Waiting for the Reveal: Seeing Before Speaking

For a distraction‑free layout that’s easy to read on mobile, print for study, and share with others, we’ve also prepared a nicely formatted printable version.

🖨️ Open the printable transcript

---

God is on the move. God is present and at work before we show up anywhere. That is the big theme of what we’ve been learning from Jesus, is that God is present and at work ahead of us always.

I want to read Colossians. Paul, a student of Jesus, a follower of Jesus, shares similar words as Jesus:

Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. Pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders. Make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

I was sitting in my car with my friend Robert. I’d known him for many years. This is about 20 years ago. I played racquetball with him for many years, and he was pouring out his heart to me in a parking lot. He was going through a divorce. He was telling me how discouraged he felt, how hopeless he felt, how much of a failure he thought he was, how stuck he felt.

And I remember thinking, as I sat in the driver’s seat, as I listened and heard what Robert was saying in that car, “This is it. This is the moment. I need to share Jesus. I need to share the gospel.” I felt the pressure building.

The longer he talked, the more I felt it. And when he paused, he took a breath. Just for a second, I jumped in.

I said, “Robert, Robert, all this pain, all this confusion—God loves you. God has a plan for your life. Jesus died for you. He died for your sins. He rose from the dead. He wants you to give your life to Him, to follow Him. He wants everything. And that’s where you’ll find your hope.”

And Robert got quiet.

For a long time.

And then, in a flat, kind of distant tone, he said, “So you think I just need to give my life to God and ask Him to forgive me? And that’s what I need to do?”

I said, “Yeah.”

Awkward silence. I could tell it did not land. And the conversation just ended.

What would you have done differently?

Did I declare the gospel to Robert that day?

Maybe.

Did I declare the gospel to Robert in a way that met him where he was, that reckoned with the concrete reality of his life?

I was hearing Robert. I don’t know if I was listening to Robert. I was waiting to proclaim the gospel. I don’t think I was waiting for the gospel to be revealed in his life.

I was trying to force a conversation about faith because I knew I needed to get it in there. I knew it was my job. I was trying to rush to action without paying attention to how God was already at work, already drawing Robert in, already speaking to him in his divorce and his confusion and his hopelessness and his sense of failure.

I want to continue to learn from Jesus. What does it look like to carry this beautiful good news that we have of God at work in the world, that Jesus has lived, He died, He rose from the dead bodily, He defeated the powers of Satan, sin, and death? What does it look like to proclaim the kingdom?

This is a way of saying what we’ve been saying each week, but here’s the good news:

The signs of Jesus’ liberating lordship are breaking in everywhere, and the Spirit is empowering us to notice and name these signs at work

… these signs of God’s love, these signs of God’s victory in people’s lives.

Last week, we talked about finding our place, being present to a God who was already present at work. Claire found her place right in a park. Before that, it was in a particular neighborhood we lived in, and then a park, and being present.

God is already at work in that park. God is already at work in your workplace. God is already at work in your home. He’s already loving people. He’s already liberating people. He’s already at work in the concrete context of people’s lives.

So we find a place, we show up, and we stay. We remain. That’s what Jesus says: stay there. Don’t go from place to place. Eat the food that’s served to you. And thank goodness they don’t serve onions, right? Because what if they did? I don’t know what you’d do.

But we eat meals. We live in the regular rhythms of life. We’re present in a place, and we look. We look for how the kingdom of God is being revealed in the actual circumstances of the people’s lives that we’re with—their longings, a longing for love, a longing for belonging, a longing for significance, a longing for security.

We look at their hopes. We look at their pain. And as Paul says, we’re watchful. We’re thankful—thankful for how God is at work. The kingdom of God is at work. God’s love is at work. We’re thankful.

We’re prayerful. We wait. We wait for the door to be opened to graciously proclaim the good news of Jesus.

Last week, I introduced six practices of what’s called presence-based witness. We get this from the Gospel of Luke, but this particular phrasing and these practices come from a book called Presence-Based Witness.

1. Know the presence.
2. God is already at work ahead of you.
3. Find your place to be present to the presence of God.
4. Wait for the reveal.
5. Proclaim the gospel.
6. Invite people to cooperate with it, to be a part of what God is doing in their life, and testify to a different power for today.

Wait for the reveal.

