WAITING ON GOD..

FOR THOSE OF YOU IN THE PAINFUL POSITION OF WAITING FOR THE GOODNESS OF THE LORD IN THE LAND OF THE LIVING..

I have been speaking with people who are in some category of pain, disillusionment, or despair lately. How easily understood, under the circumstances of the developing evils of our day. So much is designed, and being designed, to hurt us.

Personally, I have felt myself often exhausted for the battles. I've said it before, but this area I am living in, is a hotbed of spiritualism. You see it everywhere, in dress codes, bumper stickers, T-shirts, and body language, but also in what can only be called a tremendously oppressive atmosphere, that weighs on you like a lead blanket.

My son often comes to me to talk, and we build each other up as we discuss our plans to leave this place. But we're (so far) still here... SIX LONG YEARS.

This morning I got up fighting a black cloud. Not my mood, but a physical feeling of heaviness., which as always, I chose to fight..

SO GOD.. I was led to go to my office and led to pull a book off the shelf, from a series printed in 1900, that I read once in a while. INSIDE of the book was a 'booklet' that I've had since the 1980's printed by the Way Ministry. (The $2.50 price tag was still on it!). A page marked in the booklet had a poem. Here it is for YOU:

DONT QUIT
'When things go wrong as they sometimes will;
when the road your trudging seems all uphill;
when the funds are low and the debts are high;
and you want to smile, but you have to sigh;
when care is pressing you down a bit,
rest if you must - but don't you quit!

Life is queer with its twists and turns;
as everyone of us sometimes learns
and many a failure turns about,
when he might have won had he stuck it out.
Don't give up, though the pace seems slow -
You might succeed with another blow.

Often the goal is nearer than,
it seems to the faint and faltering man.
Often the struggler has given up,
when he might have captured the victor's cup.
And he learned too late, when the night slipped down,
how close he was to the golden crown.

Success if failure turned inside out -
the silver tint of the clouds of doubt -
And yo ucan never tell how close yo uare,
It may be near when it seems afar;
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit -
It's when things seem worst that you mustn't quit'.'
(author unknown)

But GOD didn't stop there. The booklet was on page 115 of the large book that I'd pulled from the shelf. Page 115 contained these words..

"For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what He hath prepared for him that waiteth for him.” Isaiah 64:4

Are you crying yet? Ok, it goes on...

'Waiting is not easy. To go on praying, supplicating, agonizing, to look around and find no help, to look up and find the heavens as 'brass', waiting as you see, the days glide into years, and still no answer.. Waiting as summers and winters come and go, and yet no response. Nay, answers seem further off than ever; gloom has deepened, shadows have thickened, hope well-nigh fled; and the lonely heart cries 'O God, how long?'

'Blessed be God, though all this is ture, there is a Divine Workman at work for the tried, troubled, tempted soul. God Himself is in it all. Often we would have answers at once, quick and sharp upon our prayers. This is not often His way. We must prepare our hearts so that we can receive the answer. Ah, behind the curtained heavens the eternal God is shaping the blessed answer for our reception, at the same time shaping our hearts to receive it.'

So you see friends, it is not just in the marvelous words I was directed to (that I am repeating here for your blessing as well).. but in the tender fact of a God NOT occupied with making more universes, but in tending to this ONE earth and to HIS People.. so personally - that I duly noted.

Finally - for the icing on the cake..
2 days ago, the Lord took me to a verse in the Bible I'd never noticed before - Leviticus 25:21. It reads

'I will command my blessing upon you in the SIXTH YEAR'.

Love in Him, Always,
Victoria