“Behold, bless the Lord, all you servants of the Lord, who by night stand in the house of the Lord! Lift up your hands in the sanctuary, and bless the Lord. The Lord who made heaven and earth bless you from Zion!” (Psalm 134, NKJV)

There is a command and a promise here, and we can examine it using the “Five W’s” of standard journalism. The who is the servants of the Lord, people who serve and love God. The what is to bless the Lord, to worship and lift Him up. The when is at night. The where is in the sanctuary, in the house of the Lord (the church). The why is also to bless the Lord (this is both the what and the why — we bless the Lord and worship Him as an act and also as a reason). The how is by lifting up your hands.

And the reward? That the Lord who made Heaven and Earth would bless you (you, who keep His commandments to bless God, at night, in His house, by lifting holy hands and standing in the sanctuary). Think about it! For those who love God, this is not a hard command to keep. It really isn’t. And the benefit, the blessing of God for those who are faithful? Priceless!

If we honor the God who sent His Son to save and redeem us, and we honor the sacrifice Jesus made for us, then going to church at night is no chore. We should be more than eager to spend time with our brothers and sisters in Christ, raising our voices and our hands in one accord, pouring out blessing and honor and glory to Jesus Christ, who loved us enough to die for our sins and paved the way for right relationship with Father God.

It is not our duty to go to church twice on Sunday. It is our privilege! When do we start to realize this and live our lives according to that truth? It isn’t a chore, it’s an honor!

I was just listening to an interview with Andrew Strom and about how and why he left the so-called “prophetic movement” that has led to things like the Lakeland Revival and he made a statement that really spoke to me. He was talking about true revival, and how it would come, but how it was all about repentance and not “signs and wonders” which these big “revivals” are all about. He said that there was an unwillingness to wait, for these meetings, for real revival, and that people blindly pushed forward with things that did not seem Biblical because they wanted something and they wanted it now. Then he said something that really caught me: he said it was like Ishmael (Abraham’s first son). Ishmael was conceived because they (Abram and Sarai) were unwilling to wait. The story is in Genesis 16, so let me briefly recount the story.

In Genesis 15, God is giving Abraham (then Abram) an amazing promise. Genesis 15:2-3 is Abraham telling God that he has no heir that would come from his body, and Genesis 15:4 is God telling Abraham that he will have an heir from his own body, and:

“Then He brought him outside and said, ‘Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.’ And He said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.” (Gen 15:5, NKJV)

Taking the story up in Genesis 16, Sarah (then Sarai) went to Abraham and told him that she had no children (obviously Abraham had just finished recounting God’s promise to him). And instead of waiting for God to do His thing for them, she gave to Hagar to Abraham, her maidservant, in the hopes that Hagar would give Abraham a child. Abraham agreed and Ishmael was the result. But this was not the child that God had promised to Abraham! Ishmael was not the child of promise! Isaac, born later to Sarah, was the child of promise, the heir that God had promised to Abraham.

Instead of waiting for God to provide what He Himself had promised, Abraham and Sarah took it upon themselves to fulfill God’s Word to them their way. Not God’s way.

The interesting thing here is that Ishmael is the father of the Islamic nation whereas Isaac is the father of the Israelite nation. Thousands of years after their birth, Ishmael and Isaac still contest for the inheritance of Abraham! For a Christian, we know that the Muslim faith, Islam, is a counterfeit religion and is not of God. The counterfeit came first (this is the point that Andrew Strom was making regarding this “revival” movement).

So it got me thinking… if God promises us something, He is faithful to deliver. If we go out of our way to hurry God’s Hand, to fulfill a prophecy or vision by our means (despite good intentions!), and do not wait for the appointed time that God in His Sovereignty has dictated, we can go one of two ways: His favour is withdrawn and we fail (and then doubt that this was ever from God), or we produce something that is wrong and counterfeit, that will war with the latter thing that is of God.

I believe there is a real warning here. God doesn’t operate by our timetable. We have to be obedient and operate by His timetable. God will let us know when the time is right for whatever it is that He has purposed for us to do. I think back to prophetic meetings and prophecies spoken over people and yes, some were confirmations of things going on right then, but some were for things that were not revealed for years or decades to come. No matter how much we desire what God is showing us, want to do God’s Will, want to jump on the vision He has given us, sometimes we need to temper ourselves and understand that God knows the timing. I believe He shows us things that He has planned for our future, but we are currently not equipped or ready to perform the duty in a way that maximizes its benefit and maximizes God’s glory. This is a promise from Him to us, just like He promised descendants more numerous than the stars to Abraham who at that point had no physical way of realizing that outcome (being childless).

If we try to rush what God is telling us He has planned for us, we have to then look in the mirror and ask ourselves: are we rushing this for God’s glory, or our own? Do we presume to know better than Almighty God the when of what He has shown? Are we prepared, or does He have other things planned, or are there other things that need to be accomplished before what He is planning for us can really be the thing He desires for us?

God is patient, man is not. It takes faith and trust in God to understand that just because He shows us something now, it doesn’t mean that what He has shown us is for now. He knows the timing, and it is up to us to be obedient and wait.

The Bible is full of passages that tell us to wait on the Lord:

“Wait on the Lord; Be of good courage, And He shall strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the Lord!” (Psalm 27:14, NKJV)

“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 40:31, NKJV)

We should be quick to do God’s Will, when it is asked of us, but if there is nothing specific in terms of timing, then I believe we need to wait. Wait in His Presence. Waiting doesn’t mean sitting idly by. It means resting in the Lord, in His Presence, in His Word. It means training ourselves up, because we don’t know when God wants to use us, or even how. It means preparing, getting things ready. Don’t go back to things of no consequence, because the Word of God (the Bible) is for the now, and in all things we need to be obedient to the Word before all visions, prophecies, dreams, or hopes — and all of these things need to be tested by and lined up to the Word to begin with. Those things (visions, etc.) will come in God’s timing, but His Word is for yesterday, today, and tomorrow and we need to be obedient to it, study it, learn it, and know it for now while we wait on God to reveal the when of what He has promised us. God isn’t into instant gratification, and neither should we.

I believe that as humans we get impatient to see God act, and do our own thing. We need to temper ourselves so that we don’t get ahead of God. We want to walk side-by-side with God, be partners with God, not fall into walking ahead of God (how can He be the light to our path when the light is behind us?), or becoming independent of God. The Bible calls those independent of God “sons of rebellion” or “sons of disobedience”. That’s a far cry from being called a “good and faithful servant” which is what should be the desire of our hearts!