Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome everybody, to week one of our Advent special episodes of podcasts. I'm Ben Fleming, one of the senior pastors here.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: I'm Evan Earwicker. And we have Lindsay here as well. Hi, Lindsay.
[00:00:11] Speaker A: Hello, guys. We're talking about hope and waiting here in week one.
[00:00:17] Speaker A: Maybe the most exhausting idea in all of Advent. Right.
How many of us really enjoy waiting anymore? Don't you find yourself in every single line or every moment that you get and kind of grab them for your phone or you're looking for distractions.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Right. And I think it's a lost muscle, right. Of waiting, because we do have phones and we do have access to be entertained at every moment. And I think that hurts our ability when it comes to the spiritual practice of waiting to do it.
[00:00:48] Speaker A: Well, yeah, it's a gift on the 10 hour car drive, right? We're not just playing the ABC game anymore, man.
People talk about how awful screens and stuff are. I'm like, well, those 14 hour trips to Montana, I think I would have loved that. But you're right, it's a spiritual practice. So I think we have to consider why it's a spiritual practice. And maybe the book of Isaiah lends itself to this a bit. Isaiah 40, verse 31 says, those who wait for the Lord will renew their strength, and they will mount up with wings like eagles. They will run and not be weary, and they will walk and not faint.
Eagles and walking, not fainting. Strength, all that stuff. But it derives from waiting. Right? Not working out more.
It's an interesting concept. Why does waiting actually create this strength?
[00:01:36] Speaker B: Yeah. And in this, in this time where we do have no, no need to be bored, no need to wait around, there's always something we can get done. There's always some way to be productive. And I think we're exhausted, you know, so when Isaiah is saying, wait on the Lord, like, be still and wait, be still, know that I am the Lord. The psalmist writes, I think it's an invitation into a place where we can finally say, I'm not just like burning the candle at both ends and exhausted all the time. My soul has a chance to receive refreshing from the spirit of God.
[00:02:11] Speaker A: So how do we start? Lindsay, you jump into a lot of spiritual practices, and so much, especially the last couple years of your life have been spent studying this, trying to understand it more. You got any tips and tricks? Sounds wrong, but how do we get started?
[00:02:23] Speaker C: Yeah, I think of two things. First is something I was asked to do when I was in school, and it was basically go sit in front of an icon that was around the spiritual retreat center that I was staying at and stare at it for an hour, Just, just stare at it.
And they encouraged you not to journal, you know, just to kind of be present. And when I was first, when I, when they first asked us to do that, I was like, oh dear God, I'm going to die.
[00:02:55] Speaker C: And as I sat there, you know, I just kind of surrendered to the experience. Just accept being bored, accept the mind wandering, accept all those things.
And the hour went by very slowly. But then over the course of the next few months or whatever, there were different exercises and things I did where, you know, go be alone in quiet for a certain, you know, amount of time without a phone, without a notepad and just kind of exist and wait, so to speak, to see kind of what happens. It got easier and easier. So muscle, so to speak, 100%. It is definitely that.
And then I think of this TikTok trend I saw where these people are trying to reset their nervous systems so they set a timer on their laptop for an hour and their laptop's like facing the camera so you can see. And they just sit there for an hour as time lapsed, God bless them. And they're just, you know, you see them, but they're just trying to reclaim the ability to first of all be bored, to exist in a space without needing to pull out your phone, to be okay with waiting in a line or waiting for a package or waiting, whatever it might be. It's this attempt that I see Gen Z trying to reclaim something.
And so I think as horrible as it sounds, you just gotta start and you gotta embrace the boredom a little bit and you gotta, you know, it's not gonna be easy or fun at first, but know that just like starting a workout routine or regimen or anything like that to get healthier. The more you do it, the easier it gets. And so to set aside some time and just kind of allow yourself to be bored, whether it's looking at an icon, a river, a wall, whatever it might be, but just kind of start reconditioning your body and your mind to slow, slow down.
And it's all a part of, we're just training ourselves to be okay with stillness and quiet and not instant gratification. Right? We have to wait.
[00:04:56] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's non productive waiting. And I think if we never learn how to wait in a space that we're not producing something, we're not getting something done, we're not checking something off, then when we get to those things where we don't have any way to control them. We can't produce. We can't.
[00:05:14] Speaker B: We don't have any control over a situation.
And then we have this muscle that's been trained that it's okay to wait in situations where we have no control and we can't produce something that's going to fix what's going on. We're well trained to receive strength from Jesus in those spaces, right?
[00:05:30] Speaker A: So here's what we would encourage you to do. You being the listener, we think you'd be surprised to see how many opportunities that you have to wait, and maybe you're going ahead and quickly covering up those opportunities with your phone or distraction. So we would encourage you to find some of those places where you're waiting. And while life is full of these opportunities, it also means that these are opportunities for not just waiting and begging for it to be over, but that these are actually opportunities for hope. Right? The Israelites finally experienced this hope fulfilled in the coming of Jesus Christ after waiting in deep expectations for hundreds of years.
And so for us today, the Holy Spirit comes alongside and allows us to experience the presence of God right here and now in all of the craziness and the messiness of our lives. And so, as we invite the transforming work of the Spirit into our dreams and plans and worries, we can find peace and even hope in that waiting.
For we believe that it's in that waiting that God actually does his greatest strengthening work. And so, as we close this portion, fill in this blank for me in this prayer. Lord, this week I am waiting for blank. Help me to wait with hope and strength and expectation. We'll see you guys next week.
