Shaped In The Waiting | Cornerstone Church | Pastor Linn Winters

here and there and here's gonna be talking about the next few weeks. In every one of our lives, there's these moments where we just go, man, it feels like God put me on pause. I don't get it. I mean, I I can remember when God did something and he was working and then

just stopped and I'm waiting for it to happen again and for God to move again and give me clear direction again, but man, it's just so frustrating because it feels like I'm in a doctor's waiting room and everybody else is getting called back, but I'm just sitting here waiting on God.

There's gonna be times in between where you go, hey, I I don't understand why God is allowing this struggle to be in my life, why? Why is he doing that and how come when I've been praying so earnestly and saying, God, would you please just take this problem out of my life and it just feels like

God doesn't care or he's not listening or maybe I'm just way down on his priority, why is God not responding to my prayers to take my struggle away? And what we're gonna discover is this, as frustrating as the in between is, from here to there, it's in the in between,

the moments that feel like a pause, the moments when it feels like God has left me in a struggle that actually, maybe the moments that God is doing the greatest work in my life. I just didn't see it and so we're gonna explore that the next few weeks. And here's what we need to know is that growing,

which is what God is doing because from the moment you became a Christian, the moment you said yes to Jesus, God's number one priority for you was to grow you and make you mature in Christ. That was his number one, his number one priority was not to make you famous, his number one priority was not to make you rich,

you ready for this? His number one priority was not to make you happy, his number one priority, the moment you gave your life to Jesus was to grow you up and make you fully and completely mature in Christ. But here's the deal, growing is uncomfortable,

growing is disturbing and hard. So Friday night, I'm at my grandson's flag football game. My grandson, Caleb, he's eight years old. The last two years, they've gone undefeated, won the championship and so they bumped his team up to the next league.

When I showed up at Friday night, I was instantly worried because the boys on the other side, every one of them was six inches taller than every single guy on Caleb's team. I thought this is going to be a bloodbath. Interestingly enough, they won. They beat the bigger boys by two touchdowns. Caleb comes off the field

and he's weeping and his dad goes over to console him and says, Caleb what's wrong, you guys won the game and he said, I only got to touch the ball once and he was right, during the whole game, they only handed the ball to Caleb one time, it just so happened in that moment, the defense was perfectly positioned,

Caleb took like two steps, the other boy pulled his flag, that was all he got to do. Caleb in his heart felt like worst game ever. His grandfather stood there with a smile and I said, this may be the best game for Caleb. Because Caleb is having the opportunity

in the struggle of the game, right, that didn't go the way he wanted to learn incredible lessons about life, not the least of which is this, Caleb it's not all about you, it's about the team, your team just won despite incredible odds, you ought to be thrilled and instead you are so caught up in what isn't,

you can't even rejoice with your teammates. I wonder, I wonder how many of us get caught up in the isn't, Hey God life is not going like I planned, I didn't never wanted this struggle, how come things aren't moving faster, how you wonder how many of us get caught up in the in what isn't and miss what God is teaching

in the isn't. And so we're gonna go chase after that today. Why is growing so hard? Why is it so uncomfortable? This is Stephanie, Stephanie is a great gal. Stephanie is a she is pre Jesus, she just hasn't figured out how Jesus fits in her life yet

and so she is just trying to be a good person, do the things that she ought to do. She's trying really hard to earn some money, so she can buy the things that are gonna make her life better. She's trying to save up enough money that she can buy her first house,

Her thought is, hey, someday I'm gonna get married, that's gonna be a great, you know, thing for us to already have a house when we do that and her dream is is, you know, maybe one day she'll drive a really, really cool car, probably not this, probably a Honda Odyssey, but she'll drive a really cool car

and maybe someday her family will have like a second lake house kind of thing and they can go up there and there will be a little boat and they can go fishing and skiing and she is just trying to do life and trying to be happy doing it. If you were to meet Stephanie, she would instantly be, she is just a great gal.

