Waiting is always the key to success. No surprise then, that the masters of waiting are the richest people in the world. People who have discovered the potent delights of waiting enjoy what evades most. Waiters have found that far more is achieved when they wait than if they rush. They have learned that there is often a dire difference between taking the best available option and waiting for the best option. If you wait a moment, I'll explain what they know.
Indeed, none who wait for you shall be put to shame;
Psalm 25:3a
About seven years ago I started a project I thought would take a few months to complete. As I undertook this, it soon became apparent to me that this Boreham Project - to make a documentary series of one of the greatest preachers and essayists of all time - would take a little longer than three months. After six years, four parts are completed (but still have to be re-edited and closed-captioned) and there remains one more concluding part to make. I have travelled to Victoria, New South Wales, New Zealand, and Canada to research, film and interview for this project.
¶ Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains.
James 5:7
Along the way to assembling this project, I have had to deal with several crises and other unexpected issues. These included taking on the leadership of one of Australia's premier regional Christian Radio Stations (WayFM), the increased demands of leading ICI Theological College (which has quadrupled in student population over the last few years), and an invitation to be a founding National Leadership Team member of the Acts 2 Alliance. None of these are diversions from my God ordained mission - they are an expression of it. Added to this has been increased number of weddings I've been invited to do over the past few years (even though as these couples discover I don't do good weddings because my focus with them is about their marriage not so much about just the first day of their marriage) and each couple requires around 9 months of preparation involving monthly, fortnightly and weekly meetings as we approach their wedding dates. And lately I've been involved in a city-wide effort to hold a majorfestival at Easter. My Boreham Project has had to wait. In the midst of this waiting I discovered an ancient secret.
So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her. Genesis 29:20
Waiting is proportional to value. I must confess that I do not know if this was ever intended to be a secret. But it must be a secret because so few people know it. We live an instant-messaging, fast-food, microwave world. This impatience and tendency to rush has even impacted relationships. Such bizarre practices as "speed dating" may be amongst the most innocent expressions of this impatience while domestic violence and forced divorce are undoubtedly among the most damaging effects. It seems that the world is not prepared to wait anymore.
The modern reader is shocked by such Old Testament statements as Jacob waiting and serving seven years for the opportunity to marry the woman he loved. The secret to waiting is that the more valuable the prize the more prepared one is to wait for it. Jacob prized Rachel. His waiting seven years "seemed to him but a few days" - because to him, the prize was great. Impatience always diminishes something's value. Always. In a rare moment of Ecclesiatical correctness, Solomon shares the secret this way-
Better is the end of a thing than its beginning,
and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.
Ecclesiastes 7:8
What are you waiting for? This is often the world's summons to not wait. But I wonder if we shouldn't have a short list ready to answer the question? What are you waiting for? Knowing that the greater the wait the greater the value of the prize, I think more of us should wait up. This year marks our twentieth anniversary at Legana. Before I commenced as the pastor of Legana, the Lord spoke softly into my heart about His plans for our church. Even though we only had 17 members when we started, thousands of dollars of debt, and no facilities, the Lord showed me a church of over 300 worshipers making a "significant" difference in our State. I honestly thought the Lord would do this in just a few months or maybe, at the outside, a few years. I have too long been impatient about most things. Now, twenty years later we are beginning to see the fulfilment of this softly spoken word. The wait will have been worth it.
The ancient secret is: the greater the wait, the greater the value of the prize. This is why the people who wait best are the wealthiest people in the world - and in a far lesser way, but not too infrequently, they also become wealthy financially. F.W. Boreham tells the story of travellers who stayed some nights in a English manor. They had heard that the surrounding forests was home to some of the most exotic English wildlife. Despite their best efforts, they had seen none. As they told of their disappointment over the manor's grand breakfast table, the son of the laird quietly interjected that he had seen several very rare species of this wildlife not far from where these travellers had been shortly before they had been there. They asked him how this possible. He said that it was important to sit very still and wait. They assured him that this is indeed what they had done. He then said, "Well after the fourth or fifth hour you should have seen some of these rare animals." Their problem was never a lack of the prized animals but of their relative impatience to see them. The greater the value of the prize, the greater the wait to possess it. In light of this waiting secret, Scriptures profoundly tell the worshiper of God to-
Be strong, and let your heart take courage,
all you who wait for the LORD!
Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him;
Psalm 31:24; 37:7a
Scripture tells the worshiper to wait for (on) God more than anything else. Because the value of the prize is so limitlessly great, the wait through delay, adversity, trial, obstacle, or disappointment is insignificant in comparison - it seems "but a few days". The apostle Paul called these kind of circumstances during our worship wait for God, "momentary light affliction" (2Cor. 4:17 "For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison"). God is infinitely worth the wait.
"but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint."
Isaiah 40:31
If you're impatient, learn to wait. Of course, while waiting certainly requires patience, it doesn't idleness (just ask any professional waiter at a restaurant). While we wait, we are trusting. While we wait, we are resting. While we wait we are serving. We do this for a prize. For me, I'm waiting to complete my Boreham project. I'm waiting to see all that God has for our church in the time that He has us here. I'm waiting to see how my children blossom. I'm waiting to see our State turn to Christ. What are you waiting for? Please wait.
Ps. Andrew
As you know, you have three sets of ears. But what you may not have heard is that not everybody knows how to use them. You don't have to be deaf to not hear - you just have to not listen. Even though many people have ears on the sides of their heads that are in reasonable condition, they may not use them particularly well. This is called selective hearing. But selective hearing not only effects the outermost ears, it can effect a person's inner ears as well. 
Even though we all have these second ears, it takes practice and training to learn how to use them. It seems that women are more adept at this form of listening. But when a man is introduced to his second ears it opens up a whole new way of seeing the world to him. It helps him to understand what his wife has really been saying to him. This is one of the most components in pre-marriage counselling when a couple is introduced to the five levels of communication (which start with clichés, then secondly facts, and so on). When we get to Level 3 communication, we introduce a new set of listening skills to the couple. This is a three stage process of listening. Stage 1 is "Active Listening". Stage 2 is "Reactive Listening". And Stage 3 is "Responsive Listening". Each stage is sequential. That is, you cannot do Stage 3 listening unless you've done Stages 1 and 2. This is one of the most difficult phases of the pre-marriage preparation for a couple. It requires learning to hear what they previously thought was criticism as heart. Reactive listening involves posture, mood, engagement, and openness. Have you ever tried to tell someone something they just wouldn't hear? Do people find it difficult to be frank and open with you? If you learn to be a positively reactive listener (give verbal cues that you're listening, smile with your eyes as they talk to you, don't interrupt them, don't be defensive, thank them for the courage and willingness to share with you) you may well find that more people want to talk with you.
HEAR HEAR
Hearing someone's heart does not come naturally. It might be possible to develop it without some training, but like anything learned the hard way, it would have to be learned the hard way. You could start by asking the one talking to you things like, "Help me to understand what you're really saying." "Are you saying...?" By restating to someone what you heard them say you are learning how to hear with your first two sets of ears. It's with your second set of ears that you hear and take note of what someone isn't telling you. These ears are used to hear hesitation. These ears are used to detect sadness, loneliness, excitement, fear, or care. But we all have a third set of ears.
The proof of whether someone has truly encountered Christ is whether they are becoming increasingly Christ-like. One of my primary roles as a pastor is not to do house-calls, but to help people understand what God they worship is truly like, and lead them in worship of Him. By beholding Christ in worship, we are incrementally and automatically transformed into His likeness. Before we knew Christ we swore, we drank, we lied cheated and stole. But then Christ gripped us and we beheld Him. We saw in Him the 'pearl of great price', our 'treasured field', and 'exceedingly great reward', and we forsook all and followed Him. We became a wet lump of clay in the Heavenly Potter's hands. He then began His work of transformation. He began spinning us. He began hollowing us out with His hands (one inner, the other on the outer). He applied pressure to us on the inside of our life and with His other hand He applied pressure to the outside of us. When He had finished with us on His wheel, He took us and thinned us so we would be adaptable in His hands. 
