This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome back for day two of our look through 2nd Peter chapter 3. Yesterday we
looked at the answer to scoffers, those people who make fun of the fact that God
has a plan that goes all the way into eternity. God is not slow, He is patient.

That's one of the main answers that you give. To look forward and not backward
in your life as a follower of Christ, you need a deep understanding of the
patience of God. And Peter talks about it in verses 8 and 9, he says this, "But
you must not forget this one thing, dear friends.

A day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day.
The Lord isn't really slow about His promise, as some people think. No, He is
being patient for your sake.

He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but He wants everyone to repent. Notice
that last phrase, "God wants everyone to repent. " That is the clear desire of
God.

God wants you to repent. Here He's talking about repent of your sins, of the sin
of trying to manage your own life, the sin of trying to make yourself good
enough to be into heaven. And to repent of that sin means to turn around, to
turn 180 degrees around and begin instead to say, "God, only through your grace,
only through your love, am I going to have a relationship with you on this earth
and all the way into eternity.

" God wants you to repent and He wants every single person that you meet your
entire life to repent. He wants everyone to make that turnaround. Why is God
patient?

Why are we waiting for Jesus to come again? Why is it that you didn't get saved
and then the next minute Jesus returned and you didn't have to suffer the things
that you've suffered since you became a follower of Jesus? Well, we all know the
truth intuitively and Peter talks about it very clearly here.

He says, "The longer God waits, the more people repent. " And that means more
people will be in heaven. This truth, that God is waiting for people to repent,
means that during our life on this earth as a follower of Christ, much of your
life is going to be spent waiting.

If you haven't learned how to wait, then you haven't learned how to live. And if
you feel that you're not living while you're waiting, then you're going to spend
too much of your life feeling like you're waiting to live and you're not. Even
while you're waiting, God wants to be at work in your life.

So how do you grow strong through this season of waiting that we're in while
we're waiting for Jesus to come again? How does the patience of God make its way
into your life? Well, I want to talk about three things with you today and
tomorrow.

Things that you and I need to stay strong through a season of waiting. First
truth is this. You wait for the Lord.

So the Bible says to do again and again. You wait for the Lord. Notice, Peter
talks about it here.

It's the Lord's promise that we're waiting for. We're not just waiting for some
circumstance to change. We're not just waiting for the world, the geography of
the world, the geology of the world to somehow change so that the world is a
different place.

No, we're waiting for the Lord. It's not something that you're waiting for. It's
someone that you're waiting for.

It's the Lord. So you stop waiting for a certain day or a particular event and
you begin waiting in a personal way for God's promise. You wait for the Lord.

A couple of verses from the Old Testament about this, Isaiah 49, 23, "Those who
wait for me will never be ashamed. " And Isaiah 64, 4 says, "For since the world
began, no one has seen or heard of such a God as ours who works for those who
wait for him. " So here's your thought question for the day.

When you're waiting, what are you waiting for? Are you waiting for the answer or
are you waiting for the Lord? It's very easy to see waiting and asking and
calling upon God as this heavenly like wheel of fortune game where you spin the
wheel and it lands on something and that's what you get.

You're waiting for it to spin and God to give me exactly what I wanted and God
is some cosmic Pat Sajak. That's a scary thought, but that's how you feel. You
spin the wheel and you're hoping for a husband or wife or house or children or
career advancement.

You're just hoping that this time is the time God's going to let it land on that
thing. You're hoping to get married and so you spin the wheel and you say, "God,
let it land on get married this time," and then lose turn. One more time you
feel like, "I lost out on that circumstance again.

" That's what happens when you wait for the answer. But the Bible says don't
wait for the answer. Wait for the Lord.

Waiting should be a powerfully personal experience of trust. That's what it
means to wait for Jesus to return again. That's what it means to wait on this
world and go through the suffering that we have to so that more people can be
saved.

You have to ask yourself as you wait, you have to ask yourself, "Is God a way
for me to get what I want or is my main concern living out what he wants? " As
we wait for Jesus to come again in this world, what God is doing is purifying my
heart, your heart so that more and more our main concern is living out what he
wants. One of the main questions we have to sort out through this time of
waiting is, is this God's will or is it my will?

What I'm saying is this, make your waiting more God-oriented and less
goal-oriented. Waiting is not just about how can I get what I want, but how can
I understand what he wants? How can I live what he wants?

So you don't just wait for the answer to come. You wait for the Lord to act.
That's what waiting for the second coming is all about.

You're waiting for the timing of Jesus. You're not just waiting for good fortune
or for your ship to come in. You're waiting for God to keep his promise.

And when you begin to wait in that kind of a way, you begin to build a different
kind of faith, even in the waiting. The truth of human nature is, for all of us,
we want what we want when we want it. We want it now.

That started when we were children, when we were preschoolers, and it's still
true in our lives as adults if we just rely on ourselves. But the truth is, God
doesn't want to just give you what you want. He wants to give you more than you
could ever dream of.

And the only way that that's going to happen is through you waiting on him for
the character that you could never dream of, for the circumstances that you
could never dream of, for the promise coming true in your life that you could
have never dreamed of. Let me be clear here. Does waiting in this way mean that
you just sit back and you watch life go by?

No way. No way. Some people who say they're looking up to God and waiting,
they're just hiding their spiritual heads in the sand.

They're not waiting at all on God. They're just fearfully hiding out from the
world. So don't excuse your fear or your laziness by calling it trust in God.

You learn to wait in a different language. You wait in Hebrew instead of
English. The Hebrew word "wait" had this idea of active trust in God.

While I'm waiting, I'm doing whatever God asks me to do. So if you're in your
house and somebody says, "Well, you know, somebody was coming over to pick you
up, but it's going to be an hour until they come and pick you up," waiting in
English is, "Well, it's an hour. I'm going to just sit in this chair and wait.

" Waiting in Hebrew is, "Well, I can clean up the house, I guess, during this
hour. There's still something for me to do in the house during that time that
I'm waiting. " We are waiting on Jesus to come again.

But we're going to talk later this week. There's plenty for us to do as we wait.
God has prayers for you to pray.

God has people for you to love. God has trust for you to give. So as we pray
today, let's ask together that God would change our hearts, change our minds,
help us to wait on him.

Our Father, as we pray, we ask that you teach us what it means to wait on the
Lord, to wait on you. You know how easily we wait on the answer. You know how
easily we want what we want when we want it.

But God, help us to understand somehow to the depth of our soul to understand
like we never have before how deeply we can trust you to keep your promise and
how wonderfully you want to work in our lives through those promises. Help us to
see that now and in seeing that, to wait on you, to trust in you. We ask this in
Jesus' name, amen.

Join us tomorrow. We're going to talk about two other keys to living with
patience.