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Guest (Male): If you give yourself to the pursuit of paradise now, you will be disappointed. You will live in disappointment. And when that happens, I'll tell you what you'll do. You'll be angry with God because you'll say, "God, you haven't fulfilled my dreams."

Steve Hiller: Welcome to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith. Colin, I'm sure that there are a number of people who come to your mind, as there are people who come to my mind, who as we heard tend to fixate on our dreams rather than the Lord's plan.

Colin Smith: Well, and the Bible's full of examples of this too. Jonah's a great example, isn't he? Here's this guy who has a ministry of the word of God, so he's a spiritual leader, everyone respects him. But when God says, "I want you to go and to do another thing, a different place," suddenly that doesn't fit his dream, and it's, "I'm out of here," and all that kind of thing.

Another example is Judas Iscariot because here's a person who had dreams that he thought he could tie Jesus into. "Now Jesus can get me to fulfill my radical Zealot dream." And whenever we try to get Jesus Christ tied into our dream, we end up departing from him in the end. The only way to live the Christian life is that I tie myself to his purpose and his will, and that's a completely different thing. The question at stake here is: who is God?

Steve Hiller: Well, that's exactly it. And we're going to continue to explore that in today's broadcast. We're in the middle of a message entitled "Learn to Wait" from Jude 21, so I hope you'll join us there as we continue today's teaching. Here's Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: Waiting, as God speaks to us about it, is never wasted time. Waiting is one of the workouts that will, properly used, shape your Christian life. Waiting can be one of the greatest growth opportunities in your entire walk with God. And if we could grasp that, it will change our whole perspective on some of the situations we find most difficult and most frustrating in our lives.

Now, I want to suggest three ways in which you can grow while you're waiting. The first is simply this: grow in patience as you embrace the disappointments of your life. Listen to our verse again: "Keep yourselves in God's love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life." Now, waiting is, of course, what we do when things have not worked out as we had hoped. Somewhere within every heart, there is a dream—a dream of life as we would like it to be. That dream is placed in your heart by God himself.

When Jude uses the word wait, he reminds us that the dream in your heart will never be fulfilled in this world. That's a fundamental Christian conviction, if we are to order our thinking by the Bible. Our first parents—this is one of the first things you learn in the Bible—our first parents were driven out of the Garden of Eden. Paradise was lost.

The dream cannot be fulfilled here because this world, though blessed in so many ways by the goodness of God, is nonetheless under a curse. It is a fallen world in which we live this life. You will not find paradise in this world. You have to get that into your head if you're going to be a Christian believer. It is a fundamental point at which the Bible and our culture are in headlong opposition. You will not find paradise in this world.

Now, I've got a little idea here. Here's a practical suggestion for you. I've been thinking that we could design a little sign and it would say on it four words: "This is not paradise." And I'm going to ask you to be creative in your minds now—and you can talk about this over lunch—as to all kinds of places where you could put this sign: "This is not paradise."

I mean, you might want to hang it over the front door of your home. And it would greatly help you because some of us are so sold out on the pursuit of this perfect family life, which we cannot attain within this world, that we become utterly crushing for everyone around us. It would take a great deal of pressure off you if you could just acknowledge the truth of the Bible and put a little sign over your home that says, "This is not paradise."

Some couples might want to put it over the door to the bedroom. It would take a lot of pressure off. My kids might want to put it over the door to their bedroom. "This is not paradise." The problem is that many of us think it should be because we don't believe the Bible. We expect more than God has promised in this life, and the result is that we live at a level of constant frustration and constant disappointment.

Now, when God does not give you what you want, in this world and this culture where we have so much, when God does not give you what you want, he opens a door of critical opportunity for your spiritual growth. I want to encourage you here: embrace that pain. Love God in that disappointment. Recognize that in a world of abundance, this may be one of the most important junctures in your Christian life.

