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Thank you so much. Could you uh also give a little appreciation for our lead pastors, Pastor Clayton, Pastor Courtney? We are so excited to be part of the leadership team here, and Penny and I are uh enjoying being back in Texas, where God lives. So we are excited about that. Penny and I have been married for 35 years, recently celebrated our anniversary. Uh, if you're doing the math, uh I was 12, she was 10. It was an arranged marriage, so you can you can do the math. We have two grown children. Uh, I believe we would picture this is Megan, our daughter on the left, her husband on the right. We don't remember his name. No, it's Dustin. We love Dustin. And then our son Jacob, who lives in uh Scottsdale, Arizona, uh, is a joy in our lives. Megan and Dustin live in Little Rock, Arkansas, and blessed us two years ago with our first granddaughter. Uh, that is wonderful until you have a second one, and it's doubly wonderful. So that's Kensington Grace and Waverly Reese, our two grandbabies, and we miss them very much. And there it is uh this 4th of July. So uh we love them, but we've been praying and praying, and let me tell you something. As much as we love our family, and we do, there's nothing better than being in the center of God's will, wherever that is. And it happens to be right here in Magnolia. So excited to get started. Today, I would like to talk to you about a topic that every one of us can relate to. It's the topic of waiting. How many of you love to wait? Just raise your hands. You just, boy, I tell you, the longer that stoplight is on 1488, the happier you get. No one? No, why? Because we hate to wait. I've never met anyone in my life that said, I just love waiting. It's my favorite thing to do. We hate to wait. I mean, have you ever been in a doctor's office for I don't know, half your life? And finally the nurse kind of calls your name, and did you ever say, oh no, no, wait, wait, wait, take someone else, please. I'm just getting into this 1997 Newsweek article. Did you ever have that happen? No. It never happens. And that's there's a reason that they make you wait in a waiting room and they call you the patient. There is a reason for that. But it's waiting is not part of the human DNA, but it is part of God's DNA. Forty-three times in the Old Testament alone, the Bible instructs us to wait on the Lord. Let me tell you something. There is a principle that runs throughout scriptural. It's this principle of spiritual waiting. And I know it's a challenge that each of us faced, and I'll tell you right now, it's a challenge that I have faced so many times in life. It's something that God does in us whenever we are willing to just trust Him and pray. And, you know, it wasn't long ago, my wife and I were dealing with a couple and they're fairly young. They've only been married a few years, but uh the wife was telling us, you know, she's just so tired of this marriage. She's been praying and praying and praying for something to change in her life. She's in a waiting season. And then I was dealing with a guy just a couple weeks ago. He's been working for this company for a number of years, and he was up for another promotion. He thought, this is it. This is the job that I've been working for. I've been working overtime and investing, and now's my time. We could use the money. It's gonna be such a great promotion. And then somebody, somebody else got the promotion. He's still, he's still waiting. Dealt with a couple recently, and they have a child that's uh moved out of the house. They've been praying for them for years, but they're a prodigal child, and they're believing that one day God will bring them back to the faith of their childhood. But today, today they're waiting. They're waiting for a miracle. It wasn't long ago I was talking with a young lady who's been praying that God would send her perfect mate into her life, her husband. And then she said, I have 36 points of criteria for my future husband. She says, That was a couple years ago, but now I'm getting older and I'm down to two. He needs to be single and have a job. That's it. He qualifies. Whatever you're waiting on God for, scripture reminds us there's something unique about what's called spiritual waiting. Waiting on the Lord. And let me assure you today, when God is silent, he's not absent. And when you're waiting, God's working. Remember that. When you're waiting on the Lord, God is still working. Now, this, as I said, has become kind of a life message for me and Penny and I in our marriage. And uh, I don't normally do this when I when I speak, but I'm gonna share a personal story and some detail. And uh just because we don't know each other very well, and I think it would help for us to have some uh commonality among us. And so a number of years ago, I was asked to be the senior pastor at a church in Colleyville, Texas, up in the Metroplex. And uh we're excited about it, moving to Texas. You know, we