Waiting on the lord!

Waiting on the Lord

Brendan Mc Crossan

Waiting on the lord!

Isaiah 40-31 but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings of eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.

This is a difficult thing for me to do, for years I never had the patience to wait on things to happen; I tried to make things happen but without success. “Today the Lord is teaching me patience, even if it takes years!” And then things God planned will happen, but in his time not mine.

Today I awoke with this scripture running through my mind, and when I awake with a scripture running through my mind I know the lord wants me to write on it, and as I write on it I learn new things or my spirit is rekindled with the knowledge I already knew but had forgotten, and as I write you get the benefit also as the lord usually reveals the depth of his word to me.

I think every Christian knows this scripture or has heard it sang about or preached on, so it is no stranger to the Christian. As I sat in my secrete place, my back garden and read this scripture, the Holy Spirit drew my attention to the whole scripture, he told me to go back a few lines to 40- 27 and begin there, find out what the whole scripture meant.

Isaiah-40-27-O Jacob, O Israel, how can you say that the lord doesn’t see your troubles and isn’t being fair? Don’t you yet understand? Don’t you know by now that the everlastingGod,thecreatorofthefarthestpartsoftheearth,nevergrowsfaintorweary? No one can fathom the depths of his understanding. He gives power to the tired and worn out, and strength to the weak. Even youths shall be exhausted, and the young men give up.

Isaiah 40-31 but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings of eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.

Usually were in trouble and complain that the lord isn’t listening just as the writer of this book of Isaiah wrote, and like the writer of this verse said, “Israel” was complaining as usual that God wasn’t working fast enough for them to see it for themselves. And the writer told them! Don’t you yet understand? Don’t you yet understand? Don’t you know by now that the everlasting God, the creator of the farthest parts of the earth, never grows faint or weary?

Don’t you know by now? God won’t let you down, after all the years God has led Israel to the Promised Land, they still didn’t trust him to get them there and in good health. They still questioned his judgments and plans for them. I still question God’s judgment and plans for my life and if you were truthful so do you, otherwise we would never have a care in the world, and we would never be in stress when trouble comes around. I find it amazing still to know that God knows everything about me, where I sit where I stand where I go when sinning in darkness. Nothing is hidden from the all seeing eyes of God. He knows everything concerning me, and you the reader.

O Jacob, O Israel, how can you say that the lord doesn’t see your troubles and isn’t being fair?

Just like Jacob and Israel we say the lord doesn’t see our troubles; when we are going through bad times; when we don’t have enough money to meet the bills, or some disaster is happening to us, we say, “God don’t you even care about us?” We get disheartened and give up believing Godandgoandtryandsortoutourproblemsourselves,wedonotwaituponthelord;wedon’t wait for his answers; we try and do it ourselves, and this is serious for the Christian believer; it means we don’t really trust God and God tells us in many scriptures, “trust me,” and we say, “Ok lord but up to a point.” After this point when it doesn’t look like the answer is coming we then do it ourselves and usually fail. “It’s not fair God,” we say “to make us wait until the very last moment before you supply our need, it isn’t fair to make us wait, it cause us stress and anxiety!” The funny thing, it doesn’t cause God any stress or anxiety to wait until the last moment to supply our need, he knows he can do it all in the blink of an eye.

The Israelites were complaining to God about himself, they told him on many an occasion he failed them, he didn’t do what he promised, and they went on ahead of him and got wiped out, they never learned that God will never fail them or you. All through the bible you read story after story of God telling the Israelites to trust him to wait on him, and they done their own thing, with disastrous results. It took them 40 years to go from one place to another a few weeks walking journey, but their unbelief caused them to fail to get into the Promised Land until all those that God told had died but one. Only one of the original Israelites entered the Promised Land the others failed to trust God and disbelieved thus they died in the desert.

Don’t let you and me die in the desert of life; let’s believe God no matter what it looks like.

You see those people got stuck in their feelings and their feelings caused them to disbelieve, even though they seen the pillar of fire by night and the cloud by day. They had a manifest glory of God happening and still disbelieved, they seen the red sea open for them and they walked across on dry land and still they disbelieved. So God let them walk around in circles going no where, full of their own selves and not filled with belief, and all they did was complain that God didn’t know what he was doing, or words to that effect. God gave them water from a rock, he gave them manna from heaven, he gave them quail for meat, and still they refused to believe God! Does it sound familure to you in your and my walk with the lord? God gives us signs of his great care and still when trouble comes we doubt he will take care of it for us.

No one can fathom the depths of his understanding. This scripture says it all, no one knows the depth of his understanding, no one realizes that God created them and God knew everything about them from the moment of their conception to their birth and then to their death and on into eternal life.

