James: Authentic Faith - Week 12: God is Always Worth the Wait | James 5:7-12

Hi, it's Pastor Jonathan, and thanks for downloading the FBC El Dorado Sermon Podcast.

In today's sermon, James teaches us how to endure waiting.

And I'm not talking about the waiting for a table at a restaurant or waiting in traffic.

I'm talking about how do we endure the most painful waits in the world.

The spaces between asking God for something and waiting for his reply.

And what we learn through James is that we must be patient and we must endure, because God is always worth the wait.

And the reason that you and I we can't enjoy it is because it reminds us that we are not in control.

It reminds you and me that the world doesn't start nor does it stop with us.

But the reason that we have to endure it is because no matter how much time we spend planning the details of every single day, every single day is filled with its own set of interruptions and hurdles.

And so in our results-oriented, production-focused, efficiency-minded culture, these moments, these hurdles, these interruptions, it makes those moments feel like they are meaningless and that they are totally unnecessary.

So what's that one thing in life that we don't enjoy but all of us have to endure?

Here's your answer: waiting.

Yeah, nobody likes to wait.

And earlier this summer, I was reminded just how much I don't like to wait.

It just so happened that our family vacation when we went to the beach had overlapped with Memorial Day weekend.

And if you're curious, in a post-2020 world, on the first weekend of the summer, if the beach was packed, yeah, it was slam-packed.

It was as if like the entire Southeastern Conference had some kind of fan conference call.

And everybody's like, hey, what are you doing on Memorial Day?

I don't know.

What are you doing?

Didn't see you at the tailgate last year, didn't see you either.

I've got my tent and my beach chair and my cooler.

I'll meet you on the Gulf Coast.

Because like every single team was represented in like one mile of beach.

Like Alabama tents and Auburn tents next to door to each other, talking trash to each other.

It's Arkansas and Kentucky and Georgia and Florida.

You name the team, they were on the beach.

But here's the thing: when there's more people on the beach, there's more waiting at the beach.

And the waiting began before we even arrived on the shoreline.

Like we got stuck in mobile on I-10, just sitting and waiting.

And then as we were turning down towards the beach off the expressway, we waited at the toll booth.

I'm not kidding, like if you've been through those toll booths before heading down to Gulf Shores, it's like a 20-second transaction per car.

And literally, there was a car five cars ahead of us that sat at the toll booth for five minutes.

I don't know if they're like exchanging recipes, if they were like long-lost high school friends, or they were like trading summer book recommendations.

Like there was a moment when it passed through my mind, like I've never experienced this before.

And like I watched way too many heist movies, and so I'm assuming, like, are they trying to rob the toll booth?

They want all the quarters out of the toll booth in that moment?

Thankfully, no.

Eventually that person moved on, and every other car took what?

20 seconds, 20 seconds, 20 seconds, like in and out, in and out, in and out.

But neither of those waits, the weight on the interstate, or the weight at the toll booth compared to the weight at the restaurants.

Uh one night we waited like two hours at a restaurant, over two hours to even get a table, and then another hour for our food to arrive.

And let me tell you one thing, this guy, I don't like to wait.

I don't want to wait on the interstate, and I don't want to wait at the toll booth, and I don't want to wait at the restaurant.

Nobody likes to wait.

There we go.

Someone's like being honest this morning.

Most of us are like, I like to wait.

No, you don't.

You don't like to wait for the web page to load on Amazon.

You don't like to wait for your your Netflix queue to repopulate, do you?

Or you don't want to wait at the the stoplight.

Or especially you don't want to wait for the person in front of you at the stoplight to hit the gas after it's turned green.

They're probably staring at their phone, sending a text message to their friend just so you know.

You know, when we hear that word wait, or we sense that a wait is about to occur, don't we all just instantly become kind of fidgety and frustrated and frazzled and maybe even a little frantic?

We don't want to endure that wait.

But here's something that's really important.

Often the things that we are forced to endure in life actually teach us a very important lesson about how the world works, about what we should expect.

