HOPE ~ AS WE WAIT

Today, as my family was pressing into God with prayer... these were some scriptures the Lord gave us.

Hebrews 10:23 (NLT) "Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm for God can be trusted to keep His promise."

Are you waiting on something today? Has it been a long wait? God knows. He really sees you as you press in day in and day out and HE WILL RESPOND to the cries of His children, but before He does... He will do something in you and me that would have never happened had we not been pressing into His heart every day.

v.35, "So do not throw away your confidence - it will be richly rewarded." (NIV) Oh what a promise this is. Believe me when I say, we can stand on the promises of God and we must. I remember a preacher saying he literally took the Bible and stood on it declaring to God that he was standing on God's promises. Whatever you do... don't give up. If you feel like giving up, go to God and ask Him to release supernatural faith to believe Him. You were created to dream God's dreams. You were created to believe not only in Him, but to believe everything He has said He will do. Be as a child and remind the Lord what he has said to you. This does our heart good to remember what God has said. Just as my children NEVER forget "allowance" and they don't mind reminding me... God is not like me in that He forgets... NO, He never forgets, but he wants us to REMEMBER because when you forget what God said to you, you begin to die inside. You no longer have hope and you begin to shrink back from your faithful friend.

v. 37 "He who is coming will come and will not delay." Remember this, if Jesus will not delay His coming back to receive those who are His, then why would He go against his own character by delaying in responding to questions and concerns in your life. You and I have a timetable that we put the Creator God on and this in itself is WRONG. If God has begun something in you (and he has) then Paul said in Philippians... "...being CONFIDENT of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus" Phil 1:5.

God's maturing us with little reminders of his attentiveness through prophesy, dreams, visions, the Word, etc. God knows how to sustain us as we wait. I love Isaiah 50:4-5 that says.... "The Sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being taught. The Sovereign Lord has opened my ears, and I have not been rebellious; I have not drawn back."

Just last night, I remember waking up and hearing in my spirit..... "I put on Christ." Then, I went back to sleep. Even as we sleep, the Lord is speaking and yes... singing over His children reminding us of how much He loves us.

Let it not be said of us that we drew back from God for it is rebellion. We need to repent of drawing back from him, when we should be drawing near to Him. There's no better place to be then close to the heart of God. Where could I go, oh where could I go... where could I go but to the Lord. I grew up singing this song in Church. How true it remains. There's no comfort anywhere else, but in the secret place of the Most High God.

Ask the Lord to give you a word to sustain you in your time of weariness. Does not Matthew 7:7-8 say, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to Him who knocks, the door will be opened." He will sustain you as only He can do. As you wait and God sustains you day after day..... you are maturing in your walk with Him. There may come a time in your life when many may be against you saying you're crazy to believe Him, but because of your history with Him... you will not shrink back. You will boldly declare the works of YOUR God.

Let it be said of us that "...we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved" Hebrews 10:39.

Hopefully I've encouraged someone today, if only myself. King David learned to encourage himself in the Lord and we must do the same. There are times when no earthly encouragement heals the ache of one's heart. But, when we remember the faithfulness of our Father towards us - it should stir us towards faithfulness to Him.... as we wait.