Father, we are so grateful for your goodness and your grace to us. I thank you so much for your word. I just am so thankful for it. I thank you that you walk with us through this life. Lord, that you have lessons to teach us and I pray that we would be open today to your Holy Spirit to learn what you might have for us today. In Jesus name I pray. Amen. Well, we are going through the fruit of the Spirit as it is given to us in Galatians chapter 5, verses 22 and 23, which says, but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Now, patience stands out a little bit different in this list. I mean, if you stop and think about it, who doesn't want love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness in their life? But the very idea that I need patience means that there's something in my life that I really would prefer isn't there. It might be something trivial, like waiting for one of those long trains through town, you know, or your printer doesn't work at home, or something like that. And sometimes it's a long-term thing that interrupts your life that you just assume wasn't there. My Bible dictionary defined biblical patience as this, and I quote, in Greek, the capacity to remain self-controlled despite difficult circumstances or actions by others that might be expected to cause anger or to upset, unquote. And that, my friend, is sometimes hard. At least it is for me. Now there are a lot of you here who did not know my husband since he's been with the Lord for nine years. Some of you did. And those of you that knew Cecil knew that he was about as chill as you could get. I used to tease him about his hillbilly speed. He was raised in the Missouri Ozarks. Putting Cecil and I together was another indication that God has a sense of humor. We did fit together well, but Cecil always used to tell people that, when I wanted something done, I wanted it done yesterday. Unfortunately, there's a little bit of truth to that. I'm not real proud of that. Like I said, I'm not naturally a patient person. I have a lot to learn in this area, and maybe some of you can relate with that. I want to start out by having us look at a couple of the Psalms. If you have your Bibles, you can turn to Psalm 37, verse 7. Psalm 37, 7. It says, Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him. Threat not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices." So what is it really like to wait patiently for God? Turn over just a couple pages to Psalm chapter 40. I'm going to read verses 1 through 3. This is the Psalm of David. He says, I waited patiently for the Lord. He inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the pit of destruction out of the miry bog and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord. reading various commentaries about this psalm of David. Nobody knows for sure what pit David is talking about when he was writing this. In his life, there were plenty of pits to choose from. There was the pit of when Saul was chasing him, trying to kill him. There was the pit when his son Absalom was trying to take his throne away from him. Or there was the pit of sin he got in when he committed adultery with Bathsheba and murder with Uriah and he was running away from God at that time. So there are plenty of times when this could have been written. But David said that he waited patiently for the Lord. Now those very words imply that he didn't get immediately out of the pit. He had to wait patiently. One of the commentaries I read said that, I waited patiently literally means in waiting, wait. And my first thought when I read that was, well, that's not very helpful. You know, sometimes we have no choice but to wait. But the more I thought about it, the more it makes sense in waiting, wait. Because when we have to wait, Do we really wait to see what God is going to do, or do we complain? Do we stew and fret? Do we lash out? Do we try to fix things on our own like Abraham and Sarah did? Do we even walk away from God? Because obviously he's not going to answer. So, you know, I'm just not going to ask him anymore because he's not answering. And I want to make something perfectly clear. It doesn't mean that we sit passively by and do nothing. You know, if it's a health issue that's a long term, you seek medical advice, you do what you can. but you wait, patiently rest. In waiting, wait means we are resting in God's perfect will and in his perfect timing. I know this is a familiar story, but I want you to think of Hannah. Her story is in 1 Samuel 1. Hannah had a husband named Elihu, and he had Hannah as a wife, but he also had another wife named Padina. who had children and Hannah didn't. I'm going to read verses six and seven of chapter one. It says, talking about Penina, and her rival used to provoke her grievously to irritate her because the Lord had closed her womb. So it went on year by year. As often as she went up to the house of the Lord, she used to provoke her. Therefore, Hannah wept and would not eat. Can you imagine how hurtful that was? And it went on year after year of weeping and misery. And I'm going to read verse 11. This is when she went into the temple and she vowed a vow to the Lord. She said, and it says, and she vowed a vow and said, oh Lord of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a son, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor shall touch his head." Now, do you think that that was the first time she ever asked God for a child? Absolutely not. She had asked many, many times, obviously, maybe even daily