This morning, at this very moment, God waits for us to give Him our trust. During these forty years, your clothes did not wear out, and your feet did not swell. This reminds me of the story of two maestros who attended a concert to hear a promising young soprano. And the Lord said, All right, I will. There’s the waiting of a childless couple who desperately want to start a family but day after day, week after week, year after year….their prayers bear no obvious fruit. How do you respond? He waits to infuse our hearts with a HOPE that will keep us going. Picture the farthest point you can think of and then way beyond that. You put your car in park and decide to lay back and take this opportunity to catch a few Z’s. They listened to His teachings and kept WAITING for Him to bring in the kingdom the way they expected-to right all the wrongs done to them and their people but He was crucified. There’s the waiting of a single person to see if God has marriage in store for him or her. I hate any place like that where I have to waste my precious time WAITING! Waiting on the Lord requires patient trust. Even though I don’t know what tomorrow holds and even though I sometimes feel like nobody in this world understands how painful it is to be alone, I will trust You. In Matthew 23 Jesus refers to this aspect of God’s nature when He looks out over Jerusalem and says, …how often I have longed to gather you! God explained the purpose of these four decades of waiting in Deuteronomy 8:2-4 when He said. It may be hard for us to understand, but there is important growth that can only happen to us in these times when we suffer through long periods of waiting. Sometimes you can radically transform your life simply by saying yes. We’re used to that. In our society there is a direct correlation between status and waiting. In fact you consider turning off your engine and going up to join in the conversation. He took away your pride when He let you get hungry and then He fed you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had ever seen. God told His people, Israel, that they would be a great nation…that they would be able to leave the slavery of Egypt and be independent, but they had to WAIT 400 years for that to happen. Now, imagine a very large Being, larger than the entire universe-so large that the Being exists simultaneously on earth and in the space occupied by the supernova discovered in 1987. If we can’t get our brains around these common things, how can we expect to grasp the ways of our eternal, infinite God? Who has known the mind of the Lord? You see, the more we seek God in daily prayer; the more we study His word; the more we trust Him enough to follow His commands, well then, the more we see that He is worthy of our trust and then the more hopeful we can be-even in times of waiting. The Lord said, Yes. Of course. As Paul writes in Romans 8:23, We ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit groan inwardly while we WAIT for adoption, the redemption of our bodies…. Many of us have experienced difficult WAITING times like this. But when we’re faced with times like this we must find the courage to WAIT on God and to be patient and trust His timing-to say, Ok God, I will take You at Your word. In other words one reason God makes us wait is that He knows it is good for us. Hang on. You are furious and attempt to drive your vehicle between the other person’s car and the tollbooth. This time of waiting was an opportunity for Me to disclose to you more of Me than you have ever known. Where does it come from? There’s the waiting of the person suffering from depression who has to struggle every day to get out of bed and life seems dark and dreary most of the time. In other words God sees all of our lives at once unlike you and me who only see one slowly moving moment at a time. Wait here a minute. They WAITED again…three days…and then He rose from the dead and things looked great! In the last chapter of Revelation, John closes by saying, The One who testifies to these things, says, ‘Behold, I am coming SOON.’ (Revelation 22:12 ) It may not seem like it, but in light of eternity, it’s soon. To wait for someone is to realize that I am not in control. You’ll be the ancestor of a great nation. Have I forgotten who is the creature and Who is the Creator? It won’t happen tomorrow. It is logically impossible that we as finite creatures could ever fully understand the infinite! Then came the promise that the MESSIAH, the SAVIOR, the REDEEMER from God would come. Waiting on God is a regular refrain in the life of faith. He has the wisdom and power to run the entire universe so He is certainly more capable to run my life than I am…. But you would have never known any more about Me than you already know. I will wait. (Philippians 1:6 ). As creatures who cannot by themselves bring about what they hope for, we wait in the darkness for a flame we cannot light. At its maximum size, the brain weighs an average of 46 ounces, slightly less than 3 pounds. Don’t you just enjoy a nice, long WAIT? Think about being 75 years old and being told that instead of heading for the retirement home you’re about to head for the maternity ward…you’re going to be a dad and then WAITING nearly two and a half decades for it to come about! Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. (John 1:10-11 ) A small, ragtag group of disciples DID follow Him as the CHRIST. God has a promise waiting for you if you would just seize the gift. And in this relationship We develop a faith that is, …sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. Boyd knew that as our nation’s leader, he did not have to wait. Thomas Merton wrote, Quote: We receive enlightenment only in proportion as we give ourselves more and more completely to God by humble submission and love. We enter into an active relationship with Him. It is only when history has run its course will we be able to look back and see that He has indeed worked …in all things for our good. But Paul lists it at the end. In life there will be times when we feel like we are hanging there and we wonder what is taking God so long.