When God Says Go: Faith in Motion

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to the podcast. Today, I wanna give you six keys to overcoming the waiting period. Six keys that are gonna help you successfully break through and overcome that waiting period when you're waiting on a promise, or you're waiting on a plan of God for your life to come into full view.

You're in that waiting season. Today, I wanna give you six things that will help us complete that waiting period successfully. I mean, it doesn't do us any good if we quit halfway through.

We wanna make it all the way to the promise. We wanna make it to the harvest. And so today, that's what we're gonna talk about, and we're gonna kind of build off of our last teaching when we talked about waiting upon the Lord.

So if you didn't hear that one, I would encourage you to go back and check that out, because today we're gonna kind of just keep the momentum going there, and we're gonna talk some more about waiting upon the Lord, or when we seemingly, we feel like we're waiting. And I really wanna encourage you, I believe the Lord would encourage us that it's worth the wait. It's worth the wait, praise God.

The fulfillment of the promises of God and the plans of God for your life, they are worth waiting for. Building your life upon the promises of God, that's how you and I live as believers, isn't it? We live, we go from promise to promise and from faith to faith.

That's how you and I access the greater things of God as we progress along. And that's a good decision. It's a good choice.

That's the only way for you and I to live and inherit the things that God has for us here on this side of heaven, is we walk from faith to faith, from glory to glory, from victory to victory, amen. And that's a great decision. Building your life upon your relationship with the Father, with the Son, with the Holy Spirit, that pays off.

That relationship pays off, not only now, in this earthly realm, but it's gonna pay off for eternity. You know, heaven's worth waiting for. That's a promise that's worth waiting for, praise God.

It's hard to wrap our mind around eternity sometimes. I think if you're like me, it's hard to even really process that. But heaven is gonna be awesome.

It is gonna be well worth the wait. All the promises of God, all the plans that God has for you, they're worth waiting for. If you've ever had to stand or wait longer than you thought it would take, if you've ever had to fight a faith fight for a season of time, maybe way longer than you thought, have you ever had to do that?

I know you have. If you're living from promise to promise, if you're walking from faith to faith, you've had to fight some faith fights. You've had to stand longer than you thought you were gonna have to stand.

And it's during those seasons that thoughts will come to your mind. Thoughts will come and they'll tell you it's not worth it. I know you've had those thoughts.

Thoughts that, you know, it's not gonna happen or it's not working, it's not worth it. Maybe I missed God, maybe I made a mistake, maybe I'm not good enough to walk in this promise. And that's a lie from the enemy.

But these thoughts come, and this can be a battle. This can be a real battle. So much of the battle takes place in your mind.

And looking back on my journey here with the Lord, I could say this, and maybe you can relate to this. It seems like especially in the early days of salvation, you're saved, you're born again, you're going to heaven, you made a decision somewhere to trust Jesus as your Lord and Savior, and so you're saved. But then this sanctification process starts, where the Lord starts to mold you and prune you and weed the garden of your heart, so to speak.

And man, it's in those early days, if you're anything like me, I had a lot of weeds that we needed to get pulled up out of there. And so it was a lot of little battles, a lot of little things that I was having to walk and trust the Lord and take steps of faith. And the enemy hates this.

I mean, he's already mad enough that he lost you. When you made Jesus your Lord and Savior, the enemy's not your Lord anymore. He's not your king.

You're not doing things his way. You don't serve him. You don't bow down to the things that he has planned for your life.

Now you're translated out of his kingdom and you're transferred into the kingdom of light. And Jesus is your Lord. And the enemy, he hates that.

But what he really doesn't want, it's bad enough that he lost you, but he really doesn't want you to mature to the point that you start bearing for the kingdom or that you actually start walking in victory now. He's lost you for eternity. Your eternity is victorious, hallelujah.

But he does not want you to walk in victory now and be a light to other people. And so man, it's the battle's kinda on in those early days. And it never completely stops.