This is Phil. Phil is a believer, is a Christ follower. Phil is working really, really hard to try to earn as much money as he possibly can, so he can buy some you know, good things for his family, he's already married,

already own their first house, but now they've had a couple of kids and so he's trying to save up so they can buy the second house that's, you know, bigger with a good backyard and he dreams too of like driving a pretty cool car that actually does look like this and

he would love someday to have a second house for his family to enjoy and you know a little boat there that they can go out skiing and fishing on the lake.

Here's my question for Phil, Phil, why are you chasing the very same things that people who don't know Jesus are chasing? Why are you looking for fulfillment in the same place that people who don't know Jesus look for fulfillment? Why why

is this table your priority? Matter of fact, the scripture would say, hey these are the things of the world and when it says that, not because they are evil, just because they are not filling.

Matter of fact, I would say to Phil, Phil isn't it true that you were already getting some of these things and what you realized was, they didn't fill you up, they weren't enough to really make your life good and that's how you figured out Jesus, you said there's gotta be something more.

But now you're frustrated with God because he's not helping you with the table, he's not giving you more stuff so that you can be happy and Phil, haven't you figured out yet that the world, the world is a ravenous mistress that no matter what you get, the world will always say, more, more, more.

Hey, you got the promotion and you thought when you got there, that would that success would feel so good and you get there and it's just not what you thought and the world says that's because it's the next promotion. You got the raise and you're earning good money and you're buying cool things for your family and

it just doesn't have the appeal you thought and the world says, more and you realize he raped. You can never satisfy the hunger of the world and the world can never satisfy the hunger in you. So Phil, why are you chasing? Why are you chasing what everybody who doesn't know Jesus is chasing, trying to find happiness

there and here's what you got to get, if you go after the wrong things, you will always be disappointed. If you spend your life chasing the wrong thing, you will always regret it. I'm 16 years old and I'm working a part time job, my part time job is barely enough to pay my car payment,

to pay my insurance and to put gas in my car. My best friend and I decide we want to be golfers. So we find two of the most horrible old sets of golf clubs and some golf balls, and we we go to the cheapest golf courses we can possibly find. On this particular day, we went to Tempe Rolling Hills.

Oh, good. Everybody yeah, no one knows. Tempe Rolling Hills is this little it's an executive course that's literally at the top of Tempe, it's so high in Tempe, it backs up to the Phoenix Zoo. So we get to the third hole, on the third hole, I tee off, my ball slices and flies into the zoo.

I go walking up there hoping upon hope that I'm gonna get there and find out my ball didn't actually didn't clear and go but that it's maybe somewhere there on the edge of the fairway. As I get to where my ball went out, I look in, there's a cage of animals,

they're in front, they got to look this up, so they're called oryx, oryx. Oryx are these animals that look kind of like a horse, they're smaller than a horse but bigger than a pony and they've got these two horns that come up just perfectly straight on their head, they're super pointy

and matter of fact, when they turn sideways, you can only see one horn and people think, that's where unicorns came from, sideways oryx. I look into their cage, there are thousands of golf balls, thousands, apparently I am not the only guy with a slice, so or there be a hook, I am sorry and so I go, you know what,

I need those golf balls, there is enough golf balls for the rest of my life inside that cage, there might even be enough golf balls, I could sell some and make some money. So my friend and I make a plan that we are going to come back that night to the zoo and get the golf balls.

So sure enough, it's 2AM in the morning and we have emptied out a golf bag, so we can fill it up with golf balls. We get to the zoo, you can get to the fence and it's got that v thing at the top with barbed wire and so we are going over the top of that, we are getting all cut up,

we get into the cage with oryx, we brought a pool cue so we could fend them off while one guy picked up the golf balls. It worked beautifully, we filled that entire bag, I mean, to the brim with golf balls. Now we've got to get a 120 pound golf bag back over the v wires,

so now we're getting cut up even more. We get home at about 03:30 in the morning, we go to sleep, we wake up at noon and now we go to look at our treasure. We pour the golf balls out of the bag, they are all yellow, It turns out that Auric pea stains golf balls and they are this hideous,

horrible shade of, we put them in Clorox, we scrubbed them with every cleaning product you could ever find, nothing helped and there is no way you could take pea colored golf balls to the golf course. We ended up with about 10 good golf balls.