knew that this was a great place to live, this is a great state. The church that was a difficult church. I mean, it I knew that they had fired the previous pastor and that they had gone through two church splits in their history. So it was a troubled church. How many of you have ever been in a troubled church? Let me just stop right here because I know some of you have been dealing with some church wounds in the past. I and I get it. I I've been there. But you know, our church in Magnolia, this place, this is a place where God wants to do some healing in your life. This is a healthy church. This is a place where God's spirit resides. And I don't know what you've been through, but if you'll just take one more chance, just step out one more time and say, God, we're gonna trust you. We're gonna go back to church. You're here for a reason, you're not here by accident. That was a church that was troubled. And I mean, I I didn't know that board members were having fist fights in the parking lot after board meetings. That part they left out. But we had said yes. And so, uh, you know, I spent the next couple years with passion and vision, but but they were just hopelessly deadlocked, and there was so much fighting going on, and the arguments, and it was just toxic. And finally, after a couple years, the Lord released me from that leadership position. The only problem was I didn't have another church to senior pastor at the time, but I've been in that interim. But God is gonna show up. And so I just told my wife, I said, the Lord's gonna provide, and so we put our house on the market and and began praying and searching, and um, some opportunities came up, but I wasn't gonna take my family back through the disaster we were just living in, the nightmare. We finally got to the place where I said, I, you know, honey, I'm frustrated. I need a word from God. I'm desperate to hear from God. Ever been desperate for the Lord to speak? I said, I just gotta I just gotta get away. And so there's this little cabin that was available in Maypearl, Texas, outside of Waxahatch. And it was three days I had. So I went away to hear from God. And the first day you get there and it's quiet, and there's no TV or anything, and I was worshiping and praying and just listening for the Lord and reading the word, and then went to bed. And the second day I got up and took a long walk around that little pond there by the cabin, and then came back and I wrote this long 12-page letter to God, front and back. It wasn't a love letter. And I just started to pour out my heart, God, why am I in this situation? I'm only here because you brought us to text. You put us in that church, God. You led us here. And now look what's happened. I need a word from you, God. I'm desperate. But heaven was silent. And then the second night, and I knew the next day I'd have to get up and clean the cabin and go back home. And the first thing my wife was going to ask me was, What did God say to you? And I heard nothing until 3 a.m. on the third morning. I was sitting in this little rocking chair in that small bedroom, and the moon was shining in from outside, and I'm crying uncontrollably before the Lord. And I'm crying out, saying, God, why are you so silent when I'm so desperate? And in that moment, God, in a supernatural way, in an inaudible way, spoke into my spirit, and he gave me one word. I would have preferred a chapter, you know, a long sentence would have been fine. It was just one word and one verse. Anyone want to guess what that word was? Wait. And the passage he gave me was Isaiah chapter 40. We're gonna look at that in just a moment. And that's all I had. Next morning, cleaned up the cabin, drove back. Sure enough, there's my wife standing at the door. She said, Did you hear from God? And I said, Honey, have a seat. I said, Yeah. She said, Well, what did God say? I said, Well, bear with me. Uh he said, now this will be brief. He said, wait. She said, wait. She said, wait for what? I said, I don't know yet. She said, well, wait how long? I said, I'm not sure. But isn't that exciting, honey? We get to wait a little longer. A couple months later, the house finally sold, and we had no place to go. And so we had family back up in the Chicago area where we're from, and so we went to live with them. But every day, every day I would be praying. And I would get prostrate before the Lord. I would bend over and kneel and cry. And every day God would say to me, wait. And then he would say, The answer is through Gateway Church, which is the church we were attending in the Dallas area in this interim month, you know, of our lives. And I thought, well, the answer is through Gateway. And the only thing I could think was as a senior pastor is they must know of a church. They must be connected to a church that I can be the senior pastor at, and that's the relationship. That's how we'll get to the new season of life. The only problem was I'm living in Chicago and they're back in the Metroplex. And