“Asking keep on asking. Seeking keep on seeking. Knocking keep on knocking…and don’t give up.” The worship pastor at a local church, David Brymer, wrote a song with just those lyrics that continues to play on repeat in my head from time and time again. So now, whenever I hear someone say “don’t give up” I hear this song start to play in my mind. It’s scripture with a tune.
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”
Matthew 7:7
Not giving up. It’s similar to not losing heart. Which is exactly what the Lord keeps nudging me with this week…Don’t lose heart. Don’t grow weary.
“And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.”
Galatians 6:9
The word for “grow weary” (or “be weary” in KJV), is ekkakeo. It means “to be utterly spiritless, to be wearied out, exhausted”. Yet if we look closer, that word ekkakeo is a compound of two words: ek, meaning “out of” or “away from” and kakos meaning “a bad nature, not as it ought to be, a mode of thinking, feeling, acting (wicked), troublesome”. This tells me that when Paul penned this, he was arming us with insight. Let us not grow weary, meaning let us not fall into a bad habit of thinking, feeling or acting. Keep going forward in your new man, as a slave to Christ, and do not fall back into destructive thinking. We need to get away or get out of that habit or pattern of thinking.
(Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? Romans 6:16)
Do not lose heart.
You know, I’ve been talking to a few friends lately about that feeling of being “out of gas”. See, I recently lost my job, yet when it happened I heard the Lord that day. I was comforted before even knowing what I was walking into at work. I didn’t know the exact outcome that was coming but I knew God was already working regardless of it. I knew when I showed up that day that God had gone before me and He said specifically “Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.” I was full of faith!!! Expectant!!
Yet, as time has gone by and days have added up… I’ve started to wonder…and it makes me want to say “Did I really hear?” Which sounds like a thought that is conjured up from the pit of hell… yet, I have been tempted to ask that because my faith doesn’t FEEL as expectant or excited or exuberant as it did that day that I knew what the Lord had said…it’s like, I’ve gotten weary. The whole thing feels similar to a marathon race and at the start of a race, in the beginning, you are pumped up, full of energy, excited, yet mile 10-15 hits and you might not feel the same physically in your body as you did at the start. You might be a little more tired, run down…
And that’s my problem. Getting weary, or being weary in my faith, when I know what God said.
As I came across 2 Samuel 23:10 last Sunday in church I felt a little energy come shake my bones because I knew in that moment, what I’m feeling, I’m not alone in. I’m not the only one who has grown tired.
“But Eleazar stood his ground and struck down the Philistines till his hand grew tired and froze to the sword. The LORD brought about a great victory that day. The troops returned to Eleazar, but only to strip the dead.”
2 Samuel 23:10
A few things stood out to me: Eleazor stood his ground. He stayed where he was led until his hand grew so weary that it froze to his sword. Then the Lord did what the Lord does when we are at the end of ourselves: He brought victory that day.
Maybe at the end of weariness is the end of me. A perfect place for God to come in.
I came across Jane Johnson, who is an amazing bible teacher, and saw she did the same study on this exact verse which helped me to dig a little deeper as I had a guide to reference my findings. I found that that the phrase “grew tired” is the word yaga in Hebrew. Yaga means “to be weary, be exhausted, to labour especially with effort and toil, and so as to become weary.” The concordance of this word led me to Isaiah 40:31, “but those who hope (wait) in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”
I’ve kept Isaiah 40:31 close to my heart time and time again… and this time, with guidance, I was able to see something new. “Yet those who wait” is the word qava in Hebrew. This word is a verb meaning “to wait for (probably originally twist, stretch, then of tension of enduring and waiting).”
I heard Jane Johnson say it this way, “it’s binding two things together by twisting continually, over and over again… It’s wrapping one thing around another so tightly that it goes where the other does, and it describes the tension of enduring – a tension-tightness that comes when all you really want to do is let go. Quit fighting. Call it a loss.”
I wanted to reflect on this, so I took some space from writing and went to the gym. When I was there, I started reading the Final Quest by Rick Joyner again and came across this paragraph about THE ANCHOR, and it said, “Then because the ledge I was standing on was so narrow, and becoming so slippery, I drove the sword in the ground and tied myself to it while I shot at the enemy. The voice of the Lord then came to me saying, “You have used the wisdom that will enable you to keep climbing. Many have fallen because they do not use their sword properly to anchor themselves.”
And it clicked.
Waiting on God, in this season, might very well look like twisting ourselves around our Ephesians 6 sword, letting it be our anchor. It’s the waiting that looks like binding to the sword, which is His word.
“Therefore take up the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you will be able to stand your ground, and having done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness arrayed, and with your feet fitted with the readiness of the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”
Ephesians 6:13-17
The next part seems to drive this home. The word for “and froze” in Hebrew is dabaq. The GHCL definition says, “to cleave, to adhere, specially firmly, as if with glue – to be glued.” So, we see Eleazar’s hand grow weary and cling to his sword as if it were glued together as one. A dear friend said it to me like this, that when he reads this verse he has envisioned someone who has been working really hard and their hand starts to blister, and as they continue working, removing their hand from their tool, will peel off the skin. It’s a hand so weary in working, it became glued to its counterpart.
Something about that seems valuable to me, that as we come to places of growing tired as Believers, we have the opportunity to glue ourselves to the word of God. To wrap and twist ourselves so tightly around it that no matter where we are standing, we will not be shaken. That when weariness or discouragment comes, we will then know what it’s like to use our sword properly to anchor ourselves, because we will not be shaken.
Don’t lose heart.
Let’s pray:
Lord, thank you for this word. Thank you for your promises. You are the God over the flood and you reign forever. I ask that anyone who is reading this be able to live out clinging to Your word, by Your divine grace. Holy Spirit, I ask for an infilling of hope over the valley of dry bones before us. May this word start to rattle what’s before each one of us and may there be an increase of faith. Thank you, Lord, that you are the God who humbled Himself to know what it’s like to be human; may you have mercy on our humanity and help us walk as saints who are not of this world. Help us to be courageous and bold in our faith and may it be our anchor when circumstances are not in our favor. If anything is hindering love, or hindering our sight, or hearing, I pray it be removed in Jesus name. May we be a people who seek you wholehearted and may we see your Kingdom come and will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.
Amen.
by Melinda Suzanne 