Stop Waiting, Start Expecting

0:00 Then in enduring for so long, we've forgotten what it feels like to actually expect something from God. We've experienced it for others and we've seen what God has done in the past, but we can't live on that past. We have to look expecting what God's gonna do in our future. Romans 8, 17.

Now, if we are children, I think I have the NIV, he probably has King James, but now if we are children, then we are heirs, heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ. If indeed we share in his suffering in order that we may also share in his glory. It's very important here that we see

while we go through our suffering, we may have to go through that suffering so that we may fully be impacted by his glory. We are heirs who have forgotten what was written, sitting in poverty in the spirit while the riches are already assigned to us. One thing I recognize, I'll just say the last five years,

I don't know exactly, but we have moved from a prosperity mindset to a poverty mindset. We have concentrated on our lack instead of concentrating on our abundance. We have focused on what the devil is trying to do and not what God is trying to do. I hate that word trying though, because if you say trying,

that means you're making an excuse to get out. God is not trying anything. We may think he's only trying, but God accomplishes every single thing that he sets out to accomplish. What gives him the way? We do. What passive endurance looks like. Drag each other through the routine without expecting to hear anything.

Are we just going through our prayer life just because it's something that we know that we're supposed to do? Are we really expecting God to move? Now, I know not all of you are like that, but I think we just need to focus on, are we in a prayer because we really truly expect God to do something.

Praying the same prayers for three or five years with no real sense of a breakthrough coming. Coming to church because it's the right thing to do, but keeping your heart at arm's length. We all have things that we've done in our lives that every morning when we get up, we expect the sun to rise, right?

3:10 And why is that? Because we've experienced it for, some may have experienced it for 10 years. I'm trying to think, Hailey's not in here. I'm trying to go the youngest to the oldest. To 96. How old are you, Billy? 96. But we've watched every time we've gone to bed, the sun would rise in the morning

and the sun sets in the evening. We learn that through our lifetime because it has always happened. Well, if you live in the last one. The longer you go without expectation, the harder it is to expect. The longer you go, that's why, you know, if we do the habit over and over again,

it becomes natural for us. Which is like, and this is where it gets, if you start, oh, I'm not going to go to church today, I'm going to go fishing. I'm not going to go to church today because I'm going to go to the ball game. Those are all choices we make. Now, you know, we all need to go on vacation.

I'm not saying that missing church is a terrible thing, but when you, you know, you can find reasons not to come to church and every time you do that, it gets easier and easier and easier to not come to church the next time, the next week. You build tiny arguments against the whole.

Last time I got excited, it didn't pan out. Are we hurting from disappointments? You can't protect yourself from let down without also protecting yourself from the miracle. Sometimes, you know, we're all natural beings filled with the Holy Ghost, but it's easy for us sometimes to, you know, we don't like being hurt. When we fall into protection, you know,

we learn about people that, they're afraid to go find the right one, the husband or the wife, because they've been too many hurts in the past and they don't want to go through that pain again. But if you put up this wall around you to protect yourself from any of that stuff, you're also putting up that same very same wall

that's protect, that's blocking out that miracle that God's waiting to do in your life. And if all of us are doing that, we put up a wall around this whole building saying, you know, we've been through a painful time. We've been through a time where the walls may have tumbled or the spirit may have fallen away.

6:04 But if we don't get our mindset correctly and get our waiting into an expectation mold, God can't move because we're too busy blocking everything out. We all need to refocus on the things that God wants to do. Again, I keep going back to this because when I read it last week, it really hit me.

The latter glory is gonna be greater than the former glory. We don't know what that's gonna be yet, but we're preparing our house to accept it. We're moving into excellence again. What does this mean when we talk about the kingdom? Passive believers become ineffective witnesses. Think about it, you know, one of our main responsibility on earth

is to worship God, but it's his commandment for us to witness to those that we come in contact with. If we're stuck in this way, in this mindset of just waiting and wondering if God's ever gonna do what he said he was gonna do, people will feel that when you talk to them.

What we need to do is get into the environment, get in our minds, get in our hearts that we're expecting God's gonna do something. We are eagerly expecting God to move in our sanctuary. We are eagerly expecting for God to do a miracle in my life. We are eagerly expecting God to do a miracle

in the lives of people who fill these chairs. We need to get it in our mindsets that when we are witnessing, they know we're not just spilling our words. They know that we have been changed by the Holy Ghost, we've been changed by his spirit. We want them to feel that coming from us,

not the word of doubt. If we go through every day, I prayed, I prayed, I prayed, and I doubt, but I doubt God's gonna do it. Ouch, right? Do you think people can sense that? When we go to people and they ask what church you go to, I go to Alport Worship Center

and we've been waiting for 10 years for God to do something. Doesn't it sound so silly? Your neighbors, your coworkers, the kids who are watching, how you carry the name of Christ. The world isn't drawn to endurance, they're drawn to expectation. What I just explained, we've endured through the season and when we talk to our friends and our family

8:52 and our coworkers or our fellow students where we come in contact with, they have to see the expectation in us, not that we've endured the waiting and the pain. Our words need to come from our heart until we get that embedded into our heart, it is gonna be a little bit difficult to witness to others.

