The Power Of Waiting

Waiting can be the hardest answer of all. When life is already heavy, “wait” feels like silence, like freefall, like being stuck in a corridor with no exit sign. We talk honestly about that space, the one we call God’s waiting room, and why it can feel dark, cold, and endless even when your faith is real.

We begin with a moment of reflection and gratitude for service and sacrifice, then move straight into the heart of the message: the power of patient waiting in an instant gratification world. Through Psalm 40:1 and the promise of Isaiah 40:31, we explore what it means to wait on the Lord in a way that renews strength rather than drains it. We also draw a sharp line between simply being in the waiting room and choosing to be a “waiter”, someone who keeps leaning toward God instead of slipping into anxiety, anger, or despair.

Along the way, we use everyday pictures to make spiritual truth concrete: a safety harness on a ride, an anchor that stops a boat from drifting, a quarterback standing protected in chaos, and the calm eye of a cyclone while the storm still rages. We also touch on grief, loss, and the painful reality that you may not feel God’s presence even while he remains with you. If you’re searching for Christian encouragement, biblical hope, and practical faith for hard seasons, this will meet you where you are.

Subscribe for the next part, share this with someone who’s in a long wait, and leave a review so more people can find hope when they need it most.

Good morning, good afternoon, wherever you are in the world - Welcome to Grapevine Ministries.

Transcript

Anzac Reflection And Gratitude

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Well, it's another week and we're back. And you know, unless you're from Australia or New Zealand, a lot of people overseas won't actually uh understand this. But before I start my message today, which is basically about the power of waiting, I thought I'd just reflect on our Anzacs. Um John 1513 is a verse that's used to express greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends to honor, you know, the ultimate sacrifice made by servicemen and women. This is about the ultimate love shown by Jesus, but their ultimate love for their country. I think it's very important that people honor and respect all servicemen, past, present, and in the future. So I just like to say this myself. Thank you for your service. I know firsthand what it is like to put your life on the line for others. And um I am very grateful now that I have God in my life. But enough of that. Let's let's get into our message today. We're talking about the power of patient waiting, and this is going to go on for a few more weeks because I want to make sure that people really understand one of our greatest struggles and in our faith is having that um ability to be able to wait on the Lord. And it's a very difficult thing to live, purely and simply because we live in an impatient, instant gratification world, but God is always on time. Waiting is not just filling time or marking time, it is a vital part of God's plan to test and strengthen our faith. Now I'm going to be focusing on the Psalms. Um Psalm 40 verse 1 says, I waited patiently for the Lord and he inclined to me and heard my cry. See, if you're in God's waiting room, uh I want to give you a couple of like examples to try and you know, like picture this the best way that you possibly can. Um, a lot of you will know the comedian Howie Mandel. Uh he's been on um America's Got Talent, um The Voice, a few other things. But one of the shows he's doing at the moment is called Deal or No Deal. Unusual role for him, but there are a lot of the skills that he's actually used working in some of his first jobs. You know, like he believe it or not, I mean, I've I've done a lot of research on a lot of big stars, and everybody thinks, wow, these people are loaded, they're making lots of money, this is really, really good. But they don't really focus on where these people started. I mean, Howie Mandel, for instance, I mean, yeah, he's getting paid a lot of money for this now, but he used to operate an amusement park ride, and he had to make sure that everybody had their harnesses on, you know, the orange safety harnesses have to be over the left shoulder and secured, and he would warn riders we're going upside down in about five seconds, this announcement would invariably be met with object panic. There was, uh, he later explained, no orange safety harness. We don't like it when there is no safety harness, do we? We don't like it when there is nothing to catch us, nothing to hang on to. When there is no answer, we don't like it. In the same way, a boat needs an anchor, because without that anchor, the boat will drift aimlessly, and as with our faith, we're drifting aimlessly through society, no direction, no safety net, no way of knowing where we should be or where God wants us to be. So we always need a safety net. I just want to uh go on a little bit further. Now, there was one Saturday morning when Maria and I were doing some chores around the house and getting ready to have visitors over for dinner. Now, it's not unusual for us to have some kind of event happening over our house. So I remember being told once um by my senior pastor that don't turn your house into a pastor's house. Not really understanding what that meant at that particular time, but I soon found out that, you know, once people know where you live and you're a pastor, you know, everybody's dropping in for whatever ails them or for whatever's going on. But strangely enough, it never bothered us, and we were very fulfilled when we saw that people needed us, so they were using us as their anchor or us as