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South Bay SDA Church

Alistair Huong

Wait On the Lord

Let's bow our heads for prayer as we get ready to open God's word together.

Father in heaven, I thank you so much for bringing us safely together this Sabbath morning.

I thank you that we have a heritage, an avidness heritage that we can reflect on to see that we have not followed cunningly devised fables, but that we are standing on the more sure word of prophecy.

And Lord, today, as we think practically how we can wait for your return, I pray, Lord, that you will speak to us.

May the Holy Spirit lead us into all truth we ask in Jesus name, Amen.

The title of our message today is Wait on the Lord.

Last week, my wife and I and our kids, we were in the car.

We were driving home and we were supposed to get on the freeway to get home.

You know how the on-ramp sometimes, you're on the overpass and you can see the road, the freeway, before you get on the on-ramp.

Well, it was 1 of those instances, and I saw the traffic backed up as far as the eye could see.

Some of you gentlemen know where this story's headed already.

So I pulled, made a right turn into a parking lot, whipped out my GPS to see if there's a faster way.

I looked at the GPS and sure enough, the GPS said, no, the shortest way is back on the freeway.

And so I thought, all right, let's just go with that.

It's just like a left turn and then the on-ramp is right there.

And my wife says, why don't you just make a right turn?

And now I'm facing all this oncoming traffic and I have to make a left turn or a U-turn to get around and I'm stuck in the median waiting some more.

I managed to get into the parking lot on the left side and now I have to wait for another right turn, and by this point, my hair's on fire.

Eventually, we get back on the freeway, and with a sigh, I said, well, there goes 10 minutes of my life I'm never getting back.

My wife, always there to keep me on the straight and narrow says, well, at least we weren't in a hurry to get anywhere.

And then I realized, but I am preaching a sermon on waiting next week.

And so if you feel like this sermon is intended to point at you, just know God laid this burden on me for me, all right?

But I think that illustrates the point, right?

We live in a society now in which waiting is almost always considered a bad thing.

If a package that we order online is not on our doorstep, within 2 days, something's wrong.

So we've got what's called instant message.

An instant message hitting your computer is just not fast enough.

Pretty soon, they're going to have to beam it straight into our brains.

Before you think it, we're going to give you the instant message.

And who's got time to sit around cooking a pot of pasta for 10, 15 minutes?

All the college students know what I'm talking about.

Oh, and then there's everyone's favorite appliance, the instant pot.

With all the beans us vegetarians eat, right?

Instant pot, instant message, instant noodles.

We got our phones with 3G, no, that's too slow.

Every car we buy has to be faster than the last 1, we're in such a hurry.

However, 1 of the secrets to the Christian's strength, 1 of the secrets to a powerful Christian experience is knowing how to wait.

Specifically how to wait on the Lord and Today I want to spend some time discussing investigating this idea with you through the story of Elijah Elijah and you might be thinking now that's an odd choice for Bible character.

He's not like a Job or John waiting on Patmos or some other character that's associated with being patient.

Elijah is 1 of those move fast and break things type of Bible characters.

But uh-huh, why was he able to do so much for God?

So let's turn our attention now to the Bible Where we are introduced to Elijah the prophet first Kings chapter 17 will begin reading in verse 1 it says an Elijah the Tishbite of the inhabitants of Gilead said to Ahab as The Lord God of Israel lives before whom I stand there shall not be do nor rain these years except at my word Then the word of the Lord came to him saying, Get away from here and turn eastward and hide by the brook Kerith which flows into the Jordan.

And it will be that you shall drink from the brook and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there.

So he went and did according to the word of the Lord for he went and stayed by the brook Kerith which flows into the Jordan.

The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening and he drank from the brook.

Sometimes in our Christian experience we see the doors of God's providence flinging open at every turn.

So much so that ravens are bringing us food.

Where like you are just in sync with God.

Your morning devotions are just exactly what you needed for the day.

Your prayers seem to have answers just instantaneously almost.

And God is like walking right next to us.

But that's not how we always feel in the Christian experience, is it?

Are there not also times where God calls us to retreat and to sit by the brook and wait?

When we think about waiting, It's easy to wait when we are laying in our warm bed in our down comforter on a Sunday morning waiting for someone to serve us breakfast.

But we all know that when we think about waiting on God, it's quite the opposite.

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Wait On the Lord

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