God planned things for us, but we didn’t listen to him, and nothing we do is hidden from God, but because he loved us enough he decided to give us free will to do what we want to do, the choice to follow him or do our own thing and in doing our own thing we have gotten ourselves into lots of troubles.

Our lives are laid out like two parallel lines, one line is the perfect will of God and the other is the permissive will of God. But both lines are known by God.

God sees all, he knows from before time began what line we would walk, when we would walk the straight line of his perfect will, and when we would leave that line and cross over to doing our own thing, and then we wonder why things don’t go as planned. In the perfect will of God all the blessings lie, easy to reach and achieve, it’s when we cross over to doing our own thing that things get difficult and things don’t work out as we planned. But God loves us enough to even take care of our mistakes, and changes everything to good for us later on when we return to his perfect will.

Jeremiah-29-11-I know the plans I have for you, says the lord. They are plans for good to give you a future and a hope. In Those days when you pray, I will listen. You will find me when you seek me, if you look for me in earnest.

Do you see it, God has plans for you and me, plans for good, to give us a future and a hope. God knows everything about us. Right from the moment he thought about creating mankind, and then he decided who and what to make, and he made a who out of you and me, and decided from the beginning even before he made the world, that he would bless us, that he would forgive our sins, overlook our faults and failings and declare us holy and spotless and clean like him, and he knew from before time that we would walk certain paths and that he would call out to us, “wrong path,” and we would turn to the right path, and sometimes he planned to use correction to bring his plans for us into fulfillment, and so allowed Satan at times to attack us and bring us into despair where we would then have to come to him and seek him again, earnestly, and walk the right path of blessings.

Ephesians -1-4-long ago, even before he made the world, God chose us to be his very own, throughwhatChristwoulddoforus;hedecidedthentomakeusholyinhiseyes,without a single fault – we who stand before him covered by his love. His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into his own family by sending Christ to die for us. And he did this because he wanted to.

Do you understand that even before he made the world God had a plan concerning us; he laid that plan out before us and gave us the free choice to follow that plan or to follow our own ideas or Satan’s ideas. As the book of Ephesians said long ago, even before he made the world, he knew it would even rain on what days it would rain or snow or sunshine, it didn’t rain just because it rained, it rained on Tuesday the 17th June at three o clock for twenty three minutes and fifteen point eight seconds. At precisely the time God said it would rain from before time.

Nothing is unknown to God, the birth and death of every insect, bird, cat, and dog and whatever. He spoke and all came into existence at his command and each thing at its proper timing.

I kissed my wife in the rain as we stood in a post office doorway one night and it was at that moment that I knew I loved her and would love her for eternity. We were only going with each other a few months at the time. Was it by chance that it rained as we were walking home that night, no! I don’t believe so “now!” It was prearranged by God, the woman he chose for me, the only woman who could put up with me the way I was in my younger days, that we would step into that post office doorway to get in out of the rain, and we would kiss and it was a kiss I would never forget, and haven’t. I often think of that kiss and we are married now 43 years, and that kiss is eternal.

Isn’t it amazing that the God who made us holy in his eyes knows everything about us!” His unchanging plan, {remember this; his plan is unchanging towards us.} has always been to adopt us into his own family by sending Christ to die for us.

If you’re reading this then you didn’t exist when Jesus walked the earth, but God’s plan was to adopt you into his family through Jesus. Jesus came to earth 2009 years ago as a part of God’s plan, and as part of that plan you and I were thought about and decided on by God to come into his own family. 2009 years ago, but really it was from millions of years ago that God thought of this plan that we see being fulfilled by Jesus and now it reaches into this present day where I and you are now a part of that plan and belong to his family. The plan was thoughtaboutbeforetheformationoftheearthandtheplanisunfoldingasmatterinourlifetime.

We know from reading God’s word there is to come a man who is the antichrist, we know what he is going to do and then we know what is going to happen to him. We also know that Satan the Devil was once called Lucifer the most beautiful angel there ever was, and is now the most evil being ever created by God, we know his ending is in the lake of burning sulfur along with every fallen angel who followed him in his rebellion against God.

We also know there is coming a new heaven and we even know what it will look like because it is described in the book of revelation, and in other books in the bible. We know there are the tree of life and a river flowing from the throne of God we know its walls are made of precious stones and its gates made of pearls, and its streets paved with gold. Yet this has not happened in our time, its part of the blueprint, the plan of God. You and I are privileged to know these things as our father has shared them with us in his word.

You and I are included in the plan of God, every little move we make is known, every mistake or every good thing is already known about. Everything we do is known about, and faith on our part brings in the straight line of the perfect will of God for us. Obedience to the prompting of the Holy Spirit guides us into the right path where we receive the blessings of God. It’s like following a map; we follow the clues in the map, and follow the directions the map gives, and along the way are treasures laying in store, waiting on us to collect them, if we don’t follow the map correctly then we will miss out on some treasures that belong to us.

