying your prayers, right? You never know; He’s going to come in the clouds. That was a joke! In Luke 24:49, on the day Jesus ascended to Heaven, we’re told, «Behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you. But tarry…» Someone say, «Tarry…» «…in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high.» Now here’s what’s crazy. They had just been given the Great Commission. They had just been told, «The fate of the world lies in your hands! You have the gospel; you have the key to their salvation. You have the ring, Frodo; you need to get it into the volcano! Go into all the world, preach the gospel to every creature!» This is very important! But then just before He left, He says, «Don’t leave the city of Jerusalem! Don’t go into all the world! Don’t rush out to do what you know is my will for you to do. First, I want you to tarry!»

Now, «tarry» is an old-fashioned word that we don’t really use that speaks of waiting. «I need you to go into the world, but first I want you to wait.» I need you to go into all the world carrying the gospel, but don’t carry until you tarry. Why? What’s the lesson? What’s the unmistakable irreducible minimum of what I’m trying to communicate to you? That is that we must not do what God has called us to do in our own power and in our own strength. That would be a colossal mistake. That would be a terrible idea! The goal each week is not for you to come in and hear some great things from scripture and then rush out each week to try and be a better husband, and be a better father, and be a better leader, and to be a better employee, and to be a better student, to do so in your own strength. That would end up like Samson after his haircut! Once he got his haircut, he would try to flex, but nothing would happen! He would try to snap chains, and nothing would happen because it was not about his power, and it’s not about your power. In fact, the Bible says, «Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit,» says the Lord of hosts.

God’s Spirit wants to come upon you. He wants to give you strength to carry all that you’ve been called to carry, but first, you and I, friends, we need to tarry. We need to wait on Him. Why is waiting so important to walking in the Holy Spirit’s power and to opening our lives up to the Spirit’s wind? Part of it is a function of how God created the universe. It’s just baked in; it’s just built in. I won’t have you turn there, but there’s a scripture that says, «As long as the earth remains…» So check. If it still remains, are we still here? Are we still spinning on a planet orbiting a fiery ball? Right? Spinning through the cosmos in a galaxy? Okay, yes! In fact, we are! And do you still have a pulse? Okay, great! So you’re still a part of that whole thing called life. Well, news flash then! It’s seed time and harvest, seed time and harvest, summer and winter. It’s like we’re none of us are like, «I wonder what’s coming after summer?» It’s like, «Well, autumn and then winter!» Unless you live in Arizona, right? It’s like just all the time! Right? It’s like don’t expect a nice house in heaven if you don’t have to endure some winters!

Here’s the thing: as long as the earth remains, it will be seed time and then harvest. There is a predictable order to how God built this universe, and science helps us understand what He put into the world. What that means is that God is a God of seasons, and He’s a God of sowing, and He’s a God of reaping. And so it is when it comes to what the Holy Spirit wants to produce in our lives. Why? Because the flesh and the devil lead to works; the Holy Spirit in our lives will lead to fruit, and fruit can’t be forced! Fruit can’t be flexed! Fruit can’t be fabricated! Fruit can only be grown! It can’t be downloaded or streamed; it can’t be purchased! Right?

And we are so predisposed in our current cultural climate to only accept things that are instant! Right? Like it’s always easy to look back on a previous time and think it was more difficult back then. But when my kids complain about things buffering, I want to drag them to a Blockbuster Video so bad! So bad! I want them rewinding a VHS tape! I want them hurting their finger re-spooling a cassette that you bootlegged a song off the radio! You know what I’m saying? I don’t want to become a cranky old man, but I’m on my way! You see, when my son says, «What’s the matter?» «It won’t even go!» I say, «It’s been streaming for three seconds, son! I only got to watch a movie by convincing my parents to drive me to Blockbuster Video! And even then, I couldn’t get the $2.99 new release; it was only the hot picks-the 99-cent ones! I’m like, 'Mom and Dad, I’ve already seen Weekend at Bernie’s ten times! '»

My family and I were in Florida a while back, and while we were there, we realized we forgot something. So, we went on Amazon. To our befuddlement, everything said, «Do you want it now, or do you want it in six hours, or do you want it tomorrow?» And we were like, «That’s an option? We have been living in the Paleolithic era of Montana this entire time! The rest of the country gets same-day delivery for anything they need! It takes like seven days here to get the dog sled in with our supplies!» Our veggies come via when minor Joe at the market till gets the produce! If it’s not turned by the time it’s come in, same-day freaking delivery! Lord help me! Where did you call me? And then I sit in traffic, and I remember why I left!

