By Rev.
Brian Wilkie
Pastor of St. Andrew's Christian Community
Rockland, Ontario
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PODCAST LINK to CFRA
broadcast - Sunday, December 21st, 2014:
Broadcast Notes:
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‘Waiting Faithfully’
Welcome to Good News In the Morning a program
of words and music bringing a Christian message of hope and encouragement to
those who are looking for intelligent meaningful and spirited approach to faith
and to life.
This program is sponsored by Good News
Christian Ministries PO Box 184 Rideau Ferry, Ontario K0G 1W0. I'm your host
today, Brian Wilkie of St. Andrew's Christian church in Rockland. As always I
want to start by thanking you our listeners. We are so grateful for your
encouragement and support. Please remember that you can always visit our
website for materials to encourage and support you in your Christian walk.
If you miss an episode of the show you can go
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Today I want to speak to you about another theme of Advent, the season
before Christmas, and the theme I want to speak about is waiting faithfully.
Faithfulness is carrying on doing the work of God and caring on believing in
God through everyday activities. The scripture that speaks about this with regards to Christmas is
another scripture from the Gospel of Luke chapter 2 verse 36 and it concerns an
elderly woman let's listen to scripture:
Waiting Faithfully
Scripture (Lk 2:36–40).
36 There was also a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of
Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her
husband seven years after her marriage, 37 and then was a widow until she was
eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and
praying. 38 Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and
spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of
Jerusalem.
39 When Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the
Law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth. 40 And
the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of
God was upon him.
We will get a look at what it means in a few
moments, but first I'd like you to hear
Now there is a woman that
just astounds me: Anna is there when Jesus is presented in the temple shortly
after his birth. She's been there for so long.
It says she never left the temple. that was her constant place of prayer
and fasting and we see a sense of the timeframe that Anna was operating in she
had been married once but her marriage only lasted seven years before husband
had died. She was a widow then until she was 84.
Now we don't know exactly
what age she got married at but usually people married , women especially, married
quite young in those days and so after seven years of marriage she might have
only been in her 20s and then at the age
of 84, 60 years later, she's been waiting and hoping and praying . Now we’ll
take a look at her faithfulness and the faithfulness of some of the other
characters in this story in a few moments.
But I would like you to listen to some special music with me today.
Now by the time this is broadcast I will have
been at a concert with Carolyn Arends, in fact Papa's friends, our gospel group,
will have sung at before the concert begins and I’ll have been able to watch
Carolyn Arends as she presents her beautiful Christmas music. The music today
is all going to be from her new album “Christmas the story” and this first
piece is called “Dawn on us” and it speaks about Joseph
Dawn on us, Carolyn Arends,
Christmas: The Story of Stories
Anna, the daughter Phanuel,
sets a high standard faithfulness. Through her youth and middle age she's been
expecting to spend her life in the presence of God. Many people in those days
if they were widowed at a young age would often remarry because it was a matter
of economic necessity very often. How does this widow support herself? Perhaps
on money left to her by her husband, but she clearly lives a very simple life
worshiping fasting and praying. She’s a woman that is probably well known to
the people of Jerusalem. She’s that one who is always there, She’s very, very
religious, people will look at her and say there is a good woman because she's
not just wasting her time doing nothing all day she is spending time in the
presence of God.
Now how many of you of our listeners out here are good at
fasting? It’s not a practice that’s very popular these days. We've got all the
food we want and we’re not quite sure unless were dieting to lose weight what
good fasting does. Anna could probably given us a few lessons on that. Fasting is an indication of a deep desire.
There many times when were so moved by something happening in our lives that we
lose all thought of eating. Sometimes when were struck with loss and grief
people say well have something to eat and we’ll respond no I just I just don't
have any appetite. Fasting is a spiritual expression of longing for God so much
that you leave aside all other appetites and Anna has had this longing and
desire for God through her life and she's expressed that through fasting,
through controlling her other appetites and focusing on God and she's been
praying.
What do you pray about when you pray all day?