In other words, all those small inconveniences, waiting for a table, waiting in traffic, waiting for a web page to load, all of those small inconveniences, listen, they prepare us to be obedient.

Listen to what King David says in Psalm 37, verse 7.

Psalms 37:7

He says, Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him.

Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him.

David writes those words near the end of his life.

It's a moment in the life of ancient Israel that's filled with social unrest.

There's the threat of war outside the borders.

But faced with those realities, David isn't fidgety, he's not frantic, he's not frazzled, he's not frustrated.

Instead, he says, I'm still.

Like my mind is calm.

I've pushed those things outside of my mind.

And I am just going to wait.

I'm going to wait on God.

What exactly, though, does it mean to wait on the Lord?

An author named John Ortberg describes it this way.

He says this: He says, waiting on the Lord is a competent, disciplined, expectant, active, sometimes painful clinging to God.

Waiting on the Lord is the continual, daily decision to say, God, I will trust you and I will obey you, even though the circumstances of my life are not turning out the way I want them to.

And they may never turn out the way I want them to.

I'm betting everything on you, God.

And there is no plan B.

I like that description because Wartberg first admits that nobody likes to wait.

It's why he says waiting on the Lord it requires discipline.

It's why he says that waiting on the Lord can even be painful.

You know, I think each of us, we would much rather prefer it if God answered every prayer we offered in the morning by end of business on the same day, don't we?

Like if God just had that process, end of the day, I'm going through the prayer request.

Like there are emails in his inbox, and I'm gonna send everybody a direct reply in that moment.

They're gonna know it got to me, and here's my answer, here's how I'm gonna act in that moment.

We wish God handled prayer requests that way because why?

Nobody likes to wait.

But listen, as much as we don't like to wait in this world, like we don't like to wait for Netflix or the pickup line or the drop-off line or the doctor's office waiting room.

We don't like to be in those places.

Um, there's a key difference between waiting in those moments and waiting on God.

And here's the key difference God is always worth the wait.

God is always worth the wait.

It's why Ortberg, in that definition, said, I'm betting everything on you.

You're worth it.

Your promises come true, you are faithful, you're worth the wait, you're worth the pain, you're worth the discipline, you're worth the daily decision.

Or it's why King David in Psalm 37 this way, he says, the salvation of the righteous comes from the Lord.

He is their stronghold in time of trouble.

The Lord helps them and delivers them.

While it is true that nobody likes to wait, it's just as true, church family, that God is always worth the wait.

He is our savior, he is our helper, he is our deliverer.

But but here's what I know to be true.

Just from living life, just from talking to so many of you, just from having friends in the world, I can know that God is always worth the wait, but it doesn't mean that waiting is any easier.

It doesn't mean I really like it even as I'm doing it.

And it's especially difficult to wait on God in those moments, in the space between the ask and the answer.

In the space between the ask and the act.

Because in that space, there feels like there's just silence.

So it's not easy to wait on God if you're single and you want to get married.

It's not easy to wait on God if you want to start a family, but month by month that prayer goes unanswered.

It's not easy to wait on God if day by day you care for an aging parent.

And people ask you, how what's their quality of life like right now?

And you're like, there's no quality at all.

It's not easy to wait on God.

If you have a child who's battling through addiction or struggling with mental health, you listen, those are the weights that no one likes.

Like I can put up waiting for hours at a restaurant.

I can put up with waiting at the doctor's office.

I can put up waiting in the pickup line.

I can do those weights, but the weights, when it's that space between the ask and the act, the act, the ask and the answer, those are the weights that it feels almost impossible to endure.

How do we endure those sorts of weights?

Those are the weights that often lead to doubt, to questions.

Those are the weights that can make it hard to get up in the morning.

Difficult even to pray, hard to read our Bible, hard to gather with friends and family, even in church.

Those are the moments in life that are the real struggle points, the points when really what we truly believe is actually revealed.

How do we endure those sorts of weights?

And that's where James comes in this morning.

Since the middle of May, we've been studying this New Testament letter written by the half-brother of Jesus.

