Wait Training

How many of you are ready for an infusion of spiritual power today? Anybody here ready for that? I am. I need it this morning. So grab your message notes that look like this. We put these in the middle of the bulletins that the ushers hand you so that you can follow along with a message and it helps hopefully make a little bit more sense to you.

Hey, I got a question for you. Here's kind of an audience participation thing. Shout it out if you know the answer. There is one thing as a universal question. It is the one asked by kids when they are on a long car trip every 15 minutes starting at about the first hour. It's four words. Shout it out. It is. You are correct. Are we there yet? And you know what? You know what happens to those kids? Those kids grow up into adults then ask the same question of God. Right? God, are we there yet for the thing that you've been waiting for in your life?

And so let's do some weight training this morning and talk about how to wait patiently on God because waiting is just a fact of life, isn't it? All through life. It seems sometimes we do nothing but wait. In fact, I'd love to hear from you this morning. Can you think back in your past, maybe when you were a child, maybe a young adult or older, to some situation that was really tough for you to wait for? If you think of something, raise your hand and I'll call on you. What was something that was tough for you to wait for in your life? Anybody? What was tough for you?

Yeah, over here. Shout it out. Christmas. You know, I've preached this message now. This is the third time this weekend. Every service, that's the first thing that comes out of people's mouths. Christmas time is hard to wait for. What else? Raise your hands. Yes. Going to Disneyland. Do you remember when you were waiting to go to Disneyland for your first time? That was hard to wait for. Somebody else? Yes. Waiting to start school. That's right. Waiting to go to school. Back there. Waiting to get your driver's license. That's good. Two more here and then here. Yes. Waiting to grow up. I'm still waiting, many people would say. And finally, one more? Labor Day. Waiting for Labor Day? I would say that Jamie Moreno would say waiting for her Labor Day was very hard to wait for until last weekend when Adrian and Jamie had their baby.

I made a list of some of the things that we wait for commonly in life. We wait in traffic, right? Especially on Highway 1 at Rush Hour. We wait in checkout lines. We wait for a table in a restaurant. We wait in the doctor's office. We wait while a computer voice goes through a thousand options in a phone tree. We can't wait to start school. Then we can't wait to finish school. We can't wait to get a job. Then we can't wait to retire. We can't wait to get married. Then we can't wait. No, I'm kidding about that one. But we cannot escape the web of waiting. And learning how to wait is very tough for us in our culture, right? When we microwave our dinners. When we cannot wait for a web page to load.

How many of you have ever gotten impatient waiting for a web page to load on the internet? Now, when you think about it, how long are you really waiting? Ten seconds. Imagine that you're hitting go on like your Google search button. And then you wait ten seconds for the web page to load. Let's count it off. Just imagine you're looking at that blank browser screen. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. By seven you're going, "I need a new internet service provider! This is ridiculous!" It's tough in our culture for us to learn how to wait patiently. But it's always been tough for human beings.

I found this quote from the late 1800s. The hymn writer, Phillips Brooks, this was the guy who wrote, "Oh, little town of Bethlehem." And this is the late 1800s. There's no internet, there's no radio, there's no TV, there's no cars, there's no planes. You'd expect they'd be nice and patient. He said, "The hardest thing in my life is to sit down and wait for God to catch up with me." So it's always been hard to wait. You and I need to learn this.

Let's read the first two verses of Psalm 40 together as we continue our soul food series through the Psalms. We're going to study Psalm 40 this morning. So let's read these two verses together on Waiting Well. Let me hear you. Let's say it out loud. "I waited patiently for the Lord. He turned to me and he heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit out of the mud and the mire."

Maybe you just remember waiting for something in your life, but maybe you are waiting for something right now. The job, release the call back, the house, the finances, the mates, school, the scholarship, the cure, something else. How do you learn to wait like this? Is there hope for you? Well, to resonate emotionally with where David was at when he wrote this Psalm. I want to do a little bit of word and historical context study here. Are you with me?

I looked at some of the words in David's very apt description of the emotion of waiting for a long time for something. And there's some interesting stuff here. I looked at the word translated slimy here in the New International version, a slimy pit. And it turns out that this is sort of a hard word to capture in English. Watch this. It's translated horrible in the King James version. The pit of destruction in the New American Standard Bible, despair in the New Living Translation. So it's translated lots of different ways, but whatever it means, it ain't good.

