Class Outline Jim Stone

Class Outline – Jim Stone

Holding pattern 10/23/05

Waiting on the Lord (poem)

Desperately, helplessly, longingly, I cried.

Quietly, patiently, lovingly God replied.

I pled and I wept for a clue to my fate,

And the Master so gently said, Child, you must wait!

Wait?, you say, wait! My indignant reply.

Lord, I need answers, I need to know why!

Is your hand shortened? Or have you not heard?

By Faith I have asked, and am claiming your Word.

My future, and all to which I can relate,

Hangs in the balance, and you tell me to Wait?

I’m needing a “yes,” a go-ahead sign,

Or even a “no,” to which I can resign.

And Lord, you promised that if we believe,

We need but to ask, and we shall receive.

And Lord, I’ve been asking, and this is my cry:

I’m weary of asking! I need a reply!

Then quietly, softly, I learned of my fate,

As my Master replied once again, You must wait.

So, I slumped in my chair, defeated and taut,

And grumbled to God, So, I’m waiting... for what?

He seemed then to kneel and His eyes wept with mine,

And He tenderly said, I could give you a sign.

I could shake the heavens, and darken the sun.

I could raise the dead, and cause the mountains to run.

All you seek, I could give, and pleased you would be.

You would have what you want – but, you wouldn’t know Me.

You would not know the depth of My love for each saint;

You would not know the power that I give to the faint;

You would not learn to see through the clouds of despair;

You would not learn to trust just by knowing I’m there;

You would not know the joy of resting in Me,

When darkness and silence were all you could see.

You would never experience that fullness of love

As the peace of My Spirit descends like a dove;

You would know that I give, and I save,

But you would not know the depth of the beat of My heart.

The glow of My comfort late into the night.

The faith that I give when you walk without sight,

The depth that is beyond getting just what you asked

Of an infinite God, who causes what you have to last.

You would never know, should your pain quickly flee,

What it means that My grace is sufficient for thee.

Yes, your dreams for your loved ones overnight would come true,

But, oh, the loss! If I lost what I am doing in you!

So, be silent, my child, and in time you will see,

That the greatest of gifts is to get to know Me.

And though oft may My answers seem terribly late,

My wisest of answers is still, but to wait.

Lesson : HoldingPattern!!

The poem I just read you has a lot more in it than you can know, if we just think on what it truly says. I, in reading that several weeks ago, thought about just how many times I may have missed God’s best that His love had prepared for me, just because I did not have the trust or courage to wait on His most perfect timing and this lesson will deal with some of this, and give us something to think about when patience is on trial.

I am always moved by one of the most familiar verses in the bible. It has been taught about and written about and there is even an old hymn that covers it well in the familiar strains; “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength…” It is a very moving work and lets read it and get our time started right here. It is from Isaiah 40, verse 31, but we will start at verse 28;

“Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, does not faint or grow weary; there is no searching of His understanding.

He gives power to the faint and weary, and to him who has no might He increases strength [causing it to multiply and making it to abound].

Even youths shall faint and be weary, and [selected] young men shall feebly stumble and fall exhausted;

But those who wait for the Lord [who expect, look for, and hope in Him] shall change and renew their strength and power; they shall lift their wings and mount up [close to God] as eagles [mount up to the sun]; they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint or become tired.” (this is divine exchange)

If you note in 41:1, you will again note the words, ‘renew their strength’ and then in 41:10 there is a key verse to the endurance factor that we all need in the days that we are now in.

“Fear not [there is nothing to fear], for I am with you; do not look around you in terror and be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen and harden you to difficulties, yes, I will hold you up and retain you with My [victorious] right hand of rightness and justice.”

In verse 28 above, it says that there is no searching His understanding. In other words we have no understanding to comprehend His, but we are to just look to Him, to expect His strength, His might and His power, to come along side us at the time of need and watch as the good work that He began in us, continues, and then the work of His loving grace will perfect it. What a mighty God we serve. We must constantly remember, as He told Paul in 2 Cor 12:9-10; Listen to Paul’s response; (Paul’s patience was being tested)

“But He said to me, My grace (My favor and loving-kindness and mercy) is enough for you [sufficient against any danger and enables you to bear the trouble manfully], for My strength and power are made perfect (fulfilled and completed) and show themselves most effective in [your] weakness. Therefore, I will all the more gladly glory in my weaknesses and infirmities, that the strength and power of Christ (the Messiah) may rest (yes, may pitch a tent over and dwell) upon me!