In this series, we've called Authentic Faith.

We've talked a lot about how authentic faith is actionable.

Like it's it's faith that is lived.

It's faith with feet and hands attached to it.

But sometimes those feet and those hands, they are in a posture of prayer.

Sometimes those feet, those knees are bent as they fall down to the ground because we must be still and wait for the Lord.

Sometimes the most authentic thing we can do before God is wait for Him to answer.

And so this morning, what James is gonna do is he is going to instruct us on how we can endure the trial, how we can truly know, both in our hearts and also in our heads, and in the way we live in the world, that God is always worth the wait.

And James's instruction, well, it centers around introducing us to two friends.

I want to call them this morning Pat and Percy.

You may know them by their full names, patience and perseverance.

So check out what James has to say.

Chapter 5, verses 7 through 8.

Be patient then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord's coming.

See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains.

You two be patient and stand firm, because the Lord's coming is near.

At the beginning of verse 7, James says, Meet my friend Pat.

Now, funny thing about his friend Pat, I think most of us have met him at one point or another in our life.

But not many of us have gotten to know patience.

Right?

I don't know anyone.

Like I in my 40 years, I've never met someone who said, I've got patience figured out.

Everyone always says when you ask them describe yourself, well, I'm kind of impatient.

All of us need to like sit down and spend some time with this friend named Pat.

We need to develop patience.

But before we can develop it, maybe we should define it.

Paul Tripp defines it this way.

I like this simple definition.

Patience is quiet, tenant, quietness of heart, rest of soul in the face of uncomfortable delay.

It's a condition of the heart, a condition of the soul in the face of uncomfortable delay, of things not going the way that I had planned, the way I had dreamed.

Now, as people who are trying to endure the time between the ask and the answer, patience may seem like a denial of reality.

Or maybe when we hear the word patience, we imagine patience speaking to us in this very condescending tone of saying, there, there, there, it's gonna be alright.

And in that moment, all you want to say is, no, it's really not gonna be okay.

It actually hurts so bad, I can't imagine it being okay in this moment at this hour.

Stop saying those words to me.

There are times in life, I think, when we believe patience and the command to be patient kind of trivializes what we are going through.

You're like, James, why do I need to be patient?

Why do I need to spend time with Pat, your friend?

Why do I need to develop patience in this moment?

And James would say this.

He would say, Patience is the only thing in this moment.

Yeah, it maybe doesn't solve what's in the present, but it's the one thing that opens your eyes to eternity.

It lifts your eyes off the present trial to see the glory of what is to come.

Be patient, James says, until the Lord's coming.

You see, because when the Lord comes, the pain of the wait will be over.

Tears will be wiped away, disease will be no more, death will be finally vanquished.

And when that day comes, when the Lord comes, we will know what?

But what about the days before?

How can I endure those days, James?

How can I be patient in the middle of the pain?

And I wonder if James just anticipates those sorts of questions.

Because as much as people have changed over those 2,000 years, people have stayed the same.

Same sort of questions fill their mind.

And so what James does, he says, Well, look at the farmer.

The farmer has something he can teach you about patience.

Unlike so many other trades and professions, farmers, especially farmers in the ancient world, they were wholly dependent upon God.

They depended upon God to send rains in the fall and in the spring, because without those rains, what would occur?

There wouldn't be no harvest to collect, no fruit or vegetables or grain to grow up in the fields to feed their families.

You see, an ancient farmer knew that his life and his livelihood did not depend upon his own hands.

His life and his livelihood rested in the hand of God.

And the rain over and over again, every drop that fell from heaven proved to that farmer, season by season, year by year, that what?

God is always worth the wait.

He is the God who makes promises and keeps promises.

So maybe if you're enduring a particularly painful wait, and you feel like your life is kind of coming apart at the seams between the ask and the answer.

The farmer, at first, is just a reminder to look for drops of rain in your life.

Look for those small ways that God has promised and is fulfilling his promise every single day.

