Summary & Key points
Ps. Elisha’s sermon focuses on developing faith during times of silence and when God’s promises seem distant. He begins by examining how the narrative of the Bible starts not with humanity’s fall in Genesis 3, but with creation in Genesis 1. This distinction underscores God’s purpose and mission for humanity, which begins with His original plan and continues through a series of covenants throughout the Bible. These covenants, like those with Abraham and others, illustrate that God’s relationship with humanity involves both blessing and responsibility, centered on His purpose rather than our circumstances.
Using Abraham’s story as a central example, Ps. Elisha explains that God’s promises may not always align with human expectations or timelines. God promised Abraham that he would become the father of many nations, even when he and his wife, Sarah, were childless and advanced in age. Despite Abraham and Sarah’s doubts, and even their attempts to fulfill God’s promise through human means (e.g., having a child with Hagar), God fulfilled His word through Isaac. This teaches that God’s promises rely on His faithfulness, not human intervention.
The sermon highlights the concept of “waiting on God,” which involves more than passive patience. Ps. Elisha explains that the Hebrew word for “waiting” implies “binding together” or “twisting” with God, akin to intertwining strands of rope. This connection strengthens believers, allowing them to draw resilience from God’s strength rather than relying solely on themselves. By actively engaging with God’s word, believers intertwine with His character, leading to spiritual endurance and the ability to face life’s challenges with renewed strength.
Key points in the sermon include:
- Trusting God’s timing and purpose, even when promises seem delayed or impossible.
- Actively waiting by intertwining with God through faith and engagement with His word.
- Drawing strength from God to rise above challenges, illustrated through the image of an eagle soaring.
- Understanding that God’s covenant involves mutual commitment, where believers rely on His strength and actively participate in their spiritual journey.
Doing then, I want to, you know, talk about finding faith in the silence when God’s promises seem distant. We’ve been talking about, we’ve been looking at Genesis 1, 2, 3, various portions of the Bible from there. Our story never begins in Genesis 3. Most churches, or I would say most Christians, most of us evangelicals—whatever you call reformed, deformed, whatever it is—you know, most of them, most of us start with Genesis 3, the fall.
But we fail to understand it never starts at Genesis 3; it starts at Genesis 1. So if we want to be true to the scripture, let’s be true. So it always goes all the way—creation, what’s our responsibility, what did God speak about, what happened. But we seem to focus on the fall, on the fall, on the fall. Because if you read in Genesis 1, it talks about the creation of heaven and earth. How does it end in Revelation? A new heaven and a new earth.
So think about it, and let’s understand this clearly. So we’ve looked at it. We’ve looked very simply at creation—we will look at it a bit more. And we looked at the whole place of Eve, the independence, how we, in our own independence and our own arrogance, always do things beyond the wisdom of God, beyond the counsel of God, beyond the barriers and the parameters that God gives us—the boundaries. And what happens? There are consequences. Then, when we abuse those boundaries, and we look at some of the covenants…
And today, I want to look at one person—Abraham. And I want to end it somewhere in Isaiah. Abraham, we call him the father of our faith, the father of, you know, whatever we want to call it. Yeah, we see it in Galatians after that. Now the issue is this—Abraham was known as Abram, and God says, “Come out of where you are.” And God gives him this promise.
We will look at it, we’ll look at a few scriptures soon. And God gives him this amazing promise. He said, “You’re going to be a father of nations. You know, look up to the sky—can you count the stars? That’s how vast it’s going to be. Look to the shore—can you count the sand? You can’t. That’s how amazing it’s going to be.”
But Abraham never had a child. So how could it be?
In trying to help God—we always try to help God—Sarah, the wife, says, “Why don’t you take Hagar, my maid, as your wife and have a child through that?” And through that, Ishmael is born. And today we have the conflict going on, okay?
And Ishmael is born, and God says, “No. What I promised, I will do. But it’s My way. It’s through My means, not your means. I don’t need your help to fulfill the promise; I just need your obedience.”
So that journey that Abraham takes is an amazing journey that we can learn so much from. So we’re just going to look at a few scriptures and then a few thoughts together.
Can I have that? So Genesis 15. After Genesis 12, God speaks to Abraham. He says:
“After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision.”
Genesis 12: God gives him this amazing promise, verses 1 to 3:
“In blessing, I will bless you. When anybody blesses you, they’ll be blessed.”
So sometimes we just relegate it to a nation rather than stepping out and saying it’s all fulfilled in Jesus.
