Shabbat shalom, welcome to the first sabbath of the third biblical month. Today is also the last of the seven sabbaths in the Omer Count which began at Yom haBikkurim so tomorrow we start counting another 50 days which will bring us to Shavu'ot or the Feast of 'Weeks' (wrongly called 'Pentecost') which is the next Annual Festival as well as being the second of the three Pilgrim Feasts. We're hoping that as more nations come out of coronavirus lockdown like Japan and borders reopen, that folks will be able to once more join us in celebration here in Sweden.

The message I bring today was originally a message to me personally three days ago when I was complaining to Yahweh about all the serious health issues so many friends and family are facing (including our animals). I was asking Him when He would intervene, if at all, when on one of those rare occasions He spoke to me audibly. He said very matter-of-factly, "We'll not go into this". Frustrated, I asked Him, a little flippantly, "What do you want me to do, then?" to which He immediately replied, "Wait on Me." I knew very well that He wouldn't say any more.

I did not get today's message until midnight last night which I can't say I was too happy with either! However, there it is, and the message is the same Yahweh gave to me last Wednesday: Waiting on Yahweh: What to Do and How to Do It. If you're waiting for a breakthrough in your life and wondering why you haven't got an answer, or the door hasn't opened yet, than I hope I can bless you in some small way because I know most of us find ourselves in that situation. For those of you with some experience of how Yahweh works, you already know that sometimes He doesn't answer our prayers for a long time and then, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, the answer comes, the door opens, and often when you're least expecting it.

Now hopefully we won't have to wait (for whatever it is) as long as Abraham and Sarah had to wait for the Promised Seed, or for as long as Moses had to wait in Midian until he was finally called to be Israel's deliverer. I don't wish to be flippant and explain why Yahweh does things the way He does because frankly I have no idea other than to give very general and broad answers which probably won't satisfy you anyway. There was a day when Sarah got pregnant aged nearly 100 and there was a day, 40 years later, when Moses, the ex-Prince of Egypt, was told to quit shepherding in Midian and return to Egypt to gather together Yahweh's people for the Exodus.

I will, however, share some annoying truths which none of us wants much to hear but which we would be wise to take on board early if we don't want to live a life of repetitive frustrations. Until the time Yahweh acts or moves, we must learn to wait patiently. There must have been reasons Abraham and Sarah had to wait so long before Isaac came. We can look back at their character defects and make some intelligent guesses - Abraham had a tendency to lie to protect those he loved from harm (Isaac did the same too - like father, like son). Sarah had an issue with patience and wanted Isaac so badly she was willing to cut corners and get a child by proxy through Hagar. Moses had a patience issue too and, it would seem, a bit of an impetuous nature and bad temper, no doubt fostered by being royalty. You know how he killed the Egyptian taskmaster. That all had to be burned out of him in Midian.

We too must often wait and typically we look upon having to wait with annoyance and frustration, themselves proof of a lack of patience. And I personally know very well that Yahweh has permitted ill-health on my part to burn some things out of me, including impatience. So I can relate to Abraham very easily - he must have been terrified of dying before having the promised son, of having failed, of maybe being rejected by Yahweh, and maybe doubting that Yahweh existed. Somehow I doubt that as we're told in Scripture that he was a man of extraordinary emunah (faith). It was Sarah who laughed at the suggestion she could get pregnant in old age at a time when he reproductive system was past using anymore.

Let us assume that we're not going to do anything as foolish as turn our backs on Yahweh and walk away. Sadly, a lot of people I have known have done exactly that even though they knew He existed. I am going to assume that you believe in spite of being frustrated and tempted in weak moments to 'pack it all in' and do things your own way. If you are a person who trusts Elohim (God) - one who chooses to live by emunah (faith) no matter what the frustrations or even tribulations - then typically you will wait in one of two ways: either you will:

• 1. wait passively; or
• 2. wait expectantly.

