From the Prophetic school: "Waiting upon the Lord" (Continued, part two)

Isaiah 40:31

King James Version (KJV)

³¹ But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

Waiting on the Lord has a twofold function: 

It is a procedure to come into spiritual perception, and it is also the actual mechanics of deep spiritual perception.

There is a little trick to it.

 I say "trick" because in its simplicity the people almost miss it.

 People are constantly looking to the Lord as though He had to make some new provision for them, and that is not the issue at all.

Even after many sermons have been preached on waiting on the Lord, there still is not a real understanding of how we are to do it.

You need to understand that what you are actually doing is bringing your spirit into such a focus upon the Lord that you draw from Him, from His wisdom, from His power.

That is why the Word says that when you faint or utterly fall, you can wait upon the Lord and renew your strength. As your spirit comes into tune with the Lord, it draws His strength to you.

God says, "I do not faint. There is no weariness with Me. If you wait upon Me, you will renew your strength."

Let me present seven essential steps in the process of waiting on the Lord that may help you more than anything else to understand it.

As you wait upon the Lord all day long, you may repeat this process a dozen times, and each time it will be different.

1. Begin with contrition or an inner focus, with a repentant, broken spirit.

If you do not have a broken spirit, your subconscious or unconscious mind is going to keep "throwing up" anyway.

Suppose you became very angry last week and lost your temper, and never adequately repented of it. Then, this week, you want to wait on the Lord and come into His presence to lean great and wonderful truths.

First go before the Lord and make that right in your spirit.

You may have forgotten about it consciously because you wanted to. Unconsciously, however, there is a full remembrance of it.

As you wait upon the Lord, you often feel that there is some disturbance. Then you had better start with a period of opening your heart.

Begin with an inner focus and as you search your heart, ask the Lord to forgive you and cleanse you. Come into a period of meditation with an inner focus.

This clears the deck for action. This gets rid of any hangups that you have in your spirit or in your heart.

2. Focus upon His provision.

Notice that I did not say "Focus on the Lord," but focus upon His provision and His grace.

I would further specify: focus on His provision and grace in His Word. I find that the most fruitful time is a little period in the Word meditating upon His provision for me.

I know where to look as I am directed by the Spirit. I have to see, in the Word, that He provided all things for me. Then I begin to focus on that.

First I focus on my inner need and take care of that situation. Then I focus upon the
Lord's provision, how great and abundant it is.

If I am thirsty, there is nothing more exhilarating than to turn the faucet full force. It is a joy to behold.

I am very simple hearted by nature. I enjoy things. I enjoy driving down the freeway, thinking that it cost over a million dollars a mil, and appreciating the privilege I have of riding on it.

Do you appreciate things?

When you bite into a good juicy apple, do you appreciate nature's entire process of growing fruit for you and having it laid in your hand?

Do you appreciate a refrigerator? Do you appreciate ice cubes? Do you appreciate screens on the windows?

I do. I have experienced too many times of privation not to appreciate those blessings.

It is interesting to watch a child with a growing appreciation of money. Give him a fistful of dimes and watch him look at those dimes. He may even be able to count yet, but that handful of dimes is a delight to him, if he appreciates what he can do with them.

He enjoys deciding how he will spend them. He may even appreciate the fact that he can save some of them if he wishes.

I am using this illustration to make a point.

You may take many things for granted, but when you go to wait upon the Lord, you should contemplate His provision.

Let your imagination and your focus dwell upon all the great things that His Word and His divine grace have provided.

Picture His cross, His precious blood being spilled, opening the door to the riches of grace. Think about the fact that there is no end to the bounty and blessing that He would lay upon your life.

Meditating upon His provision will serve as an antidote against the hang~up of legalism which make people feel guilty even before they are accused; then it is easy for the devil to make them feel inadequate and insufficient.

With that attitude, they are defeated before the battle ever begins. Have you ever had that problem? If so you can see why this second step is important.

Focus on the Lord's provision and His greatness. You have already had inner focus to deal with that which the holy Spirit could bring to your consciousness. Then forget it. It is under the Blood.

As you now come to the lord, it is not necessary to be overly introspective. If you keep looking inside, you will not see anything worth looking at anyway.

You know that there are a lot of problems in the depths of your heart which have not yet come to the surface. The heart is very deep, but it is also desperately wicked; so do not look too deep.