How do you fill your time
in prayer? Very often when we started out as Christians our time of prayer is
little more than a grocery list. We have a whole bunch of things we want God to
do. We make the list we express our list and then we don't know quite what to
do after that.
I remember when I was a young Christian and I had a small group
that we met together and we share concerns and we did I'd write them down a
little piece of paper and slipped into my wallet and then after a while I had
to had to write smaller and fold the paper couple times and eventually the
paper was folded over and over again with very small writing and each day I'd
only be able to pray through one fold of that prayer list because it just
seemed to take all my time and the grocery list had gotten so long people that
I wanted God to meet with, situations that needed help, people who were need of
healing, and prayers for my own strengthening encouragement. B ut eventually
that list kind of got put aside as I realize that God wanted more than just to
be a sort of Monty Hall, you know a character that just gives and gives and
gives and gives thing after thing after thing. He wanted to spend time with me;
he wanted me to get to know him better; he wanted me to tune my heart to his
heart; to try and understand through his word prayerfully considering what did
God want to happen.
Instead of deciding
what I thought needed doing I needed to listen to God and find out what he
wanted. The Catholic humanitarian is now
named a saint by the Catholic Church Mother Teresa, she was a person who spent
a lot of time in prayer and when asked about it by journalist the journalist
said: What do you pray about all those hours? What do you ask God for? What you
say to God?” and she said “I don't talk so much, I mostly listen.” and then the
journalist said “Well what does God say to you?” and she said “He doesn't talk
so, much he mostly listens.” Can you imagine having such an intimate
relationship with God that you could sit in his presence and experience that
stillness that the Scriptures speak of when you’re still and you know that he
is God and no words need to be spoken.
I remember having a friend
like that when I was a young kid; we got to know each other so well we when we
exhausted all the topics that needed to be talked about we could just sit there
and enjoy some time together, whether was looking at a beautiful sunset or
whether it was just sitting and relaxing, it was a relationship in which there
was a great deal of peace and in which sometimes no word needed to be said. Maybe
that was Anna, maybe she had her list of people she was concerned about and she
talk to God about those people; maybe she had questions about Scripture that
she would ask God as she prayed; and maybe she came to God over and over again
about the question of when he was going to redeem Jerusalem. But spending a
lifetime in prayer she must've drawn very close to God, worshiping, praising
God, fasting and praying. I don't know if I can be as faithful as Anna can
you? Can you wait when there's really
nothing happening, or just to rush off
and do something and make your mark?
Anna seemed to understand
her place. She didn't have to make up things for her to do to feel useful.
Somehow or other she knew that her place was this place of worship fasting and
prayer.
Now that's not necessarily
going to be the place for all of us, but too often we get dissatisfied if we
don't have something to do, something to accomplish ,we rush away from prayer
before God has really had a chance to move within our hearts. But she was faithful and all that time of
waiting culminated in a day when an amazing thing happened: She saw a baby. Now
she had seen lots of babies come into the temple over the years everybody came
to dedicate their child and to make the proper sacrifices for, but this baby, this baby she knew to be the
Redeemer of Israel. How did she
know? I think only those who are
faithful will understand.
I think that the way that God spoke to her is
something that Scripture doesn't express to us but it does tell us the
preparation that she was faithful in little things day after day after day.
Do
we want to be suddenly rewarded do we want to be suddenly the person has got
all the insight into God I know that happens sometimes but the truth is God
forms us most of the time very slowly, bit by bit, bringing us to the place he
wants us to be. We rush but God is patient.
Anna let God work on her over decades. Whether she was frustrated some
days and happy others we don't know. She was probably very much like us at
first but I expect that as time went on she became more comfortable just
attending to God and waiting for his direction as to what her life was about.
Now we're going to talk about a couple of other characters that were very
faithful in the story but I do want you to hear another song from Carolyn
Arend’s new album which is called “Christmas the story” and this song is called
“the sound”
The Sound, Carolyn Arends, Christmas: the Story of Stories
I hope you are enjoying music Carolyn Arends. She's a Canadian singer
and songwriter who lives out in Surrey BC and she is frequently here in Ottawa
doing concerts and I do hope you get a chance to listen to her albums online or
to see her in concert sometime. But I want to talk to you about a couple of
other people in this Scripture that we read today that were very faithful. I
want to speak to you about Joseph and Mary.
