This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to the fourth day of our fifth week working through 1 and
2 Samuel. Yesterday we began to look at David's heart of submission, the kind of
humility that he had before God. Yesterday we looked at the fact that submission
means you have the ability to put things in God's hands.

You have the ability to leave things to God's judgment. And then there's a third
ability that is part of submission, one that you and I, certainly all of us have
to deal with almost every day, if not every week, every month, every year of our
lives, and that is the ability to wait upon God's timing. One of the times when
I have to, when most of us have to most submit ourselves to God is when we wait
upon his timing.

David knew that he would be king. He'd already been anointed by Samuel, but it
was not yet God's right time to make him king. And in this in-between time, Saul
was attacking him, trying to kill him.

He had to feel like, "I've got to force the issue here. I've got to get my
timing going here. " But he knew.

He'd been told it's not God's timing yet. Have you ever known that God wanted
something, but it wasn't yet time? Of course you have.

Of course you have. And that will test your submission like nothing else. I
remember Shondell and I dated for five years before we became engaged.

We were just starting college together when we began dating. So we went through
college, then we became engaged after that. And I've got to tell you, it was a
test to wait through college, believing that God wanted us to get married after
that.

That was a test. Even a greater test for Shondell and I was waiting for
children. When we became married and we believed God wanted to bring children
into our lives and tried and tried and the doctors told us children probably
wouldn't come into our lives.

It was a real test of submission. Are we going to trust God through this? And
I've got to admit to you, there were many times when I wondered who to trust or
what in the world God was doing.

This tests your heart for God. A lot of God's greatest servants, in fact, failed
this test. Abraham failed.

He tried to find his own way to bring a son into his life before God brought
Isaac into his life. God had to tell him, "No, that's not the son I planned. "
Moses failed.

You might remember that he started by killing the Egyptian to protect his
people. And God had to say, "No, that's not my plan. " But David submitted.

One of the reasons he's called a man after God's own heart is even with his
failures that we're going to look at in a few weeks, he submitted to God. It is
so hard to wait. But you and I, we learned some valuable lessons from David on
how to wait upon the Lord.

Just some things to know in our minds and our hearts. First thing to know. In
order to be able to wait upon the Lord, you've got to know this.

God's will takes time. God's will takes time. Our will doesn't always take time.

God's will takes time. The fact that it takes time is somehow amazing to many of
us in our hurry-up world. God could do anything.

He could do it as fast as he wants to. So God's will has to always happen
immediately, right? No.

He waited 25 years to give Abraham a son. He waited 430 years to set the people
of Egypt free. And most shocking to me of all, he waited thousands upon
thousands of years of human history before he sent his son to die on a cross to
be resurrected.

Why does God's will take time? I don't know all the reasons, but David's
experience is a good indicator to us of God's reason in this. Of two of the
primary reasons for this.

The patience of God and our own need to grow. That's why God's will takes time.
One reason is related to God, his patience.

God was patient with Saul. He knew that Saul was not the right leader, but he
gave Saul time to commit sin after sin after sin and go down the wrong road
after the wrong road after the wrong road. God waits because he's patient.

That's why he waited to let the people in Egypt free. He was giving the people
in the promised land that he was going to send them to time, the Bible says, to
complete their sin. He let them sin upon sin upon sin.

That's why Jesus waits to come again. The Bible tells us that he is waiting for
others to come to salvation. God's patience is waiting.

I'd rather have him come right now and all of the evil in this world, but he
waits so that more people can come to him. We often have to wait because our
lives are tied up with the lives of others. And there's something they're having
to wait on.

God is being patient with them in some way. I'm thankful for God's patience.
Without it, none of us would know Jesus.

Without it, none of us would know God's grace. I'm thankful for it, but it also,
in all honesty, irritates me sometimes. And if you're honest, it probably does
you too.

I don't like God to be patient when I want the ministry to move on, when I want
the person to change, when I want my plan to happen. Believe it or not, you're
not the only one that God is interested in in this world. And because we're all
tied together, God is being patient with people all around you.

And that means you have to be patient too sometimes. Sometimes when you wait,
you're not just waiting on God's plan for your life, you're waiting on God's
plan for somebody else's life. And that's a sign of love.

One of the reasons we wait, one of the reasons God's will takes time, is the
patience of God. A second reason is our need to grow. During this time, when
David was waiting, David was growing.

Growth takes time. And if you read carefully in the New Testament, you also see
that growth takes trouble. God works through the difficulties of our life to
cause us to be patient in the midst of those difficulties.