Okay, so that’s the whole problem when we get fixated. And if we start at Genesis 3, we always miss the point. We must start with Genesis 1.
“After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision:
‘Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.’”
But Abram said, “Sovereign God, what can You give me since I remain childless and one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?”
That was his servant. He says, “I’ve got no one. In case You forgot, you know, I have no son, I have no brother, I’ve got nothing.”
So, “And Abram said, ‘You have given me no children, so a servant in my household will be my heir.’”
Then the word of the Lord came to him:
“This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.”
Verse 18:
“On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates.’”
God says, “Hey look, Abram, I’m fixing this. At the end of the day, it’s My story.”
You know, we talk about missions. Mission, we look at mission—packing bags, going to another place.
But the mission of God is always the story of Jesus beginning from Genesis. He’s fulfilling all the promises, culminates at the cross, His resurrection, and it all comes to an amazing end when He returns, and a new heaven and a new earth.
Okay?
We want to get it right—we get it right all the way.
So He says:
“On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the river Euphrates.’”
Chapter 17, it says:
“When Abram was ninety-nine years old”—you know the promise was given to him when he was seventy-five—“the Lord appeared to him and said, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before Me faithfully and be blameless. Then I will make My covenant between Me and you.’”
Because we’re talking about covenants, right?
“‘And you will greatly increase your numbers.’”
Abram fell face down, and God said to him:
“As for Me, this is My covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. I will establish My covenant as an everlasting covenant”—and that comes through Jesus—“between Me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.”
God also said to Abraham:
“As for Sarah your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah. I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her—not Hagar, not anybody else—by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.”
Abraham fell face down; he laughed. Ninety-nine years old—would you laugh? Ninety-nine years old—the wife is turning ninety, she’s eighty-nine—“Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old?”
Sometimes we come to a part of our life or stage in our challenges where we look very hopelessly, and we say, “Can God change this situation? Can God change this person?”
“Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?”
And Abraham said to God, “If only”—see, he’s already tried to help God—“if only Ishmael might live under Your blessing.”
God has said so specifically, “It’s not Ishmael. It’s not going to be through Hagar. It’s from you and Sarah. I am working something.”
Then God said, “Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish My covenant”—notice how many times that word comes—“a covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.”
Now you go down to Chapter 18. It’s been about a few months now, and what happens is Sodom and Gomorrah are going to be destroyed.
And three people come, and they all believe that it’s the Lord walking in there—it’s an angel, however you want to look at it. We will look at it more next week in the weeks to come. But they visit Abraham.
And Abraham, and then one said to him, he said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.”
So God keeps reminding him—not only just speaking to him but physically comes down and now is speaking to him and saying.
Now Sarah was listening at the entrance of the tent, which was behind him.
Abraham and Sarah were very old, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing. So Sarah, what? Laughed.
Abraham laughed. Sarah laughed. And hasn’t God got a sense of humor? Isaac means laughter.
So God says, “I have the last laugh.”
So Sarah laughed to herself, and she thought, “After I’m worn out and my lord is old, will I now have this pleasure?”
Then the Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child now that I am old?’ Is anything too hard for the Lord?”
Is anything too hard for the Lord?
Today, as we go through certain things, certain portions of the Scriptures, where are you stuck in life? In your journey? In your career? In your health? In your relationships?
Is there a place where you look and say, “Can this really turn around?”
At times we’ll say, “This is how I am.” That’s one of the worst things we can say. Or, “That’s how he is; that’s how she is.”
No.
What is God shaping us to be? What would be the Lord’s desire?
And then, other things that we will look at:
“Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return to you at the appointed time next year, and Sarah will have a son.”
You see the contradiction, isn’t it?
He doesn’t see the possibility; she doesn’t see the possibility. God keeps reminding them, “I have said something to you, and I’m going to do it.”
Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, “I did not laugh.”
But He said, “Yes, you did laugh.”
Just one more portion:
Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah as He had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what He had promised.
Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him. Abraham gave the name Isaac to the son she bore him.
One more verse:
Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.
We call our life with the Lord a journey of faith. Whether you want to call it, “My walk with the Lord,” “I’m serving the Lord,” or “I’m honoring the Lord,” it’s a journey of faith.
And we see this narrative in Abraham’s life. It’s a constant struggle because in life we face problems, we face challenges, we face uncertainties, we have failures, we have disappointment, we have hurts, we have all kinds of things happening. That’s the reality of life.
