 All right, I'm going to read from Habakkuk chapter 1 verses 1 to 4. Don't try and find it. You'll be here all day. It's that part of your Bible where the pages stick together. But I promise you, it is a book in the Bible, Habakkuk chapter 1. Reading from the message Bible, which kind of brings this alive in a fantastic way. Here's Habakkuk having this rant, this rant towards God. And I'm glad the Bible includes the good, the bad, and the ugly of these people. We consider heroes, but they had some moments that we wouldn't think were very heroic if they were our friends. But the truth is, we've all gone through what he's feeling at this time of his life in ministry. He says, God, how long do I have to cry out for help before you listen? How many times do I have to yell, help, murder, please, before you come and rescue me? Why do you force me to look at evil and stare trouble in the face day after day? Anarchy and violence break out, quarrels and fights all over the place. Law and order are falling to pieces. Justice is a joke. The wicked have the righteous hamstrung and stand justice on its head. I want to speak to you about a season of life, a zone of life. Many of you here, many watching by TV, are in this season of life now. But perhaps you don't know what to call it. I believe Habakkuk was in this season of life. My term for it is the agony of divine delay. I have a graphic somewhere. I try and work out of my graphic so that you can have a visual for you visual learners, as well as the text. So it may going to your mind stronger. This is about times in our life where we feel like the stoplight here. God does this to us. Where we feel that like Habakkuk felt, God has not got your back. Where we feel that we are doing what God called us to do, which was Habakkuk's case. He's a prophet. He's prophesying, but what he's prophesying is not coming true. The people that were supposed to be subjected to judgment based on his prophesying, judgment wasn't falling. In fact, the people that were supposed to be suffering judgment based on his prophesying were flourishing and doing well. And justice was a joke, it seemed. And anarchy and war and unrest and lawlessness was breaking out everywhere, contrary to his prophesying that that would change. It was not changing. And this season of his life was years. And I think what he's describing is a zone of life that I want to try and give a language to. Because many of you are in this zone today. It's a zone between where tragedy, difficulty, problems strike your life occur. And the gap between that and God showing up is the gap I am calling divine delay. It's a divine delay. It's a delay because it's not as if God doesn't know you're in trouble and you need help now. It is a season of life where we feel that God seems like he's deaf and blind. And indifferent and uncaring and non-compassionate to what we're going through down here in our world. And we wonder where God went and where is God. There are millions of people in Florida now that are hoping God showed up. And for many of them, they now feel he didn't and the worst has happened. And there are hundreds of thousands of people, possibly millions that are still recovering from Hurricane Harvey. Under 800,000 I understand affected now because of the new DACA. Possible changes to their status in this country that have stepped into this twilight zone. This zone of life where you hope God comes through. But it feels the longer it goes with no divine intervention. It feels like it's this red light putting your life on hold. And I want to say something to you guys today because I think classically in the church we have not had a lot to say to people that are trying to survive this zone. Or we could call it the middle. I think classically when we teach from people's lives that went through difficult stuff like we could talk today easily about Joseph. There had a divine delay of maybe 15 years between him getting that dream from God and having the confidence or the foolishness, however you see it to tell his brothers about this massive idea God had for his life. And between that moment and when we find him becoming Prime Minister of Egypt, he went through this terrible on hold as it felt like I'm sure for him. Season of life where God didn't intervene. God didn't show up. God didn't deliver him. He's so concerned that his time is not ending. If you remember he tries to tell the cup better to the king. Remember me won't you because he's getting early release from jail. The guy has been in jail with and he said when you get when you get back into the presence of Pharaoh mentioned my name. I shouldn't be here. He's trying to take it into his own hands because what else can you do when you don't feel that God sees you or God is coming through for you. And this is about saying to you that are in this season and zone of life. I think it's a miracle you're even in church today because here's what I figured out. The middle, the divine delay zone, the zone where you're waiting for God to show up for a breakthrough. I think is the place of the greatest miracles in life in us. But I also noticed the greatest point in life of fear, instability, disorientation, frustration and it's also where guilt and shame most function. Because what the middle makes you feel is it makes you feel things that you don't think you can come to church feeling. If you feel that God has abandoned you, if you feel that God is not coming through for you. It's an