Practical Living

Dale O'Shields: Thank you for joining us for today's Practical Living broadcast. I pray that through this message, you will learn how to apply God's word and truths to any situation in your life. Stay with us as we discover God's truths that will transform us.

Today, we continue a series we started back at the first of the year entitled Lifequakes. I've felt like we just needed to continue in this. This message series is far more than a teaching series for me. It's felt more like a pastoral impartation, just to somehow spiritually shepherd us along some journeys in life as we talk about tough stuff that we go through at times.

A lifequake is anything that shakes you up, that causes you to lose a bit of your equilibrium—the storms and difficulties of life that will often come our way. Jesus made reference to this in Matthew chapter 7 where he talked about two men building houses. One man built his house on the foundation of sand, not a very good foundation. Another man built his house on the foundation of a rock. The storms, the winds, and the rain came to both men.

Storms come to everybody. No matter who you are and whether you have a relationship with God or not, everybody experiences storms. Jesus talked about the storms that came to these two individuals. Of course, the man whose house was built on the sand, his house didn't survive. It didn't stand up during the storm. But the man who was building his house and built his house on the rock stood firm.

What we're talking about is how you stand firm. How do you have your life built on a solid foundation, the rock called Jesus Christ, and his word, and obedience to his word so that when the lifequakes come, you're not destroyed by them? I want to talk to you this weekend and next weekend about dealing with delays in your life. We've been talking about a lot of different things. We talked about discouragement. We talked about loss. We've talked about a lot of things over these last few weeks.

If you missed any of the messages, you can go back online and get them and catch up with where we've been. But I want to talk to you this weekend and next weekend about dealing with delays in your life. How do you deal with things that just don't happen when you want them to happen? Delays in your life. It's a lifequake. It's not the same kind of lifequake as a big crisis or problem that you face, but it slowly eats away at you when things aren't happening as quickly as you want them to happen.

It shakes you up, not so quickly, but certainly over the long haul. You begin to be torn by the delays, by the waiting periods of life. I want to take you to three stories found in two passages of the Bible. I'm going to read for you far more scripture than I normally do. I normally try to segment out the amount of scripture that I'm reading to you every week so that you have a good dose of it, but I'm not giving you everything and drinking out of a fire hydrant for you.

I'm going to give you far more scripture today than I normally do, and that's good for you. You never can get too much of God's word. I'm going to read to you three stories in two passages, starting in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 5. I'm reading from the New Living Translation.

Jesus got into the boat again and went back to the other side of the lake. This would have been the Sea of Galilee in Northern Israel, where a large crowd gathered around him on the shore. Then a leader of the local synagogue, whose name was Jairus—don't forget his name, Jairus—arrived. When he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet, pleading fervently with him, "My little daughter is dying. Please come and lay your hands on her; heal her so she can live."

Let's stop there for a moment. Jairus, the synagogue leader, comes to Jesus. Jesus is in his town, in his territory. He says, "Jesus, you've got to come to my house. My daughter is dying." She's not just sick; she's on the edge of losing her life. I think we would all agree that if someone is dying, time is of the essence. You need to get there as quickly as possible.

Maybe you've received news of a family member who's at the end of their life, and you hear that news and you rush to the hospital or to the bedside because you know time is of the essence. In this moment, time was of the essence. Jairus says, "My daughter is not just sick, but my daughter is dying. Come and lay your hands on her and heal her."

Notice verse 24. Jesus went with him, and all the people followed, crowding around him. Now we move into an interlude in the story, something that stops the progress of Jesus going to Jairus' house and turns the attention to someone else. Verse 25: A woman in the crowd had suffered for 12 years with constant bleeding. She had suffered a great deal from many doctors, and over the years, she had spent everything she had to pay them, but she had gotten no better. In fact, she had gotten worse.

