Shameless

Psalm 25:1-6

October 4, 2026 (World Communion Sunday) • Mount Pleasant UMC

I was tricked into paying for Amazon Prime. When Christopher was in college, I got an offer for prime at half price for all the years Christopher was a student. And this was before the video content, before The Chosen was on Prime Video. It was mainly just the two day shipping. Rather than waiting a week for your package, you could get it in two days after you pressed the “place order” button. Apparently they thought you’d buy textbooks and other school supplies if you could get them faster. So I signed up. And after four years of half-price Prime, I was told it would revert to full price. And I became that person who said he would never pay for Amazon Prime who then agreed to pay for Amazon Prime. Because I was addicted to the two-day shipping. I even became that person who complained when something didn’t arrive in the promised two days. I realized how much I hated waiting. Ironically, while I was working on this sermon, I had a couple of books I had ordered from another company that were backordered, but then I found out for just a little bit more I could order them from Amazon and get them that afternoon! What a world we live in! As science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke once said, “The only thing we can be sure of about the future, is that it will be absolutely fantastic.”

We have become a culture that does not like to wait. Everything is faster and sooner. Fast food. Microwave ovens. DoorDash. Or order in the app and it’s ready to pick up when you get there. Same-day shipping. High-speed internet connectivity wherever we are. Instant, 24-hour breaking news. We want what we want when we want it and not a second later. We are all toddlers these days, and when we end up having to wait, like in a doctor’s office or in a sit-down restaurant, we get very impatient. Maybe you don’t, but I do. To just sit and wait is frustrating to me, which is why you will almost always find me with a book in case I have to wait. But I honestly don’t think I’m alone because I watch people, even in the check-out line at Kroger or Walmart, or while they are waiting at a red light, scrolling on their phones while they are waiting. We are not good at waiting.

And then there come those other times in life, where we have no choice but to wait. Where no amount of scrolling in the world can make the results happen faster. Those times when we have a medical test and have to wait days or weeks for the diagnosis. And then we have to wait for a procedure or a surgery. I remember when I was first diagnosed with my heart issue, aortic insufficiency they called it, and my response was just to fix it now. Get it done. Do whatever will make it better. And the doctor patiently explained to me that we had to wait until what I had was worse than they could put in. Wait. Or one of my favorites: someone says, “I need to talk to you. Can we schedule a meeting?” And then you have to wait, and my mind goes everywhere wondering what I might have done or said or what has gone wrong. Rarely is it anything like that, but the waiting is hard. The only person not waiting is my inner critic. And I think, maybe, that’s why early on in my life, God gave me Psalm 27:14 as a life verse. Do you know what that verse says? “Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” Very funny, God. Very funny.

Because waiting is a common experience for all of humanity, and because the Bible talks about it so much, we’re going to spend this month in the “Waiting Room,” trying to not only learn what the Bible has to say about waiting, but how to do it well. Obviously, it must be important or it wouldn’t be mentioned so many times throughout Scripture. And if it weren’t something we need to learn to do, we wouldn’t be commanded to do it. God wouldn’t tell us to do something we can’t do. So let’s have a seat in God’s waiting room for the next few weeks and see what he wants to teach us.

Let me tell you how important this idea of waiting is. In the Old Testament, there are three words usually translated as “wait” or “waiting.” The most common word shows up 47 times and generally means “to look with eager expectation.” That’s the word in my verse from Psalm 27; waiting for the Lord means there means looking forward to something good. The second most common word shows up 42 times, and it means having “confidence or hope” that what is promised will happen. Eventually. And the third word the Old Testament writers use shows up 14 times and it means to endure or to have patience, like this verse from Psalm 33: “We wait in hope for the Lord; he is our help and shield” (33:20). It’s waiting when there’s no guarantee of anything. We might call it “spiritual endurance” (cf. Vroegop, Waiting Isn’t a Waste, pgs. 40-44).

When you turn the page to the New Testament, it’s similar. There, waiting involves both receiving and watching. There is a “doing” aspect to waiting that we will get more into in the weeks to come, but here’s the basics. One word used in the New Testament has the sense of waiting with open hands, that you’re waiting to receive something—something you need that you can only get from outside of yourself. You can’t supply it yourself; you have to wait for it to be brought to you. You have to receive. The other word means to watch—in other words, making an intentional effort to look for something. It’s not passive; it has the sense of a guard watching the horizon with anticipation, with the sense that something good is coming. You wait by receiving and by watching (Vroegop 44-47). And, like I said, we will get more into that in a couple of weeks.