It may not be the whole answer, it may not be the whole entire act that you desired, it may not turn out the way you want it, but God is present in that moment.

He is answering some prayers of your hearts.

Rain still falls from the sky.

Here's the other thing.

Because you're not alone.

James says that the Lord is near.

God is not unaware, he is not unconcerned.

God is close by our side.

And even if you cannot see it, God is always at work.

You see, a farmer knows that waiting, it's not useless and it's not meaningless.

A farmer knows that waiting is productive, that waiting is transformative, that beneath the soil the seed is germinating.

He can't see beneath the soil, but he knows that when the when the seed is watered and it's deep down, it's been there's a hole for it to rest, that root Will grow out of it, that a stalk will form, and eventually something will spring out of the ground.

The farmer knows that without the seed being unseen in the soil, there'll never be a tree with fruit, there'll never be a bush with berries, there'll never be a stalk with corn on it.

The farmer doesn't see all of that, but he knows all of those things are unfolding beneath the soil in places he cannot see.

The farmer is waiting for that seed to sprout because he knows God is at work.

So hear this.

If you're in the midst of a difficult wave, God's already at work.

There's things going on beneath the soil that you cannot see.

And God is doing a work that is productive and transformative and life-giving.

And you may not be able to see it with your eyes.

You may not even be able to discern it with your faith.

But God is at work.

And listen, God is faithful to bring to completion the work he has already begun in you.

He never abandons his children.

He never leaves his work incomplete.

And there will be a day, even in the midst of this current wait, when finally that shoot will spring up and out of the ground, and you will see that God's been up to something.

And once again, you'll know what?

So that's the first friend, the friend Pat.

Be patient until the Lord's coming.

Here's the second friend that James wants us to meet this morning: Percy.

Perseverance.

Listen to what James now says in verses 10 and 11.

He says, brothers and sisters, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.

As you know, we count as blessed those who have persevered.

You have heard of Job's perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about.

So if patience emphasizes the length of the wait, then perseverance emphasizes the stress or maybe the pressure that occurs that falls on a person as they wait.

It's what emphasizes why waiting is so difficult.

There feels like there's a yoke, there's a weight on our shoulders throughout the entire process.

So what then is perseverance?

You may define it this way: Perseverance is the ability to press forward even though you are under pressure.

Perseverance is the ability to take the very next step.

And I think James knows like it's hard to learn to persevere in this world.

It does not come naturally.

So he says, look at the prophets.

Look at the way they took another step forward under enormous pressure.

He doesn't name a specific prophet, he just says, the prophets.

He like lays their all of their lives before us and says, they are your living illustration of what perseverance looks like.

That um the prophet Elijah stood up under the pressure.

He kept moving forward, even though the pressure of wicked King Ahab was enormous.

Or the prophet Jeremiah that he persevered under the pressure of the fall of Jerusalem.

Or that the prophet Isaiah persevered under the pressure because the people wouldn't listen to him.

Or the prophet Daniel, he faced the pressure of the lion's jaw, but he persevered.

He kept moving forward.

Those prophets, they lived in a time between the ask and the answer, the ask and the action of God.

And the only reason they were able to take another step forward every single day is because they learned perseverance.

They weren't gonna give up.

They weren't gonna stop waiting on the Lord.

One more step, one more step, day by day.

Last week, um, a member of the Olympic team from Great Britain, her name's Katerina Thompson.

She was competing in the women's heptathlon.

It was the 200-meter uh portion of the heptathlon.

She's in the race, she's doing really well, she's meeting expectations, and then in the middle of the race, she feels her calf give way.

It like pops on her.

And she just like immediately falls to the ground and she lays in the fetal position, and uh the doctors come out for the medical team and they bring out a wheelchair and they just want to help her get off the track, and she waves off everybody.

She just waves off.

No, no, no, no, no.

I gotta keep pressing forward.

So she has one good leg and one leg to drag behind her, and she just takes step by step by step until she crosses the finish line.

That's perseverance.

Her example and the prophets in the Old Testament remind us to press forward towards the goal no matter the pressure we face.