For 12 years, she tried to get better from this situation, found no cure, and her situation has now grown worse. She had heard about Jesus, so she came up behind him through the crowd and touched his robe. For she thought to herself, "If I can just touch his robe, I will be healed." Immediately the bleeding stopped, and she could feel in her body that she had been healed of her terrible condition.

Jesus realized at once that healing power had gone out from him, so he turned around in the crowd and asked, "Who touched my robe?" Let's stop there for a moment. Jesus is approached by Jairus: "Come to my house; my little girl is not just sick; my little girl is on the edge of dying." Time is of the essence. Jesus starts the journey to Jairus' house, and somewhere in the midst of the crowd, a little lady who's been bleeding for 12 years realizes that if I can just get to Jesus and touch the edge of his robe, I don't need to bother him.

He doesn't even need to know that I'm there. All I want to do is by faith touch the edge of his robe, and I'm going to be healed. She crawls more than likely through the crowd, makes her way to the point of reaching out and touches one of the tassels on the edge of Jesus' robe, and she is immediately healed. Jesus stopped everything and he turned around. To turn around, you've got to stop. Now he was going to Jairus' house, but now he's stopped.

He says, "Who touched me?" This begins this whole interaction that Jesus has on the way to Jairus' house with this other woman. His disciples said to him, "Look at this crowd pressing around you. How can you ask who touched me?" Everybody was touching him. But he kept on looking around to see who had done it. He understood that someone had touched him in a different way, had reached out in faith for healing.

Then the frightened woman, trembling at the realization of what had happened to her, came and fell to her knees in front of him and told him what she had done. And he said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace; your suffering is over." While he was still speaking to her, messengers arrived from the home of Jairus, the leader of the synagogue. They told him, "Your daughter is dead. There's no use troubling the teacher now."

While he's stopped, ministering to this lady, talking to her, what has happened back at Jairus' house? The daughter is now dead. Messengers come and say, "Don't even bother him anymore because the daughter is dead." But Jesus overheard them and said to Jairus, "Don't be afraid; just have faith."

Then Jesus stopped the crowd and wouldn't let anyone go with him except Peter, James, and John. When they came to the home of the synagogue leader, Jesus saw much commotion and weeping and wailing. He went inside and asked, "Why all this commotion and weeping? The child isn't dead; she's only asleep." Death never intimidated Jesus. He's the resurrection and the life.

The crowd laughed at him, but he made them all leave. He took the girl's father and mother and his three disciples into the room where the girl was lying. Holding her hand, he said to her, "Talitha koum," which means, "Little girl, get up." The girl who was 12 years old immediately stood up and walked around. They were overwhelmed and totally amazed.

Notice she's 12. How long had the woman been suffering? 12 years. So the lady had been suffering for the same amount of years this little girl had been living. Jesus gave them strict orders not to tell anyone what had happened and then he told them to give her something to eat. There are two stories, both of them related to delays. I'll explain that more in a moment.

Let's go to John chapter 5 and look at one more story. Jesus is in Jerusalem at this time and he goes to a place called the Pool of Bethesda. Afterward, Jesus returned to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish holy days. Inside the city, near the Sheep Gate, was the Pool of Bethesda with five covered porches. Crowds of people—blind, lame, or paralyzed—lay on the porches.

One of the men lying there had been sick for 38 years. When Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for a long time, he asked him, "Would you like to get well?" "I can't, sir," the sick man said, "for I have no one to put me into the pool when the water bubbles up. Someone else always gets there ahead of me." Jesus told him, "Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk." Instantly the man was healed. He rolled up his sleeping mat and began walking.

That "instantly" can fool you if you're not careful. It was instantly after 38 years. There had been 38 years of waiting, and then Jesus shows up and there, in an instant after 38 years, there's a healing. Three characters, three people that experienced delays: a man named Jairus and his daughter, an unnamed woman, and an unnamed man.