And sometimes we can detach from that reality. We think God is not present because we believe that if I am walking with God, then if I believe as a believer of God, as a Christian, I should have no problems.
And then there is where we have what is called this crisis of faith.
We end up struggling and crashing. So either we become very disillusioned, we become bitter, or we walk away, or we become cold, or we just casually live life and say, “Ah, it is what it is,” and we become pessimistic rather than optimistic.
So we see the life of Abraham, and so many places in the Scriptures all the way through—it’s always reminding us that, at the end, God’s promise comes true.
Not the way we think it should come, but the way God wants it to come.
Because we face all the various trials and problems.
So here we see Abraham’s life, and just like, I’m assuming, both of us—you and me—our life of faith is filled with tension, filled with challenges.
God’s promises often clash with the complexities of life. Would you not agree with that?
God’s promises clash with the complexities of life, and many times we need to engage His Word in the midst of what we are going through and experiencing. If not, faith is not real—it’s not real.
So we witness this tension. Actually, you can read it in three chapters: Chapter 15, Chapter 17, and Chapter 21. You can read it.
So we want to look a bit at Abraham, but I want to go back to another Old Testament book later.
One of the things we learn is this: trusting God.
Can I have that? The nature of God’s—no, I think you missed one here—trusting God when life’s challenges overshadow His promises.
We must trust God in our life’s challenges, especially when the problem overshadows the promise.
We looked at it in Genesis, right at the beginning. The issue was the issue of trust with Adam and Eve. They couldn’t trust what God had said.
The whisper was more powerful than the promise. The whisper was stronger than what God had spoken. And His character was questioned because why? That whisper of the enemy—like I said, there are no talking snakes today. If there were, TikTok would have 10 million hits, you know?
There’s no talking snakes, but the snake still whispers in people’s ears all the time through social media, through people, through negativity, through so many things.
But the challenge is this—we need to everyday journey, trusting God in life’s challenges because we don’t want life’s challenges to overshadow the promise.
So we’ve seen it in some of the scriptures just now.
Abraham, seventy-five: God says, “You’re going to have a kid.”
Sarah, sixty-five: “You’re going to have a kid.”
Twenty-five years.
Have you prayed for something and waited for 25 minutes and lost your patience?
Or 25 days?
Or 25 weeks?
Could there be something that you felt God had spoken to you years ago and it still has not come to pass?
Is there a promise that you have felt come to you, but it’s still not coming?
There is a struggle. There is a tension. Sometimes there is a stirring in the midst of a song that you’re worshiping with, or scripture. And then, when you face the problem again on Monday or Wednesday or Thursday, you know faith goes through a punctured tire—you struggle again.
So, what’s the nature of God’s covenant in a world of uncertainty?
When we read Genesis 15 again, it is God who initiates the covenant with Abraham. It’s God who initiates it.
And where does God initiate it? In the midst of a problem, a complexity.
God is saying, “I’m going to increase this; I’m going to do this amazing thing; I’m going to build the whole—going to build mankind.”
But there’s a problem here: Abraham can’t have children.
So the promise comes in the midst of a complexity.
Okay, uncertainty—what’s the uncertainty? Abraham is childless. God says, “You’re going to be a great nation.”
We read that—“great nation,” right?
“Hey boss, do You realize I don’t even have a child? Great nation?”
So in this context, God establishes His covenant, not based on Abraham’s circumstances but on His divine purpose.
Now I want to make a simple comment here, but yet something for us to think about.
When you got saved, did God see something great, or did God see something broken?
“While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
God’s promise works through complexities and fallenness and brokenness and sin. God works through it.
God establishes His covenant with Abraham, with you and me, and it’s not based—God’s promise is not based—on our circumstances but God’s purpose.
We have a disconnect because we have this thing taught to us: “Name it and claim it, blab it and grab it.”
It’s not, because it’s detached—and you will see the last scripture that I’m going to use—how God says, “This is how I will exchange My strength for yours, and I will give you that very strength to go through so that you reach the place of My promise.”
So the covenant God makes with Abraham is unilateral.
He is the one—when we read that portion, I didn’t read it for you—God says, “Okay Abraham, bring the animal, cut it.”
And those days, that’s how they did it. God says, “I’m going to go through this.” That means I’m saying, “That’s how serious I am because I can swear no more—I’m God. And Abraham, I swear by My own name that I will no longer exist as God if I cannot keep this word.”
