The Waiting Room

When Moses stood on Mount Horeb received his calling from God, he knew the people God was asking him to go to. God told Moses that He had heard His people’s cries, and He was going to use him to bring them out of Egypt, but what was Moses’ response? In Exodus 3:13 Moses says to God; “when I come to the children of Israel and say to them. ‘ The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they say to me, ‘What is His name?’ what shall I say to them?” Moses had been with the people and knew their hearts, he knew their pain and suffering, and he knew that for some what they were going through had caused them to doubt God. He knew those four hundred years of crying out to God for deliverance had caused them to no longer know the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So when he went to the people and told them, the God of your Father’s has sent me, what do you think would be their response? They were a generation of people that no longer knew God as their Fathers had. How do we know that? Look at Exodus 6:9; So Moses spoke thus to the children of Israel; but they did not heed Moses, because of anguish of spirit and cruel bondage. What is God’s response to Moses’ question in verse three? In Verse fourteen God says; “I AM WHO I AM.” And He said. “Thus say to the children of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ”
God doesn’t offer a reason why He left the people in bondage for so long, He doesn’t spell out how He is going to do it, nor does He tell Moses to form a committee and figure out what is the best way to get Pharaoh to release the people. He simply tells Moses that I AM about to do something that staggers the imagination through you, that will deliver My people and establish them as a nation, and establish My name forever. God wanted to encourage the people, through Moses, that whatever they were about to encounter, not to look at the bondage that they were in, not to trust in their own understanding of the surroundings, but to trust in His name.
In John’s gospel Jesus uses these same two words to encourage the people and they echo down to us today that no matter what our problems are we can trust in His name. Jesus says I AM;
“the bread of life” 6:35,48
“the living bread that comes down from heaven” 6:51
“the light of the world” 8:12
“the gate for the sheep” 10:7
“the good shepherd” 10:11, 14
“the resurrection and the life” 11:25
“the way, and the truth, and the life” 14:6
“the true vine” 15:1
This bread is the sacrifice made for us by Jesus and any who believe on Him will never hunger. That longing in our spirits for an answer to the question; “Is this all that there is?” is answered in Him. This bread not only fills us to not longing anymore, but we are able to offer it to others by our faith in Him.
By Jesus saying that He is the living bread that comes down from heaven, He tells the people that He is the long awaited Messiah that takes away the sins of the world. He is the one sent by the Father, and foretold by the prophets. Jesus is the living bread that has gone back to the Father, and is alive forevermore in us.
Jesus is the light of the world in that He sheds his light on the darkness that surrounds us. While driving east in the morning I am blinded by the rising sun, so that it is all I can see. The reflection off the passing cars causes me to refocus my attention somewhere else. In the same way Jesus’ light shines on our lives and causes us to take our sight from our troubles till His light is all we can see.
We all come to Jesus from different walks of life, as God reaches out to us in a way that is unique to each of us, just as we enter the church from different doors. But as we gather together as a congregation we are united by our belief that Christ is the only gate that we can enter into heaven.
By trusting In Jesus as the good Shepherd we may not always understand where He is leading us, but we are trusting in His leadership. If we follow Him we trust that He will not lead us into harm. Is this blind faith? Certainly not, but it is a certainty in whom we trust. When we go astray we trust that He will seek after us and bring us back into the fold.
Jesus being the resurrection and the life goes beyond and everlasting life that is given to the believer, but pertains also to a spiritual resurrection, from a death of sin, to a life of grace. Because Jesus died for us, we being dead to sin might live unto God.
He is not only the way unto salvation through His obedience and sacrifice upon the cross, but is the way to a relationship with the Father and His blessings. He is also the way to heaven, entered into by His blood and opening the way through Himself to His people.
He is not only true, true to His calling, and true to the prophecies that are told of Him in the Bible, but he is truth. He being the truth is in direct opposition to all false truths and perverted gospels, devised by the devil and man.
