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the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Galatians 5:22-23
ISAIAH 40:28-31
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.
Throughout scripture there is an example, an urging indeed to wait upon the Lord; to be patient with Him as He is with us. Patience — described as longsuffering, forbearance, endurance, constancy and steadfastness — is noted in Galatians as a fruit of the Spirit. This means that our walking this life as ‘Spirit-filled’ believers imbues us with the strength of Our Lord to be as overcomers in His service.
It is easy for us — in our haste — to forget that Father God, for whom a day is as a thousand years, has infinite patience and knows the end from the beginning. We look for the quick fix and the easy answer, while our Heavenly Father is looking to raise His children to be like Him — to be as He is. For Him that is the work of a moment — for us the work of a lifetime. That work does not happen according to our expectations, but according to His plan.
God desires that we be fruitful, and that requires us to wait. The very act of waiting on Him requires a strength that we do not possess, for in reality we are weak. But Isaiah says that to those who have no might He increases strength, He gives power to the weak. Like so many things in the Holy Spirit, the actuality is a circle — something with no beginning and no end — an eternal cycle. God initiates and God completes, and we who believe in Him and give ourselves fully to Him are begun and finished in Him. Did not Jesus say “It is finished”? The work was finished at that moment — before any of us were born. The work is done and all we need do is commit ourselves to His life to be a part of it, and be patient, longsuffering for that is in the process. It happens in God’s time, not ours.
Be patient and wait upon The Lord.
It is easy for us — in our haste — to forget that Father God, for whom a day is as a thousand years, has infinite patience and knows the end from the beginning. We look for the quick fix and the easy answer, while our Heavenly Father is looking to raise His children to be like Him — to be as He is. For Him that is the work of a moment — for us the work of a lifetime. That work does not happen according to our expectations, but according to His plan.
God desires that we be fruitful, and that requires us to wait. The very act of waiting on Him requires a strength that we do not possess, for in reality we are weak. But Isaiah says that to those who have no might He increases strength, He gives power to the weak. Like so many things in the Holy Spirit, the actuality is a circle — something with no beginning and no end — an eternal cycle. God initiates and God completes, and we who believe in Him and give ourselves fully to Him are begun and finished in Him. Did not Jesus say “It is finished”? The work was finished at that moment — before any of us were born. The work is done and all we need do is commit ourselves to His life to be a part of it, and be patient, longsuffering for that is in the process. It happens in God’s time, not ours.
Be patient and wait upon The Lord.
For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, by whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly were disobedient, when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water.
1 PETER 3:18-20
BUT THEY THAT WAIT UPON THE LORD — Newlove Annan
A WORD OF ENCOURAGEMENT
“Prayer does not condition God; prayer conditions us. Prayer does not win God to our view; it reveals God’s view to us.”
― Leonard Ravenhill, Revival Praying: An Urgent and Powerful Message for the Family of Christ
SONG — ‘WAIT FOR THE LORD’ from Whitestone Farms, Alaska — CLICK ON LINK BELOW
This song is very special to Gill and myself in our walk with The Lord. Composed by a lovely lady in Alaska and part of a Christian Fellowship there, it has a deep yearning and a plaintive cry at one and the same time. A cry that brings us in to His presence…
Wait for the LORD,
all ye who are righteous,
despise not the wicked
for they have their reward
You shall ride
on the heights of the earth
and taste of things not seen or heard
and you shall declare
the glory of the LORD
wait, oh wait, for your reward
LISTEN TO THIS MEDITATION HERE…
COMING NEXT… #538 THE TREASURY OF SNOW
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EXODUS 25:17-19
“You shall make a mercy seat of pure gold; two and a half cubits shall be its length and a cubit and a half its width. And you shall make two cherubim of gold; of hammered work you shall make them at the two ends of the mercy seat. Make one cherub at one end, and the other cherub at the other end; you shall make the cherubim at the two ends of it of one piece with the mercy seat.
We know — do we not — that gold in the Bible speaks of God Almighty, The Divinity, The Most High. Study of Exodus and God’s word about the building of His House — The Tabernacle — tells us that clearly and unambiguously. In the natural realm, gold is unique. Here is what I found from research some years ago.
“if you shrink gold down to a nanoparticle, its properties change dramatically. Its colour changes, it becomes a very good catalyst, and is no longer a metal - instead it turns into a semiconductor.
Even today, ultra-thin gold is being used on buildings and aircraft windows - thin film of gold displays some unusual characteristics.
“When processed in ultra-thin sheets, gold becomes transparent. It allows green light waves to pass through, but reflects infra-red light. Windows coated with gold admit light but reflect heat. Therefore, the cockpit windows of modern aircraft are coated with gold, as well as the windows of many new office buildings.
“On the nanoscale, gold becomes a potent catalyst, exhibiting new and surprising, chemical, mechanical, electrical and magnetic behaviour, which could not have been extrapolated or predicted on the basis of our knowledge about this substance in the bulk form.”
WE didn't know, but GOD knew! He knows what He is doing with gold. All this is very technical, but it reveals to us now that gold is a uniquely exceptional substance.
However, the real point here is that gold is used for the Mercy Seat. Exodus describes it and the Cherubim as ‘of one piece’ and made of ‘pure gold’. ‘Hammered gold’ is gold that is thinned out by bearing, so the strange elastic properties of gold were well understood at the time.
But all this is background to the heavenly reality of what is expounded here, which is that our Lord and God is a God of mercy at the very heart of His divinity. The gold of the Cherubim and the Mercy Seat speaks of the nature of God in a way that no other thing of the earth can do. There may be rarer substances, but nothing has the divine heaviness, elasticity or warm brilliance of gold.
