Trusting God in Seasons of Silence and Waiting

I bet everyone in this room tonight has had their own period of waiting, where it feels like God has vanished when you needed him most. And I'm not going to lie, those periods suck. Waiting is painful. It's scary. It pushes your trust in a world where most of us are used to having... But later... along with...answers at our fingertips. Oftentimes in these situations we want to rush to a resolution to end the pain of waiting as quickly as possible. We might even doubt God's existence if the silence goes on long enough. But it's important that we remember silence does not equal absence. Just like in the Easter story, oftentimes what follows a period of uncertainty and waiting can be life's greatest blessings. [00:06:16] (42 seconds)  #SilenceIsNotAbsence

So number two, waiting establishes trust in God and forces us to release our need for control. I think one reason that waiting can feel so difficult is it feels like we're doing nothing. It's not easy to dream about that shiny new job or attractive partner, all the while our phones are staying quiet. When we want action, progress, it's hard to stay still and wait. But it's important to remember that despite how it may feel, waiting isn't passive. It's an intentional action that redirects our focus to God rather than ourselves, to listen for his voice, to say, not my will, but yours be done. [00:08:41] (40 seconds)  #TrustBeyondControl

It's important that we remember that the way God blesses us may not be the way we expected or hoped for. Sometimes we wait for something and we never receive it. But the great thing about this is that God knows us even better than we know ourselves. We may know what we want, but God knows what we need. Waiting means trusting that God is always working with our best interests at heart, even if that means no answers for a long time. Even if that means not receiving the dream that you wish for. We wait with the understanding that whatever he has planned for us exceeds anything we could create on our own. [00:15:14] (37 seconds)  #WaitingBuildsCharacter

Waiting means trusting that God is always working with our best interests at heart, even if that means no answers for a long time. Even if that means not receiving the dream that you wish for. We wait with the understanding that whatever he has planned for us exceeds anything we could create on our own. [00:15:34] (18 seconds)  #DivineGuidanceIsBetter

Like I said before oftentimes we're not left waiting just to test us, but to build our character. It can be easy to feel like God has forgotten about us if we waited long enough. We can buy into the idea of waiting on God when that only requires waiting a few weeks, but what about when those weeks turn into months? I'll see. , you you years. I feel so natural to hold God to the timeline we've created for ourselves, or maybe even the timeline society creates for us. To have your dream job by 25, get married by 30, have a perfect house by 35. And when the years pass with no progress, we can blame God. We can use the years that have passed as a weapon against him. I've been waiting for five years already. How much more can he expect of me? But God doesn't move off our earthly timeline. [00:16:11] (50 seconds)  #DivineTimingOverEarthly

We can buy into the idea of waiting on God when that only requires waiting a few weeks, but what about when those weeks turn into months? I'll see. , you you years. I feel so natural to hold God to the timeline we've created for ourselves, or maybe even the timeline society creates for us. To have your dream job by 25, get married by 30, have a perfect house by 35. And when the years pass with no progress, we can blame God. We can use the years that have passed as a weapon against him. I've been waiting for five years already. How much more can he expect of me? But God doesn't move off our earthly timeline. [00:16:24] (37 seconds)  #StayTheCourseFaith

Waiting can prove God's power by creating an impossible situation that becomes possible with his intervention. God kept Sarah waiting for a son until she was well past the normal age of giving birth. By the time I met Joshua, I had already graduated from my Christian college, and I was basically the only young adult attending a church of teenagers and cottonheads, as Joshua likes to say. My co -workers were either women or the aforementioned cottonheads. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I had been so sure I would end up with the guy I met at college, and here I was, graduated and single. It felt like all of my chances to find someone were gone. [00:18:32] (44 seconds)  #HopeInTheDarkness

Followers of Jesus had already seen him heal the sick but that could be explained away by coincidence but for someone to die and then be brought back to life this was a whole other level of power that demonstrated the full extent of Jesus's power the same can be said about Jesus's own resurrection if Jesus had resurrected himself before a day spent in the tomb people might have argued that he never really died by spending a full day buried in the tomb before returning to the living he was able to perform an even greater miracle and if his power is great enough to bring the dead to life how can we worry about whether he might intervene in our lives [00:20:31] (38 seconds)  #GodsInterventionOnTime

``The hard truth is God doesn't always intervene when we want him to or how we want him to but here's the good news God will intervene in the exact way that each of us need as long as you follow him and listen to his commands he will lead you exactly where you need to be and wherever that place is it's going to be a thousand times better than what you wanted in the beginning [00:22:35] (22 seconds)  #BlessingsAfterWaiting