Be Patient For Your Issac or Suffer Your Ishmel by Russel A. Durose
The promises of the Lord have a certain longevity that tries anyone's impatience.
The Lord gave me this Word just now, as I have just walked in the door from a very full day, of challenges and grace challenges that come with discipling a life in a troublesome life. The Lord is calling us to wait for Isaac. Are you willing? Or are you wanting to produce what is easy and natural? You see when our patience level reaches a breaking point, we must at that point quieten ourselves, then hold ourselves, until we dominate our flesh. It is here where our battles lie...the impatience of our humanity abort many divine processes.
Between the promise of Isaac and his birth, I estimate that 25 years went by. But in between there was a great temptation that came and manifested itself. The answer which was of divine promised is polluted by a deceitful thought you must collaborate with God...YOU MUST MAKE THAT FIRST MOVE, YOU MUST DO SOMETHING...this was the greatest error ever made, and today we live with its costly consequences.
Rather, let us compare for a moment two women...Sarah and Hannah...Sarah was the initiator of impatience...Hannah was the sufferer for the cause of the promise. For Hannah, the shame and the plaguing of that which was natural, but closed to her, for a season, yet she continued on until she surrendered herself, and God granted her desire. But her wait for the seed promised, took prayers, crying, fastings, torture, yet the benefits are felt today...because Samuel brought in the reign of Saul, through anointing, and then David through anointing.
Let us transport this to your ministry dream...are you willing to wait for your Isaac? Or will you "help God out?" Ishmael spells trouble and strife. He mocks the promise of God...He wars against it. I am certain that in our churches there are so called Ishmaels, who were never truly born again, but go through the religious motions. Yet they cause so much strife. This strife even creates wars, between tribes, creates states and divides worlds. So what does it cost our impatience? It can cost our very life.
Revelation 1 gives us an insight into this reality. When you consider the persecutions of the first apostles you see that what is happening today is not so developed in a concerted effort to persecute the Church, I think we are on the threshold of an end time persecution which shall fill the "cup of iniquity" of the whole world. This shall be pivotal for the end. This series which I started just after the new year has the motivation of preparing the saints for what is coming. What is coming can only be walked through when we are duly prepared in the Word and the Spirit.
Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another? Matthew 11:2 This chapter is so interesting when you examine the processes that John the Baptist was going through in prison, when he sent messengers to Jesus. This question in the title of this message means something has changed with John in his perception of Jesus, and his expectation of the Messiah. When you research how John recognizes Jesus, as the Messiah you have to go to John 1, to see what God said and revealed to him in the wilderness.
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Isaiah 40:3 KJV The call of John into the wilderness is a demarcation in forsaking family duty, what is expected and what the Law determines. John is the son of a priest. As sons, it is predetermined that they follow the course. The Scripture in Isaiah 40 represents some unheard of movement of the Lord. It represents an apparent break with conformity for the objective of bringing about the greatest prophetic task ever undertaken until Jesus.