their safety net, seeking advice and wanting support. But on this particular occasion, I was in charge in the after hours uh phone, and what actually happens is the all the associate pastors they're on a roster where every um month we get the after hours phone, and so if anybody's calling in with needs or or um support, there's always someone to answer the phone. You can't just ring the church and there'd be nobody home. So that's what we used to do. But on this particular occasion, it was someone I got to know very, very well over the next six months. I'm just gonna use first names. Mark was his name, and although he was a Catholic, his mother had become a word of faith Christian, and Mark was basically just following his mother's wishes. Now, when I say Mark and his family were devout Catholics, I mean even to the extent this guy was um, I don't know, he was some sort of accountant, but he was responsible for about five or six different um Catholic schools around the place, and so he would travel all over the place doing this, doing his job. So that just gives you a little idea. But what God was going to teach us was something very, very spiritual and very, very important. Um, his mother had had this sudden onset of a very radical illness. Uh, he wanted to honor her wishes, not knowing why at the time God was using this situation to teach not only him but also me a very important spiritual lesson. What the Lord the Lord chose to do was to take us, and particularly Mark, into his waiting room. This is God's waiting room. Now, I don't want you getting this confused where some people tell you that um there's a waiting room before we go to heaven, okay? There's heaven and there's hell. There's no middle place or no um, you see a lot of movies about where you've got to go in there and you get assessed by St. Peter, and then do you go up or do you go down, all of that sort of stuff. No, that that's rubbish, okay? It's just um movies, okay? To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. So we pass from this life that we have now into the pit of hell or into the kingdom of God. Scary, yes, but having a relationship with the Father is the most important thing. This is something else, okay? Uh, I've spoken to her about this before. Now, we have what we call um we have times when we're on the mountain, we have times when they're in the valley. Now, what this means is that uh um our life journey, even as a Christian, is like a roller coaster, okay? Um, it's like that that um sideshow that that Howie was on, okay. The thing is, we are constantly going through this in our life, and so we have our ups and downs, and this is not necessarily just based on um our faith journey. I want to make this very, very clear, all right. So I don't want you sort of like going into the doom and gloom and all this sort of stuff, but put it this way, okay. Basically, this is how it works, okay? You have good times in your life and you have bad times in your life, okay? But everything is temporal subject to change. God is the same today, yesterday, and forever. He doesn't change, okay. We live in an ungodly world and we are surrounded by ungodly things. So because we are in this world, okay, we live in this world, but we're not of it. Right? So the thing is we go through situations in our life, okay, and not necessarily because of our lack of faith, our lack of belief, or we're doing something wrong and we're getting punished. We don't get punished. God is love, God is all about love. He loved us so much that he gave his only begotten son, so whoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. Now I'm getting a little off track here, but I wanted to make sure we're doing this over the next few weeks. So I wanted to make sure that you truly understand the waiting room isn't some mystical way station when you're halfway between being dead and being alive. No, you're still fully alive, okay? But sometimes we spend time in the valley, and sometimes we send time on the mountaintops. Even Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness, so he was tested, all right? So I want you to make it very clear what I'm actually speaking about here. Now, in this particular stage, okay, when we're in God's waiting room, we're in a place where there's no yes or no answers, but only wait. And that's what happens when we're seeking the Lord's advice. He could either say yes, no, or wait. This is the wait time. The place where at first it seems dark and dreary, where God seems far away and doubt creeps in. The place where there is there's no safety harness and where faith seems inadequate. And worst of all, this is a place where there is no time limit. God's waiting room where none of us would choose to go, and when we see it coming, our response is, oh no, Lord, not that. Now, I don't want to get ahead of the story here, but I mean, okay, it's it seems scary, yes. It's dark and it's cold, and they might have to be left there for a very long time. Some of you are in God's waiting room this morning or this evening, depending on what part of the world you're in. But some of you may be recognizing what I'm actually talking about right this very minute. And some of you have been there for a very long time, and you're not sure that you can hold out. The whole heart is crying out, where is God? And that's exactly the question we want to address over the next few weeks. If you stay with me and focus on what I'm talking about, you'll get a better understanding and know that there's always a plan and a purpose behind what God's wanting. Now, I want to tell you a bit more about Mark before I move on so you understand uh where we're going with this.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

