Waiting on the Lord

May 11

servantGod Thoughts , , , , 1 Comment

This is a bit of a follow up to the obedience story that was posted last. It has been a very interesting weekend and the Holy Spirit keeps opening my eyes. More on that later, because I think this topic is more pressing.

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.
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