But what is this word? Why is it so hard to translate? Well, I think people here in Santa Cruz can relate to this. I found that it refers elsewhere to roaring or tumult, like stormy waves. And immediately when I read that definition this week, I thought of the video that we saw last weekend of the horrible waves throwing Japan just upside down. This was an amazing video of the tsunami surge after the earthquake in one of the coastal cities. We support some churches over there. You'll hear Mark talk a little bit later on about how we as a church are supporting them.

But this man with this video camera survived completely fine with no injury, but he kept moving to higher and higher ground as larger things are floating down the river that his street has turned into. It starts with debris and then cars. And then an entire looks like three bedroom, two bath house with attached garage is picked right up off the foundation and starts floating down the street. This is the kind of chaos, the kind of force that David is referring to when he uses this word, the tumultuous pit that he was in.

Now, what's interesting about this adjective is that the usual picture of a pit, when you just think of the word pit that you get is something like this. This is a sinkhole. This is not a photoshopped gag. This is an actual sinkhole that has opened up down in Guatemala. They actually have a real problem with this. And when you think of a pit, it's a very big problem, but they're finding that these sinkholes are opening up in a couple of their neighborhoods in Guatemala City like this, completely unexpected. They'll open up overnight.

And when I think of the word pit, this is the sort of thing that I usually think of, right? A dark ditch, a deep hole, or maybe some kind of an abandoned well. But when you combine this image with the adjective that David uses here, meaning tumultuous waves, it's really a scary picture, isn't it? It's as if David fell down into a deep, dark well, but instead of plunging into clear, placid well water, he finds that the water at the bottom of the well is more like a raging storm, like a hurricane, like a storm that we experienced last night, only dark and underground.

Then alongside that frightening picture is the image of the words mud and mire. It's a slimy, a tumultuous pit full of mud and mire. Now, all these images don't seem to go together, but don't forget that these are images that are supposed to make us feel what David is feeling. This is not a photographic image. This is a picture of David's emotions, right? He feels like he's in a dark pit filled with a tumultuous hurricane tsunami of mud and mire, like this mud and mire from a mud pot.

So I got a question. Do you ever feel like this picture? That is a great picture of what it feels like to be depressed, isn't it? And I had to ask myself, when in David's life do you suppose he wrote Psalm 40? When did he wait and wait and wait and wait and wait on God? And when he was waiting, he probably felt like he was in a dark pit full of mud and mire that was just full of a hurricane and he was never going to get out of it.

Well, there's a few points in his life, but I would not be surprised if he wrote this Psalm during the longest period in his life where he waited for something, and that was the period between his anointing as the next king of Israel and his coronation as the next king of Israel. Do you remember the story? He's just a boy of maybe 14, 15, 16 years old when the prophet Samuel says, "You're going to be the next king!" And everybody assumes it's like next week, maybe the next few months. 16 years later, when he turns 30, David is finally crowned king.

And those intervening 14 or 15 years, they were anything but calm for David. He literally lost everything he had in life because King Saul did not like hearing that somebody else was going to be king. So he chases him down as signs of squad of assassins to come and get him. David has to leave his wife behind, he has to leave his prophet Samuel behind, he has to leave his best friend Jonathan behind, he has to live in a cave surrounded by other men of despair, the Bible says, who have been hunted down, escaped convicts and so on.

At one point, part of his family is kidnapped and held for ransom, and another point he has to feign insanity to escape being killed. This is a tough time. When David must have felt like he was at the bottom of a pit full of a hurricane of mud and mire, and he says, "God, when are you going to come through on what you promised?" John Piper writes about this experience, he says, "Imagine falling into a well and sinking deep in the sludge at the bottom and going deeper every time you try to lift a foot, and all of a sudden you hear the roar of water coming from somewhere, and then it rushes around you in the dark and it reaches the level of your mouth and then your nostrils and you can't get out of the mud to get a breath, and then comes the sense of desperation and all of a sudden air, just a breath of air is worth a million dollars worth all the land in California, and all you feel is helplessness and apparent hopelessness."

David is talking about the emotion felt maybe by you recently when you're overworked and you just reach a breaking point. When you're unemployed and you wonder if you'll ever get a call back and you wonder how somebody of your skill and education level can possibly still be job hunting. When you're a mom of three little kids and you're exasperated with them and you're drowning in chores and you still have to work full time to make ends meet. When you're single and you've heard one too many times the well-meaning question, "Well, why aren't you married yet?" And you smile and laugh, but inside it cuts like a knife.