You see, waiting is not simply being passive, it's just this eager anticipation that God will act, and we want to be faithful in the season before God acts.

We want to be ready and attuned to God.

Hebrews chapter 12 challenges us to let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus.

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

You see, we just keep moving forward step by step by step because one day we know there will be a finish line that we're gonna cross, and Jesus is gonna be on the other side.

And Jesus is gonna be there ready to embrace us.

But James isn't done.

He says, don't just look to the prophets.

I want you to look to Job.

You remember Job in the Old Testament?

Familiar with his story?

He's the guy who lost it all.

He lost all of his flocks and he lost his family.

From like chapter one almost to the very end of the book.

Job is this man who experiences the most painful of weights a human can experience.

But he perseveres.

And I actually think Job humanizes perseverance for us.

Job reminds us that it's not easy to persevere.

Job reminds us that even as we're persevering, we may doubt God.

We may question what God's up to.

We may even have a moment when we want to give up on God.

I think we can identify with that.

When it's that hard and that overwhelming.

But listen, as much as Job questioned and doubted and wanted to give up, God never gave up on Job.

He was with him the entire time.

He walked him through that entire season of his life.

And so Job kept moving forward.

And why could he keep moving forward?

It wasn't because of who he was, it was because of who God is.

Final phrase in verse 11 of chapter 5 of James is this the Lord is full of compassion and mercy.

The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.

The reason we can be patient, the reason we can persevere is because God is compassionate towards us, because God showers his mercy on us every single day.

And it's why when the pressure's at its highest, we keep our eyes on Jesus.

He is compassionate.

He is merciful.

We can develop patience and perseverance because of who God is.

A few years ago in 2016, a hundred and eight years of waiting finally came to an end.

Those lovable losers who call Wrigley Field home finally won the World Series.

Yeah, the Chicago Cubs.

One guy was so overwhelmed by the victory that he ran around the streets outside of Wrigley Field in just his underwear and his full body paint, blue head to toe, with the Chicago Cubs logo on his stomach.

He's like high-fiving everybody.

Can you believe it?

Can you believe it?

The curse is over, the wait has finally ended.

He was so happy.

And listen, guys, one day, as excited and overwhelmed with joy as he was, we will be more excited and more overwhelmed because our wait will finally be over.

On the final page of Scripture, we are promised that the one who testifies to these things says, Behold, I am coming soon.

It may not seem like it's soon, but in the light of eternity, it's soon.

But to make it to that day, we're gonna have to be patient.

We're gonna have to learn what it means to persevere.

And then John says this his prayer in light of who God is, that he is the God who is coming soon.

He says, Come as quick as you can, Lord Jesus.

If there's any way you can move up the date, Jesus, move it up.

We are waiting for you.

You see, all of the pains we endure in waiting in the here and now, all of those painful moments will come to an end when we see Jesus face to face.

It's why we can pray with King David.

That in the face of everything that's messed up in this world, everything that drives us crazy, all the prayer requests, they're waiting for an answer.

Because we know that Jesus will come quickly, he will come soon.

We can pray with King David.

I'm gonna be still.

When we name those wounds in our life, those unsettled desires, those things that are unfulfilled, we can name them to Him.

Ask God to nurture within you patience, quietness of soul, rest in the heart.

Ask God to give you the ability to persevere as you wait.

Even as your dreams don't come true, even if there are more disappointments.

Now, would you just say to the Lord, God, you are always worth the wait.

No matter how long it takes, you are worth waiting for.

We just want to be honest with you.

Holy Spirit, deepen our faith so that we can know that even when we don't see you at work, that you are at work, like the farmer knew.

Holy Spirit, give us the perseverance of the prophets to stand up no matter how high the pressure is.

Give us the perseverance of Job, which was first honest, before it just fell on his face before you and realized who you were.

Father, as we sing one more song right now, minister to each of our hearts.

We're waiting for you to move in our midst.

We love you, King Jesus.

In your name we pray.

Amen.

Let's stand together and sing.