In the same way, no-one but Our Lord God has the same depth, power or awesome ability which infinitely exceeds our understanding, and yet touches each one of us in the innermost parts to save, heal, uplift and perfect in His Grace and Mercy. Here is the real gold in scripture — the picture of the reality of God, which is Christ within you, the hope of glory.
However, the real point here is that gold is used for the Mercy Seat. Exodus describes it and the Cherubim as ‘of one piece’ and made of ‘pure gold’. ‘Hammered gold’ is gold that is thinned out by bearing, so the strange elastic properties of gold were well understood at the time.
But all this is background to the heavenly reality of what is expounded here, which is that our Lord and God is a God of mercy at the very heart of His divinity. The gold of the Cherubim and the Mercy Seat speaks of the nature of God in a way that no other thing of the earth can do. There may be rarer substances, but nothing has the divine heaviness, elasticity or warm brilliance of gold.
In the same way, no-one but Our Lord God has the same depth, power or awesome ability which infinitely exceeds our understanding, and yet touches each one of us in the innermost parts to save, heal, uplift and perfect in His Grace and Mercy. Here is the real gold in scripture — the picture of the reality of God, which is Christ within you, the hope of glory.
Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.
2 CORINTHIANS 7:1
THE MERCY SEAT — Vicki Yohe
When the eyes of the soul looking out meet the eyes of God looking in, heaven has begun right here on this earth.
A W TOZER
#537 COMING NEXT… THOSE WHO WAIT UPON THE LORD
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LEVITICUS 24:5-9
“And you shall take fine flour and bake twelve cakes with it. Two-tenths of an ephah shall be in each cake.
You shall set them in two rows, six in a row, on the pure gold table before the LORD.
And you shall put pure frankincense on each row, that it may be on the bread for a memorial, an offering made by fire to the LORD.
Every Sabbath he shall set it in order before the LORD continually, being taken from the children of Israel by an everlasting covenant.
And it shall be for Aaron and his sons, and they shall eat it in a holy place; for it is most holy to him from the offerings of the LORD made by fire, by a perpetual statute.”
The reading comes from a passage in the book of Leviticus, setting out details for the Great Feast of Tabernacles, and sets out the order for the Table of Shewbread and how the pure frankincense was to be put on the bread as a memorial and a perpetual statute.
What is frankincense? From research it seems to be a remarkable substance. When burnt the frankincense resin becomes white (which is often taken to represent purity or holiness), but research has shown that it has healing some properties — asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, osteoarthritis among others are conditions noted. Whether there is great efficacy in the substance or not, these two qualities, coupled with its rarity would be reason enough to include it among the three gifts to the infant Jesus.
The frankincense was part of what was called ‘the grain offering, and we read in Nehemiah 13:9 Then I commanded them to cleanse the rooms; and I brought back into them the articles of the house of God, with the grain offering and the frankincense. We see that the frankincense is intimately connected with the grain offering in the tabernacle. And the grain offering is one made by fire. Fire takes the perfume, the aroma, the incense of the frankincense and makes it the sweet smelling savour, which goes through the veil into the holy of holies in the tabernacle. Remember that this offering made by fire happens in the Holy Place and is symbolic of the purification — the becoming holy — of the believer, in a walk with The Lord.
This gift of frankincense to the Holy Child Jesus was to reveal His future as holiness itself revealed in this world as a sign that God was being made manifest in His Son — that holiness was possible and indeed was in the world through the fire — the suffering of His Son and the saints. Heady scents and spices are always associated with the Spirit realm, just as are clouds, the air and anything insubstantial to our eyes.. These things reveal the Almighty in our everyday experience. We should be paying attention.
What is frankincense? From research it seems to be a remarkable substance. When burnt the frankincense resin becomes white (which is often taken to represent purity or holiness), but research has shown that it has healing some properties — asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, osteoarthritis among others are conditions noted. Whether there is great efficacy in the substance or not, these two qualities, coupled with its rarity would be reason enough to include it among the three gifts to the infant Jesus.
The frankincense was part of what was called ‘the grain offering, and we read in Nehemiah 13:9 Then I commanded them to cleanse the rooms; and I brought back into them the articles of the house of God, with the grain offering and the frankincense. We see that the frankincense is intimately connected with the grain offering in the tabernacle. And the grain offering is one made by fire. Fire takes the perfume, the aroma, the incense of the frankincense and makes it the sweet smelling savour, which goes through the veil into the holy of holies in the tabernacle. Remember that this offering made by fire happens in the Holy Place and is symbolic of the purification — the becoming holy — of the believer, in a walk with The Lord.
This gift of frankincense to the Holy Child Jesus was to reveal His future as holiness itself revealed in this world as a sign that God was being made manifest in His Son — that holiness was possible and indeed was in the world through the fire — the suffering of His Son and the saints. Heady scents and spices are always associated with the Spirit realm, just as are clouds, the air and anything insubstantial to our eyes.. These things reveal the Almighty in our everyday experience. We should be paying attention.
A garden enclosed
Is my sister, my spouse,
A spring shut up,
A fountain sealed.
Your plants are an orchard of pomegranates
With pleasant fruits,
Fragrant henna with spikenard,
Spikenard and saffron,
Calamus and cinnamon,
With all trees of frankincense,
Myrrh and aloes,
With all the chief spices--
A fountain of gardens,
A well of living waters,
And streams from Lebanon.
SONG OF SONGS 4:12-15
GOLD, FRANKINCENSE, MYRRH — Natalie Kendel
“The Holy Spirit is in charge here. We should write it for all to see on the lintels of every doorway we build. But since that might seem like so many words, we will do better: we will write it in our lives. And in all the lives we can reach out to and touch and inspire with the living Spirit of God.”
DAVID WILKERSON, ‘The Cross and The Switchblade’