Jesus being the creator of life, natural, spiritual, and eternal, is the way into that life. He gave us His breath to give us natural life, He gave us His Spirit to give us spiritual life, and He gave us His life to give us eternal life.
Jesus is the true vine and we are grafted into Him by our salvation being nourished and are able to produce fruit in our lives. And those fruits are love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
It is not often I offer hope before giving the message, but we are given this promise and then sent into the waiting room where our faith is tested. It is those promises that are to carry us through as we wait on God’s answer to our prayers. Nobody likes to wait and we have become an impatient people. We have become a people that stands in front of a microwave and say to it; “Come on, I don’t have all minute!” We hate to sit through red lights, and one fellow being so impatient at red lights figured out that on average we spend two weeks of our lives sitting at a red light. We have fast food, but still feel that we shouldn’t have to be asked to pull ahead to wait on our fries.
In Psalm 62 David says; “Truly my soul silently waits for God.” When we are waiting on test results to come back silence is the last thing we experience. When we are waiting on a child to come home late at night that peace we are to experience seems so far from us. We think the worst and God says wait and see, and when the worst is what we hear, God says wait on Me. The people of Israel waited on the Lord and a generation that knew the God of Abraham passed away, and yet another, and still another, till they began to get distant from God until Moses was sure they would not know Him. One of the fruits available to us from being grafted into the true vine is longsuffering, but we look up to heaven and scream; “How long God?”
When we gain that trust in I AM and find that peace that surpasses our understanding. When the rest of the world screams for relief and we reach out to them and offer love to them, even in the midst of our pain, along comes a guy wearing a message board stating that the end is near and we are back to square one.
We are always going to have scoffers that look at trouble and say, “Where is your God?” How do we respond to the question? What answers do we have for a hurting world? I asked my wife this question, and her answer was; “I just tell people to think of the happy times in their lives.” It is the grace of God that sustains us in our times of trouble as we linger in the waiting room. Times of waiting will happen and God is there with us as we go through them, and He watches our reaction.
Psalm 130: 1Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. 2Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications! 3If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand? 4But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered. 5I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; 6my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, Yes, more than those who watch for the morning. 7O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem. 8It is he who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities.
David begins his psalm crying out to the Lord to be heard and continues by praising Him for the forgiveness that is available to him. The world would have us believe that it deserves to be heard, while the Christian calls upon the mercy of God. So David waits and leans upon the word of God for his strength, while the word hopes that tomorrow may bring relief from their troubles. Having received peace from God, through prayer, David goes on to offer the same hope he has come to know to others. He tells them that God loves them and He will bring them through their troubles. What will we do in the waiting room? We will curse God for our troubles, or cry out to him out of them? Will we throw a pity party thinking that everyone has abandoned us or remind ourselves of where our help comes from?
Let me finish with a story. A man walked to a street corner and stopped looking up. Others came up to and joined him asking what he was looking for. The man replied; “I’m waiting for Him.” The others continued to watch with him till a storm came along and sent them dashing for the cover of an awning of a near by store. They stayed under the awning the rest of the day watching the man, until at the end of the day the man left without saying a word. The next day the man returned to the street corner and continued his vigil. Other’s would stop and join him and ask him what his was waiting for and he would tell them who he was waiting for and the love that He had for them. They continued on or joined the crowd that had gathered a short distance away under the safety of the store awning. Again at the end of the day the man left the street corner. This scene continued day after day as the man waited on Him and the crowds continued to gather, but had begun to mock the man. They would say; “Where is He?” “Has He forgotten you?”
Then one day the man did not show up. The crowd gathered under the awning but now they were silent as they waited to see if the man would show. They waited and as the day went on some left, but a few stayed till the end of the day and then left in silence. This was repeated for several days as the crowd waited to see if the man would return, till one day a man walked out of the crowd went to the corner and began to look up.
Jesus said in John 14:3; “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.” Jesus will return and we will go to Him, either in the clouds or in death. What will He find us doing as we wait?

Brian Davis
Lay Speaker
Logan Trintiy UMC