Practical Living

Guest (Male): Thank you for joining us for today's Practical Living broadcast, and I pray that through this message that 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.

Dale O'Shields: Well today we continue a series of messages entitled Lifequakes. I want to talk to you and continue to talk to you this weekend about dealing with delays in your life. This topic of lifequakes really addresses the times in life when you and I are shaken by something. Something hits our life, maybe unexpectedly, maybe a transitional season of life that we're going through, but something shakes up the equilibrium of your life. You don't feel like you're quite on stable ground.

Jesus himself talked about the fact that all of us as we go through life, we experience quake moments, lifequakes, things that shake us up, things that in some ways sort of make our equilibrium of life seem a little bit uncertain. In Matthew chapter seven, Jesus talked about two men that built houses. One man built his house on the rock, another man built his house on sand and the storms of life came to both of them and only the man's house that was built on a rock stood firm. And so here we're seeing the importance of building your life in such a manner so that when things do shake and when troubles and storms come your way, that your life is not shattered, you're built on a solid rock.

And in this series we've talked about some of the things that can shake your life up. We've talked about discouragement and how it can do that to you. We've talked about grief and loss in your life. We've talked about crisis moments that come our way. We've talked about setbacks. And today, as I did last weekend, I want to talk to you about the delays of life.

We're looking at two passages of scripture. And in these two passages, we're going to see actually three cases of individuals who experienced delays in their life. Let me take you first to Mark chapter five, and I'll begin in verse 21 and read down through verse 43 and I'm reading from the New Living Translation, so just follow as I read. Jesus got into the boat again and went back to the other side of the lake, where a large crowd gathered around him on the shore. Then a leader of the local synagogue, whose name was Jairus, an important name to remember, he arrived. When he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet, pleading fervently with him, "My little daughter is dying," he said. Please, please, do you hear the desire in this man's heart? "Please come and lay your hands on her, heal her so she can live."

Jesus went with him and all the people followed, crowding around him. 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. 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?" His disciples said to him, "Look at this crowd pressing around you. How can you ask who touched me?" But he kept on looking around to see who had done it. 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 any more now." 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, the brother of James. 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."

The crowd laughed at him, but he made them all leave, and he took the girl's father, 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." And the girl, who was 12 years old, immediately stood up and walked around. They were overwhelmed and totally amazed. Jesus gave them strict orders not to tell anyone what had happened, and then he told them to give her something to eat.

Here in this particular passage we see two individuals, actually a family and an individual, who suffered a delay. Jairus had to wait for Jesus while Jesus ministered to someone else and this lady had waited for 12 years to find a healing in her life, a dozen years she's been waiting for something to change in her life. Delays.

John chapter five, verse one, again New Living Translation. 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 sick 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.

Three stories. Jairus with a dying and ultimately dead daughter, a woman who had suffered with bleeding for 12 years with no cure, and a man who had been lying by the pool of Bethesda hoping to get well and his illness, his paralysis, had taken away his life for 38 long years. Delay, delay, delay. All three of these characters speak of people waiting on something. And there's some lessons in both of these stories for all of us.

We talked about two of those lessons last week. I would remind you of the two, you can go back and get the message if you missed it and listen to it, but here are the two main points I shared with you last weekend. To understand that waiting is actually an important part of life. Everyone goes through waiting. None of us are going to go through life without some seasons of delay. And waiting is very important for us. God really builds waiting seasons into our life. We need them for our benefit and for our good.

And in the midst of waiting, oftentimes we're trying to come up with solutions and we discover that our solutions don't work. The woman with the issue of blood, she had spent everything she had trying to get well and found every doctor possible to try to find a cure and nothing had helped her. In fact, the Bible says she had grown worse over those 12 years. The man at the pool of Bethesda for 38 years wanted someone to get him into the water when the angels stirred the water but no one was there to help him. He had tried and tried and there was no answer, there was no solution. So we talked about how important waiting is and the fact that sometimes we try everything and our solutions do not work.