so I told my wife, I said, I've got to go back to Texas. I said, all of our stuff is there, and God's answer is there. And to her credit, she said, okay. I said, give me two weeks. I'll find a job, bring the kids down, and I said, we're gonna get, you know, we'll get a place to live. And God's gonna be faithful to his word, because he said, wait, and he's telling me the answer is through gateway. So I came back down to Texas. I started searching for a job. I started in corporate America and worked my way up to Target and Lowe's, and you name it. And I had to answer questions about drugs I've never taken and things I've never stolen, you know, more than I ever had in my life. But after two weeks, no job. I remember calling my wife on a Saturday morning and said, honey, I can't leave this place. I know what God has said. Give me two more weeks. I miss my family. I need two more weeks. She said, All right. Two weeks later, I still didn't have a job. The hardest call of my life, perhaps. I called her and I said, Honey, I'm gonna ask you, please trust me in this. Take the kids out of school, come down here, let's get an apartment, let's trust God. I know what he has said. He said, wait, and he answers through gateway. And she said, Okay. She made her way down. A couple weeks later, she was able to get employment. And two weeks after that, I found seasonal full-time at Best Buy selling cameras and computers to people just like you all over the place. It wasn't what I was praying for, but it was a provision of God in a season of waiting. And that's what God does to us. He provides for us when we're waiting. Isaiah chapter 40 is the passage God provided for me that night, early in the morning. And this is what it says. I'm gonna start in verse 29. Verse 31 was the passage he gave me. But it says there for context, he gives power to the weak, he God, and to those who have no might, he increases strength. Even the youth shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. Here it was. But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up on wings as eagles, they shall run and not grow weary, they shall walk and don't faint. And I sense the Lord saying, John, don't give up. Don't give up in this season. I'm doing something. Because when you're waiting, God is working. Now that passage is an interesting word because the word wait, there's four in Hebrew, this is the most common, and this particular form of waiting, which most often in your Bibles is translated patience or long suffering. Aren't you glad you came to church today? But this one is about an anticipation and expectation that God's gonna deliver on his promise. It is not a passive sitting back saying, Oh, I'm just waiting for this to happen in my life. No, no, no. It's in the waiting season of life. God wants to know are you gonna continue to press in and press forward and be used by me? Are you gonna continue to prosper and grow and learn the lessons of life I'm trying to teach you? Because it's an active kind of waiting. Interestingly, our Bible says, and they shall renew their strength. The only problem is the word there is not in the original. The Bible says, they that wait upon the Lord shall renew strength. Whose strength? Our strength? Like I tell you this, and you know it as well. When you have God renew your strength, your human strength, one thing is for sure, at some point in time, you're gonna need him to do it again. And again, that's not what that passage means. They that wait upon the Lord shall be renewed because what God wants to do, the scripture literally means the wrapping together of strands into a strong cord. And it literally means that what God wants to do, if you're willing to wait on him in the waiting seasons of spiritual waiting, is he wants to wrap his spirit, his strength around your weaknesses. And our weaknesses now become his strength. Isn't that good news today if you're in a waiting season? Don't rely on what God can do to just fill you up one more time. As wonderful that it is, God wants to do more in the spiritual waiting seasons. He wants to replace your failings with his eternal strength. And that's a far better way to live. Would you agree with me? So, six of you said yes. I'm gonna go on with that. That's encouraging. My question for you is this today. If you're going through a waiting season, and many of you probably are, and if you're not going through a waiting season today, just wait. You will. But my question is you're going through a waiting season as Scripture defines, whose strength are you depending on? Your strength? The strength of the people around you, the federal government, or God's strength that has no limits. It's up to you. It's your choice. Let me pick up the story again because the house finally sold. And as we were going through all of that, I moved back. I got the job at Best Buy. I was making $10 an hour, which was uh six digits, six digits less than what I was making before. But there was a provision