Tag Archives: Life in the Spirit

Christian Life, Walking in the Spirit

Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength

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Have you not known?
Have you not heard?
The everlasting God, the LORD,
The Creator of the ends of the earth,
Neither faints nor is weary.
His understanding is unsearchable.

He gives power to the weak,
And to those who have no might He increases strength.

Even the youths shall faint and be weary,
And the young men shall utterly fall,

But those who wait on the LORD
Shall renew their strength;
They shall mount up with wings like eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint.

(Isaiah 40: 28-31)

I have always seen “waiting on the Lord” in the context of extended time frames: waiting for the Holy Spirit to show up in a worship service; waiting for an answer to prayer; waiting days or weeks for a word from God before making a decision. In addition, I have never thought deeply about running and not growing weary, or walking and not growing faint, although in my advancing years I certainly look longingly at those verses and hope they will apply to my physical state. Mounting on wings like eagles has been a  metaphor for growth, increase, victory, in fact any undefined superior state that can be attained under God’s blessing: the verse has never had a very practical application for me, just a rather undefined sense of promise that I can’t say I have often known to materialise outside of some worship services where “rising up” to a higher level of worship in the Spirit has been the goal. I have never applied the scripture to short term, immediate contexts.

Until today. When I was a child, my mother used to say to me “Bobby, you’re always rushing.“ (A word to the wise: if you know me, please do not call me Bobby!) It’s a character trait I’ve battled with (or maybe so much not battled as be driven by…) all my life. I’m a “fast adopter“ when it comes to decision-making; I tend to try to do things quickly so I can finish them rather than aim for thoroughness ; I seem to miss significant details on the few occasions when I’m trying to think things through, and – probably most importantly – I tend to say the first thing that comes into my head in conversation without really checking if it’s coming from a positive or a negative place. This is at age 74, after more than 40 years of being a Christian, when I really should know better. Not much about me seems to have slowed down except my body.

But this morning I saw these verses differently. It was in an all too familiar context, where I had gone into something without giving it sufficient forethought, when I realised that “waiting on the Lord“ can also mean waiting for as short a time as a few seconds for my flesh to die and “the wisdom from above” to rule my thinking before responding to words or circumstances. And then I saw the rest of the scripture. Mounting on Eagles wings takes me into the heavenly places where my new man is seated in Christ, where I can draw on all I have been given in the Spirit. When I do this, I renew my strength in the Lord. I can “walk worthy of my calling” (Eph 4:1) and “not grow weary of doing good.“ (Galatians 6:9). I can “run with perseverance to race marked out for us,“ not growing faint, but “fixing my eyes on Jesus the author and finisher of my faith.“ (Hebrews 12:1–2)

When we “mount up with wings like eagles” we take our place in the Spirit, in the Lord who “neither faints nor is weary.” We don’t grow faint or weary because He doesn’t, and we are in Him. Out of His unsearchable understanding comes the wisdom we need, “the wisdom from above,” which is “ first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. (James 3:17). In our weakness we are strong. (2 Cor 12:10)

Verse 30 says this:
“Even the youths shall faint and be weary,
And the young men shall utterly fall…”

I have always seen this verse as a dramatic contrast with the favourable consequences of waiting on the lord in the rather woolly sense that I have always understood it, but now I understand it more as a contrast between walking ( or running) after the flesh, which always leads to failure, and walking in the Spirit. “Waiting on the Lord” becomes taking the time to step  into the Spirit  – or as Graham Cooke calls it, to “step back into the Lord” – to receive all that there is for our situation from where we are seated in Christ in heavenly places. Yes, we need to wait for Him in our meetings if we want to see the power of God move and His Presence fall. Yes, we need to wait in faith for Him to answer our prayers. But, and just as importantly, we need to wait for Him in the dynamic of our daily walk with God if we want to walk after the Spirit and not after the flesh.

In the light of this, the urgency of psalm 27:14 takes on a new meaning:

“Wait on the LORD;
Be of good courage,
And He shall strengthen your heart;
Wait, I say, on the LORD!”

Let’s do it. It appears to be a recommended route to victory in Christ.

Living by Faith, Pursuing Love, Walking in the Spirit

The hole in the wall, or the windows of Heaven?

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“Bring all the tithes into the storehouse,
That there may be food in My house,
And try Me now in this,”
Says the LORD of hosts,
“If I will not open for you the windows of heaven
And pour out for you such blessing
That there will not be room enough to receive it.“(Mal 3:10)

Although cashpoints are beginning to disappear from our High Streets, the idea that there isn’t somewhere fairly close by where we can feed our card into the “hole in the wall” and walk away with some cash is still relatively untenable. Even more untenable in today’s world is the idea that the hole in the wall is still there, but is no longer delivering the goods because the money has run out.

But how much longer will the economic systems of the world carry on? In 2008 there was a hiccup in the flow of credit and many people lost their homes and their livelihoods as loans were called in and money ran out. But soon the wheels that had come off were rolling again and (unless you were one of the victims of course) everything was back to normal. Was it though? World systems are on thin ice covering a lake of debt. When cracks appear behind us we don’t head back to the shore, but run further out into the middle of the lake…

One day the ice will break and the banking system will go spinning down into chaos. But God has another system, another bank. It’s the bank of Love and Faith – the Kingdom Bank. In this system we love others and give to them, and God, who loves us far more than we could ever love anyone, gives to us out of the measure of His love:

“Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.” Luke 6:38

This, along with the passage from Malachi, is a familiar scripture. We often hear one or the other of them when we are being exhorted to give into ministry, and as Jesus said of His words “they are spirit and they are life” (John 6:63). Yet, as can often be the case with some familiar scriptures, they can have the effect of inoculating us against the life they deliver rather than encouraging us into the radical lifestyle change that they hold out. If we hear the words of the Spirit with the mind of the flesh we will respond according to the flesh, so ‘they will not be mixed with faith and will not profit us.’ (Heb 4:2) We will either ignore them completely (“Yeah, yeah, yeah…”), or we will just give the small amount of money, time, energy, personal space etc. that our flesh can afford. We will be giving out of the resources of the hole in the wall.

But if we have bought into the Bank of the Kingdom we give out of God’s supply. If we receive those scriptures with the mind of the Spirit, ‘as a doer of the word, and not a hearer only’ (James 1:22), we draw on the life that is in them and walk in the blessing that they promise. Giving is like dieting: for it to be meaningful, it needs to be a lifestyle and not an exception to our norm. If we “go on a diet” for two weeks then resume our previous eating habits, we very quickly ‘find’ the weight that we had lost; the sacrifice of the two weeks was meaningless, and we have to do it all over again to enjoy the benefits of that fitter, healthier body. But if we adopt a new regime to replace the old eating habits for good (I speak from experience here), we enjoy all the benefits on a daily basis and no longer crave what we used to fill ourselves with. It is when we habitually look for opportunities to give, that we become the cheerful givers that God loves:

But this I say: He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work. (2 Cor 9: 6-8)

Just like prayer, worship, and operating in ministry gifts, giving is an expression of life in the Spirit. When giving is part of our lifestyle we have moved away from the hole in the wall and are standing under the windows of Heaven. If we can grow our faith in this area while the cashpoints are still loaded we will find it much easier to rely on the Lord when they are empty.

(I was talking about “Two Seconds to Midnight” on UCB – a Christian radio station in the UK – recently, and used this image when asked by the presenter to sum up the message of the book. If you want to listen to the interview it is here: https://ucb.lightcast.com/player/31342/427999)