Today I want to add to those two points two more points and my first point today as we look at these stories together is to understand that life delays can be very draining to us. And the reason I want to bring that point out to you is because I want you to be prepared for dealing with the emotional and the mental drain that comes when you're waiting for something. The stress of delays, I like to describe it sort of this way. It's not like a big crisis that comes your way or some major blow that happens in your life, but delays are more like small little attacks upon your life. You're waiting for something and it doesn't happen and you kind of get a little discouraged then your hopes get up again then you're delayed again and another blow happens and there's this little sort of ongoing process and there's what I would call sort of a slow kind of quake that comes your way. And slowly it shakes the foundation of your faith and the foundation of your hope in God and the foundation of your confidence. It's like this slow process, but it's still a lifequake.

Maybe a better analogy would be if you've ever had an electrical appliance that was run on battery and you would charge the battery and the battery power didn't seem to last as long as you would have expected it to last and as long as the manufacturer would have suggested it should have lasted, and you begin to say why is this battery running out so quickly? You discover there's a short in the system and although it's not taking all the power at one time, little by little it is draining that battery of its power. Delays are much like this. Delays take a slow toll on your life spiritually and mentally and emotionally and even physically at times.

Imagine with me this morning that you are going to work tomorrow morning and maybe you travel the beltway or maybe you travel 270 to commute to your work and let's just imagine for a moment that you were to pull onto 270 or 495 and you saw a sign that looked exactly like this: Expect delays next 100 miles. Okay. As soon as you see expect delays and then you see the next part, the next 100 miles, what are you thinking about as soon as you see that sign? What are you feeling as soon as you see that sign? You're looking for the next exit, aren't you? Can I get off this road? Can I get off of this pathway?

And by the way, when we go through the delays of life and we realize that we're having to wait for something, we can experience all these terrible emotions that happen to us, these mental thoughts, and our relationship with God and our faith in God and our confidence in God. And this is not just unique to us. The men and the women of the Bible experienced this.

In the book of Psalms, David writes a lot of his prayers out. In fact, it's a beautiful book of, it's sort of a prayer book, if you've never used it as a prayer book, I would encourage you to just pray the prayers of David at times. Go through the book of Psalms and let them become your prayers because you see where David was many times in the different dimensions of his life. And David had to wait for lots of things in his life. He waited and he waited and he waited.

And notice in Psalm chapter six, verse three, one of his prayers, he said, "I am sick at heart. How long, O Lord, until you restore me?" What was the question that David has for God in this moment? The question is, how long? Psalm 13, verse one, "O Lord, how long will you forget me? Forever? How long will you look the other way? How long must I suffer with anguish in my soul, with sorrow in my heart every day? How long will my enemy have the upper hand? Turn and answer me, O Lord my God! Restore the sparkle to my eyes, or I will die." Do you see the pain in waiting?

And what question does David ask God in this prayer? How long, how long, how long, how long? In three verses, four times David says God, how long? Psalm 35, verses 17 and 18, he begins another prayer, "How long, O Lord, will you look on and do nothing? Rescue me from these fierce attacks. Protect my life from these lions! Then I will thank you in front of the great assembly. I will praise you before all the people." Once again we see this prayer of David, this question to God, how long? We see it throughout the Psalms, here are just a few examples of that.

And I would ask you this morning, do any of these prayers of David's sound like your prayers at times? Have you ever prayed, how long, God? See, delays can be very draining to you. It can drain you mentally and drain you emotionally and drain you psychologically down in your soul. They can drain you even physically in your life when you're waiting for something to occur. The question comes up, how long?

And this happened with all three of the examples we're using today from Mark five and John chapter five. I'm sure that when Jairus is getting Jesus to go to his house and now there's this interruption and somebody else is getting Jesus' attention, I'm sure that Jairus is saying Jesus, how long? How long am I going to have to wait? My daughter is dying. And I'm sure that the lady with the issue of blood for 12 years, there had to be many, many times she asked the question how long? And we know for sure that the man at the pool of Bethesda must have certainly asked the question over and over again how long, how long, how long, how long?

And the most depleted person I think of all three of these was the man at the pool of Bethesda, because think about it, he'd waited for 38 years for an answer to come his way to his life. In fact, he was so worn out by it and so had lost so much hope that when Jesus comes to him, Jesus has to prompt his faith again by saying, "Do you want to get well?" He had been completely drained by life's circumstances.