Here’s the thing: in all of this ranting, I’m just trying to give you some comic relief because those are the moments when most of you wake up! So here’s the thing: we bring that frame of reference into a book that’s rooted in a universe God built based on growing things in one season and enjoying them in the next season. Let me quote from Eugene Peterson, who said, «The person who looks for quick results in the seed planting of well-doing will be disappointed. If I want potatoes for dinner tomorrow, it will do me little good to go out and plant potatoes in my garden tonight. There are long stretches of darkness and invisibility and silence that separate planting and reaping. During the stretches of waiting, there is cultivating and weeding and nurturing and planting still other seeds.»

So what does this mean for you and me? Unlike us-unlike me, let me personalize it-our God is never in a hurry, and He’s not in a hurry with you. And that’s why when we get impatient with Him, it’s because we’re not looking at things the way that He looks at them. He is always pleasantly relaxed, like He wants us to be pleasantly relaxed. That’s why when you read this book, you’re going to find, depending on what translation you read from, over a hundred different times the Bible, in different ways, tells us to wait-to wait, to tarry, to slow our roll, and to wait. In fact, I boiled it down to a few different ways that we’re meant to wait.

We’re told in scripture to wait patiently. We are told in scripture to wait quietly. We are told in scripture to wait confidently. We’re told throughout the teaching of scripture to wait obediently, meaning while we wait to do what He has already told us to do. And we’re told, with faith in our hearts, to wait eagerly. So all of these different things point to a life of waiting. So what I want to do is just give you a little bit of a primer on the subject today. First of all, jot it down. Let’s examine the purpose of waiting. What does waiting exist for? Because everything God calls us to and invites us into has something in His mind and His heart when He invented it. And since God’s not in a hurry, it’s not like He’s rushing to get something done, and waiting just gives Him the chance to stall a little bit, right? Like, «Hold on, hold on, I’m working! I’m trying to get it together! I got your promotion; I just haven’t got it all totally dialed in yet!» You know what I’m saying?

Like, that’s not God. He sees the end from the beginning; He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. So if He has it in His heart for us to experience it, if He doesn’t just say «poof» potatoes, but He built a world for us to live in where seeds get sown and then the reaping gets done at a different time of year, that means this: big thought: waiting in our lives is never punitive; it’s always preparatory. Waiting is never punitive. And that’s how it can feel sometimes. We feel forgotten; we feel like it’s a curse when we have to wait for a new season. We have to wait for a new assignment. When we’re waiting for that wisdom, when we’re waiting for that spouse, it feels like, «Man, everybody else is just ordering their blessings on Amazon, and here am I waiting for it to come via snail mail, if at all! It’s on the slow boat or something! What is the deal?»

Waiting, though, isn’t punishment; it’s preparation. God is preparing us for what He has prepared for us, and He knows that we won’t be ready to handle what He truly does want us to walk in if He gives it to us instantly. So the purpose of waiting is preparation. But there’s pain in waiting. That’s the second heading. There is a pain to waiting. That’s why we dread it. There’s something about it that we find distasteful; otherwise, so many of us wouldn’t do everything we can to get away from it. The pain of waiting is that it exposes our fears, exposes our doubts, brings insecurities to the surface, and above all things, it shows that, fundamentally, we have a long way to go in our sanctification because we’re still impatient as heck! We’re still impatient!

And here’s a big breakthrough idea, as the Lord was speaking to me on the subject: impatience is not a fruit of the Spirit. I can tell you that with certainty and confidence because patience is, and if something is, then its opposite clearly isn’t. In fact, when you read the works of the flesh in Galatians chapter 5, which are held in contrast to the fruits of the Spirit, that includes impatience. So part of what the Spirit wants to grow in our life is patience. After the opposite of that are so many different works that have impatience at their root. And so when we find ourselves in a hurry, when we find ourselves unhappy with the season of life we’re in, we’re seeing other people further along, and we want to be there already-we just want to be there! And part of that is compounded by the current condition of life, where we see everybody’s everything, at least what they want to show us!