When you chase the wrong thing, especially if you do it the wrong way, you end up with a golf bag full of yellow golf balls, you end up disappointed when you chase the wrong thing.

Here's what you need to know, there's nothing wrong with success, there's nothing wrong with anything that's sitting on that table, it just can't be the thing that you pursue in your life, it can't be the thing that your life is focused on because it's the wrong thing

and it can only disappoint. Grab your bibles real quick. Go with me to first John and if you're not familiar, go all the way to the back of your bible and start left. You're gonna go through the book of revelation and as soon as you do go real, real slow because first John, second John, third John, super small books in the Bible. First John chapter two

verse 15. Here is what it says, do not, just don't do it, it's just a bad plan, do not, do not love the world, don't chase after all the things that everybody who doesn't know Jesus chases after,

not because they're evil, not because they're wrong, because they cannot satisfy. Do not love the world or anything in the world for anyone who loves the world, the love of the father is not in them for everything in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life comes not from the father

but from the world. The world and his desires pass away but whoever does the will of God lives forever. How many of us since we came to Christ thought it was Christ's job to give us that.

And then God comes back and He says, no, no, no, there's a whole different place for you to focus. There's a whole different place that needs to be the number one thing, the priority of your life. Grab your Bibles again, go with me to the book of Romans and God is about to shift our focus.

He's about to say, hey, don't chase the things that will never fill you up, chase the thing which is most important, Romans chapter eight,

it's verse 20. Here's my guess, my guess is that most of us have heard this verse before, we just didn't read the verse after it. Here's what Romans chapter eight says, verse 28. And we know that in all things, how many things? All All things. Okay. Okay. Okay. So even in the pause, when it doesn't feel like God's moving

in all things, even even when we have that snarky person in our life who's causing us nothing but pain and discomfort, even in the snarky person, even when my finances are upside down and I can't quite see which way is back up in all things, God works for the good,

for those who love him, who've been called according to his purpose. And then what we do is we print that verse on a piece of paper, we put a frame around it, we paint it on the wall in all things and here's what we thought, in all things God's working for good and we thought good was God helping us get this

until we read the next verse. So start again, verse 28 in the and we know that in all things, God works for the good for those who love him who've been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed, to be changed, to be transformed.

This is what he's doing, to be transformed into the image of his son. You realize what God just said,

the best thing that can happen in your life is not that next promotion, the best thing that can happen in your life is not the bigger house, the best thing that can possibly happen in your life is that you become more like Jesus and God says, I am working all things, all things, your successes and your failures,

your struggles and your wins. I am working all things to help you become, to work you, to transform you, to looking like my son. That is the very best thing that can ever happen for you and when that hits, all of a sudden, you and I stop looking for what's on the table and we start saying,

in every single thing in my life, in the way that I treat people, in the way that I respond to unfairness and and I want to look like Jesus. I want there to be less and less and less of me and more and more of Jesus in me and God would say, as long as you stay transfixed on the table, you're gonna end up with yellow golf balls.

You will surely be disappointed, but come and live a life that looks like my son and you'll find out what real living is all about. Hey, how many of you remember the bracelets that said WWJD, what would Jesus do? How many remember that? Okay, you're old.

There was this season in the church, it's been a while where there people were wearing these bracelets and it said WWJD and after a while it got it got a little weird, but there was a season in the church that was just absolutely transformative because Christians took on this idea that said,

whatever comes up, you know, whether it's that horrible coworker at work that I can hardly stand or or whether, you know, it's I'm struggling with you know my finances and my kid is in rebellion, whatever it is in that moment, I'm simply gonna choose in that moment to do whatever Jesus would do in a moment like that.

