Wait until…

For the last few days it has felt like God’s been taking me on a specific path, with each day clearly following on from the previous day. Yesterday at the end of the post about Coming Up Higher, He reminded me of Jesus’ command to His disciples to wait in Jerusalem to receive God’s Promise (the Holy Spirit). It’s a theme that has been confirmed through others too. This morning God and I picked up where we left off yesterday:

Luke 24:49 – “Listen carefully: I am sending the Promise of My Father [the Holy Spirit] upon you; but you are to remain in the city [of Jerusalem] until you are clothed (fully equipped) with power from on high” (AMP)

That word ‘remain’ (the Greek word kathizo) can also be translated as ‘tarry; be seated; wait’. We know we are in a waiting season. The whole world is impatiently waiting for lock-down to end, for the pause button to be released, and life to resume. But those who are alert to the Spirit know that it has not been a pause without purpose. It’s not been a rest for the sake of rest: God has been working a very specific purpose through this time.

Covid-19 and the global lock-down have provided the Church with a wake-up call. As we saw yesterday, God is continually knocking, calling us all to wake up and get ready – but we have not been released to act yet. We are to be awake but wait where we are seated. We may have looked like we were awake before, with our Sunday services and community programmes, but we now know that was not the full expression of what God calls Church. We were asleep – sleep-walking, if you like, with merely an appearance of action. However now we have been woken up, and are in a place of waiting. Not passively lying down to rest, but seated – watching and waiting, ready to move when the time comes. Kathizo carries a connotation in some places of being seated like a ruler waiting to have their rank, honour and authority officially conferred upon them. I believe there is a God-ordained ‘kairos’ moment coming, when He will suddenly release us into the New, and we will move from seated but alert, watching and waiting, to standing, moving – fully active and engaged. We don’t have to know what is coming, only to be ready and willing to move when God says to move, and to follow wherever He leads us.

The disciples did not know what they were waiting for. We now know the outpouring of God’s Spirit at Pentecost was about to be released to them, but they didn’t – they were just waiting for the unknown; obeying God by continuing in prayer and fellowship until God released the next thing, when they would somehow be both equipped to do what He was saying to do next, and released to do it.
Sound familiar? We are also waiting: not for a repeat of Acts 2 – God is doing something new; and not just for lock-down to lift, as the rest of the world are doing; but for a season shift – for something to change, for God to reveal what we have been waiting for so that we can receive an equipping for and a release into the next season.

But as they waited for power from on high to equip them for what was next, not just for what they were going to be called to do (preach, work miracles etc), but who they were called to become: clearly set apart from the rest of the world for His service – so I believe we need to do the same. God has woken His Bride from her sleepy state. And now we need to wait. Not because we need any more rest – far from it! But because we need to take this time talking with Him and getting to know Him better again, so that when He says it’s time, we will be sensitive to His voice and able to respond appropriately, knowing we have the power to go where He says, do what He says and be who He says.

We don’t have long left – but until He says it’s time, let’s be watchful, and patiently wait just a little longer.