There are some lessons that we can learn from these three stories that will help each one of us to deal with delays in their life. Principle number one we learn from this story and from many places in the Bible: waiting is a very important part of life. That is not a statement that most people get very excited about. Most of us would prefer that not to be true, but it's very true that waiting is an important, valuable part of life.

The stories of all three of these individuals are stories of delay. The delays experienced by these three individuals are all different. Jairus and his daughter, sick at home, who eventually dies—it's a relatively short delay. The delay happens as Jesus is on the way to his house and there's some interlude there that occurs. We don't know how long it would have been, but there's just enough delay to challenge Jairus' expectations.

Time was of the essence. "I need to get you to my house as quickly as possible," and he stops to minister to someone else. It's probably a little irritating to you, a little frustrating because you want Jesus to get there right away. Jairus and the little girl experienced a short delay, but nevertheless, a delay. The bleeding woman, had she experienced a delay in her healing? Yes, for 12 years. For a dozen years, she had gone trying everything possible to get well with nothing occurring.

12 years of delay for her healing. How about the paralyzed man at the Pool of Bethesda? Yes, 38 years he's experienced a delay trying to get better, and nothing happening in his life. So this short delay for Jairus, this 12-year delay for this woman with the bleeding issue, and the 38 years for the paralyzed man. These three stories that I give you today are just the tip of an iceberg of all the stories in the Bible of people experiencing delays.

In fact, what I've learned as I've studied scripture and looked at it through the lens of personal experience of my own life, I will tell you this: most of the main characters of the Bible that were ever used by God in any significant manner, they always go through delays in their life. They always go through waiting periods of life. I want to define for you today what a delay is so that we all understand it together.

A delay is a pause or waiting period between when something is expected or desired to happen and when it actually happens. Let's read it again. A delay is a pause or waiting period between when something is expected or desired to happen and when it actually happens. So what is a delay? A delay is when you get a promise, you have a desire, there's something you're expecting to occur in your life, and the moment it's fulfilled—that gap in between is called a delay.

We all go through these delays in life. Sometimes they can be short and sometimes they can be longer. They're not the same for every person. As we see the differences in the three of these individuals, it will be different for all of us. Some go through kind of short delays or multiple short delays; others have more extended delays. But we all have delays in life. Waiting is a part of life.

If you've never thought about it before, waiting is good for you. It's important and it's necessary. I'm going to share with you five ways, according to scripture, that waiting is good for you. Number one: waiting is good for you because you can't get a God story in your life without waiting. We all want God stories, don't we? A God story is how God worked in our life. We call it a testimony.

There is no testimony in your life without a test. See, the root word for testimony is test. Part of what allows you to have a testimony is the test, and oftentimes that test could very well be a delayed period of time in your life when you're waiting for something to occur. You cannot get a God story in your life without waiting. The psalmist talks about this in his life multiple times.

In Psalm chapter 40: "I waited patiently for the Lord to help me, and he turned to me and heard my cry." Let's push the pause button there just for a moment again. "I waited patiently for the Lord to help me, and he turned to me and heard my cry." How long did he wait? We don't know. There's no length of time here. We don't know how long he waited, but he had to wait patiently for God to help him.

Then there's this moment in time when God turned to him and heard his cry. Here is this testimony in verse number two: "He lifted me out of the pit of despair, out of the mud and the mire. He set my feet on solid ground and steadied me as I walked along. He has given me a new song to sing, a hymn of praise to our God. And many will see what he has done and be amazed. They will put their trust in God."

How did he experience this amazing miracle in his life? How did he experience God lifting him up out of the pit and setting his feet on the rock and giving him a firm place to stand and putting a new song in his mouth? He experienced it because of the first words of verse number one: "I waited patiently for the Lord." His God story was the result of him waiting patiently. If you want some God stories in your life, you're going to have to learn to wait.