You're always gonna have to stand and fight the fight of faith. But boy, those early days can be rough. They can be real rough.

But as we grow, as we develop and learn how to trust God, it should get easier to hang on to the promises. But thoughts will come. Thoughts will come.

No matter how long you've been following, no longer, no matter how long you've been taking steps of faith, there are moments in time where you will have to stand and thoughts will come. And here's the thing, don't miss this. This is so important.

These thoughts can come from the enemy and his camp. We acknowledge that spiritual warfare is a real thing. The enemy, he has soldiers in his army.

And a lot of these thoughts can come from spiritual forces. And we don't deny that. But listen to this.

These thoughts often come from your own un-renewed mind. And they come from your underdeveloped faith. A lot of times, we're blaming the enemy for something.

We're giving him credit for stuff, thoughts of, well, the enemy's attacking me. Well, really what it is, is your mind hasn't been renewed yet. The word will wash and clean your mind.

And as you study the word, as you build and grow in the word, it will renew your mind. It will change your thoughts. As you meditate on those promises over and over and over, your mind will become renewed and made new into the promises of God.

But in the early days, you really haven't developed enough to renew your mind yet. You haven't studied enough. You're like a newborn baby.

And so these thoughts come, and you don't know how to fight them, and it can get very discouraging. But as you keep going, your mind becomes renewed. And that's why, like I just said, if you keep going, the further you go, the more you grow, it should get easier to stand and fight, because now your mind's renewed.

And then another place that these thoughts come from is our own underdeveloped faith. You know, you have the measure of faith. When you're born again, you have the measure of faith.

But learning how to take steps of faith and develop your faith, and yield to faith in God, that's a process. And that can take some time. And like I said, with my own life, looking back, not that I've fully arrived, but I've grown some, and looking back from where I started to now, how the Lord has progressed me is it started with little bitty steps of faith.

I remember walking across a Walmart parking lot, and I had been praying for weeks, Lord, lead me, help me hear your leading, help me take a step of faith. And as I'm walking out of this Walmart, there was a cart that somebody had left out kind of in the middle of the lane there. And as I walked past it, I heard in my spirit, put that cart up, just a simple little command.

And I walked on by the cart, and I was in a hurry and headed towards my car, and I got about halfway up there, and I realized that's the Lord prompting me to do that. So I turned around and went back and put the cart up. Well, if you won't obey in those little steps of faith in the early days, how could the Lord trust you with something bigger?

If you won't put a cart up, how could he trust you to encourage somebody, or to be in a ministry of some kind? You see, he develops us in those little steps, and that's a process. And if you're in the middle of the process, if you're in the early days, that's okay.

We all start where we start, we all grow, we keep growing, we'll be growing forever. But we need to recognize that a lot of our battles come from our own, unrenewed mind and our own underdeveloped faith. If you're weak in your mind, study, spend time in the Word, listen to teaching, whatever you gotta do to change your thought pattern.

And if you have underdeveloped faith, start taking some steps. Believe God for the next step of faith because he'll give it to you. You know, a lot of times we get big picture, big goal minded.

We want that, we see the prize at the end. We see winning the world championship, and that's our only goal. And the Lord wants to develop us in the little things so that we can get there.

And we become the end of the goal, the end of the line minded, and we need to be focused on the step right in front of us. And so as we take those steps of faith, our faith will get developed. But the reality is, the truth is, the passing of time will test your faith.

If you're believing for something to come to pass, if you're believing for a promise to come to pass, the passing of time will test your faith. It will try your faith to see if you'll really hang on or not. And passing the time test, that pleases the Lord when you do that.

Failing the time test, it displeases God. It displeases our Lord. And the reason it displeases him is because it hinders us from reaping the reward or the harvest of the promise or the plan that God has for us, that we've been waiting on.

That's quitting in the middle of the time season. Seed time and harvest is a spiritual law. And if you've ever grown anything from seed, like if you've seeded your yard or planted a flower or a tomato plant or whatever, you understand seed, time, and harvest.