Have you settled for surviving when we should be thriving? Have you settled for surviving while we should be living in an expectation? Romans 8, 19, for the creation waits an eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. Creation awaits an eager expectation. I heard those words the other night, Vanita, eager expectation.

We're not just sitting on our hands. There's a Greek word that talks about eager expectation and I don't know if I can pronounce it, but apokaradokia, which means apo is away from, kara is head and dokia is to watch. We need to get into position that while we're doing our waiting, this Greek word means neck cranking,

face pressed against the window, straining to see expectation, not a passive folded hand's weight. I can sit here and sit on my hand, how many have, you've all heard that, I can sit here on my hands and do nothing. We've all heard that expression, right? But think about it, especially fathers, when you go to work and you come home

and you find children sitting, for me, it's dawns, dogs are waiting for me when I come home, but they're sitting and expecting. When you come home from work, your children are there watching the door expecting you. The dogs know that about five o'clock, they expect to see me, so they start watching for me at 4.30 or 4.45.

That's the kind of expectation we should have. I don't know when it's gonna happen, but I'm expecting it and I know that it will happen. Or it's like a farmer leaning over a fence, they've been in a terrible drought and he can see the storm, he can't quite see the storm yet, but he knows it's coming over that horizon.

He's waiting for that storm to come. All of creation, the mountains, the rivers, waiting for you to step into your identity in Christ. Hasn't he commanded us, hasn't he instructed us that all we need to do is speak to the mountain and it will tumble? Too many of us are making a mountain out of a molehill.

12:13 Too many of us are giving the enemy too much authority. When we all get to heaven, we're gonna look and say, I was afraid of that. Romans 8, 22 through 25. We know that the whole creation has been growing as in the pains of childbirth, right up to the present time. We've all been struggling.

I don't know, I don't understand the pain of childbirth. I never will, thank God for that. We ourselves who have the first fruits of the spirit, we grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship. But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

We need to wait for it expectingly. We need to wait for it eagerly expectingly. But what does hope actually mean? The biblical hope actually means, I hope it works out. That's wishful thinking. That's not what it says. There's a Greek word called Elpis, which means confidence. Living expectation based on the character and promises of God.

You're not waiting in your own strength. You're waiting in the spirit of God. You're waiting in His strength. Once you understand that you're waiting is with Him and that He will help us endure so that our enduring turns into expectation that He may move and we become eager for what's coming for us in the future.

I hope I'm speaking to somebody today because I know that we've been in this time of enduring and waiting, but God's ready for us to move or change our mindsets. We have to change our mind from living, from being in the word of black into the word of abundance. I don't see empty chairs here.

I see full chairs. I don't see people here that lack the spirit of God. I see people here filled with the spirit of God. I don't see our finances. I don't see our bank account struggling to pay bills each week. I see us having an abundance. So here's the way I think about church finances.

Our church finances should always be not, we should never really have lots of money in the bank account, okay? And the reason I say that is because if it's sitting in the bank, it's like the five talents and three talents or two talents and one talent. If you don't put that money to work

15:28 to reach the community, to reach the loss, we're failing. I don't care if we bring in 200,000 or a million dollars a year, if we're sitting on $100,000, now, yeah, there's time where you're building something or but if we're just putting that money in the bank, just so we can say we're living in a prosperous church,

our finances are doing wonderful, we're failing. It's not about what we have sitting in the bank. That money isn't being used for anything. It's not doing any good at all. It's about what we are spending that money on. We need to learn to be good stewards so that God can say, oh, we need to help those lost.

We need to help those who are hungry. We need to help the poor, but most importantly, we need to help those who don't know Jesus. And that we are never gonna do that if we just put the money in the bank. Isaiah 40, 31. But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.

They will soar on the wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and they will not faint. If you start waiting in expectancy, if you start waiting eagerly, you will bound up wings like eagles. You will soar over those mountains that are being placed before you to stop you.

You will grow, you will be strong to no longer be weary. He will give you strength. If we turn our waiting and stop sitting on our hands, if we change it to expecting and eagerly expecting for God to move, I can promise you we're gonna go through a massive, under a greater anointing, a greater transformation,

a greater glory for God. We live in Michigan and we have the great lakes. We have many lakes here and we have many lighthouses. There's a lot of people that like to travel around and see the lighthouses. Now many years ago, I think they still have some of them. I think that where they would cut the wick

and they would light a big gas or oil burner in the lighthouse, I know that's how they used to do it. And think about the lighthouse keepers back then, they would, every day they'd go up and trim that wick and they'd light that fire and they don't even see a ship anywhere to be seen.

18:08 They may never know what that light did for the ships that were coming in because the ships would, the captain would see that light and it would give them in the middle, in the fog or in the darkness, it will give them a point that they could see so they could navigate into that channel.

