31st August 2025 - Celebration Service - Dave Food - In the Waiting Room with God

Before you. Thank you for the way that you have

for us. Lord, use him mightily for the edification of

your people and your church in Jesus' name. Amen, Thank you,

Rob morning, Church, morning, those listing online, It's a glorious

day today. As part of our series on His Story,

My Story, I want to close out our month by

talking about something I know every one of you has

enjoyed this month. We all do it. None of us

like it, waiting waiting. Who likes waiting, Juliet says, she does,

depends what it's for. Thank you asmin. Absolutely, if it's

a chocolate bar, you're wanting to wait for it now.

We rarely enjoy it. Though, I really kind of wanted

to give a bit of a focus here, so I

want to call this in God's waiting room, waiting for

the next chapter. I don't know whether you're an avid

book reader. My wife reads books all the time. There's

shelves in our house full of books. If we go

on holiday and we take five books away with us,

she's read all of the four other books before I

finished the first one, so she's already wanting my book

before I finished it. But in every book there is

a new chapter, you open up a new chapter and

there's a new part of the story that opens up.

Think about the last time you sat waiting. Maybe it

was in the doctor surgery, in the waiting room, in

the hospital, in the job center. You know, normally, the

magazines are a bit out of date. Maybe you find

a bit of chewing gum stuck in the in the

middle of a magazine. The chairs are a bit uncomfortable.

The clock always seems to move a little slower than

you expect. I don't know whether you've ever sat in

a waiting room, but I checked my watch far more

times than I ever checked my watcher any other time.

Why is that time seems to move slower than normal

when we're in waiting time. When we're in the waiting room,

you know, we don't want to be there, if we're honest,

we'd rather just go through the waiting room. I don't

know whether you've ever been recently. I sat down in

the waiting room and there was a queue of people there,

and I came in, and I logged in and let

them know that I was there. And i'd hardly sat down,

and then I was called, and I thought, but there's

all these people who should be going before me? Shouldn't they?

But I was really excited to be going in so quickly.

Waiting is biblical. There's lots of stories in the Bible

about people waiting. I wonder who you can think of.

Abraham waited twenty five years for a promised son. You'll

find that in Genesis twenty one Joseph. We know the

promise of You know the dreams that Joseph had. He

went through prison and pits and other troubles, being sold

into slavery before he found himself in the palace. We'll

find that in Genesis forty one, Moses spent forty years

in the desert before leading God's people forward again back

into purpose. Jesus himself waited for thirty years before he

came to a sincere time of ministry. God is not

in a hurry. He does it in his time. Scripture

talks about a thousand years can be as a day,

and a day could be as a thousand years. Well,

a thousand years is a long time. Can you even

consider what a thousand years is? Some of us may

think about planting something for the next generation. We might

think about our children or our grandchildren, and we think

about something maybe ten fifty, twenty twenty fifty years ahead.

Some people may think about planting a tree that will

be there for our great our grandchildren, maybe our great grandchildren,

maybe even longer. Just the other side of the river

here from running me. There's the anna wicktory, which is

hundreds of years old. Hundreds of years old. Isaiah forty

thirty one reminds us with this. It says, they that

wait on the Lord shall not maybe shall renew their strength.

They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall

run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint.

Anybody up for that. Yeah, when you run out of yourself,

when you get stitch, for those people who do exercise,

and you kind of think I can't go any further,

sometimes you get a second wind and then you run

further than you've ever run before. When you run out

of patience, you think I've waited long enough? How much

longer can I wait? And then a second wind comes

and patience arises. Lamentations three twenty five and twenty six

says the Lord is good to those who wait for him,

to the soul who seeks him. It is good that

one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.

So what is waiting all about? Why do we have

to do it? I'd like you to think about the

last time you got something that was valuable, precious, did

you have to wait for it. We live in a

world now we can get our credit card out and

we can pay for things, and we can get things

on credit, and we can get things much sooner than

we could get them before. There used to be a

couple living over the road from us, John and Maureen,

and they talked about the first time they moved into

their house here in Egham, just when it was built,

how they had an orange crate was their dining room table.

It couldn't afford a dining room table, didn't have a

dining room table. They had two folding chairs and an

orange crate. And that's what they ate off for a

number of years, and they saved up the money for

their dining room table. They said it was so exciting

the first time they sat around their dining room table.