You plant that seed. There's a time season before the harvest. And if you've ever done that, it can be, especially in the first few times you do it, there's always thoughts that come that maybe you did something wrong in this process.

You know, here a few years ago, we had a place that had a big birch tree in the front yard. This thing was huge. Tree actually died.

That thing never did come back. And so we had that big tree a year or two later, after we had it topped, we had them come back and cut it down, and they grinded that stump out of the ground, and this thing was huge. Well, when they did that, we've got this big bare spot in our front yard, and we had a pretty nice yard there.

I tried to take good care of our place. And so we got this big bare spot. So I go out and buy a little soil to fill that hole up.

I buy some good fescue seed. I seed it. I straw it.

I water it real good. And then I start watering it a couple times a day. And like I said, if you've ever done this, there comes a point in that journey where you think, I must have bought some bad seed, or maybe I didn't get that seed planted deep enough, or maybe I got it too deep, or maybe I'm watering it too much, maybe I'm not watering it enough, because that time process will trust whether you really believe that seed's got everything in it to germinate.

Where's them little baby grass hairs? I should be seeing them things already. It's been four days, five days.

Where's it at? But if you go out and dig that seed up every day to look at it, then you're gonna kill it. You're not gonna see the promise of it come to pass.

What's the same with the promises of God? When we dig these things up every day, when we don't trust the process, it's oftentimes during that time season that we kill our journey. And we wanna overcome that.

And the thing is, if you have planted grass seed 20 times, well, after you do it a couple times and you've seen it come to pass, you should just trust the process. If you've planted flowers from seed 100 times, after you may doubt the process or question it the first few times, but then after that, you should just know, in 11 days, I'm gonna see some germination or whatever it is. Because you have experience.

Well, it's the same when we trust God and we walk by faith. Man, in those early days, there can be some real battles in that time season. And like I said, you're always gonna have to stand.

You're always gonna have to fight. But the further we go, it should get easier to see this thing all the way through. Praise God, it's worth the wait.

It's worth it. And so today, I wanna give you six things that I think will help us stand during that time season. Here's some six key points that I believe will help us.

And I'm taking these out of Exodus 32, which is the chapter that I used in the last teaching, waiting upon the Lord. So that's why I said, it's important for you to go back and listen to that in Exodus 32, because we're gonna kind of build off of that same text. And so there, just in a quick summary, remember, this is when Moses had led the Israelites out of Egypt and Egyptian bondage.

They had crossed the Red Sea. They had got out there to Mount Sinai. And when they got out there, God called Moses up into the mountain, up into the glory.

And he was gonna teach Moses how to lead the Israelites all the way to the promised land. And in Exodus 24, Moses told the Israelites and the leaders of the tribes, he said, you guys stay here and wait on me to come back down off that mountain. That was the instructions.

If you have problems why I'm gone, Aaron and her, they're here to help you, and you take your problems to them, but you guys wait on me. And so they had clear instruction on what to do. Well, then Moses gets up into the mountain, into the glory of God, and some time passes.

And during that time season, the Israelites decide they're tired of waiting on Moses. And so they go to Aaron and ask him to build them a god. And Aaron agrees, he builds them a golden calf, and they worship the calf.

And then, of course, God sends Moses down the mountain, and God's upset with them. Moses is upset with them. And there were consequences.

And so that's kind of where we're at here in Exodus 32. And I wanna use that text, the first seven verses of Exodus 32, to teach us seven things that we can do while we're waiting on a promise from God to come to pass. And the first one's this.

If you're gonna be successful in waiting on a promise all the way through the seed time and harvest process, the first thing we must do is you have to have a clear word from God. That's your seed. That's what you're planning, the promise, the plan.

What is it? What is it that God's promised you? What is it that you're standing for?

What's the promise? What is the plan? You need to know that clearly what the instruction is, your next step.