So for the sake of Christ, I am well pleased and take pleasure in infirmities, insults, hardships, persecutions, perplexities and distresses; for when I am weak [in human strength], then am I [truly] strong (able, powerful in divine strength).”

Paul had just said that he had begged God three times to remove this thorn from his flesh, and it was his flesh being plagued, not his body. It is thought by many, and myself as well that the thorn that Paul spoke of, was the Judaizing teachers that followed him around, to confuse those that he had just taught about the faith that works by love. They were teaching of the works of the law that controls all in life and not faith. He had said that he wished that they would just cut themselves off completely, and I won’t elaborate on this point.

We’ve been talking about power and strength that comes with waiting and so we need to shift into the beginning of the church in Acts 1:8, where we hear Jesus sharing the fruit of tarrying or [waiting] that He instructed them to do in Luke 24:49b;

“…but tarry [wait] in the city of Jerusalem, until you are endued with power from on high”

“But you shall receive power, after that the Holy Spirit is come upon you: and you shall be witnesses to Me both in Jerusalem,

and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and to the uttermost part of the earth.” Acts 1:8

They did wait and O what a witness that day brought about. The word “after” surely tells us that there is something that occurs between the promised power and the experience that the ‘filled’ life produces. You see the word after tells us that there is a “divine delay” until conditions are aligned with the will of God, and when that is all in place, God will then release the needed “power”.

We see divine delays in the lives of many in the word of God. We see too, that some are mentioned and we can look at one of them even now and what we are after is what God is after in these delays. Turn to Habakkuk 2:1-4; Habakkuk is coming out of a mad spell;

[“Oh, I know, I have been rash to talk out plainly this way to God!] I will [in my thinking] stand upon my post of observation and station myself on the tower or fortress, and will watch to see what He will say within me and what answer I will make [as His mouthpiece] to the perplexities of my complaint against Him.

And the Lord answered me and said, Write the vision and engrave it so plainly upon tablets that everyone who passes may [be able to] read [it easily and quickly] as he hastens by.

For the vision is yet for an appointed time and it hastens to the end [fulfillment]; it will not deceive or disappoint. Though it tarry, wait [earnestly] for it, because it will surely come; it will not be behindhand on its appointed day.(“yet” places it in the future)

Look at the proud; his soul is not straight or right within him, but the [rigidly] just and the [uncompromisingly] righteous man shall live by his faith and in his faithfulness.

The word “soul” in verse 4 speaks of the deeper experience that we are to sense and read the balance of this sentence, namely, “the just shall live by his faith”. These words are looking beyond the outward to the inward, beyond the physical to the spiritual, beyond the present to the future and beyond this intermediate episode to the ultimate and the eternal life ahead.

Yes, God said [speaking to Habakkuk], I am using the Chaldean to chastise my people, but, your estimate of his soul is quite right, and he will be brought to accountability at the end, and yes, in this painful process, the righteous suffer with and by the wicked, yet the righteous shall never perish like the wicked, but shall live because of his faith as will yet be seen, because the earth shall yet be filled with knowledge of the glory of the Lord. What I have always seen in these delays, and I suppose we all have them from time to time, if we but recognize them for what they truly are, for they are molding times, times of conformation to a personality or an event attitude. I asked the Lord for an answer once and He answered me that He built delays into many of His calls to purify and consecrate the receiver and the motive, and then perfect the outcome. I suppose I have to wonder what David might have been like as king if there had not been 40 years from anointing to the crowning. He went through a great deal of humbling, cleansing, and many wilderness experiences, but he is the only one in the bible that is noted to be a man after the heart of God.

Note: Delays most often are God positioning us for promotion, teaching and training us to truly possess and operate the elevated gifts that accompany the promotion. You must be able to hold on to what He gives.