Look to God for His grace. He is the One who will change things.

Meditate upon His grace. His abundance, His love, His provision- everything that He has lavished upon you. All of a sudden your focus will shift from a personal sense of inadequacy to a divine sense of sufficiency by the grace of God.

And that is essential.

You may look upon yourself as a nobody, a nothing. That does not handicap God, so why dwell upon it?

Moses tried that routine for a little while and God became very exasperated with him. Moses said," I am a man of slow speech. Get someone else to lead Your people."

The Lord was angry with him over this (Exodus 4). If God says you are to do something, then God

will bless you and you will be able to do it. 

Quit making excuses; quit looking at yourself. Start looking to His greatness.

3. After focusing upon the Lord's provision, go on to focus on Him.

This is the most difficult step of all, because it is very difficult to set your mind on the Lord.

You can set your mind on blessings and on promises; however, it takes some real doing to come quietly and put everything else aside, and just know the Lord.

Ask the Holy Spirit to help you. This step involves a sense of flowing in your spirit with the Father. It is a time of oneness.

4. In a period of expectation and appropriation, draw from the Lord. Keep drawing.

This period of appropriating from the Lord may be beyond what a human being can stand up under.

I have fainted under it. I have been so completely immobilized by what I had touched in God that I lay on the floor without strength for up to an hour, unable to move more than a hand or foot during that time.

This can happen in that period of waiting upon the Lord with an expectancy and sense of appropriation after you have come to focus upon Him.

5. As a Word or an experience comes to you, expand it to its fullness. 

As you are drawing the blessing or the Word from the Lord, let it be expanded.

It is one thing to hear a Word, but it is another thing for you to let that Word begin to grow and expand, until its full import comes to you.

God does not speak the way a man speaks. God speaks a Word and it comes in your heart very forcefully. But it comes like a seed.

Soon it breaks open and expands. It becomes so real to you that it is echoing and reechoing within the depths of your being.

Some people say, "I heard the voice of God . God spoke to me today and He said thus and thus and thus." How did He speak? 'Oh, just an audible voice came to me."

I doubt that very much, because the way God is speaking today is more than just bringing someone a Word through his auditory sense.

God is going so deep that when He speaks a Word, it involves impartation: it is a revelation of Himself that conveys Himself, His power, His thought. Everything comes in that Word.

As you receive it, let it grow, and suddenly it will become tremendous. That is the way a Word can change your whole life. 

It will do something for you that will fill you. You will never be the same after you receive that Word in your waiting upon the Lord.

As you realize this you may decide to wait upon the Lord every day. If you succeed in waiting on the Lord over a period of a few months, building yourself up until you get a Word from the Lord, I have a feeling that is all you will get for awhile.

It takes quit some time, in periods of waiting on the Lord, for that Word to expand until it really means what it is supposed to mean to you.

Some people get a lot of words everyday and yet none of them ever seem to mean very much. They have not really received the Word from the Lord.

When that comes, it will have a power to transform their lives. 

I knew one woman who started getting words from the Lord and she wrote them down. She was coming up with six or seven pages a day.

She thought they were so wonderful that she started copying them and emailing them around. When I read them, I realized that this was not a word from the Lord; it was just a state of self inspiration.

Real Words from the Lord have great power in them.

6. Let the Word be confirmed.

You may have several sessions and many days may pass before the Lord confirms a Word. However, again I emphasize that a person's imagination could run away with him and he could honestly believe he had a Word from the Lord.

If he is looking for a very unusual direction, he should not only wait upon the Lord, but believe to have that Word confirmed by two or three witnesses.

Two or three others might come up to him and say, "Here, God is talking to you about such and such." If he comes before the elders and has God reveal that the Lord is speaking to him about a certain thing, then he has confirmation.

Seek and wait for that confirmation.

7. Worship in the Word that you receive.

Worship in it. You will never be closer to God in all of eternity than when he gives you a Word and reveals Himself in the Word.

Just worship in that Word that He gives you. Give a great deal of worship to the Lord. In waiting upon the Lord, consider the direction and instruction you receive as perhaps one  percent of it.

Ninety - nine percent consists of giving God what He is to receive out of it in worship and praise and adoration.

(To be continued)