The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
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The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
What If Your Waiting Is Sacred_
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Hey there, welcome back to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. I'm Todd Rhodes, and we've made it, hopefully you've been along for the journey, to day six of our unwrapped series where we're digging into kind of the uncomfortable, unsurprising, and the holy realities of the Christmas story that we don't often talk about. And today we're talking about waiting, but not the passive, kind of frustrated kind. We're gonna talk about the sacred kind of waiting. Now, we all hate waiting, at least if you're like me. I hate waiting, so I'm just assuming that you hate waiting as well. Let me give you some examples, right? We'll microwave a hot pocket before it will boil water. We'll skip ahead on the YouTube video if the intro's too long. We get twitchy when our Amazon package is delayed, and yet so much of God's work in Scripture happens in seasons of waiting. Which raises a pretty uncomfortable question. What if your waiting is a wasted? What if it's what if it's sacred? Today I want to talk about two people who are rarely mentioned in Christmas sermons. Matter of fact, I bet you've not heard a Christmas sermon where we've talked about these two people. Simeon and Anna. Okay? These two people show up in Luke 2 quietly, briefly, right after Jesus is born and brought to the temple. And Simeon is described as righteous and devout. And he'd been waiting for the consolation of Israel, the Messiah, for years. And the Holy Spirit had revealed to him that he wouldn't die before seeing the Savior. And yet he was a very old man. And then one day Jesus shows up in the arms of a young couple, and Simeon, you remember the story. Simeon takes the child in his arms and he says, Now I can die in peace. And then there's Anna. She was a prophetess, and she'd also been waiting. She was widowed young and spent decades, decades worshiping in the temple, fasting and praying every day and every night, and she sees Jesus and immediately starts telling people about him. These two faithful, overlooked people were waiting and waiting, not drifting, not despairing, not disengaged. They were active and they were attentive and they were hopeful. And they didn't waste the waiting. They worshiped through it. And when the moment came, they didn't miss it. If we're honest with ourselves, if you're on a church staff, you know our thing or two about waiting. You wait for the vision to catch fire, you wait for team alignment, you wait for that new staff role to get budget approval, you wait for a leader to mature, you wait for somebody to come back, you wait for somebody to leave, wait for the next season to feel somewhat lighter and better. And it's tempting just to treat that waiting as wasted time and just determine that just grind harder or I'm gonna numb out or I'm just gonna assume that God is on mute for this season. But, and here's where the challenging part comes in. What if this season, the one where nothing seems to be happening, the one where he just seems like you're like you're like Anna, and nothing seems to be happening, is the one where everything is being actually shaped happening right now? Maybe, maybe waiting is where God stretches your faith or trains your listening or deepens your character. And maybe, just maybe waiting is one of the holiest acts of leadership that you can do today or for this season. Here's a bottom line. Waiting doesn't mean that God is slow. It means that He's building something sacred in you that urgency can't create. You're not stuck or anything else. You're just you're being shaped. There have been seasons in my life and during my ministry where I begged for movement, you beg for answers, you beg for momentum, you beg for that clarity, and all I got at the time was silence and delay. Nothing. But looking back, that was where God was doing his deepest work, teaching me patience and how to surrender to him and how to lead without needing to have that control. That's not waste of time. That's just simple, plain discipleship. All right, here's your reflection questions for today. I've been leaving you with a couple each day. Here are the two for today. Okay, number one, where are you experiencing a season of waiting in your life or in your ministry? And then follow up with that is what would it look like to treat that kind of waiting as sacred instead of frustrating? Think about that today. God, we don't love waiting. Matter of fact, we loathe that a lot of times. We fix, we build, we know, but you're not slow, you're intentional. And our prayer today is help us to treat this waiting period that we might be in right now as sacred. Help us to train our eyes on you so that when you move, that we recognize and we move with you.