After He had shaped us into a vessel that was now tall and fashioned, He sat us on a shelf to dry. During this phase of our growth we felt abandoned, alone, and dry. But He hadn't left us. He was waiting for us. And when we were ready, He took us and applied His distinguishing paint to us. He then seemed to abandon us again by turning up the heat in our lives in His kiln. In this phase of our growth, The Potter stood off, seemingly aloof and uncaring - we rarely caught His caring eye through the inspection hole of the furnace. In the kiln, His paint on us fused into the clay and it formed a beautiful glaze. In the same way, the heat/pressures/trials of life are used by the Potter to beautify us as well as to harden us - so that we are useful for Him. This is the process of growth for a lump of clay into a beautiful vase. One of the hallmarks of a mature Christian is that they endure despite not understanding what the Potter is doing!
Similarly, churches undergo the Potter's shaping in order for them to grow. It starts by hollowing out the church. This is where the heart is - on the inside. For a church to grow in God's hands, it requires a new, enlarged heart. This heart firstly yields to the Father. "Father, have Your way in my heart" is a continual prayer of a church yielded to The Heavenly Potter. The result of this beautiful prayer is a change of heart toward others. Each Sunday changed-hearted church members look for others first not theirs (their friends, their family, their group members). Changed-hearted believers come to the assembly of the church and see others - a brother who is struggling, a sister who is lonely, a pastor who is disheartened, a drummer who is beaten, a guitarist who is highly strung. A changed-hearted church knows how to reach out as well to reach in.
I've mentioned the story of our house renovation and the cost - not just financial - that was involved. But the end result was that our house grew into a home through building. I've also mentioned that spiritual growth involves a change of heart. Heart transplants come at a cost - not just financial. And the Bible also talks about a kind of growth that requires maturing. This comes at a cost (just ask any parent!). For an infant to grow into adulthood there are all kinds of costs. For a church to grow into a mature church there is a price to pay. As parents discover when their families grow, there is a price to pay when children need medical attention at the most inconvenient times, when sleep-ins become a distant memory as you're up before dawn on the coldest Tasmanian Winter's morn driving your four and five year olds to Saturday junior soccer, and when your daughters each get married to some guys who've each got 35 brothers and sisters and 212 uncles and aunties, who all insist on being invited to the silver-service reception at the Hotel Grand Sherihilton. As your children grow, there's education costs and multiple volunteer requests from the organisations they are involved with. Growing families come at a cost of money and time. I could also mention the physical drain of having worked all day and then coming home to give your children play/talk/homework time. Growing families come at the cost of energy.
When a church is around 50 people, it is very easy for everybody to know each other. In a church that size, everyone has access to the pastor and the pastor enjoys having access to everyone.
You may have heard of the one about the rich man who died and turned up at the Pearly Gates with bags of gold bullion. St. Peter asked him, "Why did you bring paving stones to heaven?" The joke is funny because it highlights the absurdity of attempting to take this life's temporary riches into The Life to come, and how even more ridiculous it would be - even you could - due to Heaven's already magnificent limitless opulence. Nothing in this life surpasses The Life that awaits those whom God has saved. But there is something that we can take with us from this life into The Life to come. 
The aged apostle told his protegé that you can take it with you - but not stuff. Rather, the one thing you can take with you from life temporal into Life Eternal is: godliness. When the child of God is brought Home to be with their Magnificent One, their knowledge will exponentially increase ("now we know in part..."). The child of God's abilities will be dramatically multiplied and improved to superhuman levels. Perhaps most deliciously, the child of God can look forward to a perfected, glorified body that will never tire, ache, degrade, or age. But godliness holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. In the Life To Come, no one will be more godly than they attain to in this life. Paul previously introduced this revelation as a 'great mystery'. 
Godliness is therefore an attitude that is observed by acts of devotion to Christ that brings its devotees into closer and sweeter communion with Christ. Godliness is not holiness because holiness is a result of godliness. It requires training (1Tim. 4:7). It fosters proper responsibility toward family members (1Tim. 5:4). It is fueled by sound Biblical teaching (1Tim. 6:3). It gives more than it takes (1Tim. 6:5). It is prized above any material gain (1Tim. 6:6). It is to be pursued instead of yielding to the cravings of our lusts (1Tim. 6:10-11). It requires a growing knowledge of God's Word that instructs the believer how to be self-controlled that enables them to endure suffering. And godliness can only nurtured when regularly environed in a community of other godly God-adorers.
