What Can We Do While Waiting on God?

Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist, my name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.

What can you do while you're waiting on God? Several years ago I did a sermon and when I say several I mean very early in my ministry here at Sovereign Grace, in fact at that time it was still Forest Christian Church, and I wrote a sermon entitled What Can You Do While You Were Waiting on God and it was based on the passage of scripture in Acts chapter 2 where the Apostles and the disciples are gathered together in the upper room and they are waiting on the gift of the Holy Spirit.

They're waiting on the sign from God and we know what's going to come.

The Holy Spirit is going to fall upon the people in that room.

He's going to be as divided tongues of fire and the Holy Spirit is going to empower those people in that room to go out and share the gospel in languages that they did not know.

Very familiar text, but what's often overlooked is the fact that it took several days from the ascension of Jesus to the falling of the Holy Spirit.

And what were they doing during those days? And that's where I got the idea for the sermon What Can We Do While We're Waiting on God because that's what they were doing.

They were waiting on God.

We have a real, well I say we, I'll speak for myself, I am not a super patient person.

I am a product of the day where I order something, I expect, you know, I put in my order on Amazon and then I go look out the front door to see if it's sitting there.

I expect immediate returns and I know that's not a positive virtue, it just, I'm being honest with you today, bearing my soul a little bit.

I like to see things happen immediately and if you're anything like me then you know what I'm talking about.

And I think this often shows itself in my relationship with God because sometimes I think my expectations of God's timetable are much less patient than they should be because I want God to move more quickly than he is moving.

I forget, even though I know and have preached and I believe that God is always on time and he's never early and he's never late.

Even though I know that, even though I believe that, even though I trust that, there are times when I don't practice that because in my mind I'm thinking, what's going on? What's taking so long? Why is this not happening? And I know it's wrong, again I'm bearing my soul a little bit here but I'm trying to make the point that we do have to wait on God.

Sometimes we're waiting on God and we don't know what the answer is going to be.

Sometimes we're waiting on God and we don't know how a situation is going to work itself out.

We've been praying, we've been hoping for an answer, praying for an answer, we don't know when the answer is going to come, we don't know what it's going to look like.

But what can we do while we wait? That's the question of the day.

And again, I preach this sermon and what's interesting about it is even though it was one of my earliest sermons, I used to share my notes on a sermon blog.

It was a place where pastors could go and share notes and encourage one another and help one another with outlines and things.

And it was one of the most requested of my notes was for that sermon because I gave some thoughts from the text.

So what can we do while we're waiting on God? And the first thing I said is that we can pray.

If we know that we're waiting on God to move, maybe it's regarding an illness, maybe it's regarding a financial problem, maybe it's regarding a wayward family member, maybe it's regarding a difficult situation with someone.

Who knows what the situation is, but we're waiting on God to move.

What can we do? The first thing we can always do is we can pray.

That's what they did in the upper room, is they prayed.

And again, this is something that's not always easy.

A prayer life is something that has to be cultivated, it has to be practiced, it has to be something that is worked at.

It's like working out your spiritual muscles.

It's like when you practice exercising, you're working out and it takes time to build up some spiritual muscles.

But the thing that we see in the upper room is we see the Apostles and the disciples, they're praying while they wait.

They're communing with God.

And remember this, prayer is not always about asking God for something.

In fact, I would say that's the least important thing, is going to God and asking Him for something.

The most important part of prayer is that you're fellowshipping with God.

Prayer is the lifeline.

Prayer is the communication point.

Prayer is how we connect with our God.

And sometimes prayer needs to be just, God give me patience.

God help me to love you more.

God help me to know that you're there.

God, I love you and I want to be closer to you.

Prayer doesn't have to be some fancy language that's in the King James dialect.

Oh God thou art.

You know, it doesn't have to be that.

It can be a simple expression of God, I'm here and I'm waiting and I'm scared.

I'm frustrated.

I'm tired.

I'm anxious.

And I just want to be close to you.

I just want to know that you're there.

And I want to commune with you because you matter.

So the first thing you can do when you're waiting on God is you can pray.

But the second thing we see is that the disciples and the apostles in the upper room, they did the things that they could do while they were waiting.

One of the things that we see them do is working towards the replacement of Judas.

If you remember that Judas was, that Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus.

And at this point in the narrative, he is now dead.

He is no longer the 12th disciple.

And because of the need to have that number 12, which has an important significance, the disciples decided that it was important that they find someone to replace Judas.

And so they go through this process and there's a casting of lots and a choosing.

What's funny about that is I always think about the one that wasn't chosen.

His name is Justice.

And that's what I named my son.

I named my son, and it's not J-U-S-T-I-C-E, which we think of just as the application of righteousness, but it's J-U-S-T-U-S, which is actually just means righteousness.

I named my son that because I always thought that that apostle, that he was one who was with Jesus from the beginning, but yet there were two and they didn't choose him.

And I always said, well, I was gonna name my son after the unchosen disciple.

So be that as it may, the point is the apostles didn't just sit on their hands while they were waiting on God.

They did the things that they could do.

And so if you're waiting on God, but there are things that you can do while you're waiting, if there's business that can be attended to, I mean, I'll give you an example.

In the church, we're always waiting on God.

We're always, we're always looking for what God is doing and and praying that we're following after him and everything that we do, but there's always business that needs to be attended to.

There's always, there's always administrative things that need to be attended to.

And so the other thing that you can do is, one, you can pray, fellowship with God.

If you're waiting on God, like I said, no matter what the situation, you can pray and fellowship with God.

But you can also do the things that that you should do and take care of the things that need to be taken care of.

Some people say, well, just let go and let God.

And I understand what they're saying, and I'm not saying that's a hundred percent wrong, but what I am saying is this, there are things that that the responsibility is on us to do.

So, you know, if that means that, you know, we need to be saving some, you know, because of a financial issue, we need to be putting money away, or if that means, you know, that we need to be attending our medical appointments because we're waiting on God to to work in our life, but in the meantime, we're going to continue to use those means of blessing that God has provided.

God has used medicine as a means of blessing in the life of people, and so if it means that we need to continue to do those things that we can do, knowing that God is ultimately sovereign over everything, and we're going to trust Him with the outcome, and while we wait on Him, we're not going to just sit on our hands, but we're going to continue to do the good works that we've been called to do.

Remember, by grace you've been saved through faith, and that's not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast, for we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works.

Just because we're not saved by good works doesn't mean that good works do not matter.

Good works do matter, and good works are the things that we should be doing, even while we're waiting on God, and so my encouragement to you today is read through Acts chapter two, look at those apostles and disciples in the upper room, and understand that they were waiting on God, and yet they didn't wait impatiently, they waited on God with expectation, knowing He was about to work, and yet they were about the business of prayer, and they were doing the things that they could do while they waited on Him.

So what are you waiting on, and what can you be doing while you wait? Those are questions for today, and I hope that this time has been an encouragement to you.

Again, thank you for watching this episode.

My name is Keith Foskey, and I've been your Calvinist.

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