The Act of Waiting

Discerning between the flesh and the Spirit is one of the most profitable things a person who wants to follow God can do.

John 3:6 NKJV — “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

Something is born "of the flesh" when the idea, or power to complete the idea, comes from man. People can take God ideas and turn them into man's plans. This is the corruption we are called to grow in obedience out of.

Satan doesn't mind us studying scripture.  He studies it, too.  If we know a lot of God's ideas, but not His hand of leadership and His nearness, we can become sons of the Devil thinking we are helping God. God needs no help.

Matthew 23:15 NKJV — “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel land and sea to win one proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.

The "leaven of the Pharisees" isn't legalism, it's lawlessness... Trying to accomplish in man's own strength what only God can do.

The best sounding teaching, if it is about what "we can do for God" is false.  True messages are the cross: man's flesh getting out of the way of what the Spirit can, will, and wants to do.

Most big ministries, no matter how humble and in-touch they appear, are teaching the flesh to do something other than die.  Waiting on God doesn't garner mass appeal.  Even the prayer movement is infected with fleshy alternatives to talking to God and waiting to hear what He says.  That is boring and ineffective to the flesh which IS what makes it powerful to change the earth.

No one commands the Spirit but God. No one one "shakes the gates of heaven" unless God wants them shaken.  True prayer is saying what God says, when HE says it, and how He says it.

We don't need to feel God more, give God more, know God more, or study God more... Without God's help we can't do any of these things. 

No.

We need to recognize every tower we try to build with it's top in the heavens is evil, not good.  We need to learn to wait on God... Yield to God more... To be patient and satisfied walking hand in hand with God.  We need an eternal perspective that isn't quick to do away with faith... But is slow to speak and quick to listen to God.

Hebrews 4:9-14 NKJV — There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience. For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account. Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.

As we draw near to the return of Jesus, antichrist worship and Jesus Christ worship, antichrist teaching and Jesus Christ teaching, antichrist kingdom and the kingdom of Jesus Christ... These will all value the same things except abiding in, or waiting on, God.  

God has a kingdom with vision, values, and power.  Satan wants that kingdom.  He wants the vision and values, but he wants to be the power.  He can only steal it through the agency of man.  He has no power without God.  

The only difference between the false and the real will be who is the leader: man or God.

Satan wants to be God. He has no original ideas.  He just wants what God creates.  Groups of people that want what God wants can be wheat or tares.  The only defining difference will be those who wait on God and those who go and get what they think God wants for them.

Wait on God.

Psalm 37:1-11 NKJV — A Psalm of David. Do not fret because of evildoers, Nor be envious of the workers of iniquity. For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, And wither as the green herb. Trust in the LORD, and do good; Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness. Delight yourself also in the LORD, And He shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD, Trust also in Him, And He shall bring it to pass. He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light, And your justice as the noonday. Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for Him; Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, Because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass. Cease from anger, and forsake wrath; Do not fret—it only causes harm. For evildoers shall be cut off; But those who wait on the LORD, They shall inherit the earth. For yet a little while and the wicked shall be no more; Indeed, you will look carefully for his place, But it shall be no more. But the meek shall inherit the earth, And shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.

When the great commission began, Jesus didn't ask His disciples to do anything but wait on God.  

Acts 1:4-8 NKJV — And being assembled together with them, He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father, “which,” He said, “you have heard from Me; “for John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” Therefore, when they had come together, they asked Him, saying, “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” And He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority. “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

That IS the witness and discipling everyone needs, that IS all that Jesus taught.  He didn't teach missions.  He didn't teach translations.  He didn't teach world domination.  Jesus taught that He was dust without God.

John 5:19 NKJV — Then Jesus answered and said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner.

John 5:30 NKJV — “I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me.

In this season, I don't want to be led astray by good, or "God," ideas.  I want to remain in the true power of a crucified life.  God will never let a faithful person wait too long.  Many will abandon God thinking they are helping Him.