Here is one place where you have the opportunity to detach yourself from the headlong pursuit of paradise in this world and to set yourself apart for Jesus Christ as Lord. The places where you may have that opportunity in this life may be relatively few, so seize them. Grasp them. They are critical to your spiritual fitness.

The places where God calls you to wait are of great importance in your Christian life. This is a wake-up call to reality that God is giving you. There are discoveries of grace that you can make while you are waiting that you will never make while you're careening on your way with everything fulfilled.

Paul says in Romans chapter 8 and in verse 24 that we read: "Hope that is seen is not hope at all." You see, that's the reason why many of us have such a little sense of hope, that everything around us is seen. We've not got the sense of what yet lies ahead. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not have, we wait for it patiently.

What you do not have is the place where God will do a deep work in your life. So grow in patience as you embrace the disappointments of your life. You see, if God should grant that thing that you're waiting for right now, your opportunity to grow through it will be gone the day that he gives it to you. The opportunity to grow through it is now. It's now while you're waiting.

Secondly, grow in hope. First was grow in patience as you embrace the disappointments of life. Secondly, grow in hope as you cultivate the anticipation of heaven. Notice the verse again. Jude says, "Wait for the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life." And he is reminding us, of course, that the large part of the Christian life is to be one of anticipation.

The Bible speaks of believers as being like the bride of Christ. So the whole of your Christian life is to be viewed as a bride-to-be would view an engagement. Those of you who are married, remember engagement. Karen and I were engaged for eight months. And you're counting days, aren't you? I mean, the whole of your life when you're engaged is geared towards the day.

Now, says Paul, that's what it's like to be the church of Jesus Christ. If you're a believer, you are engaged to Jesus Christ. The life is all about what happens after the day when you stand with him and you are united with him and you enter into the life that he will bring you into. So that's our whole perspective on life if we've understood what the Bible is saying to us.

Now, I've wondered, and it remains heavy upon my heart: why is it that believers in India, for example, to take one place that I've enjoyed visiting, why is it that believers in India have a much more lively anticipation of heaven than believers in Europe or America?

Frankly, when we get interested in what's going to happen after the return of Jesus Christ, we get interested in what happens to those who are left behind, not what happens to those who go. Isn't that interesting? But why is it that believers in India have a stronger anticipation of life with Jesus Christ, a greater joy in the anticipation of it, than we do here or in Europe?

The answer is very simply that if we expect more than God has promised now, we will anticipate less than he has promised then. If we expect more than God has promised now, we will anticipate less than he has promised then. Take a risk with this balloon here. I'm very afraid it's going to go pop.

You see, if I divide this balloon here and we think of it as being divided between what God has given to us now and what God has promised to us in the future, if I inflate my expectations of what God has promised now, what do I do at the same time? I diminish my expectation of what God is promising for the future.

What is the only way to increase my anticipation of what lies in the future? It is to deflate my expectations now. That's the only way. And with these massive expectations of life now, we have minimal expectation of what lies ahead. That's why we're so disappointed, so frustrated. That's why we're out of spiritual shape.

Steve Hiller: You're listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith and a message called "Learn to Wait." It's part of our series, "Keeping Yourself in Spiritual Shape" as we take a look at the book of Jude. And if you ever miss a broadcast in the series, come and listen online. Our website is openthebible.org.

You can stream the program or download an MP3 for free. You can also listen if you have the Open the Bible app. That's free. You'll find it at your app store. It's a great way to stay connected to Pastor Colin's teaching and listen on demand. Again, get the Open the Bible app or listen online at openthebible.org.

But whether you listen online, on the radio, or through the app, it's all made possible because of your generosity. So thank you for giving to and supporting this ministry. We truly can't do this without you. You can give your gift online at openthebible.org or when you call 1-877-OPEN-365. That's 1-877-673-6365. And again, the website is openthebible.org. Back to the message. Here's Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: Now, look at the verse closely with me for a moment and think about this. Jude talks about three things in this verse. He talks about mercy, he talks about Jesus, and he talks about eternal life. Now, here's a question. Think about it. Think about it biblically. Do you have God's mercy now? What do you think? Some nods, but you think I'm tricking you. I'm not. I'm just honestly trying to help here.

