How To Wait on the Lord to renew Your strength – Isaiah 40:28-31

I am having a great time studying the word of God with a group of friends on the You Version application. There is so much I have penned down in the last six days, and even much more I am learning from other believers doing the study with me. Commentaries are hilarious, insights so profound, and expressions of the Holy Spirit in diverse forms -it is a beauty to behold. As much as I could easily pick one or two of the lessons from our study to share with you today, the Lord wants me to write to you who may feel constantly burned out, drained, and unable to keep going.

As I delve into the specific things the Lord would have me write to you today; It just occurred to me that a community of believers sharing the word of God is a source of strength in itself. Finding a genuine circle of believers to study and pray God’s word could be the answer to your questions or concerns. So in this moment, I implore you, I encourage you by the power of the Holy Ghost to intentionally seek a Jesus-believing and led church for fellowship.

Now, I would love to share a pattern that I have been able to pinpoint in my life. I have noticed that I have triggers and drainers; things that trigger me to do certain things and things that drain my energy. For example, worshipping God triggers me to focus on my Jesus, forgetting every doubt that there may be, spirit chants propel me to pray! In this same way, I have noticed that when I binge-watch and consume unedifying content, I slowly slip into a posture where I feel exhausted from the inside out. In those moments, it usually takes feeding my spirit with the word and spending time with God to come back up. This is what the bible calls waiting on the Lord in Isaiah 40:31.I would love to point out that this exhaustion isn’t the type that stems from working long hours, the exhaustion I write about is the type that stems from doing nothing, the type that comes from a heart or spirit overwhelmed with doubt, worries, the cares of life, the type that stems from non-existent joy in a life.

What is the root cause?

With that said, I would love for you to take this moment to examine and retrace your steps. Ask yourself these questions, “When did I start to feel burned out?” “How did I arrive at this state of exhaustion?” “Does this exhaustion stem from overworking or underfeeding my spirit?” “Does it come from harboring bitterness, greed, or envy”? The root cause is endless but you sure can find answers to these questions when you take the time to search within you.

Get Rid of the Cause

I made a conscious effort to stop listening to this particular podcast last year after I realized it was a trigger and “drainer” for me. This podcast is hilarious, extremely engaging, and filled with so many “bants” but nothing exactly from the podcast that blesses the soul. I noticed that every single time I listened to the podcast, I always slipped into this foul mood of exhaustion the next day. Although the podcast has me laughing while I listen, by the next day the laughter is non-existent. I concluded that the spirit that oozes from the podcast isn’t the spirit of joy nor is it the spirit of God. I think this a good place to note that there is more to content consumption, spiritual transactions take place when you consume content. I listened to the testimony of a man who was a secular artist recently. The Lord told Him that, “the same spirits that torment him while he made music is the same spirits that torment people who listened to his music”. So you see, there is a transference of spirits when you consume content, beware. More so, Pastor James Kawalya who was an ex-satanist shared in this video how spirits and power are transferred from the pulpit. He elaborated. on the importance of consecration as a minister of God because it is easy to pollute the church from a desecrated altar. When a man of God stands on the pulpit to share the word of God, he pours out to his congregation the spirit that powers him. I mean think about how contagious joy is, think about those times when your mood changed from good to bad or vice versa just because of an interaction with an individual or because you were in a certain place.

The sum and meat of what I am trying to communicate under this bullet point is that once you identify your triggers; that is the things that bring you to ground zero – eliminate them. These energy drainers are vast and vary from person to person, I pray the good Lord helps you to identify them in Jesus’ name.

Now the very place and potent point of this blog post:

Learn of and Lean on Your father who never gets tired

Just in case you have not gotten to the point in your life where you identify with Jesus as Lord in your life or God as your Father, this is a good place to do so. If you want to live your life bubbly with energy, the Lord Jesus is your true and most potent source. Do you know why? Come with me to Isaiah 40:28. It poses a question and points us to the reality of our big God.

Have You not Heard of the everlassting God who created the ends of the earth yet He neither faints nor is He weary

Isaiah 40:28

I would love you to take a pause at this point and take all of that in, engage your imagination just a little bit. Imagine if you had to create and cater to the whole world, 7 continents, about 195 countries in the world, and the billions of people in the world and not be tired. I sure would get tired and need to take lots of time off here and there but this is not the case with our father in heaven. This is why He encourages us to wait upon Him, to tarry in His presence so that He can rub off on us His never-weary, never-fainting nature. As I write now, I cannot help but think about men and women of God who are constantly doing the Lord’s work, it is so evident that they are laboring in the vineyard of the Lord and even over God’s people yet they look agile. It is because they wait on the Lord, He renews their strength and He causes them to mount up with wings as eagles. Verse 29 of the same chapter goes ahead to tell us that God gives power to those who have no might and He increases their strength.

Therefore, my dear friend in Christ and my dear friend who has decided to know Christ, to wait upon the Lord means:

• To acknowledge that you are Spirit living in a body
• To understand that the Spirit of God is your true source of life and energy – Genesis 2:7
• To intentionally do things that allow the free flow and circulation of God’s spirit in your body ( sin causes constraint of the flow of God’s spirit in the human body, it drains man of all the energy and nutrients God has deposited into a man’s life)
• To stay with the Lord, spend time in His word.
• To continuously build up your spiritual muscles, stamina, and strength through, worship, word study, and praying in the spirit.

So, my dear friend, I would wrap up this post by encouraging you to identify the root cause of your burnouts, get rid of them, and wait upon on the Lord.