And I'm telling you the church started growing unbelievably, they got so mature, they became so Christ like in this world

because they simply made their motto, their call, I'm gonna do in every circumstance what Jesus would do if he had the same thing going on in his life that I have going on. He'd treat my wife the way that Jesus would treat my wife and it was transformative in the church.

We have this guy on staff a while back, his name was Tom Stone, he retired not too long ago but Tom was amazing, know, we do this thing in staff where we say, hey, where have you seen God working and Tom would be the first guy with his hand up to go, hey, I had this person, you know, they came in for appointment and I said, are you here? They said, I'm just looking for something and I led them to Jesus

and it was just amazing.

Man, that's great, Tom. Then anybody else, Tom would raise his hand again and go, I forgot to tell you, was, you know, I met this woman in the lobby and she's struggling with cancer and I was able to pray with her and you could just see hope come back in her eyes, was it was amazing, it was remarkable. Tom, that's really nice, but you only get two and staff and so and and then he'd still, he raised his ankle, I've got to tell you about another one. He said, man, you know, I'm just telling you that there was this guy and he was he's been away from God and he's been struggling with drugs and I got to pray with him and he's getting ready to go to celebrate recovery and his life has changed.

It got so much that after a while, our staff started saying, hey, what would Tom do? What Tom do in a moment like this?

How cool would that be? How cool would it be if when your son is being pressured by some of his friends to go to a movie that he shouldn't go to and he knows he shouldn't, but he doesn't want to be left out and be uncool. If in that moment he said, I wonder what mom would do

in a moment like this because my mom is so much like Jesus. I wonder what my mom would do if she was being pressured by her friends to go to a movie she shouldn't go to. How cool would it be if your daughter is being invited to an underage drinking party and she doesn't want to miss out on the social and she

and what if in that moment she said, I wonder, I wonder what dad would do if he was being pressured to go to an underage drinking party because your daughter saw so much Jesus in you that you became the reference point for her.

And how cool would it be if your friends at work and you know, you got this little club and there's this one guy who always says the wrong thing and always irritates them and they're getting ready to throw them out and all of a sudden they said, Hey, you know, I wonder what Jeff would do with this guy

because they've seen so much Jesus on Jeff, on you.

The greatest success you can have as a Christian is less and less of you and more and more of Jesus on you. And that is the literally the heartthrob of God for us. So how does He do that? How does He transform us? How does he make us more like his son? Grab your Bibles again, go with me to the book of James

to a verse that none of us like, but all of us need.

If you're not familiar, go to the back of your Bible, start working to the left, you'll find this book of James, James chapter one. Here's what it says, James chapter one starting in verse two, he says, consider it pure joy when

my brothers and sisters whenever you face trials of many kinds. No, he doesn't say, hey, feel joyful. He says decide it's joy. Decide that this struggle that God's allowed in your life is actually for the good to make you more like his son. Decide that the very thing that you don't like may be God's hand in your life

to make you more like Jesus. So my junior year of high school, I signed up for basketball, I don't know why I wasn't that good at basketball, I just thought that's what I had to do. I get to the first day of practice, the coach walks me and about 10 other guys out to the track.

As we're going there, I'm like, I maybe maybe I got in the wrong room, I signed up for basketball. The coach tells us, here's what you're gonna do, you're gonna run the mile right now, you have to run the mile under six flat. Now, was a problem because my best time was six ten.

He says, if you get down, if you run the mile and if you don't go under six flat, you have to do wind sprints. So now, I'm motivated, so I I run I run that mile with all of my heart, I run with every ounce in me, six seven. Now, the coach without pausing

takes me and the five other guys who didn't make the mile and starts us doing wind sprints. It was like the most horrible moment, I'm like, this is torture, this is horrifying. I am now angry at the coach for the struggle he's putting me through and about halfway through the wind sprints, hit me.

