Calvary’s theme verse for the year is Isaiah 64:4…”For since the world began, no ear has heard and no eye has seen a God like you, who works for those who wait for him!  I don’t like to wait.  But when you read the three verses before it, you find that it really is a prayer for God to come and amaze us.  Would you be willing to wait, if at the end of your waiting, you would experience the amazement of God at work?

Do you understand that when God says, “WAIT.” He’s promising you that there will be a tomorrow. Wait is a word of hope. God’s “wait is always tied to a promise, which simply means there’s more amazement to come. I’m not saying we never go through difficult times. We live in a fallen world…but we live for an amazing God, a good, joy-filled amazing creator. I love how Isaiah describes this God in Isaiah 29. He writes,

The Lord says: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.”  Did you catch that? God is bummed because people’s hearts are all bricked up and their worship is filled with dry rules. There’s no joy. There’s no amazement. So what does God decide to do?

“Therefore once more I will astound these people with wonder upon wonder… Isaiah 29:14 (NIV)

I’m going to amaze them. I’m gonna blow their minds, knock their socks off, I’m gonna bring a smile to their faces, if it’s the last thing I do. Let me ask you, when is the last time you waited long enough to let God astound you? When we were in Hawaii for our family vacation about 8 years ago, we had one of those wonder upon wonder moments the day we went snorkeling. We went on a charter, a small boat that held only 6. So it was just our family. The guide took us to a bay, the same bay where Captian Cook landed, and supposedly some of the best snorkeling in the world. And it was amazing; a reef around the bay, filled with the colors of the rainbow…amazing fish. And then less than a hundred yards out the reef disappears with a straight drop, thousands of feet deep.

While the reef was amazing, I have to say that swimming out over the abyss was a bit unnerving, scary even. So we were snorkeling, — the boys were with me and the girls were with Lynn — and at some point Lynn swam up beside me and asked me if I had seen the girls. I said I didn’t know. But a little later I was near our boat and the guide told me that he had sent the girls way out there… and he point out toward some kayaks in deep water, over the abyss.  “Why would you send them out there?” I asked. “Dolphins,” he said.

So we bravely swam out to join the girls…and before you know it, we were swimming with dolphins.  Pods of dolphins all around us, spinners.  They would come out of the air, spin, and dive down.  There was one pod that was playing with a leaf, two adults and three young dolphins.  They swam within 5 feet of us. It was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had.

When we left for the bay that morning, Lynn had prayed, “God would you amaze us today. Give us something that will make us smile.” On the way home our guide said, “I can’t believe that happened, dolphins don’t come over to that side of the bay more than two or three times a year. You were really lucky.”

We weren’t lucky… God just decided to amaze us.  You may be thinking, “I’ve never had the dolphin experience.”  Can I tell you with the greatest certainty I can muster that swimming with dolphins is like garbage compared to the reality of His presence.  The question is, “Are we willing to wait? Because when we wait, He astounds us with wonder upon wonder and we find that He is so worth it.