Now we often understand how
Mary was faithful: how she accepted what God
wanted her to do, and with Mary we don't have any background on her except that
she is a young woman who is engaged to be married and the Angel appears to her.
We don't know whether Mary had spent a lot of time in prayer and fasting like
Anna before this occurred, but we do know that when God called, Mary responded
faithfully. She accepted what God wanted to do.
She accepted everything that was part of becoming the mother of Jesus
Christ. She knew from the Angels own testimony that this was not when to be an
easy road. She understood being a woman
of her times that her becoming pregnant before she was married would be a
problem, especially for her fiancé Joseph who knew that he wasn't responsible
for this and yet she accepted what God wanted to do and she followed through.
But Mary's faithfulness doesn't end there. She continues to do the things that
a mother needs to do, the things of the Hebrew family needs to do. She raised
our Lord from childhood and she taught him just as Joseph did so that he
learned as he grew and grew up strong, filled with wisdom and grace. We spent a lot of time thinking about Mary's
faithfulness but do we spend as much time thinking about Joseph, this man who
was struck by this heartbreaking story that the woman he was engaged was
pregnant and he was not the father. He
was ready to quietly divorce Mary because he wasn't a mean spirited
person. He could've had her stoned for
adultery if she were guilty of such a thing and that's what he thought was the
case in the first place: That perhaps she had fallen in love with somebody else
and was just following through on marriage from duty. Whatever Joseph was
thinking, he wasn't bitter and trying to hurt Mary, he was going to divorce her
quietly so that the scandal would go away and should be free to do whatever she
was led to do. But the Angel told him that it was just as Mary had said, that
this was of the Lord and he should not hesitate to take her as a wife, and
Joseph faithfully obeyed.
And then when
the Angel warned in a dream, Joseph didn't wait, he obeyed what God told him to
do: He took the family off to Egypt and settled there for a while. How did he
know what was going to happen next? All he knew was that his life was in God's
hands. We have two very faithful people raising Jesus and we can go on and on
about the different indications of their faithfulness. We too are called to be
faithful. God has given us faith in order that he might produce good works in
us. So as we look at the Christmas story let's remember the call that God has
on our lives, that we are called to wait faithfully and to serve faithfully as
we wait. This is an important part: that Christmas should not just be a recitation of the facts.
Christmas should be a time when we really turn our hearts to God to worship him, to pray to him, even to fast, as we seek to understand more fully and draw closer to our Savior Jesus Christ. That we should take the opportunity to be strengthened in faithfulness by this word of God.
Christmas should be a time when we really turn our hearts to God to worship him, to pray to him, even to fast, as we seek to understand more fully and draw closer to our Savior Jesus Christ. That we should take the opportunity to be strengthened in faithfulness by this word of God.
So would you pray with me?
Almighty God use this
season to strengthen us so that we might wait faithfully might serve faithfully
Lord we ask this in Jesus name Amen.
Conclusion of Message
Once again I want to thank you listeners for
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you know the good news ministries has only one major cost? The four hosts Brent
Russett, George Sinclair, Juliet Schimpf and myself are volunteers. So are the
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Be sure to worship in a church where the
gospel is soundly proclaimed and lived out with compassion, integrity and
resolve. Now to conclude our program I would like to have you listen to a song
called
O
come all ye faithful, Carolyn Arends,
Christmas: the Story of Stories
I do pray that the Lord will hold your heart
and you would know Jesus personally and profoundly. May the Holy Spirit reside
deep within your heart, may the heavenly Father surround you with his constant
and abiding and accompanying love.
Good News In The Morning is produced in the
Studios of News Talk Radio 580 CFRA.
- Rev. Brian Wilkie
St. Andrew's
Christian Community, Rockland,
Ontario
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To listen to the above broadcast, click on the following link:
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