God stories require waiting. Number two: you cannot appreciate the integrity of God and the reliability of his promises without waiting. How do you know that God is good for his promises? How do you know that he's a God of integrity? He proves himself over time. The key word there is time. We often talk about God being faithful. How do we know he's faithful? We watched him over a period of time.

Extended time periods have proven to us the faithfulness, the reliability, the integrity of God. Abraham experienced this in his life as he waited 25 years for the promise of God to be fulfilled for him. Hebrews chapter 6 reminds us of this waiting process in Abraham's life: "Then Abraham waited patiently, and he received what God had promised." God said the reason that Abraham got what he promised and I was proved faithful in Abraham's life is because he waited patiently.

The third reason why you and I must wait is because you can't develop inner strength and resilience without waiting. One of the greatest assets of your life is your character, not your gifts, your abilities, your skills, but your character. You can always learn skills and abilities, but if you have no character, you will not be able to really survive well and be promotable by God to be used in unique and special ways.

The most important focus of your life is on your character. Character is built in many different ways. There are all kinds of elements to a person's character. Let me tell you three of the basic elements to a person's character. If you're going to have good character, you have to be consistent. Consistency is vital to your character. That consistency produces a sense of reliability to your life, faithfulness to your life. So consistency.

Then you have to have resilience. That's another part of your character, that you're able to bounce back. Then you have to have endurance. Now, to be consistent and to have resilience and to be able to endure, you have to build those muscles. You don't come with those muscles intact. You have to build them. The primary thing that builds these muscles called consistency and resilience and endurance is waiting.

Let me illustrate it to you this way. If I told you you could have incredibly strong muscles without ever exercising them, you would know I would be lying. The only way to build muscle, to add muscle mass to your life, is you have to exercise them. There are no pills for muscles. You've got to exercise. This exercise process builds it. You can't substitute anything else. Exercise is the one thing that will result in muscles growing in your body.

The same is true when we talk about your character. Listen closely. If you're going to have good character, consistency and resilience and endurance in your life, the one, the only thing that will build that is waiting. There's nothing else that will build it for you. Nothing else will give you that capacity in your innermost being. James the Apostle says this in James chapter 1: "My brothers and sisters, when you have many kinds of troubles, you should be full of joy because you know that these troubles test your faith, and this will give you what? Patience."

When your faith is being tested, what's the end result? What muscle is it building? Patience in your life. Building endurance in your life. Isaiah 40:31 says, "But those who wait upon God, what do they get? Fresh strength." The only way you get fresh strength is by doing what? Waiting. Waiting on God. "They spread their wings and soar like eagles. They run and don't get tired. They walk and don't lag behind." So you have to build muscles of character, and that requires waiting.

That's why it's good for you. The fourth reason why waiting is good for you is because you can't make good decisions without waiting. If I were to ask you to raise your hand on this—and please don't do this because I don't want to embarrass anyone here—is there anyone in the room who would say, "You know what, I've made some bad decisions in my life because I was impatient"? I see a lot of heads going up and down right now. I'm feeling the breeze come this way just from heads coming up and down.

Had I been more patient, I would have made a better decision. How many decisions have we made in life and how many times has our judgment been very poor because we rushed into something? Waiting is critical to making good decisions. Proverbs talks about this: "A person without knowledge is no good. A person in a hurry makes mistakes." It's true. The Bible is accurate in describing what impatience will do to you.

The fifth and perhaps most important—all five of these are important, but let's put the capstone on with the fifth reason why waiting is important: because you can't get to know God intimately or hear his voice accurately without waiting. Let me say that again. You cannot get to know God intimately and you cannot learn to hear his voice accurately without waiting. It's impossible. Have you ever tried to have a conversation with an impatient person?

They're not hearing a thing you're saying because they want to move on to what they want to say, or they're distracted or preoccupied by what's going on in their life. So there's no attention being given to you. Why? Because they're operating out of an impatient spirit, a stirred heart, we might say. It's true with God. You can't really get to know God intimately without slowing down and quieting yourself and waiting upon him.