In a previous time, we wouldn’t have YouTube videos to see and Instagram posts and TikTok accounts to follow. We wouldn’t be seeing where everybody else is at, and we wouldn’t have such a desire to just speed things up and already get there! So it exposes that impatience, and it exposes, I think in my own heart, a need for control, or at least a need for me to live with this illusion of control. And when all of a sudden everything comes screeching to a halt and we are forced to wait for something, something in us just-ah! Because we’ve been living with this idea of «I’m in control,» and now clearly I’m not! So what is our go-to thing to do? To do something to take that control back! To do something to get ourselves back in control! Which is why I wrote this down: big idea: waiting will make you do crazy things.

I started to think about how in scripture, there is not a single story that you can point to in scripture where the type-A person in me-the driven, motivated shark in me that hates impatience and wants sufficiency at all costs and wants to get on with it and get to the-there’s not one story in scripture that you can point to where rushing or hurrying or responding poorly to a period of waiting ever leads to a righteous act. Not a single one! I started to think about in Exodus 32. God called Moses to go on top of the mountain, and God was going to give him the law, including the Ten Commandments, and God was going to show His glory to Moses, and then Moses was going to come back down. And the people, with all of that glory from the mountain, were then meant to go into the Promised Land. Right? It was a moment where they were having to make camp and sit around!

Now, part of that would be hard because you’re like, «Dude, we’ve been idle in Egypt for all these years; it’s time to get on with it!» Right? «Anybody with me? It’s time to go! It’s time to-I say we cross the river now! I say we rush the hill! I say we do it! Let’s get on with this! I already looked on TikTok; I saw like seven hack videos on how I can get this done! Let’s just get over there! I’m going to make a raft! We’re going to get across the river!» Right? And God says, «Nope! We’re going to camp! We’re going to tarry before you carry! We’re going to wait before you go!»

You know there were those old credit card commercials, right? I don’t know if you remember these: «Don’t leave home without it!» It was all like, «Man, you need that American Express card before you travel!» Like, «Don’t leave home without it! You’ve got to make sure!» That’s what the Holy Spirit wants us to see: «Don’t leave home without it!» Pentecost, I believe, is supposed to have a microcosm in our calendar every single week; it’s called church! Pentecost is supposed to have its own little microcosm in our lives every single day; it’s called devotions or, if you’re old school, it’s called a quiet time. But then everybody got all weird and legalistic about, «Did you have your quiet time?» or «Did you not have your quiet time?» So now it’s, «I just meet with Jesus; I walk in the way of Jesus.» We have to find all these other languages to put around it. Guess what? It’s a good thing to have a quiet time, and it’s a good thing to have some devotions! Because, in fact, here’s something I’ve learned: it’s impossible to have a quiet soul all day if you don’t have some quiet time with God first.

Some quiet time, listening to Him, letting Him whisper into your life, letting His Word set the pace for the scale inside your mind-how am I going to decide what’s heavy and what’s light? How am I going to decide what’s worthless and what’s worthy? How am I going to decide how to respond to the temptations and the trials that come my way if I don’t first spend some time with Jesus? You need a quiet time-not like a box to check, but like a Savior to encounter in your life. And so I believe this tarring to receive is not meant to be a one-time thing; otherwise, Paul in the book of Ephesians wouldn’t have said «be being filled with the Holy Spirit.»

So it’s not enough to have had an encounter with the Holy Spirit at some point in your life, and you’re like, «I’m good now forever! I got a dose of the ghost! I got under the spout where the glory comes out! I got Holy Spirit filled one time!» Right? No, no! Listen! We leak! We leak! And the power leaks out! So we need to return again. We need to each day; we need each week; we need each moment to be coming back to that glorious fountain for the Living Water of His Spirit to cleanse us and the wind of His Spirit to once again fill our souls! It’s sort of this recalibration that we have to do to get grounded because life puts us on our heels, and we need to get back onto our toes! We need to get that unhurried, pleasant, relaxed state that God always operates in!

You know what’s crazy? The book of Psalms says God sat during the flood! The Lord sat enthroned at the flood! We picture God pacing the halls of Heaven in the high-stress moment! You know like when you see the movies that depict like national leaders during a crisis, and they’re like, «Lock the door! Make 10 pots of coffee! We’re going to smoke 50 cigarettes and just be up all night! Our clothes are going to be all wrinkled!» Right? They’re using the red phones back and forth to each other, right? That’s sort of how we imagine God in high-stress moments.