Because if you don't, if you don't know for sure when pressure comes, you'll quit. It'll be a lot easier to quit because you'll waver. You'll be like, well, maybe that was God.

Maybe it wasn't. Maybe that was just me. And so we have to take time to get clear instructions from the Lord, if you're gonna make it.

Because once you've heard from God, then you can hold on, you plant that seed. You know you've got a good seed to plant in the ground. But if you're just guessing, if you're just punching the air, I've done it a bazillion times.

I'm sure you've done it too. But as we grow, we start to recognize what's God's promises, what's us. The further we go, it gets easier to recognize this is from the Lord.

And so Moses, remember, he told them, these Israelites in Exodus 32, they had very clear instructions. They had a word on what they were supposed to do. They're supposed to wait until Moses comes back down the mountain.

That's their seed, that's their instruction that they're waiting on. For us, we've got to have a clear promise, a clear instruction, whatever it is for you. The second thing that we can do, so that's the first one, get a clear word, take the time to seek the Lord until you get clarity.

Faith begins where the will of God is known. You can't really have faith for something that you don't know is God's will. Take the time to get that seed together.

Here's point number two. The second thing that we can do, if you're gonna make it all the way from seed through the time season, all the way to the harvest, you're gonna have to be patient. Oh man, this is a tough one sometimes, but we have to be patient.

That time season, oftentimes it goes longer than we thought it was going to. And we see this in Exodus 32. Remember verse one?

It says, when the people saw how long it was taking Moses to come back down that mountain, when they saw how long it was taking, they went to Aaron and asked for another God. When they saw how long it was taking. And you know, you put yourself in their shoes.

They probably thought Aaron's gonna, or Moses, God's called him up there on the mountain. We're on our way to the promised land. You know, in their heart, they've got promised land vision.

They've got the big picture. We're heading to the promised land. And here along the journey, there's a stop.

And now they've got to wait for Moses to come back down the mountain. And I'm sure in their mind, they're probably thinking, okay, we'll wait. He may be up there a day or two, a couple of days.

But then a week passes. Two weeks, three, four, five. Now we're in six.

We're in our sixth week. He was up there 40 days. And at some point, somebody in the camp said, that's it.

This is ridiculous. We cannot wait anymore. I mean, we don't know what happened to Moses.

We can't see him. He could have fell off that mountain up there somewhere. He could have fallen and bumped his head.

He could be dead up there. We don't know what happened to him. We got to go.

We got to get to the promised land. And that's so often, that's what we do. God gives us a step, and we got to get to the...

We feel like in our heart, we got to go. We got to get there. And the Lord's saying, wait.

If you won't wait for me to come back down this mountain, if you won't be faithful in this step, I can't take you to the promise, because you'll get off out there, you'll get distracted, and it will cause you harm. You'll never reach the promise. He was trying to train them in these little things.

Just like I told you, he tries to train us. We got to be patient. So we need a clear word from God.

We're gonna have to be patient. Point three is, if you're gonna do it, if you're gonna make it all the way, we're gonna have to walk by faith and not by sight. We are gonna have to walk by faith and not by sight.

You cannot be led by what you can see going on. The Israelites, they wanted to be led by something they could see right now. They can't see Moses.

They don't know what happened to him. So they've got to create something in their mind. They want to create something that they can look at with their eyes.

Well, the scriptures tell us we walk by faith, by trusting God, not by sight. If you're gonna be led by sight, you can easily be distracted by a lot of things in our society. If you're just gonna be led by sight, if you're gonna be led by that, if you're believing for financial breakthrough or provision and you're led by your bank account balance, then it will be easy for you to get distracted and get off track, because all the enemy would have to do is offer you a job that pays $2 an hour more to get you off track.

If you're led by what you can see, your bank account, your paycheck, your retirement account, whatever it is, we can't be led by sight, what we can see. If you've got a promise and you're hanging on to it, you've got to be led by faith. The fourth thing that we can do in that waiting period, and this is so important, we want to show honor during the waiting season.