in the Lord. And every day I would iron those khaki pants and I'd put on that blue Best Buy shirt. And every day I would drive from our apartment, and on the way to Best Buy, I would drive by 2121 South Lake Boulevard, which was the church home of Gateway Church. Every day. Every day, every day I would iron my khaki pants and put on that shirt. And every day as I drove by 2121 South Lake Boulevard, I would slow down and I would pray and I would remind God, God, you said wait, and you said the answers through Gateway. Every day, every day when I drove by for 18 months, the answer didn't come. And then one day, I was invited to join the staff at Gateway Church. Now I had never prayed for that one time. I was a senior pastor. I wasn't a staff pastor, it was a senior pastor. What are you talking about? But here's the thing that was God's answer through the provision of spiritual waiting. And so let me encourage you today, if you're waiting on the Lord, be careful what you're praying for. Because sometimes God will surprise you. And sometimes the answer he wants to deliver is missed by us because our expectations are not equal to his provision. You understand what I'm saying? Sometimes we're missing the blessing because we're expecting God to move a certain way. And that's because we're still in the driver's seat. But I've learned this thing in life life just goes better when God's driving. It just does. Life just goes better when God's driving. But it leads to an obvious question: why does God make us wait? In the little bit of time we have left, I want to briefly give you three life lessons that I have learned on the power of spiritual waiting. Are you ready for it? I'll make it quick. Pastor Clayton took up all my time. Here's the first one: God has a plan for your life. Remember, if you're going through a season of spiritual waiting, God has a plan for your life. But the problem is this. How many know life doesn't always go according to plan? I mean, life doesn't go according to plan in our lives. I mean, I mean, uh, I was raised as a uh in a Catholic home, a traditional good Midwestern Catholic home, one of seven kids, because where I grew up, you had to have at least five kids to even be considered Catholic. So we, you know, we qualified. And my parents had plans for all seven of us children. I have uh two older brothers, and their plans for them were that they would finish the eighth grade and stay out of prison. That that was the plan. But when it came to me, uh, for whatever reason, my mom had a different plan for my life. And she would always call me her little priest. And then she'd introduce me to people and said, This is Johnny, my little priest. She'd line us all up. This is Danny Piggy, Gordon Penny, Johnny my little priest, and Todd and Wade. And I mean, after a while, I'm like, why is my mom determining the path of my life? And then when I got to be a teenager, I was probably 13, I cornered her in the dining room one time after she'd made this kind of introduction. And I said, Mom, mom, I wish you would quit saying that. And she said, Well, what, son? I said, I wish you would quit saying that I'm your little priest. And she said, Well, why, John? And she said, Well, because I like girls. And she, now, now, eternity's at stake here. Because in a Catholic home, if you have a son that becomes a priest, everybody escapes purgatory and goes straight to heaven. So, I mean, she's pushing the well, why you can still like girls and be a priest. I said, not the way I like girls, you can. It was the last time she ever said that. I already had plans for my life. I wanted to be a model, a swimsuit model. And uh I got to be about 230 pounds, and the dream died. And so I had a different plan. I was gonna be a professional football player. As I played football, I thought, well, I'm gonna be a professional football player. And if that didn't work, I started out in college and broadcast journalism. I thought if that didn't work, then I'm going to uh broadcast the Chicago Bear Games and write for the Chicago Tribune. I mean, it was set. That was my life. And then I went away to college in the freshman year, my first semester. I had a friend of mine who invited me, Catholic kid, to a Pentecostal church. And oh, it was Pentecostal. I mean, there was crying and yelling and screaming, and that was just the ushers, that wasn't even the pastor. But the Holy Spirit was present in that place. And at the end of that message, this Catholic kid walked forward and bent the knee of surrender and accepted Jesus Christ into my life. And I've never looked back because now his plans are shaping my plans for the future. And God has done a work in me all of these years because God's in charge, not me. God has a plan for your life. And sometimes in the midst of that plan, many times in the midst of that plan, you're gonna find yourself in a season of waiting where patience is demanded. And you're gonna be asking God and asking God. And it's gonna seem