They sat around it for twenty minutes whilst they were

whilst dinner was cooking. They sat around the table anticipation

of the meal was coming. They'd laid the table they

sat for nearly half an hour after they'd finished the meal, said,

this is our dining table. Sometimes there's an expectation that

rises in our hearts when we have to wait for something.

Waiting tests are trust. When we're in God's waiting room,

the biggest question that arises is do we trust him?

Do we trust him? It's a bit like sitting in

a railway station. Yeah, you can't see the train yet.

You know, the timetable says it should be a rising.

But can you trust the timetable If anybody traveled in

Switzerland by train, okay, the trains come on time. In fact,

if you get to the platform bang on time, you

will miss the train because the doors close ten seconds

before they're meant to leave. You know. That's the way.

You know the expectation is if we have an expectation

that everything runs late, then we'll turn up late and

we'll we'll be very surprised when it starts running on time.

Faith says God has not forgotten me. Psalm twenty seven,

verse fourteen says, this wait for the Lord. Be strong

and let your heart take courage. Wait for the Lord.

I love proverbs. I can turn to proverbs at almost

any time of the day or night, afternoon, morning, evening,

there's always something that speaks to my now situation. Proverbs three,

verses five and six six gives us a key here.

Trust in the Law with all your heart. Lean not

on your own understandings, in all your ways. Acknowledge Him,

and he will direct your paths all our heart, not

just a bit of our tension, not just a bit

of our time, not just a bit of our focus.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and wait

on him. Waiting prepares us for what's going to come next.

Think about the seasons we're just you know, tomorrow is

the end of summer. I think they officially took about

it being the end of summer. Winter looks barren when

we look forward. We look forward to winter and there's nothing.

It seems like there's nothing going on. But underground, the

roots are going deeper, ready for the new season of growth,

ready to bear fruit. God does hidden work in our

lives in waiting time. God's at work all the time.

Think about Joseph in prison. You might have thought he's

just in a waiting room. He's just waiting. But he

learnt so much. He learned to hear from God. He

learned to interpret dreams. He became a man who was

trusted even amongst the prison guards. He learned to David

learned to worship in the wilderness when he was out

there looking after the sheep. He didn't put a crown

on before he was king, but he learned to worship God.

Waiting rooms are not wasted rooms. Waiting time is not

wasted time. They are classrooms where God develops in us patience, humility, resilience,

and a deeper intimacy with him. Romans tells us this,

we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance,

and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. James puts

it a different way. He says, this, let perseverance finish

its work, so that you may be mature, complete, and lack,

and do not lack anything or lack nothing in a

different translation, So are you good at waiting? Think about

the children who sit in your car, who when you

travel somewhere, what's the first question they ask? Are we there? Yeah?

You know. They want it to be instant. They want

it a bit like Star trek. Can you press the

button and just appear somewhere else. If you're in God's

waiting room today, there are three things that I want

to say, three things I want to share with you

about waiting. Well, please, waite is not a dead time,

it's active time. Lorraine, for example, she's going when she

goes for her operation. They've told her she will not

hear at all for about a month, and then slowly

they'll turn things on. We've been praying for a couple

of weeks now that God would speak to her in

her time of silence. If you want to speak to

Lorain over the next few weeks, you'll probably have to

write things down. But let's wait actively, not passively. Those

who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy.

David wrote in Psalm one hundred and twenty six. Keep serving,

keep praying, keep growing, don't wait passively, wait actively, but

also waits expectantly. David also wrote in Psalm twenty seven,

I remain confident of this. I will see the goodness

of the Lord in the land of the Living. Delay

is not denial. Sometimes God says yes but not now,

Yes but not yet, and then you think, well, what

are we waiting for? I'm ready? Well, maybe we're waiting

for someone else. Maybe we're waiting for the situation to

be in a different position. There are many times in

my life when when I've looked back with hindsight, I've

realized how the paths come together in a way that

no way could I have known about, no way could

I have designed, no way could I have been prepared.

And also, waiting doesn't have to be a solitary act.

We can wait together. Hebrews ten twenty four says, let

us encourage how we might stir one another with love

and good deeds, not neglecting meeting together, but continuing to

encourage one another. And in times of waiting, let me

encourage all of us, those listening online, those listening later,

those in the room, Let me encourage you to think

about what God has said. When God has spoken, we

hold on to what he said with confidence and faith.