But today I want to take us back to the psalm we read this morning, Psalm 25, which I think can give us a helpful, Biblical way to wait. All we are told about this psalm is that it’s “Of David,” which as I’ve said before can either mean it was written by David or for him, in honor of him. Either way, we don’t know the historical setting for this particular psalm, which really means it can apply in a wide variety of settings (cf. VanGemeren, “Psalms,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Volume. 5, pg. 227). The focus is verse 3, which in our translation says, “No one who hopes in you will ever be put to shame…” The word that is translated “hopes” in the NIV is more often translated as “waits” other places: “No one who waits for You will be disgraced…” (HCSB) or “Do not let those who wait for you be put to shame…” (NRSVue). Even though we may not know exactly what is happening to the psalmist, we have all likely been in situations where we had to do exactly what the psalmist does: he declares his trust in God. No matter what else happens, he chooses to trust in God because only by doing that can be be shameless. Only by doing that can he be assured that, in the end, he will be delivered from his troubles. One way or the other. He does not know whether or not that deliverance will come in this life or the next, but he trusts that it will come because he knows who God is. That’s the main thing he sings about here, that he can wait and he can trust because he knows who God is. God has not disappointed him in the past and God will not disappoint him in the future (cf. VanGemeren 227). Of this he is sure. And he wants us to be sure of that as well.

But let’s break this down on a little more of a practical level, and to do that we’re going to use an acronym that might help you remember it a little better. The acronym is FAST, which stands for focus, adore, seek and trust. Focus, Adore, Seek and Trust—four things to do when we are in a season of waiting on God.

So, first, focus. I think the biggest reason we don’t like waiting is that it is a period of time that reminds us we aren’t in control. The one in control is whomever we are waiting on—the doctor, the pizza delivery guy, the planned event, whatever it is. And in our spiritual life, waiting reminds us (or should remind us) that God is ultimately in control (cf. Vroegop 39). So the first step in waiting is to change our focus. The psalmist does that in the very beginning, remembering who is in charge, who is in control. “In you, Lord my God, I put my trust” (25:1). When we’re waiting, it’s easy to get our focus off of God and onto our circumstances. Why haven’t I gotten an answer? Why is this taking so long? Is God really listening to me? I have been in that place. I’m in that place more often than I like to admit. There are things I pray for day after day and I’ve said to God, “Are you really listening? Because I’ve been asking for a long time, and I know I’m not the only one praying for this. Why haven’t you answered?” But that kind of focus is on me and my wants or supposed needs. My demands. That kind of focus is on what I don’t know. The psalmist changes his focus to what he does know. Or, rather, to who he knows: “No one who hopes in you will ever be put to shame” (25:2). No one who waits on God will ever—and I mean ever—be put to same. Focus (cf. Vroegop 48-50).

Next, adore. The psalmist remembers who God is and that leads him to worship, to adoring our God. “You are God my savior, and my hope is in you all day long” (25:5). When we remember who God is, the natural inclination is to thank him for who he is, for who he has promised to be in our lives. And sometimes God himself will pull us into worship—not for his sake, but for ours. I remember a time several years ago when I was driving, thinking about a lot of different things. Or, let’s be honest, worrying about a lot of different things, and doing what I do best: letting all the scenarios play out in my head of what could go wrong. Does anyone else do that? I have all of these conversations in my head that never actually happen, but I think I’m preparing myself for the worst. What I’m really doing is worrying, which isn’t good. Anyway, as I was driving, suddenly this song came on the radio that I loved and I found myself singing along. Then I realized what I was singing. It was a song about trusting the God who is actually in control, who is not surprised by our circumstances, and who can handle it. I found my heart turned away from stewing to worship, adoring. We can fill the gaps in our life with worship (cf. Vroegop 50-51).

Focus. Adore. And seek. Waiting for the Lord is not just about sitting around. It is active, seeking God while we wait. The psalmist is actively trying to conform his life to what God wants. “Show my your ways, Lord,” he prays, “teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me” (25:4-5). Later on in the part of the psalm we didn’t read this morning, he even says that if there’s anything in his life that needs changing or forgiving, would God please do that. He asks God to work in him and make him the person God wants him to be. “My eyes are ever on the Lord” (25:15). “Guard my life and rescue me,” he prays (25:20). And certainly we can and should seek God in prayer (cf. Vroegop 51-52). We can also seek God by reading the Scriptures. Here’s the challenge we have today, though: we tend to do more reading about the Scriptures than we do actually reading the Scriptures. We read devotional books and think we have read God’s word. Or we read the latest book by our favorite author who writes about Biblical themes and think we have read God’s word. Or we listen to a podcast by our favorite preacher and think that’s enough. It’s not. There’s nothing wrong with those things; I read a lot of Christian books. But if I’m going to seek God, I need direct access which he has promised to provide through the Scriptures. We need more Bible reading and less “about the Bible” reading. That’s how we seek.