Now, give us a confident answer here. Do you have God's mercy now? (Audience: Yes.) Okay. Do you have Jesus Christ now? (Audience: Yes.) Now, think of John chapter 17 and verse 3. I'm giving you a hint so you get this one right too, because we're going down the same line. Do you have eternal life now? (Audience: Yes.) Thank you. We're well into that understanding that eternal life, in its very essence, is to know God in Jesus Christ, and so it begins right now.

I have mercy now, I have Jesus Christ now, and I have eternal life now. So why, why, why does Jude tell me to wait? Now, you see, this is teaching us something that is profoundly important. You have the mercy of God now, you have Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit now, you have eternal life begun within you now, but everything that you can know and every blessing in this life and everything that you can experience of God right now is only a taste of what God has in store for you.

When we think of the promises of God now and the promises of God for the future, where are we to make the cut, as it were? Is it roughly 50-50? Or is it as many people feel that we have the abundance of God's blessing now and a residual peace in a sort of shadowy life afterwards? No.

The Bible tells us in Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 14 that the Holy Spirit is given to us as a deposit, guaranteeing our inheritance. A deposit. Now, those of you who are in the process or recently bought your first house and the rest of us who can remember, was the deposit the largest part of the price? I'm talking to normal folks now. There may be one or two who wrote out half for the deposit and half on the mortgage.

Look, the deposit was that much, wasn't it? The mortgage was massive. Now, says Paul, that's how you're to think. The Holy Spirit—and he's talking about every blessing, every highest moment of worship, every experience of God that you have in this life, every blessing that is poured in, every pleasure—is a tiny deposit. It is a tiny anticipation of what is yet to come.

Grow in hope as you cultivate the anticipation of what God has promised. Then, you see, the disappointments of this life will be the places where you're most able to do that. You see, when God describes what he has in store for us, he does it like this in the book of Revelation: God will wipe away every tear from your eyes. Now, the only time you can really understand the glory of that is when you've got tears in your eyes.

There'll be no more death, no more mourning, no more crying, no more pain. The only times you can really understand the glory of that is when you're in pain, when you find yourself alone, you find that the bottom has fallen out of your life. Use these painful moments to increase your anticipation of what God has promised.

Think about what life will be like in the presence of the Lord Jesus when all his purpose is fulfilled. Your body will be redeemed. Your body will be redeemed. Your relationships will be whole. Your soul will be free to serve God with all you are. The creation itself will be renewed and you will be completely at home in the presence of God.

You see, waiting is not wasted time. Waiting is the place where God does deep things within our own souls. Growth in patience as you embrace the disappointments of life, growth in hope as you cultivate anticipation of heaven, and finally: grow in worship as you love God in pain as well as in pleasure. See, waiting on God is a wonderful, wonderful expression of worship. Waiting on God. Waiting on God. Think of that phrase: waiting on God. Waiting.

Think about this next time you're in a restaurant. We call the person who comes to your table with the menus a waiter or a waitress. Their job is to wait on you. They have no other agenda. They have no other priority. Their business is to wait on you. They take your order, they bring your food, they stop by to check if everything is in order about five minutes after you've started eating it.

Now, you see, some folks have the idea that God is there to wait on us. And the Bible puts it entirely the other way around. My calling is to wait on God. The purpose of my life is to make myself, like a waiter, wholly available to Jesus Christ, the guest who has come into this world. And the waiter or the waitress never takes center stage. That's very important. The waiter never takes center stage.

Karen and I took some friends out a few months ago to a restaurant—I won't mention which one—and it was really rather frustrating because we had an over-friendly waiter. And this person came and found out the names of our guests, wanted to know where they were from and so forth. And that was fine, but every time this person came back, we had five minutes of conversation in which they told us something about their life.