like the gates of heaven are silent and dormant. But let me remind you, God's silence is not his absence. And when you're waiting, God's still working. Say, well, what do I do then? How do I successfully navigate through a season of waiting? The key to it all is being willing to trust God every day in every way. You don't know what it's like to truly trust God until you're willing to step out on the edge of faith and say, God, if I utterly fail, if I utterly fail, God, I'm willing to do it if it means following your will. I remember standing at Best Buy one night, many nights, I had a lot of time on my hands. And I'm starting to think to myself, God, I'm just not in charge of this. I'm not in control. I have I had lived so long trusting in my own strengths and my own abilities. I had put confidence in the amount of money we had in savings and everything else. But God wasn't asking me how much money I had in the bank. He wasn't asking me what kind of talents and abilities I had. God was asking me one thing. Are you willing to trust me through this time of waiting? Trust the Lord with all your heart. And here's the mind-bender. And lean not on your own understanding. You'll never figure God out. And rarely will even get a glimpse of seeing what he is doing until you're looking in the rear view of life and you see God was with you every step of the way. And all your ways acknowledge him. He will direct your path. God has a plan for your life, but it requires absolute trust in him to work out the details. May I remind you again life just goes better when God's driving. Second life principle that I've learned through seasons of waiting. God has a purpose in the waiting. He's never late, but I found he's rarely early. I call God my 23rd hour, 59th minute God. Because it just seems like when I'm waiting on the Lord in a spiritual season of waiting, he's never delivering on the early side. He's trying to do something in me. See, here's the thing. If we're willing to learn the principle of spiritual waiting, is that God is working out some details in the hidden places you don't see. God is orchestrating some of the circumstances or the relationships. Or maybe it's just not the timing of the Lord. I mean, I was 18 months at Best Buy, ended up in this church that God used to reach tens of thousands of people over the 16 years that we were part of that church. The 18 months that I was at Best Buy were the season where God was developing that church and an opportunity for this guy who happened to be a pastor and working at Best Buy to actually be invited to join this journey, this miraculous journey of God's provision and of God's abundance and blessing lives. It never would have happened if I would have walked away in the 18th minute of the 18th month. And some of you today, some of you today, don't give up on what God is doing. Don't walk out in the 23rd hour of a 24th hour miracle. If you don't give up on your marriage, if you don't give up on that prodigal child, if you don't give up on that miracle healing, if you don't give up on that financial blessing, if you don't give up on that spouse that sometimes you wake up and go, why am I even here? If you don't give up, God has a miracle. God has an answer, but he's got to work out some of the details. Are you gonna trust him? He has a purpose in it, and oftentimes God's purpose is I'll do some things for you. I remember asking God this. I remember standing there best by going, you know what, God? I've pastored some of the fastest growing churches. I I've earned two master's degrees and a doctorate. I have I've seen miracles happen. My time in ministry, God, I've seen all of these things. By the way, God was not impressed with my spiritual resume. And may I remind you, He's not impressed with yours either. I said, But God, I'm standing here at Best Buy. And God said to me, God, in those moments, that just in my deepness of my spirit, God was saying, Yeah, I know. But there's some things I want to do in you before I'll do something for you. You see, and the real blessing during spiritual waiting seasons is the work that God wants to do in you while he's working out the details of what God wants to do for you. You see, see, that's the real blessing. It's not that he gets you out of the situation, it's that he changes you in the situation. Oh, I'm not I'm not standing up here saying this is easy, it's not easy. That's why they call it spiritual living. God is calling you, as he's calling me, to understand that he has a purpose in the waiting, and the biggest reason why God makes us wait is because he wants to do a deeper work. And the wilderness seasons of life is where God does his finest work. That's where God does his finest work. Now, 2 Peter chapter 3, I'd asked you early on to turn to this passage. This passage says, Dear friends, remember this one thing, talking about the timing of Lord and how God sees your search situation. Because God sees your situation from an eternal perspective, we