Man its good to post again, I’m sorry that it has been so long. This is little intimate insight as to why I post and why I post what I post and when I post it, I’m walking daily to seek after the Lord and so what I talk about in my blog are the things i’m learning and I usually don’t post about it until I’ve actually feel like I’ve learned it because that would just be silly and make all just words of no value. I appreciate you’re patience (if you actually were wondering if this thing even still existed) because the you’re gonna LOVE this one because thats what its all about, Patience.
Its something I’ve never been good at. My parents alway told me that I would never be a good doctor because I would never have any patience [STOP HERE] if that didn’t make any sense to you and read it out loud. If it just wasn’t funny then...well…I tried...
What sucks about being bad at it, is that patience is one of the fruit of the Spirit (also referred to as longsuffering), so in my efforts to follow after the Spirit, if I’m not patient I’M NOT BEING LED BY THE SPIRIT! (Gal. 5:22)
But honestly, what does that even mean to be led by the Spirit? Does that mean we have to do awesome things like running after chariots like Philip? or get to do a Holy Hulk-Smash on buildings and wicked people like Samson? These things happened under the leading of the Spirit, does that mean that if I’m not doing something then I’m not being led? What then would the Spirit be telling me to do and how do I know if need to be doing something else?
Well what if the Spirit tells you to stop? What if the Spirit tells you to be quiet, and tells you to not move? Sometimes, the Spirit moves us around, gives us things to say, allows us opportunities to directly minister BUT SOMETIMES he tells us to go no further until He gives us the word. Believe it or not, sometimes we actually can get to a point to where we are doing what God wants us to do for now, and he doesn’t want us to move on to the next thing just yet.
EXAMPLE TIME!!
The Children of Israel
I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about the exodus and which direction all those egyptian and arabian cities and places are, but it turns out those maps in the back of your bibles mean something...who knew!?
I don’t quite know how accurate this one is but I traced it a good ways with what the Scripture says and saw that God didn’t make the Israelites go straight to the promised land, and though we think thats because they sinned, God tells us in his word why He did that. “And it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, Lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt: But God led the people about, through the way of the wilderness of the Red sea: and the children of Israel went up harnessed out of the land of Egypt.” Exodus 13:17-18
God knews what was up, He knows his children, and knows how to protect them from things they just may not be ready for. Sometimes he makes them wait, and not go straight to what he wants for them, because he wants them to be prepared for it. So many time we want it now, and we want to progress and go and do and be because THATS what Christians do! In the words of Dwight Shrute, “FALSE.” Christians do no do stuff. Christian FOLLOW Christ by way of the Spirit and sometimes that means wait until further instruction.
Daniel and the vision (Daniel chapter 10)
Sometimes He doesn’t even have a specific place for us to go, which means we have to do a little waiting/wondering before we get the green light to go onto the next thing. But why are we so impatient and want everything now? Why do we think our spirituality is graded on how much we do? Just maybe, at times, our following after God, really isn’t about God after all. Just maybe, we can’t stand that we’re not doing something because the doing gratifies our flesh to know that God is blessing us or “working through us,” and that makes us feel awesome about us and what we do. Honestly, if it were about God then we would do whatever we’re told—big, small, fun, scary, come rain, sleet, ice, snow, Hell or high water—because when we fear and love God, we do what He says which includes staying still.
I’m not going to copy verses because you just need to read the whole chapter…
But Daniel sought of the Lord to understand what was going to happen to the children of Israel, after the 70 weeks prophesied by Jeremiah. Daniel fasted and prayed for three full weeks and three days until God sent messenger to reveal the answer he had been seeking and to give him understanding. The angel tells him of a fierce battle with the powers of darkness to get the message to Dan that he was seeking for. God wanted to tell him right away, because God is not a big ogre in the sky who like to watch us suffer, but the enemy wanted to get in the way, and while God COULD have stopped it, in the end we know that God’s team always wins and that the demon (who is called the prince of persia) stood no chance from the get-go.