He's describing the emotion felt when you're a student and you're facing far too many classes and impossible expectations and you're just hoping for a gulp of air. The emotion felt when you're sick and the illness is grinding you down. If you feel like that, is there hope? Well, this is a psalm of hope because David says, "Yes, that's what I felt like, but he lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire. He set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God so many will see and fear the Lord and put their trust in him. Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, who does not look to the proud, to those who turn aside to false gods."

How do you get to that point? Well, I want you to refer back to the phrase that kicks off this psalm. This is key. David says, "I waited patiently." Now, what does it mean to wait patiently? When I was younger, I thought it meant to wait passively, to sit in the muck and the mire at the bottom of the pit and just go, "Well, you know, I hope somebody rescues me. I hope I find a job. I hope I find a maid. I hope I find something like that, but I guess I'm just going to sit here in the muck and the mire because there's nothing I can do." And just kind of sit there and get depressed.

Turns out that's not what the word "patiently" means. The word here translated "patiently" really implies kind of a purpose. It implies waiting intently and purposefully. You don't just lay there in the muck. You wait proactively. So how? How do I wait purposefully? How do I wait with intent? How do I wait proactively? If you feel like you are in that pit, there is hope because no matter what's going on in your life now, no matter what you're waiting on, you can choose by God's grace and with his help to do the things that David talks about doing here. Jot these down in your notes.

Number one, I can choose to see the wonder around me now. I can choose to see the wonder around me right now. I don't have to wait for that, right? I can choose to see the wonder. David says in verse 5, "Many, Lord my God, are the wonders you have done, the things you planned for us." I found this is really key to waiting well. In other words, you may not have what you want, but do you enjoy what you have? Do you see the wonders? Are you so focused? You miss them.

We have a cat named Oreo. And Oreo is just an excellent hunter. How many of you are cat owners? If you raise your hands, you did not understand the question. You don't own a cat, but a cat may live in your house. But here's, Oreo is our cat. She lives in our house and she's a hunter for us. She brings back offerings and places them on the mat in front of us to pay her rent or something. There's gophers, voles, moles. Lori gets upset when she brings a bird, you know. But when I watch Oreo hunting, especially if she's looking for something that has a burrow underground, it's an amazing example of concentration.

She just sits, hunches in front of the gopher hole or whatever, and just laser beam focus. Just doesn't twitch. Doesn't move a muscle. And she's just looking at that hole waiting to pounce. I think a nuclear bomb could go down a block away and Oreo just wouldn't move. She's so focused. Well, that's good in a cat and focus is good in humans sometimes, but are you so focused on the gopher that you're missing the beauty of the garden? Are you so focused on what you're waiting for that everything else good around you goes unnoticed?

You say, like what? Well, what about the wonders of a sunset? Here's a sunset that happened just right out here a little while ago. You know these things happen every day. Did you know that? These things happen 365 days a year and you can catch me while I'm commuting then. What about the sunrise? Or what about the wonder when you just stand before the waves of the ocean? Or when you look up at the snowy Sierras? Or do you see God's wonder in things like the intricate beauty of a flower or the detailed design of a leaf or the delicate beauty of a newborn baby? This is Adrian and Jamie's newborn Ella Joy. Adrian Facebook posted this and said, this is my new favorite picture of all time. There's his new little daughter. That's beautiful.

Or what about the beauty of art? Any piece of art. I just love to go to museums. I just love it. But when that art tells the story that I can put my faith in, the story of God's love for me, I mean, then especially I can be moved to tears. This is one of my favorite sketches done by Rembrandt of the face of Christ. It's a detail of a drawing that he did of Christ revealing himself at Emmaus to the two disciples who didn't at first recognize him. Then the resurrected Christ goes, "It's me!" And then he disappears. I love that, the playful Jesus. And when I see this picture, I just lift it up in wonder. Take in the wonder while you wait.

There's a woman at our church, Karen O'Connor, and she's one of our seniors here at Twin Lakes Church. And a few years ago, she wrote this book, and the whole book is about taking in the wonder while you're waiting for something in life. It's published by Regal. It's called Squeeze the Moment. And she just gave this to me as a gift. She didn't know or didn't ask for a plug or anything. She gave this to me months ago, and I've been reading it. It's really great. It's got these little, like, two-page chapters on just seeing wonder all around you and in the Lord and in the Lord. And in Scripture, squeeze the moment. And I love that somebody from TLC wrote this because this is a great example for the rest of us, how to squeeze the moment, squeeze the wonder out of the world all around you, no matter what's happening to you down in the pit.