And, finally, trust. Like it did with the psalmist, waiting requires that we rest in the truth, in the belief that God can be trusted. He is the God who delivers. He is the God who is compassion and truth itself—and he is committed to you (cf. Goldingay, Psalms Part 1, pg. 80). Trust is a hard thing to come by these days. So many people have let us down. So many people have hurt us. The other day in our pastor’s prayer meeting, one of the pastors said if you haven’t been hurt in church, then you haven’t been in church. He’s right. We are humans and we hurt each other, most often unintentionally. And when we’ve been hurt, the strongest temptation is to walk away—from church, from other people, from everyone, anything and everything that we think we can’t trust. We’re not going to wait around and be hurt again, we say. And there’s a tendency to treat God the same way. We don’t want to wait, we’re not sure we can trust him to come through, so we’ll just walk away and try to find a better deal. But the psalmist here remembers that even though God may not do things the way we think he ought to, or on the time frame we think he ought to, God never lets us down. God never fails us. “Good and upright is the Lord,” the psalmist says (25:8), and because God is good, he always has good in mind for me and for you. Trust is believing that God is good and that God will bring good into our lives, even if it takes time. Let me take you once again over to Psalm 27, my favorite psalm. We read the last verse earlier, but let me add to that the verse right before that, where the psalmist demonstrates the kind of trust I want to have. He writes or sings, “I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord” (27:13-14). I trust that God will be good, and even if I have to wait until I see him face to face, he has good things in store for me. As one author puts it, “Waiting embraces God as a refuge while the answers are not clear and may never be” (Vroegop 53). I choose to trust, even when I have no answers. Only when I learn to trust in God can I live shameless.

FAST. Focus. Adore. Seek. Trust. Can we learn to “wait fast” in God’s waiting room? Instead of waiting, we want to rush ahead and do things our way. I think of the story of Abraham and Sarah in the Old Testament book of Genesis, and how God promised that they would have a child, a son, and that through that son they would become a great and vast nation. But years passed and the promise didn’t come true. So instead of waiting, Sarah suggested to Abraham that he sleep with her servant and have a child with her. The child, then, would legally be considered Sarah’s. Maybe, after all, that was the way God wanted them to have a child. And so Abraham did. We have no indication in the text that Abraham questioned or complained about Sarah’s plan, but we know Sarah didn’t like it after the baby was born. God told Abraham later that this wasn’t the plan, that if they waited he and Sarah would still have a child, but that God would bless Abraham’s other son as well (cf. Genesis 16, 21). And that baby, Ishmael, is claimed as the father of the Arab people. Look at what has happened down through history (clear up until today) because Sarah couldn’t wait on God. The descendants of her two sons Isaac and Ishmael have been at war with each other throughout history. How might it have been different if Sarah had been able to wait, to focus on God’s promise, to adore God even when her life wasn’t what she wanted, to seek after God’s desire for her, and to trust that God would be good even when things were hard? Focus, adore, seek, trust. How might our lives be different as well if we did the same?

There was a night when thirteen men gathered in a room on the outskirts of Jerusalem. The week had been difficult and confusing but their teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, really wanted to have them all together this night for a passover meal. He knew they were wondering what was going on. Despite the fact that he had told them repeatedly over the last year that he had come to Jerusalem to be arrested and killed—and that he would rise again—they didn’t seem to be listening or understanding. One or the other. So when they came to the table, Jesus gave them a practice, one that would help them wait FAST. Focus on the bread and the wine, they are my body and my blood. Adore God because of what the Father is going to do through the cross. Seek God by living the way Jesus had taught them over the last three years. And trust that good will come out of even an unjust death on the cross. In this bread and this cup, this sacrament, we find strength, encouragement and direction to wait on the Lord. Roman crucifixion was designed to bring shame to the victim and horror to those who watched, but the Scriptures tell us Jesus took the shame that was intended for us. He took everything intended for us so that we wouldn’t have to. Because no one who hopes in and waits for him will be put to shame. Because of him, we can be shameless. Will you pray with me as we wait on the Lord and prepare our hearts for holy communion?