Episode 123138: 12/21/25 Waiting Well: Unconditional Hope

1:35 I invite you to have a seat. so we are days away from actual christmas day and it's one of those things where i i think about growing up and uh you know there's always i don't know if you had lists of christmas lists but there's always that kind of thing that um if you had a list a christmas list you had sometimes on that list was like the one thing you really wanted more more than anything else i i think i think about those those years when you know you didn't get what you asked for those years that you did get what you asked for. I mean, there's a lot of gifts, but there was that one gift. In fact, I mean, if you think about a Christmas story, here's Ralphie, right? If you remember that scene on Christmas morning, he has all these presents, all these gifts, but his obsession had been the Red Rider BB gun rifle, right? He wanted that more than he wanted anything else. And so he was still happy. He got a bunch of gifts, but he didn't get the one gift until his dad says, oh, check that. What's that? What's that behind the tree over there? And he finds the Red Rider BB gun. It's awesome.

2:28 It's awesome when you're able to say, hey, I got what I asked for. Praise God when we come before the Lord and we ask for something, we wait for something, we pray for something, and we get that thing. That really is incredible. And it's truly one of those moments where we just say, God, thank you, praise God. The question is this. You know, we've been, this whole Advent, we've been in this series called Waiting Well. And we've been learning how we wait well. typically how we wait is we check out, right? We're passive, but we're called to engage or we wait by worrying, but we're called to trust God in his goodness and his timing. We wait by being in a hurry, being rushed, but we're called to have patience and to praise God in the midst of everything. What happens when we wait well, but we don't get what we asked for? Because that happens, right? I prayed. I trusted. I engaged. I praised. I did all of the right things in waiting well, and then I didn't get what I asked for. Because that's the truth. The reality, that's our lives.

3:32 I could do everything right and still not win. So the question we could ask is, what are you waiting for? I remember talking with a woman a number of years ago. It was this heartbreaking moment where she said, you know, when I was in high school and I didn't have what I wanted, and I just was going through a lot of strain. People said, hey, wait till you get to college. College will be different. She said, when I'm after college, it wasn't any different. And they said, well, wait till you get done with college. People are silly in college. Just wait till you get into the real world. Then they'll be fine. She said, I got into the real world and nothing was better. Nothing had changed. Said, well, wait, you're in your 20s. Everyone's stupid. Just wait till you get past your 20s. And she got to her 30s and still nothing. Said, well, wait, you're only early 30s. And she got to her 40s. And when I talked to her, she had just turned 50, a little after 50, and she's like, I've been waiting my whole life, and I still don't have it. Because what she was waiting for in particular was waiting for someone to marry.

4:33 She's waiting for a family. And that could be so many of us. Like, what are we waiting for? It could be our students, you know, waiting for graduation. I'm waiting to get that job. I'm waiting to find that spouse, find that person I can share life with. I'm waiting for my vocation. So many couples, I'm waiting for children. there are people who graduate and they want success and they don't get it. And they maybe waited well. Maybe they were engaged and they were not worried and they praised God and they trusted and then they don't get what they asked for. Now, here's the interesting thing. Graduation, the job, the success, the children, spouse, vocation, all of those are outcomes. Which makes sense, of course. it makes sense on one hand because you want to wait for outcomes. But on the other hand, we know the painful truth. And the painful truth is it is a hard reality of life that I might not get what I'm waiting for.

5:31 so what I need to do is I need to wait with hope, but a certain kind of hope. As Christians, here we are in Advent. We need to learn how to wait with unconditional hope. I think of the gospel today. There's this incredible announcement from the angel to Joseph in a dream, and then Matthew writes this. He says, All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken through Isaiah the prophet, that a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, they shall name him Emmanuel, which means God is with us. And I think that's incredible. But let's put a context around this. The context is what? Isaiah said these words. Again, Matthew's quoting these words over 600 years after Isaiah wrote those words.