I mentioned last week, I know the authors of this book, and I gave Gino a call this week. It’s nice to be able to just call someone who wrote the book, right? And so I asked—we had a good, good, good conversation about waiting for the reveal. What does this look like in your church’s life, in your life?

We talked, and so I want to be really clear. What we’re going to talk about today—waiting for the reveal—I’m borrowing heavily, all right, from Gino, with his permission. But I’m sharing with you, as we discussed Luke 10, we discussed what this looks like. I’m sharing with you almost directly from Gino’s mouth.

Do you hear the credit being given there? Right? Okay. No plagiarism happening here.

All right, so waiting for the reveal.

We’re present. We believe God is present and at work. God’s love is already liberating and healing and restoring and breaking in. We’re present in a place. We’re awake. We’re attentive. We’re looking.

And what does the reveal—what does waiting for the reveal in that place look like?

First, we need to know that waiting for the reveal is an act of faith. It’s a deep act of faith that God is at work, that God is loving people. It’s an acknowledgment that He’s already at work before we ever speak, before we ever act, before we ever show up. God is there.

It is not our job to create the revelation.

All right? We’re waiting for the reveal. We’re not forcing the reveal.

That’s what I felt like with Robert. “I’ve got to force the reveal. I’ve got to help him see this.” Right? We want to jump in, and it’s from a good heart. It’s from a good place.

But we don’t create the reveal. God creates the reveal.

Our role is to be attentive, right? Our role is to listen deeply, to discern where and how the Spirit of God is moving in this person, in this place.

So this is a pretty radical departure from the impulse to force conversations and to force conversations about faith or to rush to action.

What we’re being encouraged here is to wait on God because God is at work.

And that’s what I did with Robert, right? I felt the pressure of the moment. I needed to introduce him to Jesus, rather than realizing that Jesus was already introducing Himself to Robert, right? And I needed to wait and listen to how God was introducing Himself to Robert.

So to wait is to trust. It’s to believe that God’s timing is perfect. It’s to believe that the Spirit of God, the living God at work, will reveal the right moment to proclaim the kingdom.

Now, don’t hear this. Don’t hear this to mean going passive. Don’t hear that this means being disengaged, right? This is a call into a very active, engaged presence in a place with people.

We are prayerful, as Colossians says. We are thankful. We’re thankful for what God is doing. We are watchful. We’re looking.

We have this posture of expectation. The living God of the universe, who loves people deeply, is on the move around me, through me, in this person, in this place.

And so we’re very actively engaged, and we’re looking for how a door is being opened. The door of heaven is being opened into the particular place and into the particular person at this particular time.

How is God at work?

So we’re actively involved. This is very active stuff that Paul is inviting us to—devoting ourselves to prayer.

We’re praying. As Claire says, we’re praying beforehand, we’re praying during, we’re praying after, and we’re looking. How is God answering this?

And what world—and how awesome, right?

“Hey, could you guys sing some of your greatest hits now?”

You’ve got to be willing to sing, right? You’ve got to be willing to sing.

That’s the invitation, though. That’s the invitation of the people.

And we see that in Luke, right? Wait. Be invited into a home. The first act of hospitality will not be yours. The first act of good news is often not yours. It’s the person to whom you’re going.

They have something to bring. They have something to offer. They have something to give.

And this beautiful act of hospitality, an unlimited onion meal set before you, and they say, “Hey, would you share with us?”

Well, yeah. There’s the door. There’s a door.

Be watchful, prayerful, thankful.

We’re active. We know God loves the person that we’re with. We know God loves the place we’re in. And we expect the love of God to be stirring.

We expect. We expect it. We expect it.

And we stay engaged, watching for signs of God’s work.

This is what Jesus did. This is what Jesus says.

Remember, we talked about this. Every healing that I can think of that Jesus performs flows out of a conversation. It flows out of a relationship.

And often Jesus doesn’t just send a zap into people with healings. He often says, “What do you want?”

The man at the Pool of Bethesda, John 5—this guy’s been waiting for years. He can’t get to the pool to get healed.

And Jesus encounters him, and He doesn’t just assume, “Let me pick you up and throw you in the pool,” or disappear.

He says, “Do you want to be healed?”

And in that moment, He’s honoring human longing. He’s acknowledging it, and He’s attentive, and He’s paying attention to human longing and divine movement.

Right?