So God makes that covenant.
So God passes through the pieces of sacrifice.
What does it mean? God says, “You know what? I will fulfill this covenant, this promise, solely based on My faithfulness, not your ability in your circumstances.”
And that’s what they did. Sarah said, “Look, I don’t think God is going to come around. Here is Hagar.”
In the circumstance, we want to help God, or we walk away from God, or we struggle, or we give up on God.
So the principle is crucial: God’s promises are rooted in His character, not our situation.
How many times do our problems dictate our moods, our reactions, our responses?
It always dictates how I worship God, how I am generous, how I give to God, how I serve God, how I love God—whatever I do, everything is dictated by my situation.
But we fail to see that it’s actually supposed to be rooted and centered in who He is.
So the covenant is an act of grace.
We know that.
The grace that is independent of human conditions.
How do we reconcile this disconnect of God’s promise—this divine promise—and what I would call the existential reality, the living reality of things?
Here we embrace what we call the concept of hope, defined by God’s truth, not wishful thinking.
We have a confident hope in God’s character and His truth.
I want to look at these few scriptures:
“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for, and assurance about what we do not see.”
Our hope is rooted in what? In God’s Word.
Our hope is rooted in what? In God’s character.
Our hope is rooted in what? In God’s faithfulness.
But if I don’t center that, I will struggle.
So:
“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for, and assurance about what we do not see.”
The things that you are believing for, praying for—do you see them physically?
Do you see them physically?
We don’t see them physically.
And that’s where the problem starts, isn’t it? That’s where the problem starts.
“I can’t see it.”
Isaiah 40:31—we sing this song, we use this scripture often:
“But those who hope in the Lord…”
Now faith is what we hope for.
Now we look at this:
“But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint.”
What does this mean?
How many of you have used this scripture before? Yeah, we have, right? We’ve heard it.
I want to go a few verses before that.
Verse 25, God is speaking to Israel, and He says, because they’ve just come out from captivity—they’re struggling, they can’t see the hope. Like Abraham, it starts where?
It starts here:
“Abraham, I’m giving you this promise.”
“I can’t see it, I don’t have a child, I mean come on, God.”
God says, “You’re going to have it—it’s going to come through.”
And now Israel comes, and they go through these problems—they are the engineers of their own problems—and now they also cannot see.
So the prophet begins to speak and says:
“To whom will you compare Me?”
This is God asking.
Can I ask you: Who do you compare God to, especially when there’s a problem, or there’s an uncertainty, or there’s a hurt, or there’s a loss, or there’s pain?
“To whom will you compare Me? Or who is My equal?”
Who is My equal?
Says the Holy One.
“Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens.”
Did God ask Abraham? He says, “Look up to the sky, Abraham. Can you count it?”
See, Abraham had to come out from his tent to look at the sky.
Many a time, we are hiding under the tent, and the tent is our problem, and we can’t see beyond that.
And the tent is our circumstance.
The tent is our own compromise.
We can’t see beyond it.
So He said:
“Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens.”
Think of the Psalms:
“Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”
So the perspective—what is the issue here? Change your perspective.
Change the focus.
If Abraham just looked from his tent, he could never see.
If you and I keep looking at our problem, we can never turn our eyes.
We sing that song:
“Turn your eyes upon Jesus…”
“Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls forth each of them by name. Because of His great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.”
Now, this is loaded, isn’t it?
We could park here and talk so much about God’s amazing power, ability, and creation.
Let’s carry on:
“Why do you complain, Jacob?”
So He’s not talking to Jacob, He’s relating to a people.
“Why do you say, Israel, ‘My way is hidden from the Lord…’?”
If I want to use a word here, I will call it the hiddenness of God.
Do you feel sometimes: Where are You, Lord?
There feels a hiddenness of God.
“I don’t seem to feel. I don’t seem to understand. Hope—faith—is the evidence of things hoped for, not seen. I cannot see, but because I hold onto something more tangible—that’s God’s promise and truth, His faithfulness—then I can step out of the tent and say, ‘God, I see.’”
“My way is hidden from the Lord; my cause is disregarded by my God.”
He says, “Do you feel that I’m hidden? Do you feel that I cannot see?”
“Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God.”
Now He is going to come—His attribute, His character, who He is.
He says, “I’m everlasting. Beginning and the end. Nothing is before Me, nothing is after Me—it’s all in Me.”
That’s why God calls it what? His everlasting covenant.