I want to talk to you for a few moments about things that can drain your spiritual battery. The delays that can get a hold of your life and really wear you out if you're not careful. I'm going to walk through these fairly quickly, but we all need to be aware of them because we need to be on guard when we're going through these things.

Sometimes we're drained by what I would call seemingly unanswered prayers. And I've used the word seemingly there because I believe that God hears and answers every prayer, but sometimes it seems like to us he's not hearing and he's not answering. It appears to us that God is not in touch with what we're sharing with him. And when you're going through these seasons, you can very easily have your faith and hope drained.

Or maybe it's a troubling, unchanging part of your character. There's something about you that you want to see changed, but it seems to stubbornly hang around. You've prayed about it, you've sought help, and it seems to be troubling your life. And you begin to be drained by that delay of a change in your character.

It might be a delay that's caused by your own personal failures or your poor judgment or bad decisions in your life. You wonder will this thing that's hanging over my head, my own failure, and I'm so frustrated by what I've done to myself, will this ever, will I ever be free of the guilt and the shame of this? And it hangs over you like a bad skeleton in a closet every time you walk in your house. Spiritually speaking, there's a haunting sense of the failures of your life. You wonder will I ever get past this mistake that I've made in my life.

Sometimes it's an unsolvable problem, at least it seems like that to us. We've tried everything to solve the problem, no answers have come, we've tried and we've tried and we've tried, and there's no solution. Sometimes it might be just an ongoing, unrelenting attack in your life, that something is attacking you. It might be physically, it might be emotionally, it might even be a spiritual battle you're going through, or there's someone in your life that just will never give you a break. It seems as though there's always an attack coming your way and it's unrelenting in your life.

It might be a continuing set of trying circumstances, not just one problem, but a whole set of problems. Here are these circumstances that I've dealt with for such a long period of time and it seems like this whole arena is never going to change. It might be a recurring problem. Have you ever had one of those? You solve it, and then it shows back up again? You think, I've finally passed this thing, and then it comes knocking at your door again.

And it may very well be, and the Bible uses this phrase to describe, I believe, the context and the content of all that I've shared with you so far in terms of these kind of things that can drain our life. And the Bible refers to these as deferred hopes, deferred hopes in your life, that you had a hope, but it was put off, it was deferred. And the Bible acknowledges very clearly that these things can drain your life. In Proverbs chapter 13, verse 12, notice what the writer of Proverbs, inspired by the spirit of God, Solomon, says to us, "Hope deferred makes the heart what? Sick." So when you're going through a delay, what can that delay do to your heart? Help me out here. What can it do to your heart? It can make your heart sick. Hope deferred can drain your battery, it can make your heart sick.

But a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. Now, I've known this verse of scripture for a really long time. I've walked through this verse of scripture many times in my own life personally. But I've never studied it quite the same way that I studied it in preparation for this message. I want to understand exactly what it means, hope deferred. A hope deferred is not just that you're waiting, but you're waiting way longer than you thought you were going to wait. That's the idea. Hope deferred, again everyone waits, but hope deferred means your waiting season is extended far beyond anything you ever imagined it would be. And the Bible says that this deferring of hope will make your heart, your innermost being, it will make you sick if you're not careful.

I know from my own biblical studies that there are all kind of words in the Bible for sickness, words like infirmity, illness, there are all kind of words that are used, disease, all kind of Hebrew and Greek words that are used in the original text of the Bible to describe sickness and illness and disease and so forth. So I wanted to understand exactly what it meant when it says it'll make your heart sick. So I did some research on that particular word, sick. What does that word sick mean? And the Hebrew language quite uniquely, that word speaks of something that is rubbed or worn over time. That it will cause your heart to feel chafed by and worn by and, if you will, torn up by things that happen over time.