for a child. But it was probably the first time that she told God, I will give him back to you. if you give me a child. Do you think if she had gotten pregnant right away in her marriage that she would have given that child up? I don't think so. I don't think we would have ever heard of the godly woman named Hannah because she wouldn't have even thought about doing that. Listen to part of this verse in 1 Peter 3 verse 20. It's talking about a different time, but the principle is there. It says, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. So did you catch that? God waited patiently. In Hannah's case, he was waiting for her to get to the point where she would be willing to give up her son. Because he had a special job for Samuel to do, so she had to get to that point. So sometimes, as we are waiting patiently for God, God is waiting patiently for us to get to the point where we see what we need to do, the lessons that we need to learn, and surrendering to Him. Sometimes I think about that day when Hannah took that little guy by his little hand and took him up to the temple and left him there. Man, that could not have been easy. But she kept her promise to the Lord and left him there. And sometimes being a mom is just hard. I'm going to take you back in time to the fall of 1977. Most of you weren't even born then. And some of you know this story, and I apologize for that, but it best illustrates what I wanted to say. But I was a young mother. Jeremy was four and a half, Christy was two and a half, and Sherry was just a few months old. We had gone over to eastern Iowa to visit Cecil's grandfather and grandmother. And while we were there, that first evening, Jeremy and Christy decided to play hide-and-seek. And we were visiting in the living room, and all of a sudden, Jeremy comes in the living room, a funny look on his face, and Cecil asked him what was the matter. And he said, Christy went down the hole. And Cecil knew immediately what he was talking about. His grandfather had a laundry chute that was low to the floor in his bathroom, and it went 10 feet to a cement floor in the basement. And Christy went down that, thinking it was a good hiding place. And Cecil immediately ran to the basement. She was laying there unconscious. He said, later I realized I did the wrong thing. He picked her up and started hollering her name. And anyway, long story short, ended up in the Iowa City Hospital. X-rays and all those tests that night. You can tell it's still emotional for me after all these years. We sat down to talk to the doctor after all this testing and stuff was over, and I remember so clearly saying to the doctor, will she live? And I remember him looking at me for a little while, and I knew he was thinking, what do I tell this mother? And he said, well, I give her a 50-50 chance. He goes, the brain can only swell. She had landed on the top of her head. Her skull fractured on both sides. The right side was especially bad and the brain was swelling out. And he said, the brain can only swell so much when it means the end. So I gave her a 50-50 chance. Well, Cecil stayed with her that night because I had a baby to take care of back at his grandparents' house. And I can't tell you how long that night was for me. It was hard. Did a lot of pacing, crying, praying, kneeling down, praying. You know, and I remember distinctly thinking often as if God was saying to me, you dedicated her to the Lord. Did you really mean that? And, you know, we just had a baby dedication in this church, Sonny, and I love those times. And that is a good foundation to dedicate those children publicly to the Lord. But ladies, it won't be the last time. You have to do it. It will be a constant thing through your life when something comes up with your kids. that you have to say, Lord, I'm going to surrender them to you. Christy isn't here today. She sent me a text and said, I'm sorry, I can't be the lift. One of the secretaries got sick and she's the first substitutes they call, because she substitutes for everybody. So I told her, well, you're going to get talked about. But obviously she made it. The doctor said if she lived, She would have brain damage, which didn't happen. But those days in the hospital, I mean the doctor shook their head because in five days she was dismissed and the doctors couldn't believe it. A lot of people were praying. But it was hard those first two or three days because we could give her that much water every three hours because the doctor says any fluid you put in is going to make your brain swell. So, you know, that's hard when your two-and-a-half-year-old is hungry and you can't give him anything. So anyway. Made it through that. Went back home, but the doctor said, don't let her hit her head. Two and a half years old. Don't let her hit her head. And then, a couple months after that, it was the evening when the stores were open in Lamar's, and I took, Cecil stayed with Sherry, I took Jeremy and Christy in to get a new pair of shoes. We were coming home. And ladies, like I said, in 1970, this was a different day. You had no car seats, not even seat belts in the car. You just put your kids in the car and went. And anyway, I was pulling out onto Highway 75, and I thought I saw a light in my peripheral vision, and I thought, did I pull out in front of somebody? And I turned around, and the back seat door was open, and Jeremy was gone. And my first thought was, I ran over my own son. So right on Highway 75, I threw my car in park, jumped out of the car, and