Youth camp many many years ago, so when I was

leading the youth here in church, there was a couple

who came from another church, Matthew and Nadine. They'd not

been married that long, and they were youth leaders from

a church up in the Midlands. And I was talking

to them, well, actually I talked to them after the

So they were called out in the middle of a

youth meeting and the guy who was speaking, Ian Green

called them out and said, I believe the Lord's calling

you to be missionaries, I said, and I see Japan

on your ho right now. They burst out crying because

God had already spoken to them about going to Japan,

already spoken to them as a couple about going to Japan,

and they'd shared that with their church leaders. We feel

God's going to at some point in our lives call

us to be Japan. So they submitted that to their

church leadership. So then when a youth camp, you know,

it wasn't in church, they went back and they recounted

to the church leadership that again someone had called them

out and prophesied over to them about going to Japan.

About two or three months after the youth camp, a

traveling minister was traveling through their church. They called them out.

What do you think, He said, I'm calling you as

missionaries to Japan. Now for the church itself. This was

the first time they'd heard this for the church, the

wider church. Within a few months they were in Japan

serving the Lord. So let me explain a little bit

about what's going on, because it seems like waiting time.

God had already spoken to them, and they shared that

with the leadership. So when they got extra ernal confirmation

at youth camp, they already went home and they went

back and they shared with their leadership, and they talked

to their mortgage companies, said we will want to rent

our house out for a number of years at some

point in the future, changed their mortgage so that they

were able to do that. They put themselves on Japanese classes.

They learned, and they found they learned Japanese far better

than they expected. It's the gracing of God. What they

were doing was aligning themselves to the prophetic word that

God had spoken to them. They were aligning themselves to

the command of the king, and so when a confirmation

came again, they were ready to go. I just want

to encourage you. Waiting times a great time to lean

into the word that God has given you. Hey, Lord,

I know you've spoken. I haven't seen it yet, but

I'm waiting on you because the next chapter will come.

We will not be in the waiting room forever. God

is always ready to turn the page. There's more chapters.

There's more to be written in our book of life.

Galatians six nine says this, let us not grow weary

in doing good, for in due season we shall reap

a reward. We shall not give up. Habakuk two verse

three encourages us, for the vision is yet for an

appointed time. It hastens towards the goal, and it will

not fail. Though tarry wait for it, because it will

surely come. It will not delay your due season. My

due season is coming. I'm saying that because God is faithful.

God is a god of tomorrow, today, and yesterday. God

is not bound by time, and so I want to

declare some things that I believe to be true. I

want to say, Number one, your appointment is booked. Yeah see,

I remember. But if our appointment is booked, that means

there's probably going to be a bit of a waiting time.

Don't know how long that will be. But the train

is on its way. The train is coming. The next

chapter is in God's hand. God is writing yours and

my story. And here's the thing. It's one of the

reasons why I'm a great believer in sharing with other

people around us what God has said to us. Some

of you have got prophetic words that were given to

you years maybe decades ago, and they're still still time

for them to be fulfilled. They're still in your still

in the waiting room for that word. I'd encourage you

to share it with people who are around you for

one reason, because some of the people around you are

part of that story. We don't go I mean, how

many books have you read that are about one character

and nobody else is in the story? Be a pretty

boring book, goodn't it? You know you need other characters

in the story, and people step in and they take part,

and then they step out again. So as we've talked

about my story is his story, I also want to

say to you, your story is our story. Some of

you remember scholar of Shnoike. He's going to be with

us next October. He's going to be speaking here in October.

But he felt the Lord say to him, I'm going

to take you on the golf course. You'd never really

played golf before. He was an expert in HR systems,

but he felt God say, I'm going to take you

on the golf course. Get ready. Somebody prophesied over him,

I see you going to golf clubs and speaking to

business people. So he thought, I better align myself with this.

So he shared it with the men in the church,

and we said, we want to be part of this.

So a number put some money into a part and

we bought him a golf club, just one, not the

whole set, just one, but we wanted to be part

of it. I know. Over the next few years, his

handicap went down. He didn't play that often. His handicap

went down. He was playing really well, and he led.

He spoke to a number of people on the green

at the end of a do you call it a match?

I don't know, you know, find out I'm a round

of golf, sorry, a round of golf. And he said

there were a number of times he said he'd get

to the last the last hole, and in that last hole,

the father would go, okay, I want you to have

a conversation now, And as they're walking towards the clubhouse,

as they're walking to the final green, he'd shares something

with him. Sometimes it would be something that God dropped

on his heart and he shared it with them. Do

you know we're part of one another's story? God is

writing your story. The waiting room is part of the

process I'll say that again because this is the outstatement.