He’s waiting.

Is this the time? Is this the place? Is this the healing? Is this where the kingdom breaks in?

We see this in the same Luke 10, right? Verses 8 through 9.

I’ve mentioned this already, right?

“When you enter a town and you’re welcomed, eat what is offered to you.”

And notice the timing of this.

Now, this is just the one passage here, but the timing is interesting.

“Heal the sick who are there, and then tell them…”

So you see the kingdom break through. You see the work of God doing beautiful things, and then you say, “Look. Look how much you’re loved. Look. The kingdom of God is near.”

It’s happened.

You didn’t do it.

The kingdom did it.

You bear witness to it.

So the proclamation follows the presence. The proclamation is a response to what God is doing. It’s noticing how God has revealed the kingdom, and then you just say, “There it is. There it is. Look at that.”

Too often, right, evangelism has been approached kind of as a scripted presentation that we have prepared. We’re ready. “Ready? You got it? I got it memorized. Get ready.” And then we’re just kind of waiting to give it, waiting to give it, waiting for the guy to shut up long enough so that we can put it in there, right?

Rather than a responsive engagement with real human need and this divine moment.

I don’t think that Jesus asks us to show up with content ready to deliver. I think He asks us to be present, arrive with eyes to see, and then the naming grows out of this concrete reality of what you’re seeing happen before you in that person, in that place.

And when we do that, when we wait for the reveal, our words carry more weight because they’re intersecting the content.

Here’s some good preaching—a little alliteration.

The content is intersecting with the concrete context of that person’s life, right?

The content is not just abstract, floating up in the sky. Jesus did this wonderful thing up here, and someday you’ll go to heaven. It’s saying the kingdom of heaven has come on earth as it is in heaven—in this life, in your divorce, in your hunger, in your loneliness, in your legalism, in the love that your friends have for you. Whatever it is, you name it.

So when we proclaim good news, let’s name the concrete reality of God’s presence in the actual person’s life.

And ultimately, this waiting reveals and teaches us humility, right? Because we aren’t bringing the kingdom.

As Claire said—we could just stop there—but Claire said, you realize there are no words. Hey, you can’t come with a pre-scripted conversation. It’s only God that can reveal His love that meets the longings, and we bear witness to it.

But we can’t bring it. We can’t facilitate it. We can’t manufacture it.

And what happens is, like we’ve said all throughout this series, what we’re trying to subvert here is this tendency, out of this pressure, that we end up being very coercive and controlling and manipulative, trying to convince people, “This is the way, right? You need to believe,” or guilt people or shame people or terrify people with the fires of hell or whatever it is.

And that’s just not how it works. We can’t do it.

Our task is not to bring the kingdom. Our task is to be present to the way the kingdom is already at work, to remain open, and to trust that we have nothing.

We have nothing in our pocket. We have nothing. We have one pair of sandals. We don’t have a change of clothes. We need to rely on the hospitality of others. We are dependent, humble, and we are, just as the people we’re with, sheep among wolves, going to other sheep.

And we’re just there, right? Bearing witness to the Shepherd who provides, who’s got everything.

All right.

And it’s our privilege to name it.

So quickly, what is it that we’re looking for?

All right, if we’re waiting for the reveal, what are some tangible artifacts, some concrete signs that God is at work, that the kingdom of God is breaking in?

1. T. Wright—my buddy Wright. Remember? I met him. I had eggs with him.

In Simply Christian, this book, he speaks of four echoes of a voice, four longings in the human heart that are a sign of something beyond themselves that Jesus provides in the good news.

Right?

Because Jesus has defeated the powers of Satan, sin, and death. He is risen, victorious. He’s making all the wrong things right.

There is a longing for justice that’s meant to be satisfied.

There’s a quest for spirituality, a connection with our Creator that’s meant to occur.

There’s a hunger for relationships—restoration and healing and belonging and community—that is in every human heart, that is meant to be experienced.

And there is a delight in beauty.

There’s something about something beautiful that calls to something deep in us that we can’t name or put words to, but we’re all drawn to.

So each one, Wright says, points beyond itself to God.

In Jesus—His life, His bodily resurrection, His burial, His resurrection, His enthronement as King—Jesus is Lord, and He accomplishes these things. He meets these needs.

The kingdom of God is coming near when wrong things are made right and justice is experienced.