You can't learn to hear his voice accurately without waiting on God. See, impatient people don't hear well. It's true in every realm of life. Habakkuk the Prophet in chapter 2, verse 1 says, "I will stand like a guard and watch. I will wait to see what the Lord will say to me." I'm not in a hurry. I'm waiting for God to speak to me. I will wait and learn how he answers my questions.

To get to know God intimately and to hear him accurately, what must you do? You must learn to wait. You have to experience delays in your life. So waiting is a very valuable and important part of life. Delays—listen to this—when God planned your life, he wrote into your life delays. I was thinking about a way to try to describe this for you yesterday as I was studying and preparing for the weekend.

How do I explain that God's plan includes delays? The only way I could think of—and I'd never thought of it this way before—let's just imagine for a moment that when you were born again, you accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior of your life, he gave you a personal book. In that book, it described his entire plan for your life. Wouldn't that be a nice book to have? By the way, on another note, this is the book right there.

But let's just say it was a personalized book and he gave you all the seasons of your life, told you exactly what was going to happen and what you're supposed to do in every season, and you've got all these chapters in there as you walk through your life. I thought about how wonderful it would be if we all had a book like that. But I also thought about this: if you were to have a book like that, do you know what part of what would be in the book? There would be some blank pages in the book.

There would actually be some blank chapters in the book. You would come to that part of the book and you'd say, "Oh, it's a blank page. What is that all about?" That's called waiting. You come to a blank chapter: "What is that whole chapter all about?" Oh, that's the whole chapter I just want you to wait. You'll pick up on the next chapter, but there's sometimes it feels like there are 500 pages in that chapter in our book.

God writes into the story of your life waiting periods because he's utilizing those for your benefit and for your good, as we see in the stories that we're looking at. So understand that these delays are vital. Let me take you to the second point today. Now, the second point—let me just say this before I get into it—is a little bit different from the first in the sense of how you might be taken aback by it a bit in terms of how does it make sense with the first. I'm going to tie it together, so let's take a look at it.

Number two, the second thing is to understand that our solutions to problems don't always work. Waiting is important. Second point: our solutions don't always work. If you're like me, and I'm sure most of us are, when a problem comes up in your life, what do you do? I go into solution mode. How about you? I need to solve this problem. What do I do to fix this thing in my life?

There's nothing wrong with that. We should try to fix our problems. That's why God gave you a brain. God didn't expect you to somehow check your brain at the door when you met Jesus. You need to use your brain and utilize it well and try to figure out problems and come up with solutions. All that's very good and very valuable. God does not condemn that aspect of your life. He didn't say, "Don't use your own understanding." He said, "Don't lean to your own understanding."

So you have to use your thought processes and try to figure things out. But you have to also realize that we're limited in our ability to solve all of life's problems. We may try, but we can't solve them because some problems are really persistent and some problems will never yield to our efforts. The fact is very clear in two people in today's text that we've looked at, both passages that we looked at a moment ago.

Let's talk about the woman who's now suffered for 12 years. Look at the story again in verses 25 and 26 of Mark chapter 5: A woman in the crowd had suffered for again how long? 12 years with constant bleeding. Now, I can only imagine what her condition must have been like. Medically speaking, she must have been completely wiped out. By the way, socially, she was ignored as well because she's considered to be unclean.

So she has all kinds of problems going on for 12 years she's been in this terrible situation. Notice verse 26, what had she done about it? She had suffered a great deal from many doctors, and over the years, she had spent everything she had to pay them, but she had gotten no better. In fact, she had gotten worse. Was this lady trying to solve her problem? Absolutely.

Let's look at the man at the Pool of Bethesda. Chapter 5 of John, verse 5: One of the men lying there had been sick for 38 years. When Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for that long time, he asked him, "Would you like to get well?" Kind of a strange question, right? "I can't, sir," the sick man said, "for I have no one to put me into the pool when the water bubbles up. Someone else always gets there ahead of me."