Now you say, "I'm having a hard time seeing the wonder around me." Well, David says, "As good as all that is," look at the next verse, "none can compare with you, God. Were I to speak and tell of your deeds, they would be too many to declare." Now he's tripping out on God. I've told you, sometimes I just think to myself, "What is it like to be God?" Have you ever tried to think about that? I love to read articles about astronomy and the cosmos and marvel, thinking that God, according to the Bible, did all of that, created our universe, and perhaps if some physicists are right, a multiverse without expending any of His own energy because He's infinite and changeless.

So we said, "Let there be light," and bang, there it all expanded from nothingness. And here's what really trips me out. We can see God's power in nature, but the Bible says, "As powerful as God is, His love is even greater." The Bible doesn't say God is power. The Bible says God is love. And so all of His power, all of His creative power was done with the intent to love, to love you and me, to become a bridge between us on the cross, that that's how much an all-powerful God loves me, is just amazing, that He's not just a God of power, but a God of grace and love. Wow! So enjoy the wonders around you. Now, even while you wait, it's a huge part of waiting, a huge part of Psalm 40.

I like this poem. A woman named Susan Leichs wrote, "Forgive me, Father, you gave me the perfect gift of right now, and I threw it away, hoping for a better gift later." I need to remember and see the wonder now. And then I can choose to, number two, do God's will now. Do God's will. I don't have to wait for that either, right? I can do God's will right now while I'm waiting for something else to happen. David says to God, now, kind of put your thinking caps on for the next couple of verses, because these are huge, huge, huge.

And I would say many, if not most, Christians miss this whole concept, even though it's a theme of the whole Bible. He says, "Sacrifice and offering you did not desire." What? "But my ears you have opened, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require." Now, stop right there for a minute. Why does David keep saying things like this? We saw last week in Psalm 51 where he says, "You do not delight in sacrifice," or I would bring it. "You do not take pleasure in burnt offerings." Do you realize this is written 3,000 years ago in the Bronze Age? David is a man way ahead of his time, and David is a man in tune with the thread of the Bible that goes from Samuel to David to Isaiah to Malachi to Jesus to Paul and James.

This thread that says it's not legalistic procedure that God is interested in, not religious ritual. It's your heart. And David just relentlessly attacks in so many of his Psalms this, follow me here, this naive view of religion that just makes it into magic. Magical thinking. Like, just say this spell and you'll get this result. Just go to this temple and make that offering to this God and you will get that wish. Listen, all of us humans have this tendency to go magical with our thinking about religion, to tie results into ritual.

I saw a Charlie Brown comic once where Linus says to his sister, Lucy, "I've discovered something about prayer." And she says, "What?" And he says, "When I pray with my fingers pointed down, I get the opposite of what I pray for." Right? And that's the childish view that we sometimes have of religion. Like, if I just do this this way, then I will get a good life guaranteed. Theologians call this the prosperity gospel. You do this in this way and then you'll prosper, guaranteed. And especially in tough times like now, the prosperity gospel finds a lot of takers.

That's why you get these chain emails. I don't know if you get these, but I do. If you forward this to 20 friends in the next 24 hours, good luck will come back to you, right? Just do this. Something good will happen. That's why you get these things in the mail. If you bury the statue in your yard, then you'll sell your house. Just send us some seed money. And David keeps saying to this kind of magical thinking over and over, phrases like, "No, offering God did not desire. Offering you did not require." Now listen carefully because this is a trap for people who are waiting.

David is saying, "God is not holding out on you just because he's waiting for you to finally do the right religious thing." Because sometimes even if you think the right kind of thought, sometimes even if you do the right thing, you still have to wait. That is just life. Many times it doesn't have anything to do with anything you're doing. It's just the way life is. So what do I do in the meantime? Next verse. "Then I said, 'Here I am. I have come.'" He's voluntarily giving himself to God to do God's will. He says, "Here I am. I have come. It's written about me in the scroll." In other words, I know I have a destiny. I have a future. I have a purpose in your plan, God. I desire to do your will, my God. Your laws within my heart. He says, "I'm going to serve God now where I am."

