Pastor Kent Christmas | Learning To Wait On God | May 29, 2024
Pastor Kent Christmas | Learning To Wait On God | May 29, 2024
Pastor Kent Christmas Podcast www.regenerationnashville.org
You’re watching KCMI TV.
I’m so excited that you join me today.
And, uh, man, I’ve just You know me, if you listen to my preaching and my teaching, I love to talk about faith and, uh, I wanna talk about faith today from a perhaps a different standpoint.
And, uh, over the years, you know, that’s that’s probably the greatest battle that believers fight.
It’s not believing in the redemption story or the birth of Christ or the second coming of Jesus.
It’s about being able to believe god for the impossible.
And, uh, you know, there are a couple things I think about faith.
One of them is, uh, faith is not an emotion. It’s a choice.
Uh, even before, you know, people think, well, I need to feel it and I need to have goose bumps and all of those things.
It’s not it is a choice, but it’s also it is a position in god.
You know, you you can’t get wet until you get in a in the water.
Uh, you can stand there all you wanna say, well, I wish I was wet, but until you jump in the pool, you’re never gonna be wet.
And because you have to make a choice to get in there, and you’ll never walk by faith until you change your position from not believing to believing.
And so we wanna start are versed today out of, uh, 1st Corinthians chapter 15 58.
And I really believe this this bible study today is gonna get in your spirit, um, verse 57.
Let’s start with verse 57, but thanks be to god which giveth us the victory.
Notice that he he gives us the victory.
It’s not something you have to purchase It’s not something that you have to earn. Victory is given to us.
It says through the lord Jesus Christ. In the verse 58.
It says, therefore, or that word literally means because of what you’ve just heard.
What did we just hear that god has given us already the victory through Jesus Christ?
Therefore, My beloved brethren, oh, don’t you don’t you just love the fact that god is calling us beloved?
He he would tell Daniel that in the book of Daniel, if the angel would say, Daniel, you are greatly beloved.
I I love the fact that god loves us.
Says, therefore, my beloved brethren, because god has given us the victory in verse 57, he says, you need to be steadfast.
Unovable, always abounding in the work of the lord for as much as you know that your labor is not in vain in the lord.
So I wanna talk to you about, um, a time element because the Bible says this that that you and I, we can’t create seed.
The Bible says that god gives seed to the sower. And we can’t create harvests.
The Bible says that, uh, it says that that god is the lord of the harvest.
And so we plant. That that’s our responsibility.
God will give you seed, but he won’t plant it.
You have to go through the process of of finding the right pasture, the right field, and preparing it and putting that seed in the ground and, uh, nurturing it.
And then the Bible says, in fact, you says that he’s the lord of the harvest, but here’s here’s, I think, the greatest battle.
It has been for me over the years, and I believe that I’ve walked out of this Valley.
But I think the area that that unbelief comes in to our lives is the time frame between the planting of the seed and the reaping of the harvest.
Because once we plant the seed and before we get to the harvest, there’s this time element that you can’t see it.
You you’re really not involved in it.
Uh, the Bible says you can plant and another man can water, but it says this about it.
It says only god can give the increase.
And so because we are are human beings and we have our 5 senses Uh, we are stimulated in our intellect and our belief system by being able to see.
You remember, uh, after resurrection, Jesus had appeared to summons Cyples and, uh, said Thomas was not with them.
And so the disciples told Thomas, said Jesus is alive. We’ve seen him. He said, no.
You know, he he saw Jesus die. He saw him crucified.
He saw the horrendous damage to his physical body And, uh, probably was there, uh, when he was put in the grave.
And he said, I will not believe that he’s alive until I touched the prints of the nails in his hands, and then and then the sides, the scars of the side.
And so then a few days later, Jesus appears, and he singles out Thomas.
And he said Thomas, he said, here’s my hands. Touch him. Here’s my side.
He said, now Thomas, he said, uh, you believe because you have seen the the physical realm, you you’ve actually seen my scars.
You’ve touched my physical body so you know that I’m alive. But he said, Thomas, blessed.
Are they that have not seen yet they still believe.
And so I wanna I wanna just really zone in on that time frame to where it looks like nothing’s happening.
