Living by Faith: Quietness

Welcome to Delight in Grace, Rich Powell, Pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston Salem. This is part two of a message that was first preached on February 10, 2024 at Grace Bible Church in Winston Salem.

Peace Maker, if fret is raging on the inside, there must be quietness. Now I want us to make something very clear here this morning because it says, Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him. And we're talking about what it looks like to live by faith.

When it says, wait patiently for Him. Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him. Let me tell you what this is not. This is not a pacifying wish of the imagination which drowns out troubles.

Do you know this is what most people perceive faith to be? A pacifying wish of the imagination that drowns out troubles. Is that what the trainer was saying to Jonathan with 80 pounds of scuba gear on his back in the waves of the ocean? John, just in your mind come up with this pacifying wish of your imagination that just ignores the waves. Is that what he was doing?

Not even close. Look at me. Remember what you learned.

What is that? That is a solid ground of expectation. Because when it says, be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him. We're dealing with a person here, not just a wish of the imagination. You are trusting the one who cares and the one who can.

Completely. So, when it says, wait patiently for Him. This is a very interesting text here. Because the idea here is to wait expectantly. Now here's the nuance of this word that is used. Because it is used most commonly in the Old Testament of a woman in labor. A woman in labor. Many of you have gone through that recently. We have a royal baby boom going on here. And it's continuing. Waiting expectantly in labor.

Going through the labor. You have to endure the process. But it will come to completion.

That's the idea here. Psalm 62 2 uses the same word and it says, I will not be greatly shaken. So, it's the sense that you are shaken a little bit. Labor is not an easy thing, is it?

I wouldn't know, but I've heard. All I've had is a wisdom tooth. But I hear labor is very hard and I witnessed it six times. It's not easy. But you're in that state of tension. You're enduring the pain.

You are under the weight. It is in that that God says, wait patiently. It is in the storms and the waves of life that God says, look at me, remember, remember. It's not just wait, right? The Lord doesn't just say be still and wait. He doesn't just say be still and wait patiently. He says be still before the Lord and wait patiently, what?

For Him. He cares and He can. You see, there is a person involved here. This is objective reality to which David calls us.

It is recorded in history. This is God's self-disclosure. It is in this way, it is in this way that God says, look at me.

That's what He means. God is like what God has done. And He calls you to look at Him and to remember so that you're not caught up fretting and getting riled up over the hardships, the inequities, the injustices, the oppression of life. Because He has promised two things and these come in verse 9. Wait patiently for Him, wait for what exactly? Wait for these two things that He has promised. Among many things, He has promised these two things. First of all, that evildoers shall be cut off.

Evildoers shall be cut off. Because God is sovereign, He has the last word. Because God is good, He will oppose evil.

Wait patiently for Him. But the second thing that He has promised is that those who wait on the Lord shall inherit the land. You see, this is a promised presence of God where David said, He is my portion forever.

I will forever get to enjoy the perfect, prosperous, peaceful, pleasurable presence of God. It's in the Word of God. God says, look at me. You need to know this, Christian. If you are in Christ, regardless of the difficulty of the circumstances that might be going on now, the things that get you riled up, the anxiety that you might feel, because you are in Christ, you are a part of the story where everything will be as it ought to be.

You are a part of that story where everything will be as it ought to be. Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him. So the opposite of that then, where David is actually saying the same thing but in a different way, he says at the second part of verse 7, fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way or the man who carries out evil devices.

Fret not yourself and the idea of fret is to get enraged, that internal smoldering that can go on. It is the attitude and the disposition of alarm. The attitude and disposition of alarm at the advance of the ungodly, about those who carry out evil devices. I was listening to a podcast earlier this week about things that go on down in Biloxi, Mississippi. On the Gulf Coast down there, it is a vacation resort. And there is some real darkness that happens behind the scenes down there. And it called for the company of a 16 year old girl and a 12 year old boy from sex traffickers.

And it was discovered that this man was a deacon in his church in Montana and he had a wife and two kids. And this sex trafficking involves children as young as three years old. And they are so used and abused that by the time they're 10, they're dead.

And when they die, they maim them so that they can't be identified. I can't tell you the rage that that stirred up in me. As a man, it makes me want to grab somebody's neck and just squeeze and twist with everything I've got. It makes me want to put my fist through a wall.

This stuff is reality and it goes on a whole lot more than you and I would even care to imagine. What gets you riled up, that gets me riled up. Or laws that are passed in our land that are tantamount to infanticide, that gets me riled up.

Or abuse of people and relationships and as a pastor, I encounter that more often than I care to admit. It gets me riled up. And as a man, I develop this disposition of I have to fix this. And what I have done, the mistake that I have made sometimes in the past is that I will fret and I will get riled up. And I will manifest that externally in the attempt to fix this problem in this person. And you know what that does? It alienates them.

Not even close. And I hate to admit this, but I've driven people away. You've been listening to Rich Powell, the lead pastor at Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. The Delight in Grace mission is to help you know that God designed you to realize your highest good and your deepest satisfaction in Him. The one who is infinitely good. I hope you'll join us again on weekdays at 10 a.m. We'll be right back. .