see our situation from a momentary, momentarily perspective. One of the great challenges in spiritual seasons of waiting is being able to get God's perspective on our current situation. And so God says this It says, Dear friends, remember this one thing. With the Lord, one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is this one as if one day. The Lord is not slow about keeping his promise, as some people think. He is, notice this, waiting for you. The Lord does not want any person to be punished forever, he wants all people to be sorry for their sins and turn from them. There's a purpose why God delays. There's a purpose on why God's waiting on you, because he loves you so very much. He wants the very best for you, but you're not ready to handle the thing it is that you're praying for him to deliver. Not yet. I found it interesting because a banker read this passage and was quite amazed by it. So he asked God, Lord, if a thousand years for us is just like one day for you, then a hundred years for us must seem like just one minute to you. One minute. And the Lord said, Well, yes. And the banker said, Well, then a million dollars to us must seem like just one penny to you. And the Lord said, Well, yes, what's your point? And the banker said, Can I have one of those pennies? And the Lord said, Sure, wait here a minute. Wait, you'll get that on the way to lunch. Wait, a hundred years. Here's the problem. The problem is we want God's blessing, but we don't want his timing. We want God's penny, but we're not interested in his minute. We want his help, but we don't want his calendar. The most significant work God will ever do in your life is when you are willing to lay down that which is most important to you, that which is most troubling to you, and say, God, I don't understand why I pray and I pray and I pray for this challenge, this person, this situation I don't understand, and yet to be willing to say, but I still trust you, and I'm not going anywhere. I'm gonna continue to pray and wait because I know that there's a purpose here. Which leads me to the final thing, and I'll close with this. During the waiting seasons of life, not only does God have a plan for your life and a purpose in the waiting, but God has a promise to be on your prayers. There's always a blessing in God's waiting. You remember when I was sharing my story and I said that every day I would iron those khaki pants and put on that Best Buy shirt, and I would slow down as I went by 2121 South Lake Boulevard, and I would say, God, you said wait. Remember that? You just nod yes if you've forgotten already. Several years later, uh I was asked by leadership if I would become the president of the King's University, as Pastor Clayton had mentioned. And uh it was part of my responsibilities and senior leadership in Gateway, and and so I did, and I took on that position, and then every day I would get on my business dress clothing, I'd get in my car, I would drive down South Lake Boulevard, but instead of going by 2121 South Lake Boulevard, I turned into the parking lot, which was the new home of the King's University. And instead of driving by 2121 South Lake Boulevard, I pulled into the parking lot and pulled into a parking slot and I walked in the building and I put my key in my office door. And when I opened the door behind my desk, prominently displayed is a picture frame. And inside that picture frame was a Best Buy shirt to remind me every day God is worthy of our waiting, and there's a blessing when God says, wait. And I still have that picture frame, and I still have that jersey because I need to be reminded that God is faithful to his word, and his delay is not his denial, and his patience is for our benefit, not our punishment. And your need is right on his mind. He's not absent, he hasn't forgot about your need, he's working it out in the hiding places in the spirit. And if you'll be waiting on the Lord, Scripture says this in Philippians he who began a good work in you is faithful to complete that good work. Not on the day you die, not when you've breathed your last breath, on the day that Jesus Christ returns, which means if you don't give up, not only is your life going to be a blessing, but your children's life will be a blessing. Your grandchildren's life will be a blessing, the generations that follow will be a blessing, and you'll never know the results until one day in heaven, it will be revealed to you that because you didn't give up, because you didn't check out of that marriage, because you didn't give up on your faith, because you didn't quit going to church, because you didn't stop making relationships, because you didn't stop being humble before the Lord, it's gonna come back because He, God, who began, he's not done with you, a good work, because he only does good things, is faithful to complete it. In the waiting seasons of life, God will deliver on his promises. Because when we wait on the Lord, God will always bring the blessing.