Jeremy was limping but running down the highway, and I could see him in the headlights of a car coming. So I picked him up, put him in the car, took him to the ER, and the doctor took one look at me and said, I think you need the doctor. Jeremy was limping. He said, I ran over his foot. And if I did, God miraculously protected him because it, you know, but I can't imagine what I might have seen getting out of the car at that time. And then just a few weeks after that, Sherry got bronchitis so bad that the doctor thought she was going to get pneumonia. So she ended up in the hospital in one of these mist tents, you know, and I couldn't hold my baby. It was a horrible winter. And I remember running around trying to make sure my two-year-old didn't hit her head, being paranoid about car doors. Get away from that car door. Make sure that's locked, you know, blah, blah, blah. And I remember one day I just fell on my knees before the Lord crying and I said, God, I cannot live this way. I cannot do this anymore. You're going to have to help me because these fears, these thinking I'm in control. I know it's wrong, but that's where I am, God. I'm so nervous about my kids. Oh, and then I found out I was pregnant with Kayla. So the hormones were going wild and she snuck in on us, but what a blessing she turned out to be. So, you know, I wouldn't have labeled it back then, but it was a time when I had to wait patiently for the Lord. Did it happen immediately that God took away those fears? No, it didn't. Remember the first talk I had when I talked about sanctification, that God works in us, but we have to work with him. And that was where I was at in this time. I prayed daily that he would give me victory over this. And I started memorizing scripture that would help me, you know, because as you memorize, you can meditate and let it roll around through your mind. And that was really a blessing to me. And, you know, it's just God works so subtly. All of a sudden I thought, ah, I didn't fear today. You know, He works in us and He does answer prayer. One of the passages that I really came to appreciate, and it seems strange to some people, but I really came to appreciate Ecclesiastes chapter 3, verses 1 through 8. which says, there is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven. Time to be born, and a time to die, a time to plant, and a time to uproot, a time to kill, and a time to heal, a time to tear down, and a time to build, a time to weep, and a time to laugh, a time to mourn, and a time to dance, et cetera, et cetera. I need to review these other ones. But, you know, as I memorized that and thought about it, you know, I thought, No, there's things on that list that I don't like. I don't want to weep. I don't want to mourn. But God says there's a time for those things. I like times to laugh. You know me. But when I'm going through the hard times, it really helped me to feel like there's a time for this and God will get me through it. And then I had to claim Ecclesiastes 3 verse 11 right after that. It says, He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men, yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. Now that verse has so much depth in it. He's made everything beautiful in its time. But in our humanity, we just can't fathom what God is up to. He has a perfect plan. And it's beautiful in his time, but we have to trust him for that. And that is hard. We walk by faith, not by sight. We have to trust that he is true to his promise. And even as I say that, gals, I wish I had it down pat. Don't ever think that I do. This lesson has taught me that I still have so much growing in the Lord to do in this area. I want us to look at another passage of scripture that talks about waiting. Turn in your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 40. This is a glorious passage of scripture. Sometime on your own, read the whole chapter. It is a beautiful chapter, one of my favorites. We're going to focus on verses 28 to 31. Those verses say, Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary. His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might, he increases strength. Even you shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted. But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk. and not faint. You know, in verse 31, years ago, I used to think about these things in this way. I used to think that walking is the easy one, right? Because that's what we learn to do first. We learn to walk, and then after we walk, we can learn how to run. And don't we wish we could learn how to fly, but we can't, because that's the hard one. But I've since changed my mind about those things, and I don't know if God has a particular order in mind or not. But have you ever seen an eagle fly? It's not hard for them at all. They just go on the current of the wind and glide along, and they're so graceful and so beautiful. Then there's running. I know some of you are runners, and your kids are runners. They eventually do get weary. But long after the rest of us would, I could go maybe through the gym and that'd be about it. I'd grow weary. But then there's the walk. In my mind, this is really the difficult one. They shall walk and not faint. Most of you know that I had to go through chemotherapy for cancer in this bone. And the days that I had chemo were fine. But it was about day three after the chemo that, man, it just felt like you ran into a brick wall. You just... Bed to the sofa, sofa to the bathroom, sofa to the kitchen to maybe get a