Listen, not because it makes my weight shorter, but because it makes my weight better. Amazing example of this. Do you remember Martin and Gracia Burnham's story? Here's a picture of them. They were in their early 40s. They worked as support missionaries in the Philippines. Now this is important because this means that they were not trained to be like field missionaries. She was a nurse and he was a pilot. And they were trained just like a nurse and a pilot are over here only they worked in the Philippines. Suddenly one day they were kidnapped by members of a group affiliated with Al-Qaeda and they were dragged into the jungle and held captive for 376 days.

Constantly on the move, every day, tied up the trees at night. After more than a year, Gracia was set free. That's the good news. The bad news it was following a raid by the Philippine military during which Martin was shot and killed. She wrote a book about it in the presence of mine enemies. It's riveting. And she describes this experience of waiting every day for 376 days. Talk about a pit. How do you handle that? She says every single day Martin looked for something to be joyful about and looked for ways to serve his captors. First two points. Looked for things to be joyful about. Looked for ways to serve his captors.

Let me quote her. Martin accepted Jesus' greatest challenge. Love your enemy. She says Martin built a relationship with those guys. Martin said to me, "Scripture says that if you hope to be great in God's kingdom you must be the servant of all." It doesn't say be the servant of everybody but terrorists. And she writes, "Martin was always willing to serve those guys. If they asked him to carry something he had such a good attitude he would even volunteer sometimes if he didn't have things to carry before they asked him." Martin taught his guards English, shared food with them. It got to the point where they would apologize for chaining him to the tree each night and he would thank them.

She says Martin kept that attitude throughout the 376 days. In fact, just before the raid he said to me, "The Bible says to serve the Lord with gladness so let's go out all the way. Let's serve him all the way with gladness." They served God in the situation while they were waiting. Now, I don't know about you but to me that is amazing because I am so impatient. This is really an area of maturity that I'm working on but man it's like part of my DNA. I'll go to Safeway or any other grocery store around here, Whole Foods or whatever to shop. And are you like me? How many of you instantly, you don't even think about you look for the shortest line? Instantly, right? Right? You go up there, you don't look for the longest line. You look for the shortest.

I'll waste time going back and forth making sure I've got the shortest line. And it doesn't end there for me. Then I make it into a race. I look at the other line that was like my second choice and I go I'm at the same spot as the guy with the blue shirt and I watch to make sure. And if that guy gets through checking out before me I go I'm such a failure. I chose poorly. You know? So to think about waiting, I can learn a lot from these guys. You know? Learn how to serve God now. Learn how to see wonder now. And third, while I'm waiting, praise God now. Praise God now.

David says, "I proclaim your saving acts in the great assembly. I do not seal my lips, Lord, as you know. I do not hide your righteousness in my heart. I speak of your faithfulness, your saving help. I do not conceal your love and your faithfulness from the great assembly." Listen, one huge help to despair and discouragement is speaking words of praise about God. What He's done for you in your past, what He's done for others. In fact, look there at your notes for a second. Did you notice the first point is about changing what you are seeing? The second point is about changing what you are doing. And this third point is about changing what you are saying.

You talk to people about God's faithfulness to you. In other words, you don't do what comes naturally, which is to talk endlessly about what a raw deal you got. Right? Now, look at these. Again, you see here in the Psalms what we have seen every week so far in this study. Follow me. A shift in orientation, not necessarily in situation. A shift in frame of reference, not in circumstance. One great example of this. Do you remember the story of Bethany Hamilton? She's the well-known surfer who had her arm bitten off by a shark while she was surfing near her home in Hawaii on October 31, 2003 when she was only a teenager.

Now, she had already finished in second place at a big surf tournament. She was being groomed to compete at the pro level and this seemed to end all those dreams. So what do you do when your dreams come crashing down? This is a different kind of waiting because it means you are waiting for something that now it appears will never happen. Well, there is a new Hollywood movie coming about her story in a couple of weeks. It's called Soul Surfer with big name Hollywood actors and everything. And I really hope they get it right and don't water down her Christian faith because that's what got her through this.

But what I want to do for you right now is to show you a clip from a documentary about Bethany and her whole family. This is not the new movie that's coming out. This is an actual documentary. I'll show you just a couple of minutes from it. You'll see her mom and her dad and her brother and her youth pastor and you'll see Bethany having the very same attitude David talks about in this song. Watch this.