The Israelites here, when they got to waiting a little longer than they thought they were going to have to, remember they went to Aaron and they said, we don't know what happened to this Moses fella, this guy Moses, we don't know what happened to him. I mean, this guy just put his life on the line for them, didn't he? He was happy out there in the wilderness, herding some sheep, and God called him into Egypt to face Pharaoh and all his mighty army to try to lead these people out.

And they say, we don't know what happened to this fella, this guy that brought us out of Egypt, we got to move on without him, we got to go. Friends, in the waiting period, it's so important to show honor to God. You show honor by sticking with his things, you know, when things don't go your way as quick as you think they should, you don't quit going to church, you don't quit studying the word, you don't quit giving and tithing, you don't quit praying and asking and believing.

You show honor to God by honoring his things. God's word tells us, he said, I'll honor those who honor me. God, when we honor him, he honors us.

And when you're in the waiting season, the temptation can come to just like, it's not working. I'm tired of reading the Bible, I'm tired of praying, and I'm tired of going to church. I'm tired of hearing these preachers get up and tell me it's gonna be all right.

I'm tired of hearing all this, right? The enemy would love for you to quit honoring God during that waiting season, but don't do it. Keep showing honor.

So we gotta get a clear word from God. We're gonna have to be patient. We're gonna have to walk by faith and not by sight.

And we wanna keep showing honor to God during the waiting season. That's kinda like fertilizer for that seed. You're honoring God, you're watering that seed.

You're fertilizing it and tending to it by showing honor to Him. The fifth thing we gotta do, if we're gonna make it all the way to the end, we cannot create a counterfeit. The Israelites in Exodus 32, they took a gift that God had given them, all that gold.

Remember when they came out of Egypt, one of the last things the Egyptians did was load them up with wealth. They took the gold out of their ears, off their fingers, whatever the women did, gave it to the women and children of the Israelites on their way out. And so when they're out here at the base of Mount Sinai, they've grown impatient.

They wanna get to the promise, to the promised land. They take something that God gave them, this jewelry, this gift he had loaded them with, and they turn it into a counterfeit God. Friends, God's gifted you.

He's gifted you. You've got a spiritual gift in you. He's got plans to work with that gift, to honor him and honor his things and to bring joy to your life.

But it's easy in the waiting period to take those gifts and abilities that God's given you and get sidetracked and turn them into a counterfeit. So God may have called you into a teaching ministry, or let's just use that for an example. You've got the gift.

You can teach, you can talk. You're comfortable with people. Well, during the waiting season, if you wait long enough, the temptation will come to, I can just go do something else with this gift.

You know, I can go make money. I can go build a retirement. I can go make friends.

I can do whatever. And I've got into some of this. I've done this.

I've been standing on a promise to teach the Word, to encourage God's people through the teaching of the Word since 2010. We're now in 2024. This is 14 years I've been standing on this.

And I keep taking these little steps of faith, and I get a little further down the road, but I know there's more. I haven't fully arrived yet. Well, there's been times that during the waiting season, I've quit mentally.

In my heart, I've just grown weary and given up on that promise. I thank God it was only for a short amount of time, and we'll talk about that here in a minute. But there's times the temptation will come, just do something else.

Friends, we don't want to create counterfeits. And then the last thing is, if you've missed it, like I told you, I just told you, I've done it. If you've ever done that, repent and refocus.

Just go to the Lord and be like, okay, Lord, I've been waiting on this promise for what seems like to me forever. And I grew weary, I got tired of waiting, I quit trusting you for a minute, I went this direction, or I got sidetracked, and I repent, I come right back to you. Let's pick this thing back up.

And God is so gracious. He's so faithful to help you. He knows this journey's hard.

He knows it's not easy. Jesus had to fight with everything he had to finish his race. So he knows, he can sympathize with our struggle and what we go through.