First, the passive way, which is, unfortunately, the weak way - the ineffective way - which is the one commonly adopted by the one whose emunah (faith) for whatever reason. As you get older and see the available years rapidly being eaten up, it's very tempting to slip into that mode. A passive person, if he or she continues in that way, will give up eventually because his unnurtured emunah (faith) will dry up. Typically he will say: 'OK, I'm done, I've waited for x long years and nothing has happened.' One minister has described such a person as one who has a lot of 'wishbone' but very little 'backbone'.

Now the expectant person has a very different attitude. Abraham and Moses were expectant people. The one thing they never let happen is their 'hope bucket' to run dry. Each day an expectant believer, even if he has been waiting for years, believes the answer is just around the corner or that the closed door will suddenly swing open. In other words, his belief - his emunah (faith) - his trusting - is not a passive thing. He ensures, by keeping his eyes on Christ always, that his heart remains full of tiqveh - hope. He expects his problem to be solved at any moment, he awakenes every morning expecting to find his answer, or for that door to swing widely open. He may wait, and wait, and wait, for many years, until suddenly - like Abraham getting news that Sarah was pregnant, or Moses being confronted by a burning bush when he was 80 years old - that the time had come and that their emunah (faith) had been vindicated.

Now there is one thing we do have to be very careful of - two things, really:

• 1. We must be obedient to what Yahweh has already told us, whether through Scripture or through personal revelation (which will never contradict Scripture), and not expect or hope for something that Yahweh will never do or for a door which will never open; and

• 2. Once we have got a clear answer to Him in the affirmative, we must not try to force His hand by taking matters into our own hands, like Sarah who virtually forced Abraham to marry Hagar to get a proxy child for her, or Moses who thought he could start rescuing Israel in his office as a Royal Prince of a pagan nation by assaulting an Egyptian taskmaster and accidentally killing him.

Today we still live with the consequences of Abraham's ill-advised union with Hagar, the child becoming the forefather of a deadly, satanic religion that has caused so much grief to the planet, and Moses, to his horror, suddenly found himself an outlaw and stripped of his privileged position in the world. Perhaps that was the only way he would have relinquished it because the flesh will often make the excuse to try and change the system from within when that system is doomed to destruction, when Yahweh wants us clean out of it. We're told to leave Babylon, not reform it. We cannot compromise with the world.

I'm hoping - praying - that none of you will quit trusting in Yahweh by being tempted to return to the world, or - if you remain faithful - that you won't foolishly try to take matters into your own hands and cause yourself and others much grief. So I'm going to assume that you, the listener, are going to be covenant-true and that you will not do things presumptuously in the way of the flesh. That said, let's get back to the way to productively wait - and I underline the word 'productively' advisedly because passive waiting will not work. What do I mean by that?

To 'wait' means to 'expect' or 'look for' but - and this is critical - it also means to serve, as a waiter 'waits' on his or her customers in a restaurant. We're not supposed to be passively sitting around passively hoping that something will happen sometime very soon while we are idle. We have lots of other things to be getting on with.

So once we have asked our Heavenly Father to answer a question or solve a problem, we need to be eagerly awaiting His answer without putting any time restrictions on Him. We need to be busy serving in Kingdom work, in taking care of our families (if we have them), in earning an honest living with the means currently at hand - all the things we know we should be doing, remembering that in putting the Kingdom first we have the promise that Yahweh will take care of everything else, "...seek first the kingdom of Elohim (God) and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you" (Matt.6:33, NKJV), and here, as you know, Yah'shua (Jesus) uses food and clothes as illustrations of the things man needs.

What kind of 'service' should this be? It should be with passion, like that of the late Ravi Zacharias, who worked so hard for the Kingdom in the particular portion of the vineyard assigned to him - that is, fervently and expectantly - not artifically, but with eagerness and determination generated by the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit), as will happen if we genuinely surrender to Yahweh, seeking His will in everything.

When our hearts are eager to hear from Heaven, he loves to rush in suddenly and surprise us with His solution. Don't you like to be pleasantly surprised? And you will typically find - as Abraham and Moses found - that the waiting period serves as a time of preparation for the answer.