Trusting God is when it says on the map to wait a while, to rest, then we need to wait and we need to rest. We need to be obedient to the map to find all the treasures.

God mapped out the plan of life for us and gives us directions through his word and through the Holy Spirit our helper, and told us he would supply our every need.

Philippians 4-19- and it is he who will supply our every need from his riches in glory, because of what Christ Jesus done for us.

This scripture does not just talk about our finical need but it promises every need, every Christian associates this scripture with money needs but it does not just say money, it says “our every need.”

It took ten days before God answered this prayer

The people of Israel came to Jeremiah asking him to tell them what God wants them to do and where he wants them to go.

Jeremiah-42-3- beg the lord your God to show us what to do and where to go!”

“All right,” Jeremiah replied. “I will ask him and I will tell you what he says. I will hide nothing from you.”

Then they said, “May the curse of God be upon us if we refuse to obey what ever he says we should do!” Whether we like it or not, we will obey the Lord our God to whom we send you with our plea. For if we obey him everything will turn out well for us.

{Read the whole chapter and see it took ten days for God to answer.}

{Does that scripture sound familure? God turns everything to good for those who love him.} {Everything will turn out well for us.}

Romans-8-28- and we know that all that happens to us is working for our good if we love God and are fitting into his plans.

Did you read the last four words is that scripture? Fitting into his plans; you have to fit in with the plans God has for you.

Ten days later the lord gave his reply to Jeremiah.

It took the lord ten days to give Jeremiah an answer, yet we expect instant answers when we pray, “and do it now for me Lord, I need the answer now.” There is no waiting on the lord with us is there?

When God gave Jeremiah his answer, they wouldn’t believe Jeremiah or obey God.

This scripture alone tells us that God is in no hurry to answer us, he expects us to wait on him. But we get impatient and start building our own golden calf, like the Israelites did when Moses went to converse with the lord and he was away for a while. Our golden calf is what ever we start doing because the lord seems slow to answer or doesn’t seem like he is going to answer.

Waiting on the lord

My belief in waiting on the lord is like a waiter waiting on the customer, he waits, until he gets a signal to come and take the order, and so he serves the customer. I believe that I am a waiter serving a mighty God and when waiting on his answer to my prayer, in return I will wait on him with songs and praise and worship, ministering to God as I wait on him. I believe waiting is a two way thing, waiting on God to answer and waiting on him ministering to him as I await the outcome of my prayer. So if I have to wait ten days like the Israelites I will wait on him and minister to him in love knowing he has the answer to my need.

God created us to fellowship with him, to converse and share things together, as friends do. Scripture calls us friends of God, no longer slaves but friends.

John-15-15- I no longer call you slaves, for a master doesn’t confide in his slaves; now you are my friends, proved by the fact, that I have told you everything the Father told me.

As a friend of God I will minister to him as I wait on his answers, to my prayers as I know they are coming, even if they take ten days or ten years, they are coming.

God never fails us or lets us down, but he waits until he brings everything concerning us into perfect alignment. Remember we are following the plan of God, he knows the plan and sometimes we get ahead of the plan and then God stops us and tells us to wait and sometimes that waiting is so that God can catch up with us so to speak. Sometimes we run ahead with things he has given us, and we run about telling everyone what God showed us and then we get pulled up, and we know we ran with what the lord gave us; others were not yet ready for what God gave us.

Again its like reading a map and you can see from reading the map there are new shortcuts as things have changed over the years, new roads have been made, so we take shortcuts, but we loose out on the treasure along the way, and for us Jesus is the way and no other way is the right way; we have to follow the map, the plans, to the letter to get all the treasures that await us. Now we have to backtrack to where the good plan was. The psalm writer in Psalm 119 was someone who knew he needed a map to guide him.

Psalm-119-18- open my eyes to see wonderful things in your Word. I am but a pilgrim here on earth; how I need a map- and your commandments are my chart and guide. I long for your instructions more than I can tell.

This guy knew he needed a map a chart to guide him along with God’s word. You see he included all things needed in this life the Word of God, the map, God’s instructions and the chart.

Sometimes like the Israelites we think God is being to slow and that he isn’t being fair, after all their thing is the most important thing in their life, but God has us interconnected with others in his glorious plans.

Take this for instance. If you married the first woman you met would this be the woman God intended you to have? With so many marriages breaking up in today’s world, is it no wonder when they don’t ask God is this the woman or man you want me to spend the rest of my life with?

Sometimes a woman chooses a man who beats her senseless or the other way around. Was that God plan? I don’t think so, perhaps she didn’t wait on God or didn’t even bother to ask or wasn’t into God or believed he even cared about her. {I am just giving examples here not getting at you personally, so take no offense, but maybe you didn’t ask God; “is this the right person for me?” And God knowing his plan answers no or yes depending on his plan. Then eventually they found the perfect partner, perhaps this was finally the one God chose for them, from before time began.