The friction of it begins to wear away at your soul on the inside because you wanted something to happen, you were waiting for it, but you're waiting way longer than you thought you needed to wait. And there's that rubbing away and it eventually breaks through. May not be the best example or analogy for you, but it's the only one I could think of to help you with this weekend. If you know anything about cars at all, most cars have a fan belt and the fan belt on the car is important to the cooling system of the car, etc. I'm not a mechanic, please understand, so but I know that there is a fan belt on the car, okay? And I've also noticed over time that fan belts can wear thin and oftentimes they will wear thin because they've rubbed against metal or some kind of aspect of the car for such a period of time that it's worn away at that fan belt and eventually it breaks. That's the word we're talking about here. Hope deferred makes the heart weary, worn out. And it goes on to describe that word as meaning actually sick in the sense of the kind of illness that we experience spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, and even physically.

But a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. So could I ask you this morning, have your hopes, your deferred hopes, made you sick? How low is the charge on your battery today? As something you've been going through and waiting for for a long period of time, has it worn away at your soul, has it worn away at your life, have those things drained you spiritually and mentally and emotionally and maybe even physically in your life? Are you drained out by waiting? Here is the good news. If your battery has been drained, God has a charger. And he knows how to fix the short in your system. And the way that God helps us to recharge is not to take away the waiting. That's what we would prefer, correct? God doesn't recharge us by taking away the delay. God recharges us by teaching us to wait well. There's the difference.

And so if you want to survive hopes that are being deferred so that they do not make your heart sick, you and I have to learn how to do what? We have to learn how to wait well. And this is my second point for us today, that waiting well is always rewarded. In the stories that we saw this morning, the stories of Jairus and his daughter, did his wait, even though he perhaps was frustrated with Jesus being delayed getting to his daughter by the time Jesus gets there she's dead, but nevertheless resurrection power comes and we see that even in the delay there was a reward because Jairus stayed with Jesus through the process. Do we see that the reward came to the lady with the issue of blood because after she had waited for 12 years she got to Jesus and Jesus brought her the cure? Her waiting paid off and got her to Jesus. Do we see that at the pool of Bethesda the man who had waited for 38 years, he finally got his solution when Jesus showed up in his life and he was instantly at that moment cured? His, all of the waiting, all the delay paid off.

So the question becomes how do you and I wait well? How do we wait well? And this is the heart of my message today and as I've told you throughout this series, I really have felt that this series is far more than just teaching to you. I really feel it's very important pastorally in your life to understand how to get through these seasons of life that are very real seasons. They're real stuff that we go through. And what I'm going to share with you in these next few moments, I'm going to share with you nine things to do when you are going through a delayed situation in your life that will keep your heart from becoming sick in the midst of it. And what I'm going to share with you are things that I have learned in my own life. I wrote this message out of my own experience, not just what I've learned but what I continue to need to learn in my life. These are things that are principles that I have to hold on to and I have to learn just as you do as well, and you will not learn them one time and fix everything in your life because I assure you once you get past one waiting period, there'll be another one coming somewhere down the line for you. You'll have to revisit these principles.

And so how do I wait well? So get your pens out, we're going to speed through this right now, put your seatbelts on because we're going to cover nine things in a very short period of time today, but these nine things will really help you. Number one, when you're waiting on something, keep check on your perspective. Your perspective is how you see things. And let me tell you about what you see: you see what you're looking for. You always see what you're looking for. Have you ever bought a new car or a car that's new to you and you research that car and you know exactly the car you want? You got that car and then you realize everybody else has the same car I do. Because you've seen that car and now you're seeing that everybody seems to have the same, well nothing changed, your sight did. What you were looking for suddenly now caused you to see things you had never seen before. And so how you look, if all you look at is my delay and the time it's taking, if that's where your focus is, your perspective will go in that direction and your emotions will be affected by it. That's why Paul says in 2 Corinthians chapter four verse 18, "So we don't look at the troubles we can see now. We don't look at those. Rather we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever." Check your perspective.

Number two, anchor your soul in trust. Trust God. Oh, pastor, you say that all the time. Yes, I do and I'll keep saying it. Because in trusting God is where you find your peace. There is no peace apart from trusting God. Can I ask you this morning, is God big enough to handle your future? No, I'm asking you, do you believe that God is big enough to handle your future? Do you really believe that God is big enough to handle your future? The God who looked at a dark universe and said over the surface, let there be light and there was light, is he big enough to handle your future? You better believe he is. And so you and I put our trust in him. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do and he will show you which path to take. Proverbs three, five and six. So check your perspective, anchor your soul in trust.