So let's talk about him for a moment. Had the man at the Pool of Bethesda tried to get well? Of course he had, because he said, "Jesus, I have nobody to help me." Jesus said, "You want to get well?" He said, "I don't have any help, sir. I'd like to, but I don't have any help." What did he mean by that? Well, historically, as you read in some of the other translations, particularly the King James version of the Bible, it describes the Pool of Bethesda—by the way, you can go there today to the ruins of the Pool of Bethesda.

Lord willing, we are going in November. I'm going to believe things are going to work out for that. Amen. Let's pray for that. But you can go to the Pool of Bethesda and you see the ruins there and the colonnades, the ruins that are existing there. Historically and traditionally, what was supposed to have happened at the Pool of Bethesda is that every so often in these pools, angels would come down and stir up the waters.

So when the waters were supernaturally stirred up, the first one—we had all kind of sick people lying around this pool—and the first one to get into the water, they would be healed. So it was the belief that God was sending down healing virtue through the stirring of the waters. So this man had been lying there by the Pool of Bethesda, probably brought there every day by someone who would bring him there.

It doesn't imply that he was living there, but this was his regular place to go to try to get healing because that's where healing happened at the Pool of Bethesda. He'd been there for 38 years, and what does he say? He said, "You know what, every time I try to get in the water, nobody helps me and somebody else gets in the water first." Have you ever felt that way in your life? That the blessing you were trying to get, somebody else got?

And the very thing you were looking for, somebody else seemed to get it, but you didn't get it in your own life. So here's 38 years, and that's why Jesus said, "Would you like to get well?" because this man had lost all hope that I'm ever going to get better at all. So it was an appropriate question for Jesus to ask. But the man had tried. The bleeding woman, she had spent all she had, all of her resources trying to find cure.

The paralyzed man had grown weary in fact trying to find somebody to help him get into the water. In spite of all their efforts, nothing changed in these individuals' lives. In fact, in one case, it even got worse. "I'm worse than I was when I started out here." So this waiting thing requires some important recognition of some important realities. I'm going to give you three things as we wrap up here today to remember, along with the five I gave you a moment ago.

Remember when you're going through waiting periods and trying to get a solution, always remember that human effort is going to be limited. There's certain things you can't fix in your life. That's a good amen point. Certain things you just can't fix. You're not in control; you can't fix them. You can do everything possible, and you should try, but you can't fix them.

Jesus said this himself in Matthew 19:26. He looked at them and said, "With man, this is what? With man, this is impossible. But with God, all things are possible." But with man, some things are impossible. So when you're trying to fix things in your life, going through a waiting period, you're trying to fix it, some things you can't fix.

And then sometimes your own failed human effort will create delays for yourself. Have you ever made life harder and your problems exist longer just by your own stupidity? You tried certain things and it didn't make it better; it made it worse. Anybody going to say amen right there? You made your—you're trying to fix your problem, and at the end of trying to fix your problem, you got a bigger problem than you had.

Because you messed around with it and now suddenly it's worse than it was. This is exactly what happened with the children of Israel when they're going into the promised land. Moses was preparing them to enter the land of promise, the land of Canaan, the land flowing with milk and honey. So Moses says to 12 spies, "I want you to go in and check this land out and come back and bring us a report of what the land looks like."

And the 12 spies, they go in, and 10 of them come back and they say, "Oh, it's a beautiful, it's a glorious land, beautiful land. You ought to see the fruit there, but we can't do it. We can't take this land. Too many giants there. We can't solve that problem; it's too big for us." Numbers 14:34 says since the spies were in the land for 40 days, you must wander—this is God's judgment against them—you must wander in the wilderness for 40 years, a year for each day, bearing the burden of your sins.