It's about waiting, all right?

Isaiah 40:31 For The Waiters

Isaiah’s Context And Captivity Hope

Finding Calm In Life’s Storm

SPEAKER_00 15:19

Because first I want us to see this whole thing from God's perspective. The key verse is gonna be found in Isaiah 4031. Yeah, look, just look at it with me for now. But they who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength and shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not be faint. This verse is telling us that God always has a purpose for having us in the waiting room, and the purpose is our renewed strength. But see, that little phrase those who wait is literally reads the waiters. These promises are for the waiters upon the Lord. You see, it's it's possible to be in God's waiting room and not be a waiter. It's possible to be in God's waiting room and to be anxious, bitter, angry, fearful, cold or cold hearted, then you will not be renewed, you will not run without weariness, and you will surely faint. When God is uh placing something on your heart, you need to truly understand what he's trying to say, and sometimes that means that you have to wait on the Lord. There's many, many passages of scripture and it says, but wait. So this passage of scripture was written for our comfort, strangely enough. It turns out that God is bigger than any problem, any issue, any person or any circumstance that we could possibly ever face. And though we may be in the waiting room, God wants to turn on the light, warm up the temperature, hold out hope, and make it a place of refreshment. He just needs our cooperation to bring this about. It's a bit like um, I've mentioned this many, many times. I I keep going off track because I I want to make sure that people sort of like really understand what I'm talking about. Um, so sometimes my notes go out the window and and I'm just doing what the Lord's telling me to do. In the Psalms it says, Yea, though I walk through the valley of shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Now, I talk about this scripture for a particular reason because it sounds doom and gloom. You're walking through the valley of death, okay? So it's dark, it's miserable, it's horrible. A very large amount of people lose hope when they find themselves in that situation. But if you read the whole passage of scripture, it says that he is with you, so he's not going to be in a dark, dingy place, okay, and it says you're going through it. So if you're going through something, that means you come out the other side. It doesn't settle say, Yay, now that you're in the valley of death, God has left you and you're stuck there. No, it doesn't say that. So we're digressing again. Okay. Now let's put this into the right sort of context, right? Now, Isaiah was a prophet of God living from around 739 BC before Christ until as late as 681, right? He came from a good family, had easy access to the king, wrote in impeccable style with a message urging repentance from idol worship and meaningless rituals. But he knew his message would not be followed, and he prophesied the coming of Babylon or Babylonian captivity. Now, if you don't know about the when the Israelis went into the Babylonian captivity, um do your research and read it up. Otherwise, that's that's a whole Old Testament teaching in itself. So the children of Israel were about to enter God's waiting room, and that's being in captivity with the Babylonians. In their case, to purge them from sin, and it would not be pleasant, but in the midst of the prophecy, Isaiah was instructing to offer hope. That is what the passage that we want to study for the next couple of weeks is really all about. Why and how should people take hope, and what is what is it all about, and what it can it offer them, and how their hope is if they are waiters. Waiters upon the Lord, waiters that are waiting for the answer of God. God is bigger than any possible problem we can confront. I'll give you another analogy. It helps. And with my research, you'll find a lot of this is American-based because sometimes people are more aware of American football and baseball and all that sort of stuff, but you know, it that's irrelevant. Now, my son in particular is really into American football, and this all stems from him having a couple of trips to the US. And Americans love their statistics. So James told me about this quarterback, this John Elway. Might have the name wrong, but uh I'm just going on third party hearsay. He used to step up behind the center, right. But you know, when they get there and they go, hut, hut, hut, and the ball is snapped back to them. Now, immediately there was a violent blend of orange, blue, and silver and black as these particular um the opposition, the raiders, a defense was pushed back on the Bronco offensive line. Okay. Some of the offensive line would hold their position while the others was forced into another defensive position to save them from getting offside or whatever. And in the mayhem of all of this going on around Elway, he stood firm in one spot and he was in his comfort zone. He had confidence in the greatness of his lineman, and Elway knew that he was protected from everything that was going around him, and he was able to throw the ball and do the pass, if that makes sense. So look at it from another perspective, you know. This is so different to Aussie rules because if you look at Aussie rules, Australian football, it looks like chaos all the time. Wherever the ball is, there's like 14 or 15 people fighting to get this ball out, and all sorts of mayhem um just goes into oblivion. But the thing is here, it's like I'll go one step further. Um if you're in America or in other parts of the country, you'll know what a cyclone is or a hurricane, okay. And basically what actually happens is that you've got an incredible storm that is coming through and it's ripping everything up, okay, and then all of a sudden you're in the eye of the storm, it is dead calm and it's peaceful, but all of this is raging around you, and so you can sit in that, and it's like sitting in the presence of God waiting for God to show you a path out through the storms of life.

SPEAKER_01 25:11

I mean, God's answer to the question is all about timing.

Grief Stages And God’s Presence

SPEAKER_00 25:21

It's his cresito or affirmation about himself that when applied can turn on the lights and bring peace in the midst of hopelessness. So, just for a moment, let's forget about the stories and analogies that I've been using. Let's talk about you, our listeners. I don't know you, but God does. So I'd like you to look at your situation and the scripture, Isaiah forty thirty-one, because God's work is a powerful, powerful thing. So next week we're gonna continue with what it means to wait patiently. See, we're talking about there's power in waiting, okay, and then we're gonna talk about what it means to be patient, and so there's so many levels, it's a bit like depending on your circumstances and what you're going through, like um it's still very raw with us at the moment, um, but uh my wife lost her brother to pancreatic cancer, and you know, we have to go through these five stages of grief, and sometimes you get stuck in one of them, but you have to allow them all to work through you and allow you to move on to the next one, and I'll give you an example. The very first one is denial, okay. Uh no, this can't be right, um, someone's got something wrong. Um, no, he's I just get the pastor to come in and pray for him, he'll come back to life, you know. Um, and so you need to go through all five stages, all right.

SPEAKER_01 27:40

Now in Matthew 28 20, he tells you that God is always with you.

Final Encouragement And Blessing

SPEAKER_00 27:56

You may not feel his presence, you may not sense his presence, but I'm telling you right here, right now, he is always with you, and he's your rock, he's your salvation. You doesn't matter where you are, what circumstance you're going through, what situation you find yourself in. Be in that place. If you're in the waiting room, know that you can be in that waiting room, and God will strengthen you, he will allow you to be strengthened by the spirit of the inner man. Okay, and he will renew you, he will lift you up under eagle's wings and comfort you. Not all is lost just because you're in a bad place. Trust in him and he'll get you through it. All right, we'll talk again soon. God bless for now.