Prayer - Waiting

US Election

Now there are some topics of conversation that you know have a high chance of causing a stir, and so the traditional wisdom is to avoid them.

But what’s the fun in that...

The US election is one such topic. This year in particular, you raise this topic and there is a good chance you’ll elicit some strong feelings, whether the person chooses to share their opinion or not.

It seems that most people either have a strong desire to see him stay, or a strong desire to wave him goodbye. Maybe there are people who are more ambivalent, but in this case people seem to gravitate one way or the other.

But can I suggest that there is something that, for the most part, both sides could agree on. Everyone wants there to be a quick resolution with the truth prevailing.

The problem is, on both sides there is a different understanding of what that truth is.

And so there is a wait.

In many ways it is quite a painful wait, because the lack of resolution means the no one is moving forward in a meaningful way.

So what do we do in this waiting period?

Well, as fun as it might be, I’m actually not going to focus on the US elections other than to help us think about what it means for us to wait on the Lord.

Series recap

You see, I started a short series on prayer a few weeks back. I started two weeks ago with a call to be bold in our prayers.

I followed that with a reflection on Psalm 42 considering what it means to seek God in our prayers.

Well, there is one aspect of praying which can become really frustrating.

The waiting!

You see, I suspect you all agree with me that God listens to our prayers.

Perhaps its an over simplification, but in essence, God will give one of three answers to our prayers. Yes. No. Or wait.

In fact in my experience, it is “wait” which happens the most.

You see, we are so caught up in our own perspective that we think that our problem needs to be dealt with now. And we don’t understand why God doesn’t just hurry up and get on with it.

Link with Psalm

Well, this morning, I’m going to give some reflections on Psalm 130.

As we’ll explore shortly we’ll see him using the phrase: my whole being waits.

So what I want to do is to pay attention to the posture that his waiting takes. And as we do this, we will consider what it means for us to wait for the Lord.

Out of the depths

Well, lets start with the situation that the Psalmist finds himself in.

The reality is that we aren’t told much.

The Psalm starts with the words: “Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord”.

Obviously the Psalmist is in a bad place.

Is it depression? Has he got himself in an impossible situation?

Possibly, we’re not really told. But in some ways, the generic nature of it can actually be helpful. Because we can be in a variety of situation where we just feel out of our depth.

That situation where we are just crying out to God because we can’t get a leg up.

Sinfulness

Now, while the Psalmist could be referring to almost any situation, I do want to make the suggestion that there is a spiritual element to it.

In fact, there is some evidence that perhaps his big experience is actually the feeling of deep guilt.

This is based on the assumption of verse 3 and 4 which talk about sin. The effect of sin on his life is certainly on his mind.

Now sin is an interesting thing. You see, at times we can be blissfully unaware of this great problem in our own life. So much so that sometimes we might even think we have nothing we need forgiveness for.

After all, we’ve got a good set of values and with only minor infringements, we do a fairly decent job of holding to them.

But sometimes we open our eyes for long enough to realise what a big lie we’ve been telling ourselves.

You see, once we get over this lie that sin has to be some horrible crime that would shock the community if they found out, and realise that sin is actually about turning our backs on God.

You see, we have this natural tendency to put ourselves first, and this is particularly problematic when we are trying to move towards God.

Sometimes we can see just how self-absorbed and unloving we have been towards others.

Once we see this, it is easy to spin down a spiral where we can end up in a very bad place.

Let’s just think about this spiral - because perhaps you’ve experienced it.

It starts with a recognition that something isn’t quite right.

Perhaps you’ve been unkind to someone. You realise you’ve caused some damage.

But that then quickly changes to: I’m not worthy. I can’t be trusted.

Which then becomes: God must be really upset with me.

But here comes the really bad part. Once we conclude God is upset with us, we then turn our back on him.

Once we do this, we further loose sight of what we should be doing, and then sin yet more. When we lose our temper we think - well God is already upset with me.

And then we end back where we started, ready to do another spin around the spiral.

I’m not worthy. Turn back on God and sin yet more. Feeling of guilt!

The guilt then can really get a grip on you.

The devil only really needs to start us on this spiral and we do the rest.

The problem is, this sort of depth really has a massive detrimental effect on our prayer life.

You see, when other bad things happen - say, you lose your job, or you have a massive health crisis - the chances are, you will probably pushed into a deeper prayer life. You feel more keenly that reliance on God.

However, when it is the guilt of our own sin that is getting us down, then we feel we’re not in a place to pray.

I think the devil can play this trick on communities like ours. Communities where God is starting to move and God’s people are starting to pray. If he just convinces enough of us that we are not worthy, then he can knock out a few prayers.

As a result we become more an more distant from what God is doing.

Posture of Forgiveness

So what does the writer of this Psalm do to get out of this mess?

Well, it starts with a truth.

It’s quite a simple truth in many ways.

It’s the truth that with God, there is forgiveness.

And with this truth comes a consequence.

Because of this forgiven “we can, with reverence, serve you”.

Do you see what this posture of forgiveness can do?

It short circuits that downward spiral I spoke about. Rather than the guilt pushing you further from God and then into further guilt, a knowledge that God has forgiven us means that we can say: I did do wrong, I’ve made a mess, but God still loves me and so I will stay close to him.

Waiting

So it starts with acknowledging a truth.

So we can see what’s going on here. The Psalmist is in a pit of despair. He has gone down a dark path. But he has recognised that God forgives him. In prayer, he has called out to God. So you would expect that this would be the end of the matter.

God would take him out of the depth, and he would experience some sort of amazing joy.

But guess what?

In verse 5, the Psalmist talks about waiting… “I wait for the Lord”.

But he keeps going. This is not just a simple carefree wait.