He's getting me ready for the game. He knows that if I don't if I'm if I'm not prepared, if I'm I'm gonna get winded, I'm not gonna be able to keep up with the other team and he's actually preparing me. This thing that feels so crummy is actually good for me

in my life. That's what James is saying when he says, hey, count it pure joy, not that it's good, not that it's fun, not that you like it, but understand it's literally the hand of God changing you, making you look like his son. There's some things that God brings in our life to make us look like Jesus. He'll bring pauses,

He'll bring moments when we just go God where are you and why aren't you answering my prayer. He'll bring unfairness into our lives where you go God, don't understand why is it every time I end up with the short end of the stick, why would you do that in my life? He'll bring scarfy people in your life

in order to help you become like his son. God took me through a season,

a season of change and transformation. I just had finished Bible college, Lisa and I moved back to Phoenix, I'm thinking in my mind, hey, I'm ready, I'm ready for a full time position at a church. I'd only been a part time youth pastor up until then, but now I'm done with college and I went and I applied, no one hired me.

I found myself pushing a lawn mower in the Phoenix heat, so that I could feed my family. I wish I could tell you that as I was pushing that lawn mower, I said, oh God, I trust you so much, I understand. But that wasn't I am going, hey, what the heck, I am doing everything right, I am totally obeying you, I finished my school,

what are you doing not letting me be in full time, how does this help?

You know when it changed? It changed when my prayers changed and when I begin to say to God, God I don't understand, I don't get it, but I choose to trust that you know what you're doing and that you're working in me. And you understand that God was forming me like Jesus.

He was teaching me to trust him even when I didn't understand him.

Eventually, he got me hired on a church. The problem was it's the meanest church you've ever been to. The leaders of that church literally, I can't I can't even begin to tell you how hard they were on me. They looked for every single thing to just beat me up on. What I found out later was

the senior pastor had been at home dying of pancreatic cancer. He had called me up, he hired me at 09:00 at night in his living room, he didn't tell anybody he hired me. When I showed up at the church two weeks later, after I closed down my lawn service,

they said, what are you doing here? I said, I'm the new youth pastor. The elders of the church were frustrated because since the pastor had been home dying, they had started running the church and it frustrated them that he'd made a decision and had not consulted them.

So they literally turned their faces, they looked for any reason to look for why I wasn't competent, wasn't capable. It also turns out that the head elder wanted his son to be the next youth pastor And I will tell you, was a season of just unthinkable unfairness

in how they treated me and looked for everything to criticize me on.

God was forming me. He was teaching me to stay under authority even when I didn't agree with the authority, even when I thought the authority was unfair and wrong.

He was making me more like Jesus. The Jesus who was in the Garden Of Gethsemane and said, God if we can do this any other way, let's do it a different way. But nevertheless your will be done.

God knew that there'd be a 100 more times in my life when God would ask me to do something and I would be like God, that's absolutely crazy and that I needed to have come to a place of obedience. I said, you know what, you're God, I'm not and even if I don't agree with your decision,

he knew there'd be a moment when he'd ask me to leave a comfortable job and come to Arizona and start a church called Cornerstone and it would be crazy and I needed to obey.

There was a time in that church that I took the kids, the youth group on a trip, and, we were camping, and there was one boy on the trip and his name was Joel, and Joel had just figured out that girls don't have cooties. He was thrilled.

And so this particular night, the boys are all in one tent, the girls are in another tent, and Joel is trying to be funny. He's telling jokes and he's trying to flirt, you know, from his tent to the girls' tent. But it gets to 10:00 at night and so I go to the boy's tent and I say, guys, look, you can't do that. We're in a public campground. There's families right over there. They got little children. They're trying to put to bed. You're yelling. You gotta stop.

