My Pulpit Message notes - Wait Upon the LORD

Wait Upon the LORD

My Pulpit Message Notes are extracted from sermon preached at the Nairobi Baptist Church (NBC) Ngong Road o Sunday 30th January 2022. Preacher: Reverend Munengi Mulandi, NBC Senior Pastor. Topic: Wait upon the Lord. Scripture: Isaiah 40:25-31

There are Bible commentators who think Isaiah was written by two different people because the messages are two far apart for it to have been authored by one person. So they say.

Isaiah chapter one to 39 it is a message of judgment, repentance. It is a hard hitting message that some people say it is Isaiah one. But turning to Isaiah 40, it begins

“Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. 2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.”

And people say surely that must be a second Isaiah writing because these messages are inconsistent to one author. Unfortunately there are people who believe and even go further and say, surely God cannot be such a God of thunder and fire and brimstone and others believe that He can only be a God of grace and mercy and we are all going to go to heaven because God is so merciful.

One Bible commentator used this word first and I adopted it that our faith has to be ‘ambidextrous’. That we have to embrace the messages of God and the times that He takes us through that are very hard. When we go through the valley of the shadow of death, He promises to be with us, and we go through it.

The God of Isaiah chapter one to 39 is still God and God indeed. But we must also embrace the other side of God. We must be ambidextrous and we see from the LORD and walk with the LORD, not with one hand up.

In primary school when a question was asked in self confidence you are always putting your hand up. In fact sometimes you would be so excited you would not only put the hand up but maybe also snap your fingers to raise more attention. If your are left handed you use the left hand. If you are ambidextrous in your faith your trying to raise attention in self righteousness with one hand or another, but receivingin total surrender to God with both hands raised and saying, LORD, I do not understand the pandashukas of life/ the difficult times, i know that You hold my hand.

And in those times when He speaks to you like He does the second half of Isaiah, speaking tenderly to His people, that is ambidextrous faith that takes up these from Jehovah.

Isaiah 40:29-30

He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. 30 Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall;

Those who in weakness, in raising not of a hand that says I know that I know that I know but raising both hands in surrender wait on the LORD and those ones He promises to renew their strength, to make them soar up on wings like eagles, to run and not grow weary, to walk and not faint.

There is a very interesting word that is now used, it’s virtual in Kenyan parlance, sipangwingwi meaning I am not arranged, but is a proclamation of self reliance, self sufficiency that nobody can come and order you around. And many of us have the sipangwingwi attitude. Unfortunately we even take it in our faith. So we have a hand raised, but we don’t have both hands raised in surrender in waiting on the LORD. But this children of God are being told that God specifically gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. So if you are not weary or weak, then you are not candidate.

I wonder if you realise just how soon our lives can change in just a moment from situations where our Visa cards, our net worth, our brute strength, our acre of land cannot save us from. Imagine if you get a call from KRA who don’t entertain conversations of sipangwingwi.

Uzziah in 2 Chronicles 26:15 he was doing so well, in fact the Bible translates and says he had machinery, but something sad is said about him, that he was successful because he had been marvellously helped by the LORD until he became strong.

The LORD increases the power of the weak and strengthens the weary.

I wonder if you are ready to raise both hands and surrender so that you can receive that power that makes you soar on wings like eagles, run and not be weary, walk and not faint.

How does God strengthen the weary?

We all know Samson was strong, but we know his true strength came in Judges 16 when his eyes were gorged out when he is a prisoner entertaining the enemy Philistines and he shoots one prayer to God, knowing all the sins he had committed, knowing he is in a situation of his own making and he says LORD, strengthen me one more time.

If your brokenness is because of things you have done, this God of an ambidextrous faith, even if your sins is of your own making as He accuses those in Isaiah chapter one to 39, He is still the God of ambidextrous faith, Who says to you, I come to speak to you tenderly, to pay you double for your sins in forgiveness and in mercy.

How God strengthens the weak:

- The story of Gideon, a very scared person, threshing wheat in a winepress and then God calls him and says, ‘Mighty warrior, man of valour’ and Gideon says ‘not me’. He is so scared to go into battle that the LORD strengthens him by helping him hear a testimony that is happening in the enemy’s camp and two soldiers are discussing and saying, ‘I had a dream, that dream woke me up. I was a loaf of bread that came tumbling down and destroyed all the tents of the Midianites and the other soldier says, ‘that can be nothing else, but the sword of Gideon. And suddenly God gives strength to the weak one, even causing him to reduce the numbers of his armies to 300 men and giving him victory all the way.