Here's the point I want to make for you, and you should listen closely to this. You can never speed up God's timing in your life. You can't speed it up. But you can slow it down. I want you to think about that for a moment. You can't speed it up, but you can slow it down by the way you're reacting. If you grumble your way through every waiting period, you get mad at God and you start trying to do things on your own all the time, you try to fix your own problems in every situation in ways that are inappropriate, ways that are contrary to God's ways, then you're going to make your waiting period much longer than it needs to be.

There's a certain amount of waiting in life that's going to be necessary and important; they're written into your plan for your life. But you can extend it if you'd like to by your own behavior, bad behavior. And these Israelites found themselves wandering, found themselves wandering around in the wilderness for 40 years, not because of God, but because of their own disobedience to God.

I don't say that this morning to make you feel condemned or to feel judged by God. I tell you that this morning just to warn you that you and I need to pay attention to how we are responding in the delays of life. And then the final thing I'll give you, and with this we're going to wrap up: anytime we've failed in our human effort to solve our delays or our problems, all of that failure should bring us back to God.

In John chapter 15, verse 5, Jesus made this very important, profound statement. He looked at his disciples as they are in the upper room with him preparing again for his crucifixion and ultimate resurrection. And he looks at his disciples, to us as well, and says, "Yes, I am the vine. You are the branches." He made the definition clear. "I'm the source of life; you need to be attached to me. You're the branches. Those who remain in me," or one translation says "abide in me," "and I in them will produce much fruit."

Then he makes this statement: "For apart from me, you can do nothing." Can I tell you this: that when you're going through delays in your life as in any time in your life, you need to attach yourself as closely as possible to Jesus. To attach yourself to the vine, to the life of the vine, to get you through every waiting period of life. There's a young man that learned this lesson in his own life.

The story is found in Luke chapter 15. It was a young man that went to his father one day and said, "Hey Dad, I want my inheritance and I want it now. All that money you're going to give me when you die, give it to me now." And the father said, "Okay, son, here's your inheritance." And the young man went out and spent every bit of it. In fact, the Bible uses an interesting word to describe what he did with his inheritance: he squandered it.

He squandered it, wasted it completely, had nothing to show for it. He becomes so desperate that he ends up in a pigpen feeding pigs for a living. He's so hungry that he looks at what the pigs are eating and he says, "I wish I had their food." That's pretty hungry, is it not? When you're wanting the food the pigs are eating. And in that moment, the Bible says he came to his senses and he said, "I've got to go home. This whole period that I'm in right now that I've brought it on myself, I've ended up in this terrible pigpen of life and my future is being delayed by the fact that I separated from my father."

So we see in Luke chapter 15, verse 18 these words: "I will go home to my father and say, 'Father, I've sinned against both heaven and you.'" He returns back home, and you know the story. The father meets him and greets him and puts a robe on his back, a ring on his finger, shoes, sandals on his feet, kills the fatted calf and celebrates because his son had come home again. His father had been waiting for him to return.

So even though our solutions to our problems don't always work, our delays should teach us that even in the midst of whatever we're trying to find solutions to, that our number one relationship needs to be with God. Hold tight to God in the midst of every delay in your life because your delays help bring you to the end of yourselves where you find God. I like to tell people this: many times in life, you've got to get to rock bottom before you find the rock who's at the bottom.

You've got to get to rock bottom before you discover that Jesus is the rock at rock bottom of your life. There are many of us today going through a waiting period right now. Life has been delayed. Something you expected or wanted, you're in that gap right now. For some it may have been a dozen years for you. For others it may be like the man at the Pool of Bethesda, it's been almost 40 years.

You say, "Is this ever going to happen in my life?" and you've grown weary in your waiting. I told you as I began today's message: these are not just meant to be teaching lessons for you. I really believe that God wants to shepherd you as the Great Shepherd of the sheep and encourage you and remind you that even in the midst of your delays, he's still there with you. Amen.