The kingdom of God is near.

This means that people hungry to know their Creator, to be connected with something beyond what they can see, taste, and feel, are connected to the Creator.

Jesus reconciles God and humanity and all creation.

The kingdom of God comes near.

It means our delight in beauty—in landscape, in a person, in a work of art that moves us—is, at a deeper level, this taste, this glimpse of new creation, of God restoring a good creation, a good world, to a restored world: new heavens and new earth.

So this is what we’re looking for when we’re having that conversation in the car, or at a park, or at lunch with a coworker, or with our child as they go to bed and they’re scared at bedtime, or they’re having a difficult time at school, or when you’re with your friends at the lunch table, or whatever.

We’re looking for these longings that God provides in the gospel.

So when we see justice, when someone gets justice, when we see someone hungry fed, we say, “Look. God is here. God’s at work.”

When we see a relationship restored, someone reaches out to forgive or ask for forgiveness, the kingdom of God has come near.

When we see someone hungry for something spiritual—even if they can’t name it, they’re just waking up to some spiritual, even some amorphous spiritual experience—we say, “God’s at work. God’s at work here. The kingdom is coming near. It’s breaking in.”

When we see a beautiful scene—I was talking to one of my friends yesterday. We were in the parking lot, and the clouds were above us, and the sun was shining through, and he was like, “Look at that. That’s awesome. That’s amazing.”

That’s beauty, right? That’s beauty. That’s God at work in that person’s heart to say, “Man, I see something,” and the beauty awakens something—a longing of my heart for something, this new creation to be restored.

This is what God is doing.

So these are all entry points. These are all revelations of the kingdom of God at work that we declare.

And I wish I would have been able to be attentive to these when I was in that car with Robert that day.

Content that speaks to his concrete context, right?

I wish I had trusted and knew that God was already present and at work there, and I just had to name it. I didn’t have to bring it. I didn’t have to force it.

The signs of Jesus’ liberating lordship are breaking in everywhere, even right now, and the Spirit is giving us eyes to see, empowering us to notice and name them.

This week I was walking with my wife because I’m trying to listen to my own sermons, and I was walking in our neighborhood, getting into that practice of being present in our place.

And we ran across our friend. I’ve known him for many years in the neighborhood. He lives pretty close to us, and I haven’t talked to him for many years, but he’s very, very sick.

He’s a Vietnamese refugee, been in the States for many years. He’s an American citizen, I believe.

He is very sick. His tongue was swollen. He had a colostomy bag. He was skin and bones.

He said he had cancer.

He said he was dying.

I asked if he was in pain, and he said no.

And then he just said, “I’m not afraid to die.”

Then, “My wife is afraid. My son is afraid. But I’m not afraid to die.”

Now, several years ago, if I was having that conversation, I would have felt tremendous pressure. “There’s the time. There’s the moment.”

I would have felt pressure to make him afraid of death, right? And then I would have felt pressure to relieve his fear of death.

And then, you know, “Don’t be afraid. Be very afraid. Here’s why you don’t have to be afraid. Come into it.”

Right?

Okay.

But I did not feel that pressure.

I felt peace.

I felt peace.

I was able to just be present with him.

I was praying. I was watchful. I was thankful to be with him.

And I sensed that was what was needed in that moment—to be present.

And I plan to keep being present.

I plan to keep being prayerful.

I plan to keep being watchful.

I want to walk by his house intentionally. I know when he’s out and about.

But I know that God is revealing. The revelation is God’s.

And when that moment happens, God will move to proclaim, and I can bear witness to what God is doing.

I’m trusting that God is at work.

And even as I say it, I’ll just be honest with you. I feel this tension, like, “Well, what if he dies before I can do it?”

You know what?

God loves my neighbor.

And God is at work in my neighbor.

And God has him, right?

God has him.

And I’m just learning to trust and wait and be present, ready to bear witness.

I want to ask you: What would it look like for you to wait for the reveal of God’s work in people’s lives—His loving, liberating presence at work?

Do you notice a tendency to skip past presence to proclamation?

Do you know this tendency, this pressure?

I’d encourage you, as I be encouraged too, to sit there, to be present without pressure.

Now, some of us love being present. We’ll be present all over the place.

And we hear this as an invitation into passivity, right?