But I dare you to come up with a time in your mind that the world was under greater tribulation than during the great flood! And the Bible says He was seated! A pleasant, relaxed state! And if you walk with Him, He wants to teach you those same rhythms of grace: how to be in absolute chaos but to have serenity inside your soul! Because the King, who is the commander of all Heaven and Earth and nature, must obey Him! He lives inside you! What sense would it make for Him, who sat enthroned at the flood, to now be enthroned inside your heart and for you and me to be stressing and freaking out-have all this nervous energy and we got to make something happen? No, no! Listen! Waiting is painful, and it will make you do crazy things!

But there’s a far bigger problem than the pain of waiting, and you know what that is? The pain of not waiting! That’s our next point! I’m going to tell you about the problem with not waiting. As painful as it is, we always get into trouble when we shortcut our way to the destination we have in mind, and we’re unwilling to wait. You end up with Matthias instead of Paul as an apostle! That’s what the disciples did because Judas had already left the world. And now, there was an empty seat in the apostolic circle. And so you know what they did? They said, «We’ve got to figure this out! Let’s roll dice!» Right? Tell me the part in the Holy Spirit’s life where He really wants that to be a part of your daily life! Like, we need to figure this out-let’s roll some dice! Does that sound like God? I’m like, «I don’t know! That doesn’t sound like Jesus to me!» Right? No, you know what does sound like Jesus? He uses the foolish things of this world to confound the wise! He looked at that empty seat at the apostolic table, and He thought, «Hmm, who hates me more than anybody on Earth? I know! I’ll reach him!»

You see, they wouldn’t have even considered the one that God wanted to use. So the list that they tabulated- their little yellow sheet — you think you’re the one who does it? Like the line down the middle and pros on one side and cons on the other? They made their little list out of all the Christians who would make the best apostle. And on paper, no doubt, they came up with the list of the strongest leaders and the most able-bodied and the biggest shoulders for carrying that cross as they deny themselves and pick up that cross! And who has the loudest diaphragm? They probably measured chest cavities to see who has the most lung capacity, who could bellow the gospel around Galatia and Phrygia and Cappadocia and Pergamum and Thyatira. They’re like, «We need to find somebody who’s an’anag'-whatever to do the thing!» Right?

And so they’re doing what? What are they doing? What we do! What makes sense to man! And God’s like, «You guys, listen! I have an apostle in mind, but he hates me at the moment! In fact, he’s about to kill one of you named Stephen! Right? He’s frothing at the mouth! But wait till you see him!»

God likes a fixer-upper! Aren’t you grateful that we serve a God who’s not scared of a little crafting project? So God’s picking-that’s why it’s so funny. And Paul, I think with a little humor, says when he introduces himself, «Paul, an apostle, not by the will of man, but by the will of God!» And by the way, the one they picked with their dice! Yay for them and their spreadsheet! «We’re going to do this! We’re going to work this out!» We don’t read one thing ever done in the apostle Matthias’s life! I’m sure he was a nice guy! I’m sure he had a great heart! Bless him! He’s probably off somewhere shooing it even at this moment with his anagram three and his big ol' chest capacity! Right?

But Paul the apostle wrote 13 books of the New Testament and planted churches all over the Roman Empire! Hello! Because God selects what man rejects! And God delights to use the foolish things of the world! So they’re not waiting but taking matters into their own hands and not seeing what God had in mind. I think led to walking in God’s second best for them. We also find it in the book of 1 Samuel 13: You probably have not read 1 Samuel 13 in a hot minute, so let me refresh your memory. Samuel is the prophet; Saul’s the king! Okay? Saul is the king over the people, but Samuel is the priest-who priest-prophet represents God. And they’re about to go to battle, and Samuel the prophet tells Saul the king, «God does want you to go fight this battle, but He doesn’t want you to fight it in your own strength, so we’re going to have a chapel service, and sacrifices will be offered, and I don’t want you to go; God doesn’t want you to go until you what? Wait! You’re going to carry the day, but first you need to tarry!»

And so don’t go until I get there! After seven days, seven days, Saul, who is a Matthias if there ever was one-really good on paper, super tall, impressive-like, this is king material for sure, right? He’s man’s choice for a leader! He gets sick of waiting for Samuel, and he says, «Look! This is stupid! I can do a sacrifice just as well as him! How hard is it even to walk in? You know, you put the thing on the altar, you light it, you do a cross motion or something like that. Surely all-and say something from the King James! How hard can it be?» Right? And so he says, «I’m going to do it myself!» Just after he finishes the chapel service, guess who shows up? Samuel!