This is a complete yearning. In fact he describes it as his “whole being waits”.

And just to really make his point, he goes on about it in verse 6… “I wait for the Lord”.

How much is he waiting? … “more than watchmen wait for the morning”

And just in case you didn’t quite get it, (I think he really wants you to know), he repeats: “more than watchmen wait for the morning”.

So what is he waiting for?

Well, it’s actually not entirely clear to be honest. Verses 7 and 8 do go on to talk about the redemption of Israel, so maybe he’s waiting for some bigger picture of God doing what he is going to do. A bit like us waiting for the Lord’s second coming.

That might be it. However, the Psalm seems to me a very personal Psalm. His focus is on the depths that he has found himself in.

I tend to think that he is waiting to get out of that feeling of being in the depths.

He may know he is forgiven, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he will instantaneously be jolted out of his feeling.

You know, sometimes we get this feeling of despair. But even when we turn to God, that feeling remains. It can actually make us feel more distressed because we feel that God mustn’t have heard us.

But that’s because sometimes God just wants us to wait.

Why? Well, there could be lots of reasons. Perhaps he wants us to grow from the experience. Perhaps he’s teaching us patience.

Actually, to be honest, asking the question why can be problematic because it makes us want to simplify something to a simple one-dimensional answer.

I actually don’t think these simple answer do justice to the big picture of what God is doing.

We wait, because that is what God deems the best thing for us to do.

Drawing closer to God

But there is an aspect of this waiting that I want to draw your attention to.

A such a simple aspect that it’s easy to gloss over.

And that is, the focus of his waiting. The first five words of verse 5 and 6 start the same. They both say: “I wait for the… Lord”

We might gloss over that, almost a bit like a cliche, in such a way that we assume what he’s actually saying is: I wait for my problem to be over. Or: I wait for that feeling to pass.

That’s because we like to focus on the problem.

What if, however, instead of focusing on the problem, we actually focus on the one who makes the difference.

You see, this actually starts to make all of the difference. In fact, it will probably stop us asking the question I just asked a moment ago of why we need to wait.

That question comes when we focus on the problem. But when our waiting is on the Lord, we just look for something better to come.

Waiting

So let’s just take a moment to look back on what we’ve seen so far.

I’ve described that despair that we can feel, and in particular, the despair caused by the guilt of our sin.

As we cry out from those depths, we start with the truths that God has given us.

And then we wait - but our waiting points us in the direction of God.

That waiting isn’t always easy, in fact, it usually isn’t easy. But as we wait, we actually find ourselves drawing closer to God.

Hope

And this waiting results in hope, and this is where the Psalm finally takes us.

Verse 7 says: “Israel, put your hope in the Lord, for with the Lord is unfailing love and with him is full redemption”.

What I love about this is that the waiting starts with a truth, but then also ends with a truth.

As we wait for the Lord with our whole being, we find hope in the Lord. We find a God who has an unfailing love for us.

Ultimately we find a God in whom there is full redemption.

You see, while I said before that he is longing to get out of the depth that he has found himself in - but there is a sense in which he is also waiting for that time when all things will be made right.

He was waiting for the Messiah. We live in a time when the Messiah has already come and won the victory. But we now wait till he returns and consummates the victory with an eternal reign.

Our application

So let me now spend a little time thinking what all of this means for us.

Well I want to suggest that while I’m arguing that he is writing from a sense of guilt in his own sinfulness, there is actually a wider application.

You see, this Psalm describes the appropriate posture we take when things are hard.

We start with the truths of the gospel.

I’m talking about the big truths such as Romans 8:1 which says: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”.

Or the truth in 1 John 4:10 which says: “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins”.

Or even the truth found in the Psalm we are reading today: “But with you there is forgiveness”.

And then once we have that truth in our heart - to wait. Specifically to wait on the Lord.

Because in him we will find hope.

Corporal application

So far, I’ve mostly considered this from a personal perspective. But let me just spend a few moments considering this from a church perspective.

You see, over the last few weeks we’ve been considering more specifically what it looks like to move forward as a church. We’ve considered various aspects that are important, such as seeking after wisdom, considering the spiritual opposition, keeping it about love and the like. The last two weeks I’ve considered how we should be praying.

Well, in all of this, we need to realise that things don’t often happen in the timing that we always want them to. To be honest, I’ve been praying that God will grow this church for a long time. In degrees, we’ve seen answers to those prayers, but in many ways, it has felt that the answer to these questions have come very slowly.

From this Psalm, I know I’ve been encouraged to think of this time as a time in which we are waiting on the Lord.

We wait for things to happen, but the focus of our waiting is not necessarily for a specific fulfillment, but rather a focus on the Lord himself.

You see, we start with some good gospel truths.

We start by recognising that God is love. That God loved the whole world so much that he gave his one and only Son. And that God is growing his Kingdom throughout the world. That every nation will bow to him.

We know that God wants an expression of his church here, because he loves the people here.

And so we wait on the Lord. We wait with our whole being.

As we wait we find hope - because God is powerful.

Conclusion

Waiting is not easy. It’s not easy because we think if something is important, it’s important to know now.

But waiting is important, because in waiting we find the Lord.

I started by bringing up that contentious topic of the US election.

It’s hard to wait for that. It hard because it is bringing out a lot of tension. It’s hard, because if the results don’t turn out the way we expect them to, we don’t know what is going to happen.

But what if this waiting isn’t a bad thing. What if in the act of waiting, we actually draw into a deeper relationship with Jesus. What if in waiting we find a new kind of hope.

We will all go through hard times. Both as individuals and as a church.

When we do, we turn to God in pray, focussing on the great truths that he has taught us, and waiting for him.

Ultimately, this wait will result in him turning up in a powerful way.

Let me pray...