Midnight, he wakes me from a dead sleep, he's calling over to the girls tent, he's trying to be so I go to the tent and I go, look, you guys gotta stop, there's families, there's little kids. 02:00 in the morning, he wakes me up again. I went to the boys tent with the love of Jesus,

I said to them, I'm so angry at you right now, you wait till we get back to the church, I'll tell you what I'm gonna do. We get back to the church and here's what I decided when I cooled down a little bit, I said, hey, you've proved you don't know how to act on a youth outing, so you can't come to the next one. Turns out

his mother Aurelie had been sewing his costume for three months. The next outing that we were doing was Halloween, we were just doing kind of a dress up party and Aurelie had wanted her son Joel to be the best costume there. So now she is out of her mind angry with me because I told her son he can't come.

Joel stops coming to the youth group or Elise starts going through the church and telling everybody what a horrible youth pastor I am. I went to my supervisor, a guy by the name of George Bedley and some of you heard me talk about him and I said to George, here's what you need to know, I'm right, they're wrong.

You just need to know that and here's what George told me, I want you to love on them. I said, George, they haven't even apologized yet. He said, I don't care, I want you to love on them.

So the next time I saw Orly, she's walking down the sidewalk, I'm walking toward her, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna love on her, I'm gonna love on her and Orly turned, went across the grass, got on another sidewalk and walked past me. She wasn't even gonna walk on the same sidewalk with me and so it occurred to me,

I'm gonna have to sneak up on her. So I did for the next couple of weeks, I literally, it was like I would hunt her down and I'd see when she had her back turned to me and I'd sneak up behind Oralee and I'd put my arms around her, she gives all of and I said, Oralee, I love you and I love your son

And after a couple weeks she stopped tensing, she'd let me hug her. I did the same thing with Joel, I'd get I'd get by, I'd go, Joel, man, I love you dude, I hope you'll come back to youth group. Man, I miss you so much.

A year and a half later when I went into that youth group to tell them that I was leaving, there was one young man who jumped out of his seat, ran to the front of the room, threw his arms around my neck and wept. It was Joel. And I realized God was forming me,

teaching me to be like Jesus, to love people who weren't very lovable at the time, and the power that had. I thought I was changing them. God was changing me.

Oh, by the way, when I came to plant Cornerstone, Joel was one of the original 24.

Years later, Joel ended up being my son's Sunday school teacher and teaching him the bible and telling him he couldn't come to the next no, no. The guys, are you ready? Take a chunk of coal, put it under time and pressure and heat, what does it become? A diamond. Take a Christian,

put them in a pause where God doesn't seem to be working. Allow them to live through moments that are unfair and unreasonable. Bring scarfy people into their lives and they become like Jesus. And guys, I'm just telling you what feels like the dry time, the in between time, is probably God's best time to make us like Jesus.

So here's what I did. I bought you a w w j d bracelet and here's what I'm gonna ask. So when you get ready to leave, we got people at the doors are gonna give you a bracelet. They're all stupid colors, so don't worry about that. Here's what I'm asking. What if for thirty days, what if for thirty days, whatever circumstance

comes up, whatever unfairness happens, whatever moment when it doesn't feel like God's not answering your prayer, what if for thirty days we simply said, I'm gonna live this moment the way that Jesus would live this moment? Man, what would happen in our families?

What would happen at work? What would happen in our neighborhoods if a whole church full of people lived for thirty days the way Jesus would live? And how transformed would we be? I'm gonna pray if you need prayer, you can come to the front afterwards. Here we go. Hey, dear Lord Jesus, man,

we have so struggled with this growing up thing. We've we've been so caught up like my my grandson, Caleb, in in what didn't happen, and why it wasn't right, and how come it wasn't fair, and we didn't realize it was your hand. That in the struggle, in the trials, that's where Jesus is formed in us.

And so God, we're gonna count it pure joy when when life isn't quite working, when things aren't the way I want because it's you pouring Jesus all over us. And God, we we just decided for the next thirty days, we're we're gonna take every moment, every unfairness,

every circumstance that comes our way, and we're simply gonna ask ourselves, what would Jesus do in a moment like my moment? And we're gonna live that way for thirty days. And God, our heart is not only would you transform the people around us, more than that, would you transform us

that there'd be more Jesus in us than there is us in us. And this we pray in Jesus' precious name. Amen.