And God, through Samuel, speaks to Saul and says this: «You have done foolishly. You have not kept the Commandment of the Lord your God, which He commanded you, saying to wait. And you chose to not wait for now the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever.» And he goes on to say, «But instead, God is going to take it from your hand and give it to someone better than you!» And who, of course, did God choose to be the second king over Israel after Saul? His name was David-a man after God’s own heart, who would be willing to do all God’s will. Saul was unwilling to wait. David, when he was anointed to be king, how long did he have to wait before he wore the crown? After the anointing, the answer is 13 years!

Thirteen years! Between him being anointed and him being appointed! And in between, what did he do? He was willing to wait! And God works for those who wait for Him! The problem of not waiting is that we will end up with what we want instead of what God has for us! And so it is, when we look back on our lives from God’s perspective, if we knew what He knows, we would want what He wants. If we knew what He knows, and when we know what He does know, we will say, looking back on our lives, «I want what you want to happen, not what, in the moment, I am only obsessed with getting!»

The real problem is deeper than you think! And we don’t have the x-ray vision that God does to see all the cracks inside of our lives and to know that we need the waiting that He has planned and appointed for us to experience. All right, fourthly, I want to talk about the participation in waiting because I don’t want to paint the picture of waiting as though it’s this completely passive thing. It’s like, «What are you doing in your life? I’m just waiting on the Lord, brother!» Right? And I always said it like ten times more breathily than needed! Right? We get so weird! The longer we’re saved-don’t let that happen to you! Right? Just waiting on the Lord, brother! Why are you talking like that? I don’t know! You don’t need to!

Waiting is not passive; waiting is not idle! In fact, there are two people that I thought of this week who are told explicitly-this was like a summary statement of their lives-what do you need to know about these two people? They were waiting on God! Waiting for God’s kingdom! Oh, that it could be said of us that we were willing to shoulder and embrace any waiting that God has called us to do! Help it to be true! Yet both of these two were busy; both of these two were engaged in the waiting! It was an active waiting, not a passive waiting! In the case of Simeon, he had been told, «You will not die until you get to hold the Messiah in your hands! You will not die until you get to hold the Messiah in your hands!»

And when we meet him, he’s long past the point of mandatory retirement! He’s long past when he could have easily found a place in Florida and taken up pickleball! Right? He’s long past still needing to show up and shoulder the job of doing the job of a priest and being there for the circumcision of babies. But he knew that whenever that Messiah was going to be born, according to the law of Moses on the eighth day, that child would show up at the temple for circumcision! And so what do we see? This man doing-he’s waiting for the kingdom, but he’s positioned himself to be where a baby is likely to come, born to the Jewish nation. And we find him holding Jesus in his arms and speaking words of prophecy over Mary and over Jesus’s adopted father, Joseph.

Why? Because he was in the room where it happened! He was there when Jesus was brought to be presented to the Lord. So he was waiting, but that waiting wasn’t passive; it was with wisdom that he waited. Similarly, Joseph of Arimathea was a man who was waiting for the Kingdom of God, waiting to see God’s promises. By the way, this whole book of Isaiah that we’re basing this message out of-this idea, this shocking idea that, «For since the beginning of the world, it has never been heard of that we have a God like you who works for those who wait for Him!» It doesn’t make any sense. The general rides in the back seat, not the front seat, not the position of a-why would you wait for us? Work for us as we wait for you?

Joseph of Arimathea was a rich man, a wealthy man, a powerful man, and yet he was willing to serve. He did the small things that he could. He didn’t know when the kingdom of God was going to come. He didn’t know when it was all going to take place. But what did he do when Jesus died? He went to Pilate and said, «I’m willing for Jesus’s body to go into my grave, my personal tomb, which would be there waiting for me when I die.» He was actively waiting, doing the small things that he could. He wasn’t just praying for God’s kingdom!

You see what I’m saying? He put his own money on the line! He put his own resources on the line! He took what he had, and it was only because of Joseph’s faith that Jesus got a burial, fulfilling prophecy and not burned with the trash, which is what happened to condemned criminals in the Roman Empire in that day. They would be left on the cross, hanging bloated, putrid in the sun for birds to peck at, and then eventually they would be pried down with a crowbar and dumped in the place where the trash was burned! But Joseph, risking his standing before the other leaders of the day, was willing, along with Nicodemus, to put his reputation on the line.