The waiting room is part of the process and the

next chapter will be worth the weight. As Jasmin said

when I asked the question, do you like waiting? It

depends what it's for waiting in the dentist to have

your teeth drilled, you know, okay, But if you've got

a painful tooth, then you know you want to get

it sorted out. When you can live with the pain,

you can suffer or you can get it sorted out.

Let's not waste waiting time. Let's allow God to be

at work in us and through us, so when the

door opens, we are ready to walk in. Our next

adventure is full of faith, full of courage, and full

of joy. The next chapter will surely come. Are you

ready to turn the page? Have you already thought about

what's behind the door? Have you thought about what is

to come? Some of the stories that I've shared with you,

David and Joseph and others that talked about waiting. There's

a couple who we've known over a number of years.

They used to lead a church in Lewiston, Idaho. This

church has hosted many of the people from their church

in fact. Let me tell you a story to kind

of close things out. A number of years ago, Ron

Ron King said to me, Dave, I met him at

conference and he said, Dave, we're coming to the UK

to visit our son. His son and two other boys

were working with the church in Sheffield, and so we're

coming in next year. Is it okay? If we stay

with you, we'll fly into Heathrow and then we'll travel

up to Sheffield. And I went yeap great, thinking three boys,

six parents, we can probably cap with six people for

a few days. He then rings me in early December

said day were coming? Is it still okay? I said, yes?

How how many are coming? He said, there's twenty two

of us. I don't know whether every I don't know

whether anybody remembers this. But we rang around the church,

and we rang around friends of the church, and we said,

can anybody put We put up twenty two people and

they came and they stayed with us. But Ron and

Julie led a church in Lewiston, Idaho. And the church

in Lewiston is right next to a college, a bit

like Strokes, and there will be a lot of students

who come here who learn English here and they're learning

English as to be able to get a job or

a career. You know, English is not their first language.

There were a lot of Japanese students who started turning

up at the college in Lewiston, and people would go

out and invite them. They'd invite them to come to church. Slowly,

but surely, Japanese students started to come to church. And

Ron and Julie had been given a prophetic word that said,

you will plant a church in Japan. I don't know

why I've got two stories on Japan today, but it's

just the way it landed. And Ron and Julie started

inviting Japanese students around their house because they started coming

to church. They had come around our house. And then

they found out some of the Japanese students didn't have

somewhere to live. They were struggling with somewhere to live.

So they both Yasmin and Ryan, their two children. They

changed the bedroom situation so they had bunk beds, and

the bunk bed was a bed on the top and

then a sofa underneath. And they changed that in every

bedroom in their house so that they have flexibility to

have more people to stay. They had a number of

Japanese students who moved in with them and lived with

them for the year that they were studying at college.

They became Christian. They went back to Japan, and then

the invitation started to come to Ron and Juli please

come past that, come to come to our small group.

Now here's the interesting thing, because they had a prophetic

word saying they were going to plant a church in Japan.

Ron and Julie are paid by the Japanese government to

perform Western weddings. There's an interesting Western weddings in Japan.

They like Western weddings. So Ron works typically on a Friday, Saturday,

and Sunday doing Western weddings and he gets paid by

the Japanese government, but for all the rest of the

week he passes the church. And they now live in

Japan and have seen many, many, many Japanese people come

to christ And it took twenty years from the first

prophetic word to them settling in Japan. Sometimes are waiting now.

They are very much at home. They love it. They've

sent a couple of encouraging words. They've talked about they've

seen us move in here and they've sent some encouraging

words from Japan saying good job, Dave. Keep it up

from Japan, and I just want to say, guys, I

don't know how long your waiting room is for certain things,

but sometimes just share with someone. I sat in the

doctors recently for a minor check up, and I saw

everybody sitting there, most people on their mobile phones, ignoring

everybody else. And then somebody walked in who knew me,

and we started talking and we had quite a reasonable

amount of weight. So we carried on talking and you

could see there were people go looking at us, king,

Now you're meant to be quiet in the waiting room,

but do you know what. I sat there and thought, okay,

let's speak some words of hope in the waiting room.