agony. It's an agony because you know God loves you and it's an agony to come to church and worship someone that you don't think even likes you. It's an agony to love God and to serve God and to show up like you've done today when your life doesn't seem to show any evidence of God's love and care and kindness. This zones an agony because it's hard to sit here listening to someone else's breakthrough. You're wondering where yours went. It's an agony because sometimes we listen to someone else having a great outcome and yours did not end well and you did not get a great outcome. And we have no theology for this. And I think we have to find a voice because I've passed it for over 30 years. And if I had a dollar for every person that stopped coming to church and often never came back in this zone of life. They checked out in their turbulent troublesome middle. They didn't quit on God. They quit on the church and stopped coming because often the church is obsessed with fixing things. Often we can't live without one. Tidy your life is right now so we have to try to tidy it up often for our own benefit, not yours. And if I had a dollar for every person that stopped coming to church and some never recovered and came back that skipped out in their delay zone in their middle. I wouldn't be a millionaire but I could buy a decent sized car because it's thousands of people. There are hundreds in this room today that are in this zone of life. And here's what I think we normally do and I understand why we do this. I'm not sure. It's always the most helpful thing to do. I think we speak into people's delay zone, into people's agony of the middle from completion. So we talk about Joseph after he's Prime Minister. And we say, see all things work together for good and you see it all worked out well. Well, it doesn't always work out well for people. And we don't know what to say about that. But some people for whom it's not worked out well are in this room today. Or some used to be and are not anymore for the reasons I explained. And we enter into people's middle and we enter into explaining this zone from happy endings because we have them in the Bible. But I want you to know this morning and ask you a question. You do know, don't you? People in the Bible did not know they were in the Bible. I know, forgive me if that sounds patronizing. But I think it's good for us to tell ourselves that Joseph doesn't know he finishes up being Prime Minister. So we can't assume that Joseph knew that because we do. And so you can enter into Joseph's agony because you know something he doesn't. It's like watching a football match and one of you knows the score and one of you doesn't. And the one that doesn't know the score is panicking and is anxious and is shouting at the TV. And you sat there really chilled because you know in the last minute there's a score. And they win. And this is like us and God. This will be like us reading our Scripture from Joseph's completion. We know he wins in the end. So we flick the page and read it casually. That's all good, all works out well. No, no, no. I'm trying today to hold you in the middle. Because what if Joseph is in church today? What if Habakkuk sat here today? What if Moses whose middle was 40 years? What if Moses who thinks that God's done with him and he has no more usefulness in his life. And he's gone to the backside of the desert. And we all have the equivalent of places where we retreat away from facing up to this trial. These challenges of our middle. What if he sat here today? What if Job is in church today? And the reason Job's don't come to church often is because of Job's friends. Where we try to fix Job or we try to explain to him the reasons why his life is like it is. And his three friends, friends, spent days and days trying to say to him. It's probably because of something you forgot in your youth. Someone you were unkind to. Someone that was poor and you didn't help when you had the means to help them. And they were all coming up with theories as to why God was afflicting his life. Job's friends represent to me at least six types of people I've identified that you should avoid in a crisis. One of those types are called fixes. People that just need to come and explain it and tidy it up and put a bore around it. Because it's just too messy to be around where we're all obsessed with happy endings. And some of you are in this zone today and I don't want to enter your zone. I don't want to step into your divine delay while you're waiting for God and waiting for your miracle. I don't want to enter that from completion all the time. I want to say to you, I am with you in the middle. That many in this room are in our middle, in our delay zone right now. Because the older I get, maybe it's an age thing, maybe it's a life or wisdom thing, I don't know. The older I get, the less I want to be the prophet coming from the mountain giving you God's word from his point of view if you like. And the more often I want to try and be a priest representing you to God. The more I want to come and sit down there in my mind. I want to sit there in what I'm going through and what I'm facing. I want to sit there and think, if I say this to the people, how will it sound to them? Who am I here for? Who am I going through what I'm going through for? Who am I supposed to find something? What seed is there in this sorrow? What wisdom? What light? What understanding is there in the darkest moments of my life that I