You know, you you you plant that garden in the early spring and you go out there a month later, and there’s nothing.
And, you know, it takes weeks before the plant breaks the soil.
And then when you walk out, you see the plant, you, oh, wow. There’s there’s something happening.
But there is in this there is a season where we declare things that are not as though they are.
This is I I love this verse. This is in Hebrews chapter 6.
Um, there is this There is this time frame to where you and I have to learn to wait upon god.
And in Isaiah chapter 40, um, verse 31, it says this, they that wait upon the lord shall renew their strength, and they shall mount up with wings as Eagles.
And, um, when we read that, we just think in terms of, well, you know, I’m just sitting here doing nothing.
And, uh, I’m having to wait on god for him to come through, but that word wait has a much stronger interpretation to it.
It literally means to look eagerly for, it means to hope or to expect something.
And so in this in this process where you have declared that god is going to do something, And before you physically see the answer, you’re in this you’re in this limbo stage, and that’s the time that if you’re not careful and you don’t guard your spirit, That’s the time that the spirit of unbelief gets in because we have a difficult time as human beings believing in something that we physically cannot see.
And so learning, uh, to wait upon god.
And he said, well, How how do I wait on the lord and and not lose my hope?
Uh, Luke 18 1 says this. It says men are always to pray and not faint.
And when when you begin to pray, And you get in the realm of the spirit, and the holy ghost begins to help you.
He’s your helper. He’s your partner. He comes along side of you in prayer.
You shift from the natural, and god will let you see by the spirit, the harvest that’s in the ground, that your natural eyes cannot see.
That’s what prayer does. It says men are not always to pray.
The first thing that has to happen in your life is when you are believing god for something great, you have to stay in an attitude of prayer.
He said, because if you stay in prayer, he said, you will not faint.
And this is what the word faint means. It means you will not be wearied out or exhausted.
And see, gone, uh, he has a different time frame.
And, you know, uh, there are certain seeds that take longer to to manifest and to grow than other seeds.
And there are some things that you believe god for, and they happen in a 24 hour period.
But then there are other things that you believe god that might take months or that might take year it might take years.
And it’s in that time. Once you believe god for something, you never can stop believing.
You cannot let time become a door that the spirit of unbelief comes through and kills your faith.
Um, there there is I’ve just I know this by experience.
You have to learn to be able to wait on god when you can’t see it.
And still believe that god is going to do it.
And in in Hebrews, um, this is the 6th chapter And, uh, this is this is talking about Abraham and and verse 15.
It says, god was saying, surely blessing I will bless the. And multiplying, I will multiply the.
So here, god begins to make this in credible promise to Abraham that even though you don’t have any saw it, any sons, He said, I am gonna bless you, and I am going to multiply you.
And the only way he could multiply Abraham was to continue the DNA of Abraham in the earth.
And so then I I read that because that’s where god makes the promise.
See, god will make you a promise because, um, faith has to have a promise to adhere to.
This is there are over 8000, uh, blessings in the Bible. And there are promises of god.
And we would not have, uh, the ability to believe for divine healing if there was not a promises says, by his stripes, we are healed.
So faith grabs ahold of the promise of god, grabs ahold of that scripture.
And says, I believe that god’s going to make it happen.
And yet we know that, uh, it was a 25 year process.
For the promise of god to come to pass in verse 15.
Verse 14, of course, there’s the there’s the promise. That god says he’s gonna do.
But verse 15, it says, speaking of Abraham, and I said, and so after that, He had patiently endured.
The word patiently here means to have steadfastness and endured.
So after Abraham had patiently endured, I love this.
It says he obtained the promise. You cannot let the waiting period. Oh my.
You cannot let the waiting period that you are in after yet, you believe that God has told you to declare something.
You cannot let the the length of it or the time elapse of it.
Bring you to a place to say, well, I just I guess god’s not gonna do it. No.
You know, Joseph had the had the dream of his brother in Balland Allen to him.
And that he was gonna be exalted.
And yet it took 13 years from the age seventeen to the age of thirty before he ever saw those dreams come to pass.
There are some great things in your spiritual wounds.
That god wants to bring forth.
Don’t let the enemy abort your faith because of how long you have been waiting. Oh my. Listen.