And out of that patience comes growth and hope and all the good things that God
wants to work out of it. The problems aren't good, but the things that God works
out of it can be good. David was being given time to grow in his readiness to be
king.

Just think of the things that he learned about being a king during this time
when he was supposedly just waiting. He learned patience as he waited. He
learned understanding of people as he waited.

He even built alliances. He found out who he could really trust. When you're the
one who's kicked out of the capital city, the people who go with you, who might
be going to their death, those are the ones you can trust.

He learned a lot during this time. He grew during this time. That's why we wait.

That's how God uses those times of waiting. There's a second truth. First,
waiting is a part of God's will.

A second truth we learn about waiting from David during these years, and that is
waiting is more than just passive acceptance. Waiting is active choice. This is
where the Old Testament word for waiting is interesting.

It's a word that has more of the idea of trusting, of actively trusting in God.
We think of waiting sometimes as sitting back in an easy chair and just sort of
letting life go by. But in the Old Testament, the idea of waiting was more, I'm
standing on the edge of life, on the edge of the adventure, actively trusting in
God for what's going to go next.

We often see waiting as what we do when we have no other choice. What
circumstances force us to do, and so then we have to wait. But waiting upon the
Lord is so much more.

It's the choice to trust Him even when other opportunities present themselves.
No, this is what God has told me to do, so I'm going to wait on Him. One of the
big questions all of us have to ask in life is, "Am I waiting on circumstances
or am I waiting on the Lord?

" If you're waiting on just circumstances, then you might marry the first person
that comes along. You might take the first job that comes along. But when you're
waiting on the Lord, then you ask Him, "Lord, is this the right person?

Lord, is this the right job? " and you do the thing that He's asked you to do.
Waiting upon the Lord is a declaration that my trust in the Lord is greater than
my desire to change my circumstances, is greater than my desire to reach that
goal.

David's goal was to be king. He could have fast forwarded that goal by killing
Saul, but he wouldn't do it. He actively chose to wait upon the Lord.

That's submission. Now David's experience helps us to see that in order to make
that choice to trust God, active waiting, there are a couple of things you're
going to have to do. You're going to have to reject some opportunities, and
number two, you're going to have to refuse some advice.

Reject some opportunities. In the cave, by a fire later, David has these
opportunities to take Saul's life, but he rejects those opportunities because he
knew it wasn't God's timing. God will give you a sense of that as you talk to
him.

And you also have to refuse some advice. There are some people who love you very
much who will say, "Oh no, go after that," or "Don't go after that. " And out of
their love for you, they're trying to protect you or they're trying to get you
what they think you want as soon as they can get you what they think you want.

They love you, and so they're giving you that advice. But David got some bad
advice as he walked through this time. You'll get some bad advice too sometimes
from people that love you.

What's the Lord want you to do? How can I actively choose to wait on his plan
for my life rather than grasping for my plan for my life? Now as I talk about
this, I realize this idea of submission, it is an incredible challenge.

But the challenge is worth it. It will bring new life to your marriage as you
submit to one another. It brings new joy to your relationships with brothers and
sisters in Christ as you submit to one another.

It brings new strength to your relationship with the Lord. It brings a new kind
of adventure and vibrancy to the ministries that God has given in your life. So
how do you take up this challenge?

What decision do you need to make today? You might need to trust your life into
God's hands. You've been holding on to your life.

We talked about trusting things into God's hands yesterday. You might need to
trust your own life into his hands. That's where it begins.

Or you might need to recognize again that your life is in his hands. You might
need to stop judging and start living. Or you might need to call upon God's
strength as you wait for God's plan in your life.

Let's ask for God's strength to do that right now. Our Father, we come to you
and we ask for strength to do what we can't do on our own. But your spirit
within us can strengthen us to do this.

So Lord, help us to recognize today that our life is in your hands. And maybe
for the first time to say, Jesus, I put my life in your hands, asking for your
forgiveness, asking for the life that only you can give. God help me to stop
judging and start living.

Help me to leave judgment to you. And Lord, help me to call upon you as I wait.
Instead of letting the disappointments overwhelm me and make me focus on myself,
I pray that the disappointments would cause me to focus on you even more, God.

Who you are and the plan that you have for my life. Lord, I trust you. I don't
know all that's going on in life.

I don't always understand it. But I want to trust you. So help me to trust you,
to submit to you rather than taking life up myself today as I walk through this
day.

And I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Tomorrow we're going to learn from David
what to do when everything falls apart.