He knows it's not easy. But when we miss it in stuff like this, or if we get off track, all we gotta do is repent, which means we turn back around, and we come back and say, okay. And God's grace, oftentimes, it keeps that seed in the ground anyway.

He knows your heart. He knows you're gonna come back. So that seed's still there.

He's just kind of letting you know, he's pruning and tending to things as it grows. And so he just, he stakes you up and keeps you strong. And he helps you go ahead and reach full maturity.

He's gracious. He loves you. He wants to help you.

And so if you get off, you get off track a little bit, just repent and come back. You know, the Israelites, this group of Israelites in Exodus 32, they would not do that. They just refused to repent and come back.

Their hearts never would change. You know, like I said, it's a progression. The further you go, you should start trusting God more and go ahead and make it all the way to the promised land.

Make it to the harvest on what you're believing for. But the Israelites, this group, they just wouldn't do it. He showed them time after time after time.

He trained them, and they just kept quitting and giving up during the time season. Friends, you can do this. With God's help, you can do it.

If you don't have a promise for God, from God, for your life right now, I gave you one in the last episode talking about the return of Christ. You can start hooking your faith on that. But God wants to lead you personally.

He does have plans for you. He has promises that you can grab ahold of. And so if you don't have one, I would encourage you to start seeking the Lord now.

What's my step? What's the next step I need to take? Friends, that will bring hope to your life.

And as you see God be faithful along all these little steps, life gets pretty exciting. Life gets real exciting when you see God be faithful and you grow in this relationship and you start eating some of the harvest, you start reaping off of these promises and experiencing more of God's plan for you. It tastes good.

It tastes real good. And so I want to encourage you, seek the Lord for a promise. And if you're in the time season, maybe you've already got a promise.

And you're in that time season. You've planted the seed, but now you're in this time season. Remember what I told you, be patient.

Walk by faith, not by sight. Show honor to God in that waiting season and don't create a counterfeit. Meditate on these things.

Take inventory, where am I? Where am I at? The word is like a mirror for you to look in.

And so when you hear these words, it's like looking in a mirror and you can say, okay, what do I look like where this is concerned? Where am I at? And then if you have gotten off track a little, God loves you.

He paid the price to get you back on track. So just turn back, repent, ask for forgiveness, and let's get back on the path here to victory. Amen.

Praise God. Amen. Well, thank you for listening.

I want to pray for you before we go and just believe that you are being strengthened as you hear this. Father God, I thank you for each person that's taken the time to listen to this podcast. And you know each heart.

You know each promise that you have for each person listening. I don't know what you've promised them, what you've got for each of their lives. I don't know, but you do.

And Lord, if they're following you, they've got something in their heart right now coming back to their memory. You're stirring their heart. You're drawing them to you as we speak.

And Father, each person is in a different place on their journey right now. But you can minister to each person listening. And I pray that whatever promise, whatever plan that you have for them, that right now it is just supernaturally fertilized.

It is supernaturally strengthened. That their heart is made good soil. And if there's some weeds there, Lord, we thank you for helping us pull them weeds out of the garden.

If we need some extra water of the word, whatever it is we need, Father, show us what to do. I pray that these words that we've spoken out, these steps, these six things that will help them, I pray that they take this and they meditate on it, and it gives them nourishment, and that they are supernaturally strengthened to finish their race, Lord. I pray that you would help each person to get the fulfillment of the promise that you put in their heart.

If they don't have a promise, Father, right now that they're standing on, I pray that you would, through the Holy Spirit, give them one. Right now, Lord, as they seek you, show them, this is the next step I have for you, and that they will respond in faith, that they will go from faith to faith, from promise to promise, to victory to victory, Lord. All to your glory, in Jesus' name, amen.

Amen, well, thank you so much for listening. I pray that this message strengthens you, and until next time, be blessed.

Thanks for listening to the podcast. To find this and other teachings, simply search for The Branches on any of your regular podcast platforms.