need to figure out a way to keep and to speak to them about so that they know I see you. One of the greatest gifts to each other in our divine delay zone is to know someone sees us and doesn't feel their jobish to come and tidy us up and fix us and drag us to a false conclusion. A week before Christmas last year we got the news from the doctor that our youngest grandchild, she's two. She's called Harlow. She's two now. She was 18 months or so then, has got cancer. We are now nine months into battling with her leukemia. It's at least a two year minimum treatment regime as many of you know that have gone through this or someone on your mind today that's not here that you're praying for and concerned about who are in their middle. For whom there's been no divine intervention yet, no miracle yet. And we're nine months in and we're going through something. I've counseled families for 30 years that have been going through what we're going through. Now we are that family. So as a leader what do I say and I realize one of the problems with all this thing I'm teaching you today is the oftenest pastors and leaders we teach on suffering but we haven't been through anything yet. Then when something tragic hits our life we forget to come back and reteach it based on what we've really gone through now. Which gives it a new sense of authenticity, which gives it a sound of compassion and humanity we didn't have when it was a sermon we preached five years ago before we'd gone through something difficult and we're going through something difficult and when we went for the diagnosis and spoke to the doctors the doctor in charge of her particular case said to us whatever you do don't Google anything because he realized that that's what we all tend to do and we made a pact as a family that we wouldn't Google and then a couple of us broke it and then when you Google it you realize what the doctor said don't because he said though she has leukemia and you can Google leukemia her physiology is as unique as she is so you can't say because someone else had that outcome that is what's forecast for her because we're all different there is a name for it it's called cyber-condria and in our country there are millions of cyber-condriacs people that believe that they're sick because they have a symptom an ache or a pain or something and they Google it and it comes up with this awful stuff now that convinced they've got it as they go through the checklist they're like got that felt that that happened to me who I'm going to be dying and then they demand MRI scans and then the MRI scan shows nothing wrong so then they demand a second opinion and cyber-condria is costing our health services by the way billions of dollars for people to get diagnosed and get treatment for things that don't exist but Google told them this is your problem and I tell you that to tell you this if you're here today and you have the courage the strength to tell us what you're going through in your divine delay zone what you're going through in your middle if you're Joseph in jail and we give you the microphone if you are Moses in the wilderness and we let you speak if you are Job going through agonies and feel where's God in all this and we ask you to speak to us and you tell us your story we have to promise each other that we won't Google each other don't Google what I tell you and then give me a shallow diagnosis of what you think's going on in my life when you don't know me you don't know my life and I say to people that now know what we're going through once I've told you that don't be finding me somewhere trying to fix me and this is our gift to each other doesn't mean that we don't love and stand with there's something called comfort comfort is about presence it's not about fixing anything we've come obsessed with fixing things and God says hang on a minute I'm the God of all comfort one of the Holy Spirit's job is the Comforter the Holy Spirit will sit down with you in your middle and He will not try to fix you He'll just sit with you and say to you like how about to learn to say to people as a pastor I'm so sorry that you're going through this we hear for you I don't even know what that means or if that's of any worth to you but it's enough for now and we want you to be here we want to build kinds of churches we want Hillsong and I know this isn't the DNA by the way of Hillsong because this church was so kind to my wife and I and our leadership team in the late 90s when I was speaking at the Hillsong conference in Sydney Australia and our church is going through a terrible time and we were so beaten up as a family there's a couple and Brian and Bobby and the team were so loving and so inclusive and so believed in us and this champion in the local church I got to tell you is not is not a value statement it is your culture it's the culture of your leaders and we felt championed we felt championed by Brian and Bobby when no one was championing us including ourselves we were in our middle in our reinvention of our church and half the church had left and we didn't know whether or not that would get better or worse and it was several years have been in this delay zone and I don't want to step into your world from God's completion view all the time normally we teach this stuff and we say you got to believe and have faith and all things work together for good I get that but I'm not sure that's as comforting as we can be I think sometimes it seems to skim over and skip