As I said we are all interconnected in Gods plan, and sometimes God waits on the other person or circumstance to come into alignment before he answers with the perfect answer.

I will give you an example of having to wait and there is nothing you can do to hurry it along. Take flowers, at the moment I am into gardening, something I never was interested in all my life until three years ago when I planted some flowers that were bought half grown, and I spent a lot of time in my back garden eventually building a cover between my back door and my garden shed, now I am covered in on three sides and above and even in winter I can sit out my back and enjoy being in God’s company and enjoying my flowering garden. This has become my secrete place where I spend time ministering to God every day singing him praise and worshiping him and also getting instructions from him and writing my books, at the Holy Spirits direction. God knew my father was a gardener, I wasn’t interested, but I watched him as a child growing up and somehow or other his love for gardening passed on to me, in time, 59 years to be exact. Since taking up gardening I learnt that buying flowers was expensive and gardening was hard work, weeding and sowing and watering, and feeding the plants as they grew. I have learnt that it is better to buy perennials {perennials return year after year, so even though they are more expensive to buy they save you money.} than to buy flowers that last only one season; and I learned that different flowers bloom at different times even though they are all planted at the one time. And the point I am getting to is God showed me so much about his kingdom sitting here in my back garden with my flowers. If I didn’t plant certain flowers, the bees and wasps and different insects would have to search somewhere else for food; the birds come to my garden in abundance searching for the slugs and other pests that destroy my flowers, and feed on them. Everything has a purpose in life, to some it may mean nothing and to others everything.

The flowers grow at their own speed. I can’t hurry them along, they only bloom in season, and all thesamevarieties bloom almost at thesametime, just as God planned. Other flowers bloom at different times, each in their own season.

Waiting on our season

We have to wait until our season is ready, before our prayers can be answered, and answered they will if we persist in coming to God reminding him, and on the day when they are in bloom then the answer comes.

We have to wait until everything God planned comes into alignment, in his perfect will and timing, and for us that is the hardest thing we have to do. God loves us and wants to give us the best in this life and in eternity with him afterwards. He tells us to wait until I bring everything I planned for your life to line up with what I planned for someone else’s life and how it interacts with yours, and how others are going to be affected by what happens with us. You are not just someone on their own in this life floating about aimlessly, you are the body of Christ and the body is intertwined with other parts; maybe there are a hundred people involved in your situation and God needs to line everyone up together to bring him glory and you your answer to your prayer, that is why he is in no hurry, he awaits on his plan to unfold, for each piece of the jigsaw to fit perfectly. Its no use if one piece doesn’t fit right, then the whole picture would be a mess, chaotic.

I am in a healing ministry; if I didn’t wait until God told me to move I would no doubt miss those whom God wanted to save at this point or heal. I have gone on ahead of God many times in my life in ministry, and gone to places where my wife did not agree I should go, and I was not in the perfect will of God, and I blundered through the services, even though God stilled healed those who came for prayer, but it wasn’t because of my obedience that he did it, it was because he loved those sick folk, and I got no blessing from it, all I had was a sinking feeling in my stomach knowing I was in disagreement with my dear wife; and scripture says if a husband and wife do not agree then their prayers will not have ready answers.

God knows what’s best for us; he knows the perfect timing for his plans after all he made them a few million years ago. Our task is to wait on him knowing he knows what he is doing, because he has it all worked out anyway, and its better that we should wait on him then we will receive the benefits of his blessings, his perfect will!”

Keep in mind that God planned the best plan ever when he made us, he planned that we would be blessed, he knew what road we needed to walk on, and when we needed to rest and to wait on him, waiting until everything else lined up perfectly with his perfect will, not permissive will, and now the blessings are here, praise the lord!” we just need to wait on him by ministering to him as he brings everything into being for our good.

You see you are not on your own; there is the whole body to consider and God considers the whole body in his perfect plan. When you have to wait, just wait on him by giving him glory honor and praise, ministering to him as you wait. You are the body of Christ and god is perfecting his body one step at a time and your just a small but important part in that body of ChristJesus, justaseveryoneelseisasmallbutimportantpartin thatbody also. God willwork out his plans for, and through you; just wait, giving thanks to God for his amazing plans. What a God we have!” What a Father he is!” I will wait on him no matter how long it takes for him to do what he must do to bring everything into completion. No more complaining, just praising, developing patience as I wait on him.

I know now I am just a small piece of God’s amazing Jigsaw, when each piece fits then the picture becomes even clearer. I will wait on him to complete the picture where I am involved in and while waiting I will wait on him, serving him with praise for his great understanding, and his awesome plans for me. Then “everything will turn out for my good as his word says!” Amen