Now, one seeks to be friendly, but we had actually gone there to have a quiet conversation. And it kind of got to the point where you thought, "Oh dear, here he comes again. This is going to be five minutes, and all we want is a refill on a glass of water." I noticed that this person is no longer working in the restaurant. I wonder why? Because the waiter tried to place himself center stage. Took over. It was about me.

Now, when I learn to wait on God, I will no longer put myself, my needs, my wants center stage. I'm here to wait on God. And Jesus gives to every one of us the perfect model, of course, as to what this looks like. He delights in the will of the Father, and he's ready to do it whatever it involves, even if it involves a cross.

And he tells us plainly: if you want to follow me, don't expect a trouble-free life. If you want to follow me, he says, take up your cross, even in America. I'm not offering you paradise now. I'm asking: do you want to follow me through this life with its pain, with its disappointment, with its pleasure, with its joy, with its unfathomable mysteries, with its unanswered questions, with its unfinished business, its unresolved problems, its unreconciled differences?

Will you take up your cross and follow me in this life? And saying yes to Jesus in the disappointments of your life will be just about the highest worship you can ever offer to God because it's your way of saying, "I'm not interested in you, Oh Lord, simply because of your gifts. I love you for who you are." And how can you ever state that except out of your disappointment?

If all your dreams were fulfilled, all your prayers answered, everything in your life was as you wanted it to be, how could it ever be known and declared that you truly love God and not just his gifts? I want you to think in this last moment of the great disappointments of your life now. I want you to think of the heartfelt prayers not yet answered, the great longings of your soul not yet satisfied, and I want you to see them as an open door into God's gymnasium. He's saying to you: you want this to be over. I want this to be useful.

Steve Hiller: A great perspective on today's broadcast. The disappointments in our lives can actually make our faith grow stronger. We just have to trust God in the midst of those difficulties. You're listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith and a message called "Learn to Wait." It's part of a larger series, "Keeping Yourself in Spiritual Shape."

So if you're looking to get your spiritual life back into shape, this series is for you. You can get your own copy on CD when you call us at 1-877-OPEN-365. That's 1-877-673-6365, or you'll find ordering information at openthebible.org. Well, what if you could go on a hike with Pastor Colin and go all the way through the Bible story, see how it all fits together and how it all points to Jesus? Well, now you can with the new podcast, "Hike Through the Bible."

Colin Smith: Yeah, and this is for everyone who wants to understand the Bible better and for everyone who wants to love Jesus more. In each episode, I'll read a chapter from my book, "Hike Through the Bible," and then I'll discuss it with some friends. A new episode releases every week, and so you can take this hike at a gentle pace. In a year, you'll have covered the entire Bible story. I really hope that you'll join me on this journey, and it's not too late to get started now. So you can subscribe to the "Hike Through the Bible" podcast for free wherever you get your podcasts, and you'll find more information at openthebible.org/hike. That's openthebible.org/hike.

Steve Hiller: Oh, thank you, Colin. Thank you for listening today. For Pastor Colin Smith, I'm Steve Hiller. I hope you'll join us next time. This program is a listener-supported production of Open the Bible.

Colin Smith: At Open the Bible, we're grateful for like-minded organizations committed to sharing the gospel around the world. And to that end, I'd like to commend the work of Global Fingerprints. You know, in the book of James, God calls us to help orphans in their distress. That's a clear command, but it's not always clear how we should obey it.

And this is where Global Fingerprints comes in. Through Global Fingerprints, you can sponsor a vulnerable child to help meet their physical needs and ensure they hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. I want to commend Global Fingerprints to you. They're focused on equipping the local church to care for children, and where there is no church, they help to plant one. If you'd like to help a vulnerable child, you can find more information on Global Fingerprints at our website, openthebible.org/gf. That's openthebible.org/gf.