It happened just before the Tribulation began. When it did begin, tens of thousands of Christians were brutally martyred. But it wasn't the attack from outside the Church that would be the cause of the greatest devastation. What made this devastation so glaring was the contrast between how the original local church was characterised compared with its condition just before the Tribulation began. This crisis in Jerusalem produced a dramatic response of Biblical proportions that literally averted an eternal catastrophe!
I suspect the sad change coincided as the next generation emerged. They had heard their parents talk about the supernatural fire, the wind from heaven, the miracles, the preaching that led 3,000 people to immediately turn to Christ. They heard what happened then but never really heard what should be happening now - which was not what happened then. They stopped loving God's Word. They stopped meeting together as regularly as they used to and thus the power derived from their worship, prayer, instruction together began to wane. They stopped giving - and coincidently, they had less. Their less provoked the Apostle to the Gentiles to take up an offering among the Asian churches for these believers in Jerusalem. 
It often happens. People once converted to Christ delight in the joy of their new birth and experience the thrill of spiritual ecstasy that can only come from receiving the Father's forgiveness. The early days of their newly converted life are marked by enthusiasm for fellowship, prayer, worship, teaching, witnessing, generosity, hospitality - together. But then the Enemy musters his reserves and begins to wage his war of distraction. He rarely launches a full-on assault (except where he knows that this is all it all it will take to distract some). He has injuriously learned by experience that when The Blood-Bought suffer greatly they supplicate greatly to their Limitlessly Loving Saviour - and are ironically strengthened against him. He has found that true believers become stronger believers as a result of suffering. But he is ever on the lookout for those who claim to be believers yet look to get out of their suffering (rather than the true believer who looks to what they can get out of their suffering). Accordingly, he is compelled by pragmatism to modify his strategy against most of the true believers by using degrees of ordinariness to work his insidious goal of compromise. He uses the ordinary distractions of life to lure the believer back from being fully devoted to their Soul's Delight. 
Parents can be lured back by the distraction of their children. Men can be lured back by the distraction of a woman. Businessmen can be lured back by the distraction of finances. Girls can be lured back by the attention of a boy. Pastors can be lured back by the seductive satisfaction of busyness. The weary can be lured back by the wooing of amusement. However it happened, it worked. The first indication of the early success of his mission to lure the believer back was their increasing isolation from the church community. This is what began to happen in the Jerusalem Church in the first century. The Apostle Peter gave the early believers a solemn warning about how the Enemy attempts to prey on the isolated sheep like a like picking off the stragglers.
What established the First Church, their "one another"ness, their togetherness, their "in one accord"ness, which put fuel on the fires of their devotion to Christ through prayer, worship, teaching, fellowship, and evangelism, predictably waned as they were duped by the ordinary distractions of the Enemy. With most of the damage done by around 63AD, there remained only the serious true believers who refused to isolate themselves or compromise their devotion to Christ. The Enemy knew that his pathetic splinters of ordinariness could not distract these devoted ones. He discovered that the seeds of legalism sown years before were now getting some traction and robbing the believers of their delight in God. But still they gathered. Still they prayed. Still they searched the Scriptures. There was only one thing left for the Enemy to do. And it began in 64AD. But before it began the Seated Sovereign One breathed His fiery Word into the soul of an unnamed servant of Christ - and the Epistle to these Hebrews was written.
Jesus reminded the Jerusalem believers that devotion to Him was not a matter of mere religious devotion - as if religious ceremonies and rituals were ever the basis of drawing God and man together! "Together". That's the fruit of a soul devoted to God. The believer who is transformed from death to life by the radiance of Christ is drawn to the God who is eternally together. As we dramatically see in Acts 2, the result is that person who prizes "me", "I", "my" begins to extol "you", "us", "our". When Jesus taught people to pray it may be missed by most that the first word of this model prayer for His followers is, "Our..." 