He was waiting, but it wasn’t passive waiting! He used what he did have to do what he could do and was partnering with God in what God ultimately wanted to do! And I fear there are a lot of us who are praying for what we’re not willing to pay for! We want God to do things, but we’re not doing what we can to help make that happen. But Joseph and Simeon both show us what participation with God in the midst of waiting looks like. All right, and we’ll close here, and this is some good news: the power of waiting! The power of waiting!

I love this! I love the way that we are trying to think with a Biblical worldview instead of just a cultural one! Because one of the ways that we are predisposed to think incorrectly about how God wants to work in our lives is we have our own cultural frame of reference. So, like I said earlier, there’s not a fast pass. And we assume there must be! Come on! I want to walk with Jesus! Can I just get that Matrix thing back here and be like, «I know Kung Fu!» You know what I’m saying? No, man! You just gotta do the hard yard to walk in with Jesus! You just gotta season by season-summer and winter! Similarly, just like the fast pass or the Amazon Prime instant overnight delivery or whatever messes with us, so does the doctor’s office waiting room paradigm that we have.

And I think a lot of times we dread waiting in the waiting room because we impose this picture, this rigid picture, that we’ve lived through a million times upon it! Where I want to see the doctor! I just need to see the doctor! I think when my daughter Olivia had a bulging disc in her back causing chronic pain, we just needed an MRI! And you’ve never tried harder to get an MRI and had every door shut to get an MRI! We just need to see this specialist! I know we can get answers! I know if we can get help, I know we can move forward! When is this season of waiting on chronic pain going to close? And so the waiting room just represented a barrier to the doctor! All we wanted to hear were those magic words, right? The doctor will see you now! Oh, how those words can be music to our ears when we just need the doctor with his expertise to look at our situation!

I just feel led to say thank God for all those who have gone into being a doctor in our church! Can we just thank God for those who have done that? I just-the thanklessness and hard work! And that extends of course to the whole medical community and any way that you serve to make that all happen! We can sort of just resent that and the process of it, and the bureaucracy of it, and the red tape and all the things! But there are a lot of people just trying their best who got into a thankless line of work to help us so we can go see the doctor when we need to! Amen!

So, when we look at a waiting room, we look at it as something to just get through so we can hear our name badly pronounced! Right? For me, it’s always «Levy Lusco!» That’s what they always say. And I don’t even correct them anymore, like I used to for a while, and now my new thing is like, «That’s me! Levy Lco!» Yeah! Because that’s how you always say it! «I want a pair of Levy jeans! You know what I’m saying?» Like, «Fine, Levy Lusco! Is that right?» I just go, «Mm-hmm!» Because you said my name, that means I’m being seen!

And so we sort of look at it that way, «This waiting sucks because I just want the doctor to see me now! I want the-and the Bible does call Jesus the Great Physician! But here’s the thing that will just change the way you look at waiting: our doctor, the Great Physician, does His healing in the waiting room, not in the room behind it! It’s not about getting taken out of our waiting into that next room so now we can really move forward! It would change the way you wait if you realized, „Oh my gosh! He’s with me in the waiting!“

One of the ways we describe almost shorthand for being a server is we say they wait tables! That person’s a wait-that person waits tables! And if we say the treatment was really good at a restaurant or a hotel, what we say, „Man, they were amazing! They waited on me hand and foot!“ The Lord works for those who wait on Him! You might say, „When we wait on Him, He waits on us hand and foot!“ No matter which part of our heart, our life, or our body is out of whack, He knows! He knows! He’s the Great Physician! He’s the Ancient of Days! He sees what you don’t! He knows what you don’t! And He knows your true need, not just what you wrote down!

Jenny’s brakes stopped working on her bike a while back, and so I went in to the bike shop. Had it been my brakes, yes, I would have just gone on YouTube and not waited for the appointment and just figured it out! But I’m not putting my wife on a monkeyed brake job! Okay? Even the shark’s got standards. So I go into the bike shop, took forever, had to wait. Did I call three other bike shops and see if I could get it in sooner? Yes, because I’m in process! I take her bike in; they call me a couple days later, and they said, „We fixed the brakes! Brakes are good now!“ I go, „Oh my gosh! Thank you! Can I-because it was sooner than they said it was going to be — can I come get it?“ They go, „I wouldn’t recommend it because we found a problem with the fork!“ Apparently, there’s a hairline fracture in the fork that holds the tire on the front tire, and we didn’t know it was there! But our mechanic takes every bike for a test drive! They stress test the bikes after they work on them! It’s better than me on YouTube! Trust me!