6:13 And he says, all this took place to fulfill what had been spoken to Isaiah the prophet. Almost 700 years before this, Isaiah had spoken these words. God had spoken these words. God had made this promise. Now think about if you were living in the time of Isaiah, here's a promise. you never got to see the promise fulfilled. The generation after Isaiah, you lived in the promise, you never got to see the promise fulfilled. Next generation, next generation. In fact, the letter to the Hebrews talks about, Hebrews chapter 11, where the author of Hebrews is going through all of these people who were promised God's blessings, promised a certain thing. And it says this, it said, all of these, this author to the Hebrews, of the Hebrews in chapter 11, it said, all of these died in faith, having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on this earth. they didn't get what they waited for.

7:09 They didn't get what they prayed for. They didn't get the outcome. And this is the reality. Our faith, our hope cannot depend on outcomes. Hebrews 11, they believed without receiving. Now, our culture doesn't do that, all right? Our culture ties faith to getting what you ask for, to getting what we want. This, this day, this flips that whole thing around because waiting well means not settling for less than what God wants for us. It means this. Waiting well means having the disposition. Waiting well means having the posture towards God that looks like the prophet Habakkuk. Another example from the Old Testament. Habakkuk was a prophet living at a time of Israel's demise, right? So here is the 12 tribes of Israel reunited, right? Under King David, under King Solomon. They divide under Solomon's son. Never to be recovered.

8:03 The two remaining tribes, right, in Judah and Benjamin around Jerusalem, that's still God's promise. God promised that the next king, the anointed one, would come from the tribe of Judah. So that's the hope of the people of Israel. Their hope was, okay, we're gonna get that Messiah that was promised to us from the tribe of Judah. As long as we're here, God's promises are gonna be faithful. And then here's Habakkuk, because the Assyrians came in, destroyed those 10 tribes in the north, if you know your history. Then the Babylonians came, they destroyed the two remaining tribes of Benjamin and Judah, brought them into exile. And here's Habakkuk who is walking through the city and he can see this absolute devastation and destruction the Babylonians wreaked upon what he thought was the last hope.

8:44 Not only was the promise over, it seemed like, but he's walking amid the streets of Jerusalem where people are literally starving to death. In fact, among the great many tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people, in this moment it talked about, actually Jeremiah talks about this and Lamentations talks about this, about how mothers would actually even roast their own children because they were starving. They had gone mad from starvation, mad from hunger. And Habakkuk talks about this. He looks at all of this. And in the midst of not understanding what's going on, in the midst of like thinking, okay, are God's promises not going to work out? Will I wait and pray and engage and praise and still not get what I want? Habakkuk, his heart changes. And he says these words. He says, though the fig tree should not blossom, right? and there'll be no herd in the stalls. I mean, there's no ever, never a blessing that even returns to Jerusalem.

9:37 Even though the fig tree blossomed not and there'll be no herd in the stalls, even if nothing gets better, he says this, yet I will rejoice in the Lord and I will take joy in the God of my salvation. What Habakkuk does, he acknowledges, yep, no, this is real scarcity. This is real starvation. This is real hardship. And he chooses joy. He chooses unconditional hope. think about that what would that look like in my life i don't get what i'm desperate for i don't get what i'm waiting for i don't get what i pray for i don't get what i work for and i still have this unconditional hope i i watched a recently a protestant pastor who was challenged on this and the pastor was describing how he and his wife weren't able to have children and and he's talked about how it was a great pain in his wife and in the life of his heart of his wife. And he said some people who weren't Christian, who weren't believers, they came up to him and they said, okay, pastor. He said, answer us this. Where's your God now? You've been praying for your child. You don't have a child. You can't have children. Where is your God now? His response was so powerful. His response was a Habakkuk response. His response was this. He said, I know this. I know God is a good God. And he answers prayer. I know that God answers prayer.

10:52 Even if he doesn't, this is like Habakkuk, he said, even if he doesn't, I am still going to love him. I'm still going to seek him. I'm still going to press into him. He said this. He said, because why? Because I believe in the gospel. My sins have been forgiven. He said, I've been given a new life through Jesus Christ. And if God doesn't answer one prayer for the rest of my life, I will still love him and praise him because of what he did on the cross for me. This is what it is to have unconditional hope. Even if God answers no, even if he answers no prayer for the rest of my life. I will still love him. I will still praise him. I will still have unconditional hope. Why? Because God has, he's already been enough. I remember I came across this other story of this woman. She was describing one of the most painful experiences of her entire life. There was a tragedy that happened not too long ago in Radcliffe, Kentucky. This Assemblies of God church had a youth trip and this bus got in an accident and 24 teenagers were killed in this bus accident.