We need to see now on what note Habukkuk ended this portion of his experience. Look at how this works out. God’s word to him is, “Though it tarry, wait [earnestly] for it; because it will surely come and it will not be late”. God is giving a supreme promise in Christ that He is indeed working out great and gracious purposes for His children in the days of the end. Now, he (Habukkuk) grasped it, and said, “The Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth be silent before Him.” (vs. 20)

“To You belongs silence (the submissive wonder of reverence which bursts forth into praise) and praise is due and fitting to You, O God, in Zion; and to You shall the vow be performed.”

(Psalm 65:1) [Silence is the language of waiting].

Since we mentioned David, lets look at one point in his life. He is probably frustrated, running from cave to cave, from one encounter to another. He was tired and had a ringing question to ask, How long? Turn to Psalm 13:1-2;

“How long will You forget me, O Lord? How long will You hide Your face from me?

How long must I lay up cares within me and have sorrow in my heart day after day? How long shall my enemy exalt himself over me?

David here is running at the very extremity of his emotions, and his patience is truly wearing thin, so he calls out to God to deal with his problem. He asks the question without waiting for an answer, thinking to add emphasis to his plight, but God, being Omniscient knows all that is happening, and He operates on His Own personal time schedule, not ours. He has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you, but in a time like this, we nor David remember this truth. We want God to deal with our circumstances now, without our having too much to do with the change. We want our situation changed without allowing God to show us what He wants to change in us or around us. We are calling out to Him to deal with our complications and with our plight, but He wants to develop our character in all points. I am sure that David felt like he was calling out to God, but had rung a phone out of order or getting a busy signal. Ever been there, I have and it is maddening.

Note: Situations or event circumstances seldom need to change as much as God sees the need for and seeks to change us in our character to reveal His character in our response to the situation.

Listen, we all know, how time flys, when we’re having a good time, or so we think, and sometimes I might hear myself say, I just got here and now its over, where did the time go? But, when problems are on the scene, it seems like time is in a ditch and this situation will never end. “How long will You hide Your face from me?” I have had to learn that God is never in a hurry, there is no haste in the Holy Spirit and by the way, He is never late. We are the ones that take the time. It only seems long because of our dragging our feet of character change. God says, I can see the whole of you, I know every fiber of your being and this situation has not taken me by surprise, nor is there any change noted in you yet.

I am sometimes amused by my own plights, but usually only after the fact, when I look back and see that it was me that was dragging my feet in the process, and not God being contrary. I wanted things to go my way, in my time and without any cost to me personally, but that is not the way it works. It takes seasons of time for the fruit to ripen, for the flavor to sweeten and it is generally because the biting north wind has finally blown its chilling charge across our path, but the fruitful north wind, most often cannot get past our uncrucified flesh to sweeten anything.

I remember the times, when as Romans 8 declares, in frustration, I did not know how to pray and only when completely out of the steam of fleshly ability, I finally turned it over to the Holy Spirit to make intercession for me [Rom. 8:26-30]. In fact, lets read this and make our point;

“So too the Holy Spirit comes to our aid and bears us up in our weakness; for we do not know what prayer to offer nor how to offer it worthily as we ought, but the Spirit Himself goes to meet our supplication and pleads in our behalf with unspeakable yearnings and groanings too deep for utterance. [He is always on our side].

And He Who searches the hearts of men knows what is in the mind of the Holy Spirit [what His intent is], because the Spirit intercedes and pleads [before God] in behalf of the saints according to and in harmony withGod’s will.

We are assured and know that [God being a partner in their labor] all things work together and are [fitting into a plan] for good to and for those who love God and are called according to [His] design and purpose.

For those whom He foreknew [of whom He was aware and loved beforehand], He also destined from the beginning [foreordaining them] to be molded into (conformed) into the image of His Son [and share inwardly His likeness], that He might become the firstborn among many brethren.

And those whom He thus foreordained, He also called, He also justified (acquitted, made righteous, putting them into right standing with Himself). And those whom He justified, He also glorified [raising them to a heavenly dignity and condition or state of being].”(this is the heavenly polish that this lesson is all about.)

This is all about kingdom life and its requirements. Lets turn to Matthew 5:3;

“Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

“Blessed” are all those who have come to the end of their potential and abilities, and into an abject poverty of spirit and utter dependence – or, those who have come to the end of self, and trust the Lord without condition, letting go of all that they previously held dear; for theirs is the kingdom.