Devotion to Christ is always evidenced by one-anotherness. And the Enemy knows it well! His primary strategy to undermine the believer's devotion to Christ is predictably simple: separate and isolate them from other believers. He will commonly use distractions, weariness, and offence to disconnect a believer from those whom God has ordained for His grace to be transmitted to them through. Thus, after the nameless writer to these Hebrews has finished explaining how everything in the ceremonial law was a shadow and type of Christ and His atoning work, he then pastorally conveys not only The Sovereign One's word for them - but the Sovereign One's heart for them. In a burst of three of the most pastoral and important verses in the New Testament The Sovereign One's servant uses all three words that the Holy Spirit loves to shape the believer with: us, together, we. If you get the chance, take a few minutes to hear and consider what our Sovereign Father is saying sweetly to His children.
If you feel dry, then maybe it's time to come back to the well. If you feel less love for God, then maybe it's time to love being together more. If aspects of your life are getting too difficult, then you might have an "I" problem that needs a "we" solution. If you have neglected your daily time in God's Word, then it's little wonder that devotion to Christ no longer enthralls and satisfies you. If you have stopped taking time to surrender in prayer daily and to intercede for others, then it's going to be difficult for you to motivated to join your brothers and sisters in weekly prayer.
I have always loved nice gardens. Don't tell anyone, but as a young boy I enjoyed looking through House & Garden magazines to look at some of the best home gardens anywhere in Australia. I actually enjoyed mowing grass (and still do) in the hope that I can coax it into becoming a lawn. I dreamt of one day having the privilege of owning my home surrounded by well planned and maintained gardens. I'm on my way to fufilling that dream. And the journey is very pleasurable. Every week I work on my garden - planting new plants, pruning existing ones, watering, mowing, trimming, chain-sawing. But recently when my health was under siege I wasn't able to maintain my usual gardening regime and something curious happened that has too many parallels with life generally.
After God created, it seems that the first thing He did was to go gardening. After He created Adam, He gave him a job: gardening Eden. Estimates vary, and we can only speculate, about how big Eden was. For most of us, when we hear the word "garden" we think of an area about the size of our home gardens. But Eden was a public garden. Some scholars believe it was several hundred square kilometres in size. We might be better to think of it as a "Botanical Garden" or "Parkland". It's easy to see how Adam would have been kept busy tending to the gardens within Eden in this light! God must have thought that gardening was a noble activity. And I suspect He still does.
To think that the Garden of Eden was just about shrubs, trees, watering, and pathways, is the same error as thinking that communication is just about words. The Garden of Eden was the place where God chose to fellowship with man. Gardens are great place for strolling, talking, and renewing. I wonder if God showed Eden to Adam to inspire him about what the whole earth could look like? For all the battles we are having with Global Warming, the original intention for earth as a managed garden is now perhaps more than just a nice idea. It's worth noting that the Sahara and Gobe Deserts are many many times larger than they were due entirely to deforestation and are growing rapidly each year due to a failure to reforest. If they were reforested, they would provide more than enough food to feed the starving of the world, and capture much of the carbon emissions suspected of causing Global Warming. 
Eden. A simple Garden. God's "simple", though, is mankind's infinite fascination. Like many things in life such as a good novel, a well directed movie, a Da Vinci painting, a woman, there is more than meets the eye. What meets the eye about Eden is its beauty, tranquillity, colours and sounds. What meets the eye of reflection is its arrangement of complementary groups of plant varieties - the ferns are together near the running water, the tomatoes are near the marigolds, the deciduous trees are positioned to provide maximal sun screening during summer, and the fruit trees all have their fruit accessible for a person standing on the ground. What meets the deeply reflective eye is that the Garden is a metophor for life itself. And this point brings us to my own garden.
Our lives are a garden. What we sow in our life-garden we will also reap (Gal. 6:7). In order for the ornamental plants in our soul-garden to be beautified and fragrant, they must be pruned and shaped (Jn. 15:4). We must also take care to keep our heart-garden free from weeds (especially the weed of bitterness and offense (Heb. 12:15). And what every good garden needs most is regular attention. At the end of each day I am now spending time pulling out the Bruisewort from my front lawn. I now have empty patches where I once had grass. Of course, I can't just pull weeds out and leave my lawn area bare in the hope that grass will grow there. In the same way, I can't stop one bad habit (like wasting too much time online) in the mere hope that a good habit (like reading the Scriptures daily) will automatically replace it. 