My point isn’t about visions or prophecies (while that is a cool a topic too) but the point is steadfast waiting on the Lord. Who is man, that he should put time restraints on God? but its often what happens isn’t it? We give God a deadline of when we “need” something by, and then we think he hasn’t heard our prayers when it hasn’t happened yet we give up and then start saying crazy stuff like “God doesn’t care,” or that now we have a reason to be angry with Him, all the while God wants to come directly to our aid and catch us like His kid about to fall off his bike, but as the perfect father He knows that the boo-boo we get, as painful and bloody as it may be, is going to teach us the danger, the risk, the COST of, but also the reward and joy of being able to balance on that bike. (hopefully you got the picture I was painting there. Like I always say, I never metaphor i didn’t like…)
“King” David
Erbody knows King David, the man after God’s own heart. We also know that before he was king that he was the shepherd boy who had a sling-shot that took down Goliath. What we don’t often remember is that a LOT of time passed between killing Goliath and getting the crown. The bible doesn’t EXACTLY say how old david was when he was anointed king by Samuel the prophet, or how old he was when I fought Goliath but by some comparing of scripture we can actually get a pretty good idea.
1.) It was Hebrew law in that day that only able bodied men of at least the age of 20, could go to War (Numbers 1:3) since we know David didn’t go that would have put him in the ring with Goliath at 19 years old at the very oldest.
2.) David was the youngest of Jesse’s 8 sons (the bible never says if there were girls so that could only make him younger) AND only the 3 oldest sons went to fight (1 Sam. 17:12-14) so that means if only those three were able bodied, at the youngest they were 22, 21, and 20. IF David’s mother had a child every year that would make the rest of the 5: 19,18,17,16 which would put David at about 15 at the very oldest to go against the Champion of the philistines. (btw feel free to check my math, its not my strong suit...)
3.) The Bible tells us exactly how old David was when he took the thrown: he was 30 years old (2 Sam. 5:4) ….well thats pretty straight forward so any comment here would just be awkward….oh wait….
So this puts David at anywhere ideally from 15 to 19, and he could have even been younger than that! So that means he waited for 11-15 years to sit on the thrown that was promised him. And by waiting I mean running for his life from King Saul who tried to kill him on quite a few occasions. I’m more than sure David had felt like you and I when we are waiting on the Lord to deliver us into, or out of, or bring a message or clarity, or closure. I’m fully confident in saying that not many of you reading this will ever feel like David did in that period of time. Now I’m not sure when David wrote the 23rd Psalm, but in light of all that David experienced the words are so much more than a pretty sounding poem.
so what I am really trying to communicate here that its a part of taking up the cross daily, to wait for things. There is a season for everything according to Solomon’s account in Ecclesiastes chapter 3. Which means there is a season for waiting, just from personal experience I can tell you that the more I wait on my food at outback steakhouse, the more excited I am to throw down on that steak and blooming onion.
Personally, there are a few reasons, catalysts if you will, to how God is CURRENTLY changing my perspective to be more patient. One of which, and probably the biggest one is what in the world is up with my school situation. As a 5th year in college, I’m pretty ancy about when I am going to get out of school. I feel lots of pressure from those around me, that to be a functioning member of society a college education is a requirement and that from that come a direction your life and career is going to come from. Right now I find myself at a familiar place where I have no idea what I want to do with my life, let alone what God would have me to do with it other than what He is asking me to do now. According to the world’s standards, I feel unprepared, unequipped, and unable to “be more than I can be,” because I’m doing all I can just to keep up. But in all reality, (and by reality I mean spiritually) God has equipped me with all that I need, He has made me a fully armored, able-bodied solider on the front lines of battle and as one of my new favorite songs says, “I will not fear the war, I will not fear the storm, my help is on the way…”
I know this one is a long one, but I hope that you can take away that God is always doing something and so wants us to be a part of it and He has roles for each of us to play, but we HAVE to do them on His terms because He's the only one who can truly see the outcome. Above all, we must daily be humble enough to say, "God, have your way" and not do anything outside of what direction He has given us to do right now.
Much love, ya'll
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