“The Creator of the ends of the earth…”
In one sense, I would say, this is Me saying, “Hey, Israel, it’s not about you; it’s about Me.”
And it’s not just about this piece of land; it’s about the whole world.
“He will not grow tired or weary, and His understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.”
Are you weary? Are you weak in faith?
It’s not just physical weakness.
“Even youths grow tired and weary…”
They always seem to be tired because of too much internet, too much social media.
So tired in the morning, cannot concentrate.
“So even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall.”
We read this earlier:
“But those who hope in the Lord”—does this make a bit more sense now?—“will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint.”
Three words I want us to look at here.
The first word is wait.
Now, when you read the word “wait,” what comes to your mind?
Wait. Wait patiently. How long? You know, somebody pacing up and down the hospital—you know, wife going to give birth—pacing up and down. “I’m waiting, I’m waiting. I’m waiting for this. I’m waiting for that.”
You’re waiting, you’re waiting.
That’s not the meaning.
That’s not the meaning in the original.
It literally means to bind together, to twist.
The idea in Hebrew is very picturesque. It’s like making a rope—they have strands twisted together.
“They that wait on the Lord…”
So, you say, “God, I’m waiting, I’m waiting.”
If you can change that prayer, okay?
So here the word “wait” means to bind together, to twist, as in making a rope.
So the understanding goes a bit deeper.
When we say “waiting on God,” waiting on God is what?
It sounds a bit weird, but it’s twisting myself with God, binding myself with Him.
Have you seen one is the rope, two—have you seen trees that have this other vine coming and leeching on it? And what does it do? It draws nutrition from the main bark.
You call it parasite plants, right?
So sometimes we are parasites, yeah. Parasite plant, right? So the parasite, on its own, cannot live, cannot function.
So that’s part of the idea—that binding, that binding coming together, twisting.
So intertwined with Him.
You know: Christ in me, those of us in Christ.
So what does it mean?
Let’s look a bit deeper: twisted together.
When you have different strands coming together, when you twist them together, is that rope stronger?
Yes? No? It’s not a trick question.
Is that rope stronger?
But the strand, on its own, is not very strong, isn’t it?
No.
But when you have a few more strands, it’s solid, isn’t it? It gets stronger.
So you get the picture.
“They that wait upon the Lord…”
Resilient hope comes into our lives.
Life becomes stronger.
We are able to handle things better when we are intertwined with God through faith, through hope, and through trust.
You see, it’s in the problem that I unwind from God. But that’s my very source of strength.
It’s when I question—I detach.
So the issue is: Can I be interdependent with God?
Can I work on this relationship?
Can I work on this place of knowing?
“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”
It’s not just head knowledge—it’s relational knowledge: His intimacy, His Word, His truth, His presence, His character.
So this interdependence with God—why?
Because there, that’s where we draw strength from God.
A single strand is weak; strength is limited when we are on our own.
We always say, “Two are better than one.” Ecclesiastes says, “A threefold cord is not easily broken.”
We talk about it in strength with community, with one another, but that idea originates with our relationship with God.
His strength becomes our strength.
And what does it do?
It brings resilience. It brings durability, spiritual endurance.
The ability to handle life’s problems grows.
So this is what I put here:
Waiting on the Lord is not passive but involves an active, ongoing intertwining of our lives with God’s will, resulting in renewed strength, resilience, and the ability to rise above challenges like the eagle soaring in the sky.
“They that wait upon the Lord will renew their strength; they will soar…”
But I cannot go to the place where God has promised when I’m detached from Him.
Let’s look at the second word: with.
“They that wait upon the Lord will renew their strength; they will soar with wings like eagles.”
The word “with” here gives us an understanding.
Who are you going with to visit so-and-so?
You’ve got to go do something—who are you going with?
Or will you go with me, especially when it’s dark in the night and you want to go somewhere? You say, “Will you go with me?”
True?
Why?
Why do you need that person with you?
You’re afraid.
Like at the farm—all the guys who talk so much, but in the night, you go to the tent… all the guys become cowards. But, you know, ask the little girl to go.
So, the whole issue with “with” is: I am waiting on the Lord; I am not alone.
The presence of God is with me.
I’m depending on Him.
And as a result, He gives me renewed strength.
So the word “wait” and “with” also means what? Hope—looking eagerly forward to.
Abraham waited 25 years.
Let’s look at the third word: renew.