I want to pray for you today. I'm going to do something a little bit different than I normally do, but I want to pray for you today. I would ask you just to bow your head with me all around the worship center, those of you in Frederick the same, if you're watching online, the same as well. I want to tell you something: Jesus, the Great Shepherd, is in this room right now. Did you hear that?

Jesus, your Shepherd, is in this room right now. He cares about you and he cares about whatever has been the delay in your life. He wants to come to you and refresh and renew your strength today to carry you through. I'm not telling you that your delay is going to be over with; I don't know when it will end in your life. I can't tell you when it's going to end, but I can tell you that he's with you and he will always be there with you.

He's at the end when it comes. He is the Alpha and the Omega; he is the beginning and he is the end. So if you're here today and you have a situation in your life or maybe you're feeling what I've talked about today, and again as I've told the other services this weekend, I don't care if there's one person that responds to this or a thousand that respond. I'm not looking for responses right now; I'm looking for people who need have been touched by God today.

You know that God has spoken to you today and you want prayer today over this area of your life. I want to ask you right now just to lift up your hand and say, "You know what, that's what I've heard today; I needed to hear from God." Get that hand up right where you are. Again, it may be one person; it may be most of us. I don't know who it is today, but get that hand up to God right now and let this be your moment as I pray for you.

Lord, I thank you for your precious sheep in this room today. They belong to you; they're your sheep of your pasture. You love them, Lord, and you know right where they are today. You know the chapter of life that they are in. Lord, to them it may feel like it's a bunch of blank pages; they can't figure it out. But Lord, you know what the next chapter is and you know when it will come.

I pray in the name of Jesus for those today that are struggling with some sense of delay. They're waiting and waiting and waiting, oh God. I pray that you'll show up and give them the strength that they need. May they walk with the Father through this and know that you're with them. I pray for any frustration in their hearts, maybe for some some anger that has begun to develop in them, bitterness perhaps even toward you, God.

I pray that you would extract that from their soul today and allow them to completely trust in you, even when they can't figure out what's on the page right now. They know that you're the God of the pages. Even if they're at rock bottom, may they discover today that you are the rock who is at the bottom of whatever we go through in life to carry us through. Seal this word in their heart today.

May they carry it with them not just for a day or a few days, but let them carry it with them for the rest of their life. Let us learn to wait patiently on you, God, in Jesus' name. I would like to close today by giving you an opportunity to ask Jesus to be the Lord of your life. Would you pray with me right now? Right where you are, just bow your head with me.

I'm going to give you a prayer to pray and you can simply speak this prayer out, whisper this prayer out, and from the sincerity of your heart, call upon God and I promise you that he will hear and answer you. So let's pray together. Start by simply whispering the name Jesus. Let there come from your heart just the declaration of his name.

Say, "Jesus, I know that I am a sinner, that I have fallen short with you. I'm sorry for all of my sins. Jesus, I believe in you. I believe that you are God's Son. I believe that you are the Savior of the world. I believe that you died on the cross for my sins, and I believe that you rose from the grave, that you are alive today." Now pray these words.

Say, "Lord Jesus, come into my heart, come into my life. Forgive me of my sins. Give me a new start in you. I commit my life to you in Jesus' name, Amen." Now if you prayed that prayer with me, I want to encourage you with a promise from God's word that says that when we call upon God's name, we call upon the Son of God, there is salvation that comes to our lives.

He changes us from the inside out and you become a new creation. Old things pass away; all things become new. And that's exactly what has happened to you today. Your next step really is to make sure that you get into a good Bible-believing church and you begin to study God's word, get God's word in you. Make sure that you get a copy of the Bible if you don't have one and begin to read it.

Spend some time every day in prayer. I would encourage you also to check out the resources on our website that will help you to get going in your relationship with Jesus. You can find them at church-redeemer.org. Get those into your hands. Get started in your new life with Jesus Christ. Thanks again for joining us today. May God bless you, and we look forward to seeing you next time.