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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Alan and Nicole Parker - Desires Of the Heart: God's Plan for Your Life

Nicole Parker

Crawling in Love: Finding The Love Of Your Life, God’s Way

Alan Parker

Waiting On God

Can You Hear Me Now? Communication That Connects

I just like to have the right atmosphere here.

I want you to find somebody seated next to you and just wish them a happy Sabbath and thank them for being here today.

Now, some of you are wishing a little more enthusiastically than we should.

Why don't, before we begin, let's pray together and pray that God will be with us.

Father God, we want to thank You for being here.

We want to thank You for this group of people who've gathered for great music, for the opportunity we've had to just spend time in your presence.

And we pray now that as we open your word, that your Holy Spirit will be present and that we will experience a blessing.

Now you're going to hear a strange accent while I'm up here.

All right, and I spent some time in South Africa.

So if at any time you don't understand what I'm saying, you just lift up your hands and you just say, help him, Jesus, and I'll know what to do.

You know, when the light turns red, I have to control myself.

You know, just kind of take a deep breath.

When I get into the fast lane and somebody decides they're on a Sunday afternoon drive, and I'm just about to lay my hand on, you know, and honk my horn, I have to remember that on the back of my car it says bibleuniverse.com.

I do not like waiting, and I'm sure there's times when each of us have been a little frustrated with delays.

I just, 1 time I went to an urgent care facility.

A waiting room, a chance to catch up on a 1983 Reader's Digest.

And so, you know, when I look at the Bible, I have discovered certain things.

And 1 thing that's very clear as you go through the Bible is that the Bible says that God likes waiting.

And I'm just going to throw out a couple of texts here at the beginning before we go into today's story.

Now of course, you've got to find Lamentations first, and the easiest way to find that is Jeremiah.

And right after Jeremiah, you're going to find Lamentations.

And looking at verse 25 to begin before we get to verse 26, Lamentations 3 and verse 25, the Lord is good unto them that wait for Him to the soul that seeketh Him.

Lamentations 3 verse 26, it is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord.

As I've gone through the Bible, I've discovered time after time the Bible says that we have to wait.

You're going to have to wait 4, 000 years.

And it comes down to the end of time and it says we have to wait again.

Another text, Psalm 27 verse 14, a few books back, Psalm 27, verse 14, and again it tells us that we have to wait, Psalm 27 and verse 14.

It says this, "'Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and He will do what?

Wait, ' He repeats, I say, ''on the Lord.'" And so here throughout the Bible there is this command to wait.

And I know some of us are challenged with waiting.

There are some who've been waiting for the right person to come along, and they've been waiting and waiting.

They've had a few false starts, and they're still finding that that person isn't there.

And then there are others who've been waiting for the right missionary opportunity, been waiting and waiting, and it just never seems to come.

There have been some who've been waiting for their studies to be finished.

1 day, I'm not going to have to work and study.

I can just work." You just work a lot longer.

There's some here who are about to get married, and they've been waiting for months, for this day that's going to come tomorrow.

And this weekend, my wife spoke to Tim and Sonny just a little while ago, and when we were on our way here, she says, they sound really excited.

And so when we go through the Bible, we find that God does ask us to wait.

So we're going to turn to a story in Genesis chapter 12.

And we're going to find some principles for waiting.

Genesis chapter 12 and reading in verse 1.

Genesis 12, verse 1, now The Lord said unto Abraham, Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred and from thy father's house unto a land that I will show thee.

Verse 2, And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing.

I have found that the reason why we wait is because God has given us a promise.

Because we have a promise that we hang on to.

Why do we wait to open our Christmas or our birthday presents.

Because we believe that that wrapping is a promise that something good is waiting for us.

Because we believe that God has something better waiting for us.

You see, waiting is based on the promise of something better.

So here we have Abraham at this stage being promised that he will be a great nation.

His prosperity will be known throughout the world.

He will have a name, a nation named after Him.

He has these incredible promises that are given to Him by God.

He can go through anything because He has this promise.

And so when we have the promise of something better, why would we trade it for anything less?

This becomes the core of Abraham's existence.

Now keep Genesis open and we're going to go over to Hebrews chapter 12, the other end of the Bible, Hebrews chapter 12, sorry, Hebrews chapter 11, Hebrews chapter 11 and verse 8.

By faith Abraham, when he was called, ' Hebrews 11, verse 8, "'By faith Abraham, when he was called to God into a place which he should afterward receive for an inheritance, He did what?

Obeyed, and he went out not knowing whether he went.

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Series

Alan and Nicole Parker - Desires Of the Heart: God's Plan for Your Life

Waiting On God

Transcript

Parent Series

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