People ask you like, if God loves you, like, why would he allow this to happen? And the thing is, like, God knows what he and I can handle together. It's not me doing it in my own strength. It's him giving me the strength to live and move on. As soon as she got back in the water and she started practicing and moving from a longboard and gradually getting down the shore board, we could see that it wasn't over, that she still had the drive and the heart and the will to compete again.

We all handle tragedy differently. And she's just one of those where people who took the situation and she really ran with it. This is her gift and, you know, her ministry to the world and to help encourage people and show them there's, you know, a different outlet on tragedy and you can take tragedy and make the best out of it. I just learned to look at the good side of things and really it's just an arm. Like, there's so much more to life than what your body is like. I really feel like God is using Bethany to speak out loud to the world, to the youth, that they're loved.

We've seen the bigger picture coming out of this, how he's used her in so many different ways and I wouldn't change anything. Just being a role model to young girls is enough to lose my arm. Like, there's not very many good role models and I know that God knew that I would be able to handle it and I know that he loves me unconditionally and it's not even a question if God loves me. I know he loves me.

So I just stop there. I know he loves me. It's an awesome example, isn't it? Just amazing that as a teenager she already developed that kind of an attitude. But she is doing the same three things that we see David doing in Psalm 40. She is choosing to, in her pit, which could really depress a lot of people, see the wonder now, do God's will now and praise God now. Even though her circumstances aren't changing, her emotions are changing and the same for David.

Because if you're thinking you may have said, "Well, that's all good for David. He can talk all about this stuff now, but back when he was in the pit, certainly life was different." You know? What if his circumstances had never changed? Could he still say that then? If you read the Psalm carefully, you'll see that just like Bethany, when the Psalm concludes, David's still waiting. He gives some hints here, like verse 13, "Be pleased to save me, Lord. Come quickly, Lord, to help me." And then in verse 17, "As for me, I'm poor and needy. May the Lord think of me. You're my help and my deliverer. You are my God. Do not delay." He's still waiting.

Apparently he has not been delivered from his circumstances. He's been delivered from the pit of despair. His emotions have changed, but the commotion surrounding him hasn't changed. Isn't that good news? Isn't that hopeful? That God can get you out of the pits that you're in emotionally while you're waiting, long before you stop waiting. It doesn't have to be that your circumstances, it doesn't have to be that, "I finally got work lined up." It doesn't have to be that, "I finally found the cure." It doesn't have to be that, "At last I'm getting married. At last we got pregnant. At last we got kids. At last the kids are moving out." Whatever it is that you're waiting for.

No, it doesn't have to be that. It can be in the midst of that. You can be having unfulfilled dreams, unfulfilled hopes, wishes, needs, and yet still not live in despair. Such an important thing. Learning to wait well is a key to a joyful life because I'll always be waiting for something, right? There's never going to be a time when I'm not waiting for something.

Now here's what I want to do as we close. I want to take this out of the Bronze Age, 3,000 years ago, and really move it all the way into current Christian context. Because the Bible has a lot more to say about waiting than just this, and it has some very kind of Christian creed-specific things to say about waiting for the Christian. The question I want you to be thinking about and ask yourself is this, "What am I waiting for if you're a believer in Jesus Christ? That Jesus Christ came here, was the Son of God, died for your sins, was buried, rose again, is coming again?" What are you primarily waiting for?

This is a huge question in life because what you say you are waiting for changes everything about your attitude. I'll give you an example. I'm going to confess something to you right now. That's kind of embarrassing. In some ways I can't reveal, I can't believe I'm revealing this. Not necessarily a positive thing about me, but here it is. At the end of this month I'm turning 50. 50! Yes. Don't applaud. I know that that's just kind of like, you know, grace applause. It's not a good thing. March 31st, for those of you who are asking, I was born seven hours before April Fool's Day. Mom says I was early. I don't know what that means. But, um, 5-0.

So if that doesn't put you in the pit, nothing will, right? I mean everybody talks about there's all these jokes, there's black balloons. Plus, a few days ago I was feeling really overwhelmed. I don't know if you ever get to this point, but there were so many things on my to-do list that just the things I had to do were making me feel like I was in the bottom of that pit dog paddling for a breath of fresh air. I was not the fresh air. I was depressed and I was angry and short-fused. And my wife comes up to me while I'm working and she says, "You know what? This might be a good time to give you one of your birthday presents." And I go, "No! Then you'll ruin my birthday! I'm too busy!" Like this. I can't believe I get that way. And she's still married to me too. That's amazing.