over because if being in your shoes you know we say if I was in your shoes if I was in her shoes we talk about it from God's shoes this is God's shoes if shoes are a metaphor for perspective then we can't use that about God because God doesn't wear shoes when you are omniscient God is omniscient which means He knows everything at once past, present and future He knows it all at once omniscience means you are immune from perspective perspective is its own limitation I can see what I can see from my shoes so we can't attribute shoes as a metaphor to God as if God's perspective is something that hadn't occurred to us and as if our perspective isn't valued because God has His that trumps ours that kind of makes me feel I'm not even seen and noticed when preachers do that to us when they just put on as well here's what the word of God says here's what God says I get that and I believe that but something else needs to be said to step into our middle to let us know that we are seen that we are loved because we need champions from this zone we need heroes from the middle to stand up and say I don't know what the outcome is like Job said didn't he Job said though he slay me because he doesn't know it ends well he doesn't know he's in the Bible though he slay me he said I will yet love and worship him though he slay me and that's all some of you have got here on today that's all you've come here on you hear on I don't know the outcome I don't like that I haven't got my miracle yet but though God delays though God is holding me I will be here I will love and worship and serve him because I feel I think I wonder whether or not the greatest miracle in my life is taking place in my middle I wonder whether or not God is saying to me the miracles through you can never be bigger than the miracle in you and I will not let that happen as if God's saying I want to do amazing things through you but I've got to make sure that what I do through you is first of all established in you and these miracles that happen of that nature only happen in the delay zone in the middle and the problem with the middle is how big's the middle? where's the middle? you can only you can only calculate the middle can't you when you can see both sides so we can retrospectively say that was the middle but you don't know it's the middle when you're in it are you at the beginning of the middle? are you in the middle of the middle? because this is what the people in Florida are wondering and the people still recovering and will be for years yet from Harvey they're still wondering and the people affected by the darker changes they're wondering we're now thrust into this middle and the problem with the middle is we don't know where we are is it another week, is it a day, is it a month, is it years as it was for Joseph and Moses and others that we could talk about through church history it's to them we want to say that we don't want to step into your world only from God's perspective that we want to know that you are seen, that we see you that it's an agony, it's an agony because it's divine think about this if it's divine delay then it's intentional because nothing can delay God so if God's delaying if God's intentionally not intervening it can't be something and someone stopping him you and I could be delayed on any given day for circumstances beyond our control and we could say wouldn't we I'm sorry I'm late but I got held up and we would all understand that but we couldn't attribute that to God that if it's delay, if God's doing that it's worse, it's an agony because it's his idea it is intentional for God to do that to Joseph and to do that to Habakkuk and to do that to Job it's intentional so it's hard to love and serve and worship for God that is intentionally not showing up for us I don't know if I could be friends with someone whose timing is as bad as God's if God was my friend and God knew and you're my friend and you are wealthy and influential and I can't pay my rent and my furniture has been repossessed in a couple of days time and you're not writing me a check and you're not helping me it's not that you don't know I know you know because we are close friends and we share life together and you're not to intervene when I know you can and you should and the clock's ticking and it's tomorrow and tomorrow's come and my furniture did get repossessed and I don't have a home and you still didn't show up I don't think I would you as my friend anymore and sometimes God's timing and sometimes God's appearing and sometimes God's intervening feels to me like awful timing because our idea of timing as we all know is not God's and they said God's timing's perfect God is never late well tell that to Lazarus sometimes God is late and we way past where we feel he should have showed up and we can only know that his timing was perfect we can only know that with hindsight we can only conclude that so you may come to me in the midst of our agony our delay that we are waiting for and little howl or we need a loss of three times already I know God has never had a sleepless night I know nothing ever occurred to God I know God's never had to wait for an outcome for him to become aware of I know that God has never had to be brought up to date or God's never been taken by surprise by a diagnosis he didn't see coming so I know that God is all knowing and God is aware of what's going on and yet he can seem absent and I want to say to you today that feel that we don't want to