But that lighthouse keeper may never meet any of them. But he was always obedient and he would light that light. He would light that light so that ship may find a safe passage. I use that light today. I use that light that God is burning inside of you that people are looking and seeing in the darkness

because our world is a dark world. But I use that light that they're seeing that they may find that passage to something that they don't know yet. Another thing I found interesting on the ark, we could not, we searched and searched and searched, we could not find the steering wheel. We could not find the steering wheel.

So think about it, here we have all of creation is in the hands of God and Noah and the ark at this moment in time. They have no way of steering around mountains cause there are no other vessels out, but they had no way of steering. They had no idea where they had to trust God

that God would take them to the place that God wanted them to be. Are we ready to cut off our steering wheel? Are we ready to let God navigate us where we wanna go? Romans 8 11, and if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead

will also give life to your mortal body because of his spirit who lives in you. The spirit of God is everything. The spirit of God leads us. We don't need a steering wheel cause God's already steering us. Sometimes he has to kick us in the butt. I'd rather be moving in the wrong direction

and put my trust in God that he's gonna steer my path to where it needs to go. If I just stand here and do nothing, if I stand here waiting, you know, I'm not being very effective by God, for God. But if I start moving, I have to have enough trust, enough faith in him that he's gonna correct my path

21:02 and where I need to go. The resurrection power is not a historical event. It is a present tense in you, in your reality. A Pentecostal believer who is passively enduring is like something sitting in a parked car with a full tank of gas wondering when the ride will start. There used to be ignitions in cars.

Now you got buttons and you got, you know, but you're not gonna go, that car can be full of what's needed to power it, but if you don't turn the key, you're not going anywhere. If we're filled with the Holy Spirit and we're not doing anything with it, what are we doing? What goodly, godly thing are we doing?

What are we doing for God? Are we doing anything at all? If we're filled with the Spirit and just sitting here, if you get filled with the Spirit, we could find ourselves waiting for what he's gonna do next for me. When we should be thinking about what is he gonna do next for them,

for those who don't know, what are we gonna do next for God? God is not silent. The Holy Spirit is active, present and moving right now. While you're sitting in your chairs, God's moving. The Holy Spirit is moving. He may be moving on those who we prayed for, our lost loved ones, our friends and our family,

those who don't, our atheists or the Hindus or the Muslims, God can change all of their lives and he wants to and he will to those who will accept him. The same power that raised Christ from the dead lives in you. Faith and hope are inseparable. Hebrews 11 one, we know this. Now, faith is confidence in what we hope for

and assurance about what we do not see. Of course, we know the King James better. Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. It doesn't take faith to, if I want God, if I pray that God, if I'm in the desert and I need water, I need water and I have it right in my hand.

It doesn't take faith to have that because God has already provided. Faith is when you can't see what he is providing for you creating your faith like a waiting room. Shift your posture from passive endurance to forward leaning spiritually fueled expectation. I hate waiting. I absolutely hate waiting. And this is probably more from a physical,

24:08 but if you go to a birthday party and everybody's waiting to get their hot dogs, I'm very comfortable sitting until the line goes away. Even at the risk of running out of food. It wouldn't hurt me to miss a meal anyway. So the shift isn't in your circumstances, it's in the direction that you're facing.

If I'm standing here facing the wall and God's telling me to go left or go right, I'm not fulfilling the promise of God. Stop killing time. Start leaning forward with eagerly expecting eyes, stretching your neck forward and let your heart be alive. A creation is groaning and leaning and straining, waiting for you to step into the fullness

of who you are in Christ. That's not pressure, that's invitation. God's waiting for us. God's waiting for you. God's waiting for me. God's waiting for our house to do more than we've ever done before. Again, it's not us, it's that God's gonna do it in us. Don't leave this place the same way that you came in.

This should be one of our weekly goals. We come in here, we fellowship with one another, we love one another. We listen to some worship songs. We listen to, it could be a good message or bad message. But if that's all we're doing, we're not reaching the loss for Christ and we're not doing,

we're sitting here just waiting. We're waiting for God to do something. And the waiting's not a terrible thing, it's how we focus on that waiting that matters. Are we waiting with expectation or are we waiting with doubt? Stand where you are, come to the front if you need prayer. We hear those words, but how many react?

How many sit? How many aren't interested in what, they feel that they've already arrived when none of us have done that yet. So today I'm challenging you to leave here different than how you came in. I hope that the message today that God gave me was that we are shifting the atmosphere, we're changing how we go through this waiting time.

It shouldn't be enduring in pain, it should be with great expectation. And you know, for me, I'm waiting until I retire on July 31st, but I have great expectation and I'm eagerly waiting for that. We should all have that same eagerness when we're waiting for God to do something in our midst. Lives are depending on it, souls are depending on it.

27:46 When you start to think about all the people that are going to hell that we had an opportunity to share with, that hurts, you know. Not that we can change, see, we can only present the gospel, God actually does the change. But I don't wanna get to heaven and find out that even those who I thought were gonna get there

didn't make it. What should I have done differently? What did God tell me to do that I didn't do? Let's close in prayer.