They're going to hear our conversation because the room is silent,

so they got We didn't have to shout. We were

just talking, just talking at normal level, but everybody else

could hear. So I talked about a couple of testimonis,

and she shared back with me a couple of testimonies

going on in her life. I just thought, Wow, I've

got a captive audience. I can share the gospel and

no one can complain because if somebody wants to go wait,

I don't want to hear your story. Okay, we'll stop

listening then. So we're in a waiting when we're all

in a waiting room somewhere, somehow waiting is good for us.

It raises expectation. Most of you know, Julia and I

have a dog called Teddy. Sometimes he gets a treat

when he's done something good, and sometimes I'll make him wait.

I'll take the treat and i'll show it to him.

I'll put it on the floor and I'll sit there.

I'll make him wait, and you can see the longer

you make him wait, the more excited he gets about it.

And I'm not trying to be a tease. I'm trying

to teach some discipline to the dog. That's why I

do it, you know, wait wait, wait okay now. And

I sense sometimes the father's doing that with us. He's

going wait wait okay. Now's the time we're turning the page.

We're into the new chapter. And so that's the way

I want to close. I want to close by asking you,

do you sense that you're in the waiting room with God?

Is there something that you are expectant for and you

want God to move in. But maybe you just need

a bit more patience for the waiting room. Maybe you

want to say, O, Lord teaching, show me what it

is you're teaching me whilst I'm here in the waiting room.

A bit like Joseph in the prison cell, A bit

like Joseph, you know, doing some of the things. So

let me just close my eyes. I'm just going to

ask you. If you sense you're in a waiting room

with God today and you're a bit I don't know,

a bit frustrate, I'm going to ask you to stand

those at home two. If you're in the waiting room

and you're saying, I don't even know why there is

a waiting room here. Surely this should be a corridor,

not a waiting room, I'm going to ask you to stand.

And if you didn't even realize you were in the queue,

but you sense you're waiting, so there's no room, but

your sense you're waiting for something. Because I just want

to speak into some situations. I sen God to give

me a couple of pictures as i'm I want to

share them. So if that's you, please stand, I'm just

going to speak into some I don't know who these

are for. In fact, I've got my eyes closed. I

don't even want to see who's standing. But do you

know there's a couple of pictures that God gave me

as I prepared for the word today. Number one, I

saw someone waiting at traffic lights, not a waiting room,

but a waiting time traffic lights. And you have a

and understanding of the sequence the traffic lights work in

the people on the left, the people on the right,

the people turning right, the people turning left, people going

straight on. And then it's my turn. And you've seen

the traffic slights cycle through twice, and you're sitting there thinking,

but it's my turn. I need to be going now.

Do you know what I see is you don't go,

but there's an accident on the traffic lights. And if

you'd have gone when you thought you should have gone,

you'd been part of that. I sense God sometimes keeps

us waiting because he's keeping us safe. And please, if

you ever have to wait with God, just ask him, God,

why am I waiting? Help me in my waiting time,

Show me what it is you want me to learn.

Stir in my heart the things that you want to

grow in me. But when you with hindsight look back

and see what God has saved you from, alreadied you

for rejoice, rejoice. I said, that was one picture that

I had, and the other picture that I had was

someone's waiting for a diagnosis. There's something that you've been

and you've had some tests and you're waiting for some results,

and you're not enjoying waiting for the results. And they've

already said it's going to take some time because they've

got to go through it. But you know what, I

see the prescription already written. I see the prescription already written,

and it's not to deal with with the symptoms. It's

to deal with the cause. I send the Father coming

and dealing with the situation that is going to be

dealt with at the root of its cause. So the

symptoms that you have that you went to have help with,

I sense the Father says, I'm not just going to

make the symptoms of me. We ate the system the symptoms.

I'm going to deal with the problem itself. And so,

Father God, we stand in your presence, and we trust

you in our waiting time, show us more of you

in our in our pressing time, we press into you Father,

Help us to be ready when you need us to

be ready. Equip us for the new chapter, equip us

for the turning page. Help us not to be like

the foolish virgins who had not got our lamps ready,

so when the bride came and the bridegroom came, we

were not. They were not ready. Help us to be ready.

So in our waiting time, prepare our hearts, ready our minds,

build our relationships, so that when you say now we're

ready to go, Lord, it's your time, not our time,

you can do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine.

You can do in a moment, in the twinkling of

an eye, what would take us decades. And so, Father God,

we submit our tomorrows to you, and we submit our

waiting times into your hands, and say, let your kingdom come,

and your will be done in Jesus' name, Amen,