11:58 And this old woman was talking about that day. She described how, she said, I had to tell 24 sets of parents every 15 minutes that they lost their child. she said I remember one couple in fact she said I remember one mom she came in and I had to tell her I had to tell her their son Billy who was 17 years old she said Billy has gone home to the Lord and sitting in front of her was this man this mom and this dad and she said the father went to pieces he just as anyone would immediately this teenager's mom said she said these words she said the first thing we must do is to praise God for 17 years she just found out that her 17-year-old son, her only son, her only child, was dead.

12:58 She said, but the first thing we must do is we must praise God for 17 years. We have to praise God for letting us have Billy for 17 wonderful, 17 blessed years. And then she says, this old woman who told her this news, said she got up around the table and walked over to the woman who told her the news, this mom did, and she gave her, she embraced her and she said, because this old woman's son was also in the bus accident, but he didn't die. She said, I rejoice with you that your son made it, but God's grace will be sufficient for us.

13:37 This old woman concluded by saying, she said that kind of response, that kind of faith, that kind of hope, she said it takes more than just a bedtime prayer. To have that kind of hope in a Christian's heart takes more than just grace before meals. It takes knowing the one in whom we hope because that's what Christian hope is. We have to understand this. How do we have Christian hope? Sometimes people reduce Christian hope to outcomes. Well, I hope things will get better. I hope this will get resolved. I hope I get what I ask for. I hope that I get what I'm waiting for. Christian hope is not that. Christian hope is this. Christian hope is relational. It's not trusting in outcomes. It's not hoping for outcomes. It's not wishing for outcomes. It's not relying on outcomes. it's living on this promise and that promise of God is not that we will not experience death. God's promise is not that we will not experience suffering. God's promise has nothing to do with being spared the cross.

14:29 God's promise is that in that suffering he'll be there. God's promise is in that loss he'll be there. God's promise is that in that death and in that grief and on that cross he will be there. That's why I will always say the Christian hope is this. It's trust in another, capital A, another, extended into the future. I'm not trusting in outcomes. I'm not hoping for outcomes. I'm trusting in him. I'm hoping in him. That's the only way we can have unconditional hope. I don't hope for an outcome. I can pray for it. I can not worry about it. I can praise God in the midst of it. I have joy in it. But we have unconditional hope when we have him.

15:19 That's how we do it. That's how we can get to that place like Habakkuk and say, even if there's no fig on the trees and even if there's no herd in the stalls, yet will I rejoice in the Lord. That's how we can be like that pastor who said, yep, my wife and I can't have children, but I can praise him. I won't, even if he answers no prayer for the rest of my life, never answers another prayer for the rest of my life, I will still hope. And that's like this mom who had lost her only son, her only child, and says, the first thing we have to do is praise God for 17 years. He didn't have to give us those 17 years. He did. And so he's the one I hope in.

15:55 This is the last thing. Here we are on the last Sunday before Christmas Day. and we might not get, in our lives, we might not get what we're waiting for. We might not get what we're praying for. We might not get what we hope for. So what do we do in the meantime?

16:16 I recently talked with a young couple who, they also have been struggling with infertility. It's been a great wound in their hearts. and they've said what they've started to do is they've started to every day have what they call a blessing jar, and the blessing jar is every blessing, every grace, every gift that they receive from God, they write it down on a piece of paper and put it in the blessing jar, because they said we were so preoccupied with the blessing, a child, that we haven't gotten. We're so preoccupied with this blessing that we're praying for that we haven't gotten. we're so preoccupied with this blessing that we're waiting for that we haven't gotten that we had become blind and deaf and numb to all the blessings God has in our lives that we that he is giving us so every day what do we do every day we actually write down we count our blessings and write them down and put them in a jar so that we can be reminded that God has not abandoned us he's not breaking his promises he's not left us alone but he's the one in whom we hope. Even if we don't get what we want, we can still praise Him. We can still rejoice. We can still hope. And we can still wait well.