piece of toast, back to the sofa. You know, you're so weak until your blood builds back up. Anyway, one of these times after a treatment, I was starting to get stronger again. You know, you just want to do something. You're tired. So I thought, you know, I can go do something. So I decided to go get a few groceries. About halfway through the store, I just thought, I am going to collapse right here on the grocery store aisle. If I hadn't been holding on to the cart, I would have. And I just had to stop. get my strength back a little bit and ask God just help me to make it out to the van, which he did. I forget about the rest of the store. I just went right out, sat there for a while until my strength got up so I didn't have to call Christy and say, would you get your mother out the grocery store? I made it home, but I went too early. But sometimes it's hard to walk and not think. And walk to me here represents our day-to-day struggles. The things that we have to go through day after day that are sometimes just hard to go through. Maybe it's a marriage that isn't quite where it should be. Maybe it's a daily struggle with a rebellious teenager or a relationship with a friend or a family member that just is really hard to continue on with. Maybe it's the day-to-day struggle with a health issue, or a financial issue, or a work issue, or maybe it's even a sin issue that you're having a hard time getting victory over. It's just those day-to-day struggles that God says, may that weight upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall walk and not faint. It's weary to go through those day-to-day struggles, it really is. When I was at Grace College of the Bible in Omaha, there was a guy named Pat a year or two ahead of me. This was, again, back in the day where you could work and pay for your college education. Those days are gone too. Anyway, he had gone first semester, but he didn't think that he had enough money to go second semester, so he was going to drop out, work for a while, and maybe come back to finish his degree. Unbeknown to him, his uncle went into the registrar's office and wrote out a check for the second semester. But he said, but you can't tell Pat that. He has to step out in faith and say he's going to come back. And if he does, you can tell him it's paid for. But until he does, and if he leaves, tear up the check. This was driving the registrar nuts. He kept talking, every time he saw Pat in the hall, Pat, you got to come back. And he goes, I don't have the money. I don't see how I can. And this went on and on. And one time he was talking to Pat and he said, Pat, just step out in faith. Your father owns the cattle on a thousand hills." And that is biblical, Psalm 5010, you know, God owns the cattle on a thousand hills. If you're old like me, you remember a song. Anyway, but when he said, your father owns the cattle on a thousand hills, Pat immediately said, I know, but he only gives it to me one hamburger at a time. Just so you know the end of the story Pat agreed to come back and he got that check. But you know Pat is right. Pat is right. God promises to give us strength for today. Bright hope for tomorrow but we don't know what tomorrow is going to bring. Maybe you're at that place where You just have to pray and ask, Lord, give me that hamburger I need for the day to make it through this struggle that I'm facing, renew my strength, help me to wait on you. I'm going to read, I love this devotional book. I've been through it about three times. It's called The Heavens. And of course, I was reading it and spoke right to what I was talking about today. And he says, Perhaps today you find yourself so exhausted and disillusioned that you doubt whether God even sees or hears you. If so, God has a word for you. He has graciously written it down so you won't lose it. It's in Isaiah chapter 40. Wait. It doesn't explain why everything is happening the way it is in your life, though you probably couldn't grasp God's perspective on it all anyway. But it does give you the path to hope. strength, and renewal. It's a worshipful waiting. Waiting and trusting greatly honors the Lord, and he requires it from all his saints. It makes plain who is really the everlasting God and who rightly deserves praise. Pick any godly figure in the scriptures and see how his or her power was made perfect in weakness, 2 Corinthians 12 9. There's a time for every purpose under heaven, Ecclesiastes 3 1. Wait for his time. And until it comes, lift up your heart in worship and be renewed in him. And in closing, this holiday season, just thinking about time and waiting patiently for the Lord. Remember Galatians chapter four, verse four, it says, but when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son. And that's what we celebrate this Christmas. And someday, I hope soon, when God says that it's time, he's going to come back for us. What an amazing promise. But we have to wait patiently. So let's pray. Father, I just thank you so much for your great and precious promises. And Lord, I know it's hard for me to be patient in small things that happen in my day and big things that happen in life. I want them immediately. But Lord, we know that you have a time for everything. So I pray that you would, by the power of your Holy Spirit, give us patience when we need it. Help us to wait for you. Thank you that your timing is perfect, that you have made everything beautiful in your time, and help us to trust you with that. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.