I found a Baptist pastor in Woodstock, Georgia by the name of Johnny Hunt, who said, “Winter is the season of winding down, withdrawal, retreat, and closure. Activities, responsibilities, and relationships draw to a close in winter. This is the time of ending. It’s also a period of rest, restoration, and reflection.”
He also said, “Spring is the time of beginnings, exciting opportunities, and anticipation for the future.”
We’re in the middle of winter. But we have Spring to look forward to. And that’s the hope that we have in our lives in a spiritual sense. Things may be cold and wet and dark and dreary. We may be in a lull or we may feel as if winter will never end–in both the spiritual and physical sense. As I preached a few weeks ago, we need to muster hope and faith, but it’s not easy because our strength wears out.
When I worked for the newspaper. It seemed we were on the go six, seven days a week from May through October. There was always something going on during the week, the weeknights, the weekends. It seemed endless. I’d go two weeks without a full day off. We had so much news we didn’t have room in the paper to print it all. But once November hit, we were struggling for the next couple of months to find things to fill the paper.
I find myself needing that winter season to hunker down and rest, yet there is so much more I want to do, and feel God is calling me, and this church to do.
But, as you know, the pressures of life weigh down on us. You know that I suffer the same as anyone else. My energies have been consumed by the loss of a job, loss of a loved one, financial stress, the stress of my marriage breaking down, and the stress of nothing working out the way it’s supposed to. I know you all go through things–your car broke down again, another home repair, another sickness, another surgery.
You need that Winter rest. Like my time at the paper, you’ve got so much to do, you can’t keep up. You can’t rest. Life is going full speed ahead and you’re running alongside just trying to keep up. And it’s serious stuff that is just overwhelming. You need strength to get you through whatever season of life you’re in.
Scripture:
Let’s take a look at our scripture this morning. Isaiah 40:28-31
28 Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.
29 He gives strength to the weary
and increases the power of the weak.
30 Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall;
31 but those who hope 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 faint.
There is a time and a place for Winter. There is a time and a place for hunkering down and resting. But sometimes, we can’t slow down. We’ve got to move. And moving requires strength. We’ve gotta get up in the morning and face life. God promises us the strength to get up and move when we don’t have the strength to move on our own.
Let’s take a look at verse 28 again.
“Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.”
Right off the bat, the prophet is asking a rhetorical question. He’s saying this to remind us of what we already know, but need reminding of time and again, especially when our doubts start creeping back in. I’m reminded of Steven Curtis Chapman’s song, “God is God and I am not.”
Enduring Word said: “How easy it is to believe in the infinite power of God and at the same time to feel that He is unable to meet our personal needs!”
Have you ever felt that way? You’re not alone. It’s a universal human struggle. That’s why God made sure to place it in the Bible for all of time. We all struggle with knowing and believing God is God, but we fail to always sense Him close to us, that he cares for us, and that he knows us by name.
We need that sense of encouragement. That reminder that says, “God knows you, he loves you and He is watching out for you.”
I remember when I was in high school, there was a song by Bette Midler that said, “God is watching us, from a distance.” Do you remember that song? It was one of those songs that everyone thought was so touching and meaningful and powerful, and I thought, ‘Wait a minute, God is not watching us from a distance, he’s right here.’
At about the same time, Sandi Patty had a song on the Gospel charts about God’s hand on her shoulder. Now, that’s more like it. God is not watching us from a distance, His hand is on our shoulder.
God is not distant. God is not far away. He’s right here. He’s on us, he’s in us, he’s all around us. His anointing seeps from the outside in. He knows more about us and the situation we’re in than we do. He’s not distant. He is the everlasting God, the creator of everything. His understanding is unfathomable. He does not grow tired or weary. He does not need a break. He does not need sleep.
We are the ones who need sleep.
So what happens when we grow tired and weary? When he works on our behalf when we are asleep? Verse 29:
“29 He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. 30 Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall;”
Do I really need to go on with this one? It speaks so well for itself.
Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall. Can I get an ‘amen’ from those here under the age of 30?
God is here for you, too. He is alive and well and just as interactive with you. He is not for just us old-fogey grown-ups.
As one of my former pastors used to say, “There is no ‘junior’ Holy Spirit.” That means there is no other Holy Spirit with fewer credentials; there is no Holy Spirit in-training; there isn’t a separate Holy Spirit who comes down during children’s church; and another Holy Spirit who works with the youth class. And ‘the real’ Holy Spirit who comes down for the adults.