While he turned a corner with the stress on that side of the fork, it snapped completely through in half! He says, „It’s a miracle you brought it in, and we did this! Because you might have been going down the road, and this thing just snapped! You could have been really bad going down a hill or something!“ I brought it in for one thing! What they realized needed to happen was not what I brought it in for! You might have written down something you’re waiting on in your life, but God sees your true need! That what you need isn’t just that thing to happen, but you need time spent with Him because you’re never alone in God’s waiting room!

The title of the message: „It’s Happening!“ It’s a family inside joke. One day, Clover, my youngest daughter, looked around the table and saw her whole family sitting there except for Lena, and she just felt happy! And she didn’t know as a young girl how to express the warmth of the moment, so she just said, „Mom! Dad! I have the warmest feeling inside of me right now seeing you guys all here!“ And then the next time it happened, she just got excited and goes, „Guys! Guys! Guys! It’s happening!“ And so now it’s kind of in our culture as a family, and we’ll just say to each other when we feel happy, when we’re trying to say, „I love being with you at this table, on this bike ride, in this moment,“ we just say to each other, „It’s happening!“

I know you feel frantic in your waiting, and I know you’re wondering, „Where’s God? Why is everybody getting blessed and getting anointed and getting called but you?“ And God just wants you to look to Him, and He’s saying to you, „It’s happening! It’s not something that’s going to happen! This is it! This is me working with you! Waiting is my medicine! Time with me, trusting me is what you need! I’m working it all out right now for the good!“

We took a trip into a mine this week; I have a photo to prove it! We wore hard hats and everything! And we went into this mine, and this man named Marty, who’s a fourth-generation silver miner, he’s telling us everything about mining -everything you wanted to know and a lot you didn’t need to know! And the thing that blew me away was when he said, „You know what’s crazy? This mine, which has produced billions of dollars in silver-this Coeur d’Alene mining system-billions of dollars in silver! It was originally owned by a company that tried for seven years but then gave up and deemed the mine a bust, a dud! But it turns out they were right; they just didn’t go deep enough! They just didn’t stay long enough! And they gave up the mineral rights, and another company came in and was willing to do the hard work and stay long enough to go 2,000 feet deeper than they had ever gone, and billions of dollars of silver!“

That many of us may be even wearing that! That was eye-opening to me! Like, every metal comes out of this mine! That’s crazy to think about! Mines like this-the hard, deep work to bring precious things out! And then at the end, he showed us what silver looks like when it’s found by the miners, and it was black! And I thought, „Dude, if I found that rock, I would never in a million years think it was precious!“ That’s because it needs to be refined first, and so do you!

And so whether we are looking off to something in the distance, like a reuniting with a loved one in heaven, or we have some very specific, tangible metric of success-that if we can just do this, go here, be this, we will then finally be happy-we will have missed the whole point! The process is the product! The line is the experience! Being with Jesus is the prize! And when we are willing to not be antsy and be unhurried, we are saying to God, „You are worth waiting for!“

And so Father, we pray it would be so! And if you’re honest enough to say, „I needed this message! I needed to hear this word from God today,“ could I just ask you to raise a hand? Raise up a hand! Thank you, Lord! Thank you, Lord! Thank you, Lord! I’ve got both of them up. I need you to touch my impatience, and I’m asking you to do it for my friends too! Would you help us, Jesus, to not resist the waiting but to welcome it? And in so doing, we’ll be welcoming your wind of the Spirit to work in our lives and through our lives, and we receive it as a word from Heaven! You can put your hands down, and I want to now invite those who have not trusted Christ for salvation. You don’t have the peace and confidence that when you die, you’re going to go to heaven, but you can! Because Jesus died on the cross for you! He rose from the dead for you and stands at the door of your heart! If you’re willing to invite Him in, I want you to pray this prayer with me! Say this: „Dear God, I know that I’m a sinner! I can’t fix or forgive myself, but I believe you can! Please come into my heart; make it your home! Sit in it as your throne! In Jesus' name.“