And then thirdly, this is a key principle here. Do what you can do right now. Stay faithfully engaged with life and service and with your duties. Let me explain, I'm going to give you a moment to write that down because I know many of you are feverishly taking notes, I'll give you a moment to write it down. Do what you can do, stay faithfully engaged with your life, with your service, with your duties. Now let me explain what I mean by that. Hope is always a future thing, right? If it's in the present you already have it, but a hope is something out there somewhere, right? You're here and the hope is out there in the future. And the best way to get to tomorrow and a successful tomorrow is to live the right kind of today. Boy, I wish I could get people to understand this. I see people all the time and they're living in their tomorrows: when this happens and when that occurs and ultimately this. You can't live that way because you're not there yet.

And so the best way to have a successful then and the future in your life is to be very effective in today. So what is God put in your lap today? What is God given you in this moment and how faithfully engaged are you with the very things he's placed before you? Because whatever's in your life right now is actually preparing you for what is to come in your life. And if you don't do well now with your eyes on that which is ahead of you, you will not be prepared and in fact many times God will not bring that opportunity to you because you're never ready for it. So God uses the moment of your life right now to say be faithful where you are because now is important because this is the day you're living, you're not promised tomorrow. And as soon as you step into tomorrow, tomorrow becomes today. Because in reality there is no tomorrow because every time you step into tomorrow it becomes today in your life, it's the now.

And notice how Paul talks about this in Colossians chapter three verses 23 and 24, "Work diligently," the implication here is now, today, "work diligently at whatever you do as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people. Remember that the Lord will give you an inheritance as a reward and that the master you are serving is Christ." Do it in the present. Galatians six verse nine, "So let us not get tired of doing what is good." When? Now, right now, let's not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time, that's in the future, we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don't give up.

The fourth thing is to actively and vigilantly resist resentment and bitterness. Let me tell you something, when you're waiting, you can have a tendency without even realizing it to let bitterness get in your soul. To let resentment start happening, resentment toward God, resentment toward people that you think are in your way of whatever it is that you're wanting in your life, you begin to grow kind of bitter that things are in your way, you grow bitter about that and so you begin to get bitter and resentful. And just a little bit of bitterness is enough to destroy you. Doesn't take a whole lot. How much arsenic will kill you? Doesn't take much, does it? Just a little drop. And bitterness is like an arsenic to your soul, just a little bit is destructive to you. That's why the writer of Hebrews says in Hebrews 12 verse 15, "See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no," not a little but "no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many." So vigilantly, actively resist resentment and resist bitterness in your life.

Then the fifth thing here, I'm giving you nine of these, is to remind yourself that delays aren't necessarily denials. What I mean by that is don't misinterpret your delay. Just because something is delayed doesn't mean it's going to be denied. It's just not the right time. And the right time, if it's God's plan and will for your life, it will show up, it might show up in a different form than you anticipated, but God is faithful to his promise and faithful to his word. Ecclesiastes three verse 11, "He, God, has made everything," what? "Beautiful," when? "In its time." So delays aren't necessarily denials.

Number six, learn the lessons that waiting wants to teach you. What is it God you're trying to teach me right now? What needs to happen in my life during this waiting period? I don't want to waste my waiting period. What is it that you want to teach me, what are the lessons that I need to learn? And the sooner you learn them, the better. See, a lot of us want to kind of skip through first through 12th grade and go to college. And God says no, by the way, you got to walk first grade, second grade, all the way through 12th grade. You got to do it step by step and process by process, line upon line, precept upon precept. I'll get you there at some point in time, but you got to go through the grades. So learn the lessons that you need to learn along the way. Lamentations 3, 25 and 26, "The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good, it is good that one should hope and wait. It's good, it's good that one should hope and wait quietly, not loudly." A lot of us we wait, but we wait so loudly. The Bible says it's good that one should hope and wait how? Quietly, for the salvation of the Lord.