And we’re like, “Oh, I don’t ever have to say anything. Okay, good. I’ll just sit with my neighbor.”

Now remember, maybe you need to hear this.

I want you to ask yourself: Is there a fear of proclamation?

Is there a fear?

And what is that?

What is it that causes you to shrink back when you see the reveal, right?

You see it.

Why is it hard to name it?

And maybe there’s a desire underneath that fear.

Maybe there’s something at work that I would just ask you to ask God about.

So some of us need, as I said last week, to have a place we’re already present.

Now we just need to be there with purpose, on purpose, active and watchful and awake, thankful for how God is at work.

So what’s a person?

What’s a place?

Did you choose a place last week?

Did you think about it?

Where are you already?

Where are you being invited to be?

Is there a person that you could simply be present with and attentive to how God is at work?

No agenda other than being present and awake, waiting for the reveal of God at work.

At the end of our conversation, Gino shared with me this little parable he wrote.

A parable simply means a story that goes alongside something, right, to explain.

So, “The kingdom of God is like this,” and Jesus tells a story.

Or, “The kingdom of God is not like this,” and He tells a story.

So here’s a parable of what it might look like to proclaim the good news and to wait for the reveal.

Imagine—have you ever planned a surprise birthday party for somebody, or been the recipient of a surprise birthday party?

If you have, you know all the work, you know all the planning that goes into it.

You know the group texts that you’re trying to keep secret from everyone else, and the near misses of people giving it away, texting the wrong chat.

But the night the party arrives, your friend is out with loved ones or doing something, and the text comes in: “We’re on our way. We’re pulling up in the driveway.”

They’re walking up, and everyone in the house crowds behind the sofa. You know, 17 people, and you’re holding this position. Your knees are about to give out. You’re waiting.

You’re waiting.

And then you’re hoping for two things, right?

Nobody makes a noise and gives it away, and that you won’t collapse to the floor because your patellar tendon is going to give out.

But then they walk in, the lights flip on, and, “Surprise!”

And hopefully they’re overwhelmed with joy, right? And they’re overwhelmed by the love that was poured out on them in that moment.

But that’s not proclaiming the gospel.

I think gospel proclamation is like throwing a party and being present there, but it’s not the surprise itself. It’s the moment after.

It’s the moment when you go find your friend a couple more minutes after the surprise was yelled, and you say, “Happy birthday.”

And then you say something like this:

“Do you see how loved you are?

Do you see the care that went into this?

I’m not saying put this on, put anything on you, but do you know that people planned for weeks, and you had no idea what was happening?

People were working behind the scenes, thinking about you, caring for you, wanting to show you that you were cared for, loving you, hoping you would experience this as love.”

That’s what proclaiming the gospel looks like.

It’s naming how God has been at work in a person’s life when they’ve been unaware.

It’s having eyes to see and ears to hear the signs and echoes of the kingdom at work in people’s lives and being able to name it and say, “Look. Do you see how loved you are? Do you see how much God cares for you? Do you see how God’s been at work in all of this—these years of your life, these circumstances of your life? Do you see how God is at work?”

It could be when they notice their anger.

It could be when they notice their fear of what’s coming up and their anxiety about the future.

It could be when they see something good and give God the credit.

Our job isn’t to convince anybody of anything. It’s simply to testify to what’s already been done.

And that’s witness.

And that’s a joy.

And so…

The signs of Jesus’ liberating lordship are breaking in everywhere.

The Spirit is empowering us to notice and name them.

And I want to say the same prayer  as we did last week.

And again, this is a prayer, if you would stand.

This is a prayer that is often prayed in the church across the world as they come to the Lord’s Table, Communion.

We believe that, in a special way, in a mysterious way, it’s not only symbol, but it is this presence of God among us—the life, the death and suffering, the victory of God, His ascension to heaven, and His release of all the good gifts of God’s good news, of His victory over Satan, sin, and death, released into the world, released to those who follow Jesus.

So this table is a sign of God’s presence in our midst.

And so we ask that the Lord be present in this place.

And then the most important thing is that we are present to His presence.

This is a prayer that we can pray as we walk into a party, or we walk into work, or we put our kids to bed:

“Lord, be present in this place.

Help me to be present to Your presence.”

Can we say this prayer together before we come to the table?

Let’s say it:

Lord, be present in this place.

Help me to be present to Your presence.

Amen.