That’s not how it works. The same God who works in the lives of us seasoned adults; the same Holy Spirit that worked in the lives of great Christians and pastors and preachers and evangelists and missionaries throughout history; the same God who worked in the lives of great men and women in the Bible; the same Holy Spirit that poured out on men and women at Pentecost; the same Holy Spirit that was alongside Moses and David and raised Jesus from the dead…is the same Holy Spirit that is in this church sanctuary right now, lives inside of us right now and raises our spirits and even the spirits of the children and youth who also grow tired and weary and are worn out and stressed out.
“31 but those who hope 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 faint.”
You’ll notice that God uses the illustration of the eagle. The first time I saw one, I was actually near the Town of Eagle in maybe Wyoming County. I was able to stop, and I was going to take out my phone to get a video of it, but it flew off too quickly. It seemed as if it just lept up and soared, with hardly any effort at all. And in a few seconds, it was out of eyesight. I couldn’t get my phone ready in time. In fact, I’ve seen eagles several times, and each time I couldn’t get my phone out in time.
This is from Faithlife Sermons:
Eagles do not fly like other birds; they don’t flap their wings but rather soar. Flapping their wings would use incredible amounts of their own strength and endurance and they would require so much more food as fuel if they didn’t soar. Instead they sit on a high ledge and wait for the right wind currents to come. When the time is right, they take off and soar upward effortlessly, because they have waited for the right time. There is a special ‘up going’ wind, that they ride as it circles higher and higher toward the sky.
You’ll notice it waits for the right time. In the translation that I read, verse 31 says:
“but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.”
Instead of hope, other translations use the word, ‘trust.’ Probably the most common word, though, is ‘wait.’ Those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength.
Again, this goes with what I talked about a few weeks ago–how faith and hope are tied together. The idea is that we have an expectant attitude of faith. It isn’t just sitting around in Wintertime, hunkered down, sitting on the couch, binge-watching Netflix, and waiting for God to show up. We are to be actively pursuing God, His call on our lives in prayer, and then expecting God to do something by faith, waiting, and trusting in His timing to do His work.
We’re so used to deadlines. Another example from my days at the paper–I would have a story to do, and my editor would leave it to me to do it. I had a deadline–no later than the end of the day Tuesday to get it done. Sometimes there would be a school board meeting on a Tuesday night, so if it was urgent enough and couldn’t wait until the following week, I had to come in Tuesday night and work until 11 to get the story in before we went to press on Wednesday.
Unfortunately, God doesn’t work on a tight schedule like that. He works on His schedule and we have to patiently wait. It’s more like being in a waiting room than in a newsroom. You’ll be called when the doctor is ready.
How many of you have been in an emergency room and waited hours for a doctor that you needed to see right away? You know what I mean. God works like that, doesn’t he? At least from our perspective. From His perspective, he’s right down to the minute, if not the second. From our perspective, He’s late.
I think this, from allworship.com, helps put that into perspective:
Did you know that an eagle knows when a storm is approaching long before it breaks?
The eagle will fly to some high spot and wait for the winds to come. When the storm hits, it sets its wings so that the wind will pick it up and lift it above the storm. While the storm rages below, the eagle is soaring above it.
The eagle does not escape the storm. It simply uses the storm to lift it higher. It rises on the winds that bring the storm.
When the storms of life come upon us–and all of us will experience them–we can rise above them by setting our minds and our belief toward God. The storms do not have to overcome us. We can allow God’s power to lift us above them.
God enables us to ride the winds of the storm that bring sickness, tragedy, failure and disappointment in our lives. We can soar above the storm.
Remember, it is not the burdens of life that weigh us down, it is how we handle them.
The Bible says, “Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles.” Isaiah 40:31
I want to close today by asking you, where do you need that fresh wind in your life? You probably know without even thinking about it. There’s an old Christian rock song by Petra called “Second Wind.” Do you need a second wind?
Where do you need strength? Is it just finding a reason to get up in the morning? Are you finding yourself wearing out, overburdened by life’s struggles and obligations, saying, “God, when do I get a break? When do I get to be me again?”
Do you feel as if life doesn’t make sense, and you need something from God to set you free?
God promises us strength. We may have to wait for that strength, but we are to wait with eager anticipation. God wants to give us not just enough to refuel and go. But an abundance of strength to soar; to not grow weary, to not grow faint. And we are to soar with wings as eagles. Not on our own strength, but by the winds that God provides–in His perfect, albeit sometimes strange–timing.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on First Baptist Church of Watkins Glen
Featured Image by Iva Castro from Pixabay
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