If Abraham and Moses had got what they wanted and had expected an immediate response from Heaven, they would not have been ready - they would not have been prepared and disaster might well have occurred particually as they were responsible for others....and in the case of Moses, for a whole nation.

And remember sometimes we must wait while others make their own choices, people who will be a necessary part of the answer to our question or to the particular door being opened. We must never forget, as the Calvinists do because of their false doctrine, that there is such a thing as free agency. So if Yahweh were to answer you right away, or before time, or to open that particular door right away, or too early, many of us would be ill-prepared, not to mention all those other people whose lives we are going to touch, impact or intersect with who may themselves not yet be prepared. The equation for action can, and usually does, involve a lot people, factors and highly intricate circumstances. Remember, the others who will be important to your future are almost certainly going to have to made critically important decisions for themselves as you must, decisions that may take time to arrive at. Thus there is a mutual dependency.

And, you know, sometimes we find ourselves in such horrible messes that it's hard to imagine waiting around for another second. Everything inside us screams for an immediate answer or solution. But those screams may not necessarily be coming from a good place. In spite of the inner turmoil, the desperate needs, and so on, we absolutely need to keep waiting on Yahweh and trusting Him with a sweet, gentle, innocent emunah (faith), and by that I mean the emunah (faith) of a child, remembering whath the Master said:

"Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of heaven" (Matt.19:14, NKJV).

In other words, if we are to serve Yahweh in Kingdom-building we have to have the sweet, innocent child-like faith because the kingdom of heaven belongs to such and not to any other kind of emunah (faith). Just as a child cannot figure out adult things, so we - who are the children of our Heavenly Father - cannot possibly figure out the things of the Creator - His mind, heart, and will, try though we may. We all do and, if we are wise, we will come to the same conclusion as Job:

"Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know" (Job 42:3, NKJV).

So learning humility in addition to patience is something else that must be done. Meanwhile, while we're doing things Elohim's (God's) way, Yahweh moves suddenly in ways we could never have figured out and with the kind of immaculate timing that we could never master because we aren't Elohim (God).

I've used Abraham and Moses as example but let me finish with one other. Paul and Silas both knew about waiting, and they waited exceedingly well. We read in Acts 16 how they were attacked by a crowd, beaten, and thrown into prison. In verse 24 we're told how the prison warden threw them into the dungeon and fastened their feet to the stocks, making sure there was no way they could escape.

But around midnight, what happened? Yahweh turned up, didn't He? Now I'm sure they would have been delighted had He come a bit earlier but Paul and Silas didn't seem to mind. What did they do? They just started singing and worshipping their Creator. That is how they waited on Elohim (God)! Do you recall what happened?

"But at midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to Elohim (God), and the prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's chains were loosed" (Acts 16:25-26, NKJV - Evidence Bible, EB p.1577)

I'm sure you know the rest of story, how Yahweh used the imprisonment of these two men to save the jailer and his family. That is so common. I don't know how many difficulties in my own life have been permitted so that I could help others, something, incidentally, we agree to when we give our lives to Christ and quite possibly before we were born too. We're His to do with as He pleases, and that may include waiting to that we can be effectuve servants for the Kingdom in bringing salvation to others. There is no greater honour or, dare I say it, pleasure too.

Yahweh answered Paul and Silas very suddenly, didn't He? And when Christians/Messianics patiently and humbly wait on Yahweh, sometimes in the midst of hortible situations, suddenly Elohim (God) breaks through with His power. So don't give up! Remember who's the servant of Who. Is Yahweh a character in our life story, or are we characters in His? Who's the Boss? And why is it a good idea doing things the Boss's way? Because He loves us and knows best. His power is limitless, He will break through, provided it is His will we are seeking and not our own.

May Yahweh bless you and replesnish your hope if it has diminished and strengthen your emunah (faith) in Him to see you right in His own perfect timing and according to His own inscrutible will. Have a great Sabbath. Amen.

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