Number seven, remember when you're waiting on something God hasn't left you and he hasn't stopped listening to you. Isn't that great to know? Because in those moments of delay we can easily feel like where is God in the midst of all this? He's certainly not listening to me and maybe he's forgotten where I'm at. David felt that at times in his own life, we read it a moment ago. Isaiah 49 verse 15, I love this passage, this verse. "Can a mother forget the baby at her breast?" The implication there being certainly not, "and have no compassion on the child she has born? Though she may forget," God says, "I will not forget you." Isn't that great to know this morning? I will not forget you. And so even in those seasons, and I talked last week about the book of God's plan for your life and as you flip through sometimes there are blank pages there, but just because the page is blank doesn't mean that God's still not the author and the worker of his grace in your life. He's still with you.

And then number eight, keep communicating with God and growing your relationship with him when you're waiting. Keep growing, keep communicating, keep the lines of communication open when you're waiting. God's not your enemy, he's your friend. And he wants to have contact with you and he wants to talk to you through this season in some manner. It may not be in the same way that perhaps you would hear his voice as in times of great revival and experience of mountaintops with God because you're going through perhaps a valley, but he's still speaking in some way to you and you need to stay connected with him. First Thessalonians 5:17 says "Never stop praying." Never stop praying. And John 15 verse four, Jesus says to his disciples and to us, "Stay joined to me." Don't let your heart be disconnected at any level from me. Stay, put some effort into staying joined to me and I will stay joined to you. No branch can produce fruit alone, it must stay, it must stay connected to the vine. It is the same with you. You cannot produce fruit alone, you must stay joined to me.

And the last thing I'll mention here today is you and I need to stay pliable. Seeking God's plans over our own plans. Pliable. Whatever you want for me God is fine. I have no agenda God, my only agenda is to do what you want me to do and to serve you as humbly and serve you as faithfully as I possibly can. There are no plans and I want to always stay pliable God, moldable. The opposite of pliable is brittle. Let me talk to you about that word for a moment. Because I see far too many people in our world today and certainly even among Christian believers they allow themselves to become brittle, rigid, hardened. And usually hardness happens out of offense. You get offended about something. Have you ever noticed that when you're offended at someone you get hard toward them, right? Put up a wall, you get hard, something gets hard in your heart toward them. And oftentimes we get offended at God or offended at our circumstances or offended at something because we're waiting and we begin to attach blame to something and get offended because we're having to wait on something. And that little offense inside of us gives root or opportunity for the root of bitterness to grow in us as we talked about a moment ago. And bitterness always, any time you find yourself being hard or brittle in your life, it's a symptom of some bitterness in your life. It should point you right back with flashing neon LED signs: bitterness, bitterness, bitterness! Which is, as we've already said, a terrible poison of your soul. Stay pliable.

And remember this: no matter what you're going through and how you're trying to understand it all, notice God's words to us in Isaiah 55, "My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts says the Lord, and my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts." As we see from Jairus and his daughter, as we see from the bleeding woman who receives her healing by touching the edge of Jesus' garment, as we see from the man at the pool of Bethesda who had waited for 38 years and Jesus showed up and brought him healing, and so many others through the pages of scripture and so many others through church history, waiting well is rewarded. Don't let your delays drain you. Don't let deferred hope in your life make your heart sick. Learn to wait well, knowing that waiting well is always rewarded.

Would you bow your heads with me as we pray today? Father, we thank you for the wonderful amazing stories of the Bible that really come right to where we live. Lord, we're just people. People that love you but people that are also affected by things in our lives, affected mentally and spiritually and emotionally, Lord God, psychologically and even physically at times by certain things that happen to us or that we experience in life. And certainly one of those things would be delays, things that we're waiting on, hopes that we have for our lives.

And Father, I pray this morning for those who have deferred hopes and their heart has become sick. Lord, there's been the rub and the tear and the wearing down and the draining of their life because of the loss of hope in their soul, Lord. I pray today in the name of Jesus that you would begin to recharge that battery. And I pray for all of us to help us to learn, Lord, and I include myself in this prayer, that we would all learn to wait well, knowing that waiting well is always rewarded. Seal this word in our hearts, let us not forget it. Let us apply these truths to our lives, not just being hearers of the word, but doers of the word. We trust you for it in Jesus' wonderful and precious name. Amen.

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 simply bow your head with me and 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: 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 and to 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. And 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.