She goes, "I really think I should give this to you." "No, I can't even think about it right now. I don't even have time to think!" "I'm typing on something." And she goes, "I really think I ought to give this to you." And she gives me this homemade card. And it says, "5-0 is a big milestone. I felt we should celebrate both of our achievements." She's also a 50. Let's see. What goes with 5-0? And you open it up. Hawaii 5-0. She's taken me to Hawaii for my 50th birthday! Totally surprised. She's been saving up for it. Watching airfare. She saw 149 airfare, you know? It's like an incredible deal. We have a wonderful, generous friend who's letting us stay in his place down there. And it's just an incredible, affordable, yet dream come true thing.

In the days since I found out about this, I've just been like gobsmacked. Just like, "Wow! I'm going to Hawaii!" And I'm looking at my to-do list like, "This is awesome, man! Just one more thing down until I go to Hawaii!" You know? It doesn't matter. I'm not stressed at all because I'm going to Hawaii. It's all good. People cutting me off in traffic. It's okay, man. I'm going to Hawaii. You know? I'm alright. I'm answering every call, including sales calls. "How's it going? I'm going to Hawaii. I just want to tell everybody!" Changes the whole thing.

Because I'm waiting for something on the other side of all the obligations, the things on the to-do lists, the things that perhaps I'm not anticipating. I'm going to Hawaii. Well, guess what? There's a spiritual truth there because as a Christian, how do you answer this question? You know what? I looked up the word "waiting" in the New Testament. Every single time in the New Testament, it refers to a Christian waiting for something that I could find. It refers to Christians waiting for one thing. What do you think that one thing is? Jesus Christ's return. And when the Bible talks about Jesus Christ's return, it doesn't just mean that instant. It means everything associated, big picture, with the coming day of the Lord.

It means you get a reunion with your loved ones who've died in Christ. It means you get a reward from Jesus as you hear, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant." It means you see the restoration of the planet, heaven and earth together, Eden, the way God always intended. It means you see the resurrection of your own body. We're going to Hawaii even better. That's better than Maui. That's better than Heaven, Liana. We're going to the real heaven. And when you realize that, I think Christians today have to recapture how that captured the creative imaginations of Christians in the first and second centuries.

I mean, the New Testament was written in a time of real big crisis. These were people who were at the bottom of a muddy, swirling, dark pit. It looked like their world was falling apart, those first persecuted Christians. But they were like, "On the other side of this, we're waiting for something great." Are you willing to let God recapture your imagination to the point where your instant answer to, "What am I waiting for is, 'Man, I'm waiting for something great. I'm waiting for Heaven.'" Let's pray and ask God to do that in our lives. Bow your heads with me.

Lord, thank you so much that we have got something great to anticipate. But first, God, I want to pray for everybody here who feels like they are in a pit with a mud hurricane at the bottom. Because I don't want to minimize those emotions. The Bible doesn't. Those emotions can grab us so hard, we feel like they will never let us go. And I've been there. So God, I just want to pray for everybody in that pit today. In fact, let me just put a parenthesis in this prayer. Keep your heads bowed and eyes closed. But if you identified with that metaphor of a dark pit swirling with mud, if you emotionally are there because you're waiting for something to dawn in your life, could you just slip up your hand while nobody else looks? Because I want to specifically pray for you. Just leave those hands up, lots of hands going up all over the place. Thanks.

God, I pray for all those who lifted their hands now. And some I see are even crying right now. God, we heard David's testimony today and Martin Burnham's story and Bethany Hamilton's story that it's possible to be delivered from the pit, even while we wait for circumstances to change. And so God, I just pray that you would deliver the people who raised their hands from the pit of despair. Please help us to keep in perspective that as Christians, we await the moment that we see Christ. The moment we hear, well done. The glorious moment that we're reunited with loved ones. The moment we see your artistry in all of its intended forms, heaven and earth remade.

God, help us to set our sights not on things visible, the mud that sometimes swirls around our ankles and shoulders and neck, but to hope for things not yet seen and to be lifted out of the emotional pits and eventually out of the circumstance pit as well. Help us to reorient our thinking as David did his. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.