“They that wait upon the Lord will renew their strength…”
Go and renew your license. Go and renew… why?
You want to extend the duration.
Renew—we use the word quite often, right? And we often use it with the word reset. Reset—why? Because you want to kind of start over, or things feel a bit stuck there.
So, “They that wait upon the Lord will renew…”
Renew is what? I exchange my weakness.
Sometimes we are baffled in our mind, wondering: How can I get strength from God?
When we don’t intertwine with Him—that’s engaging His Word.
Now look, all of us have different issues of engaging God’s Word, but it’s God’s Word that exposes who He is to us.
We gain knowledge of Him, and in that knowledge, that knowledge brings faith to us. That knowledge causes us to draw. That knowledge causes us to pray more effectively.
Why? Because we begin to understand His character, His faithfulness.
We begin to understand our problems, our fallenness, better.
We become more actively—not passively—actively engaging God.
And it becomes what the Bible says in James: The Scripture is a mirror.
Then we look at things that I need to deal with:
Where am I being faithless?
Where am I not engaging?
Where am I struggling in my hope with God?
What do I need to deal with in my own heart and mind?
Are there things that I need to make corrections with?
So here, what happens is renew.
Why?
God provides fresh strength to those who are tired.
Are you tired?
Are you discouraged?
Are you disappointed?
Have you been waiting for something, and then it feels like, “God, when? How long?”
God says, “But they that wait upon the Lord will renew…”
It gives us fresh strength and ability to continue in the journey.
When we are weak, weary, and discouraged, what do we do?
What do we do when we are weak, weary, and discouraged?
Four things very quickly:
Find strength through waiting.
Remember, it’s not a passive engagement; it’s an active engagement with God.
Waiting is not passive; it’s an active trust and hope in God.
If I don’t engage God’s truth, I cannot be actively engaging His promise.
It implies that even in my weakness, God is with me.
And if I rely on Him, He will renew my strength.
Exchange weakness for strength.
When we are discouraged, or we are tired, we are weary, God offers His strength in place of our weakness.
When I am weak, He is strong.
Sounds so much like a paradox, isn’t it?
But when I intertwine, that strength becomes mine.
He took my sin—why? So that I could live that life.
Our faith is not to be arrogant and flaunt it into people’s faces.
This is not something we achieve on our own, but we receive it as we stay close to Him.
Right?
And we go through a journey—whatever it is, stay close with me. Stay close with me.
Hold My hand.
Right?
When you go through a treacherous thing with a mountain hiking, stay close with me.
Stay close.
And that’s how—because there’s the confidence there, the strength there that says, “I’ve got you.”
God is saying, “I’ve got you.”
Sometimes in our body, our health—whatever—God says, “I’ve got you. Come on.”
But God, how long?
“Hang on. I’m working it out. Trust Me. Trust My plan. Trust My purpose.”
Soaring above circumstances.
Now the image: “They will mount up with wings as eagles…”
What does it suggest?
That God lifts us up above our difficulties and enables us to rise above our challenges.
It’s not me—a solo eagle flying—it is because of His strength.
That’s why God says, “Come on, we go to another level. Come on.”
Strength for the journey—otherwise, these challenges overwhelm us.
Endurance and perseverance.
God sustains us.
His promise is this: We will not run out of energy, we will not be weary, we will not faint.
Even those who seem to have energy—God says, “No, I will sustain you.”
Even when you are tired, God gives us the endurance.
Can we stand and just read this last slide together?
God is with us in our weakness.
The song that we are about to sing:
“God is able, more than able.”
Will your heart be open today and say, “God, You’re able. Lord, help my unbelief. Lord, I struggle, and I blame You. I’m frustrated. God, even in good times, I can detach myself. Lord, I don’t want to be a solo strand.”
God is with us. God is with you.
If I can just speak to you and say: God is with you in your weakness, in your difficulty, in your circumstance, in your dark time, in your pain, in your lack.
As you actively wait on Him—
“I’m tired; my faith is hurting.”
Yeah, come on, wait. Entwine with Him.
Take hold of His Word again. Take hold of His truth again.
Learn how to lift up your hands in worship.
Learn how to worship God in simplicity.
We don’t need music blaring.
When you wake up, whatever—do that.
Why am I asking just three times a day? Why?
To entwine ourselves with God and say, “God, I need You.”
God is with us in our weakness.
And as we actively wait on Him, He renews our strength.
He renews your strength.
He enables you to persevere and rise above your challenges.