He he he prayers the only way it gets it’s prayers the only way that got me through 47 years of pastoring and believing that God was gonna do something great in my life.
It made me a voice, uh, to the nations. It took 47 years, but I kept holding on.
I kept believing. And and I’m not saying it’s gonna take you that many decades.
Uh, what I am saying is that that you get in places to where the seat has to germinate.
There has there is a process for that seed to come from a biding alone to being a harvest in a field that produces the the sustenance for so many people.
In Luke 2119, it makes a statement.
It says in your patience, possess you yourself.
Boy, you know, we don’t we don’t like to wait, you know, heard somebody make the the humorous remark about, lord, give me patience, but hurry up.
Um, we don’t like to wait you know, and that’s one of the things that’s hurt society is we’ve created a fast food culture.
Not just in eating, but everything has to be now, has to be fast.
And there’s patience is a virtue.
It’s it’s one of the gifts of the fruits of the spirit.
And when the writer’s writing here, Paul said this, he said, or or Luke said this, he said, in your patience, possess you yourself.
The word possess literally gives the gives the connotation of ownership or control.
Your soul realm, your soul, as you will, your mind, and your emotions And when those those parts of you are not under the dominion of the Holy Ghost, anything can happen.
Your mind could go crazy. You you get Alzheimer’s.
You get depression and or your will gets out of control and anger rules you and or your mind, you the enemy comes in with all these imaginations and these negative thoughts.
And, um, so he’s writing here.
He said, You possess you have control over your emotions, over your will, over your mind.
He said, but here’s where you get it from. He said it’s in your patience.
Remember, I told you that faith is a position, and it’s a choice.
You get up in the mornings.
And, you know, every every once in a while, I’ll get up and for no reason, boy, you just feel a spirit of melancholy call.
Or a spirit of heaviness. Nothing bad’s happened. What is it?
It is a demonic spirit that’s trying to come in and set the tone for you for that day.
And when if that melon, uh, that that spirit can get ahold of you, then faith can operate.
I I wanna encourage.
There are some of you that have, you know, you’ve been praying for years for your children. Don’t give up.
I prayed 14 years for my son.
Before god ever delivered him from a gay lifestyle, but I never gave up.
I believe that god would set him free.
There are some of you that are blaming god for financial through or for god to save your spouse or or to heal your body.
I remember one lady believing god to heal her and she professed it for 12 years.
And and, obviously, you know, that’s a that’s not the norm, but she just kept declaring in one day.
God did it. Took the steel rod out of her leg.
She made her leg back the same length and just by the power, but she always believed that god was gonna do it.
Don’t let the enemy Daniel talks about this.
He said there comes a day when the enemy is gonna come to try to wear out the saints.
Don’t let the enemy make you lose your shout or your profession of faith.
If you declare something in faith, it has to come to pass. God will back it up.
The Holy Spirit will come alongside of you. And so, uh, you know, we’re believing god for great things.
We’re believing, I’m believing for the whole city of Nashville.
I’m believing god give me fifty thousand people in this city that are on fire for god.
We’re believing for for buildings. We’re believing for 1,000,000 of dollars. And you say, well, pastor, that’s crazy.
Normal faith is crazy. And it is the heart of god.
It’s the will of god for you to prosper.
And the writer said they said, I would that you prosper how even as your soul, does prosper.
How does your soul prosper? You possess it in your patients. You make that choice.
You don’t between seed time and harvest. That’s when you gotta really stay and stand your ground.
It’s when you gotta dig in. Because in that season, there are a lot of times there’s nothing happening.
You don’t see anything happening. And that’s when the enemy wants to come in and say, well, it’s not gonna work.
No. There’s something going on underneath that you can’t see.
There’s a a metamorphosis taking place at that seat, and it’s changing from seed into harvest.
And then one day, it just begins to come up out So I I wanna encourage you, uh, I want you to declare today declare today that god is gonna perform his word.
And so be as Abraham, patiently endure, and you will obtain the promise.
Well, god bless you. I pray this has been, uh, strength to your bones.
Uh, you keep your head up, and then I’ll see you next week.
For more information about the Kent Christmas Ministries International or regeneration Nashville, go to kentchristmas.org or regeneration nashville.org.