be a church that says you are but what we really mean is come as we are we want to build churches and build a Christianity that is so strong and is so stable and is so durable that it can stand all of Habakkuk's rants it can stand Job's frustration it can stand Joseph's aloneness when he cries himself to sleep in his cell at night and still no divine intervention we want to build kind of Christianity in churches where our God is not too fragile for us to criticize him like Habakkuk did if your God is too fragile to criticize you need to trade him out and get a more robust God because I want you to know and this is important for you to know you can be angry at God you can be frustrated with God you can be disoriented and disaffected towards God and it doesn't face God at all so don't think that you can't be here today because you're going through something I've got to skip out a church I don't know where I'll be back it could be months, it could be years I just can't be around that stuff I can't be around worship and adoring I can't be around great testimonies and stories in the midst of my non-breakthrough I can't be here I can't be here I'm frustrated and angry with God yes you can you'd be amazed how unfazed God is by what you think about him he's not fragile he's not sensitive people are but God isn't you know Jonah was again the band back up here now the band are coming up gives people hope we finish when we say that and we all need that hope I've been in some services where I hope the band would have got up sooner than they did I'll move on you know you can be so so frustrated with this divinity that seems absent we have no theology for passive omnipotence God is all powerful but seems passive and when we're struggling with that trying to figure it out you can be here come as you are can't we build churches that could stomach and deal with because we've got to have we've got to have champions from the middle we want heroes that stand up and say hey I am going through something right now I don't know the outcome I'm not sure all the outcome wasn't what I hoped it was here's what I learned here's what I figured out I saw something while I was down there I picked something up that I would never have seen had I not been down at that level in life I saw something something happened and it's happening inside me I don't want to call it but I'm a better human being I'm a better human I understand more than I ever did what it means to be compassionate and loving my empathy level is off the charts because I decided not to fast track through it not to go la la la la through it pretend it wasn't happening because our faith has to be real enough our God has to be real enough for anybody in this world anybody in this community today that's your friends and family who are going through stuff we want to build churches where you can say to them come as you are and for them to say I don't know if I can be around church and I don't know if I can be around singing and happiness you don't know our church you need to come as you are we've got hundreds of people in that zone of life and they're finding comfort and strength in church with people that are their tribe and people on their side let's stop just speaking and giving voice to those that are now prime ministers let's let Joseph speak in his middle let's let Job speak in his middle because that's where most of us are taken out and if today you are in your divine delay zone I want you all across the room to stand to your feet because I want to pray over you before I go because I'm one of you there are hundreds in this room there always are and I wonder what do we have for you what do we as preachers sometimes have for you come on all across the room so so so many oh Jesus come on let's pray maybe just stretch your hand and certainly your heart towards people standing Father my heart your heart, our heart goes out to every single person standing here in this room today it is not sure what tomorrow brings and it's not sure when this season there completes looks like coming to a conclusion a good one, a happy one and today I pray for you we pray for you we stand with you, we are you you are us and we are you and I pray that today you will find a stability and a strength and a resolve to take another step to get up tomorrow morning and do another day and then do another day and another day whether in the midst of your divine delay you would see something some facet some aspect some insight that you would lean some wisdom some revelation that will become your gift to the rest of us but in the midst of your middle you will figure something out that you could never have seen and never have known that will become your story and your testimony to the rest of us I pray today you will be stable that you will be strong that others will not try to fix you that our gift to you will be to say we love you we stand with you, we believe in you and the best days are still to come but we don't know when that changes but it doesn't matter, come as you are we love you as you are God is for you, God is with you and the best days are still to come so be held and be strong and stand firm in your middle there's no shame, there's no guilt in your middle do not give way to that God is more than able and more than large and stable in heart to accept and love and grow and build you as you are today in the name of Jesus Father raise up champions and heroes from the divine delay we love you thanks today