Phil Beach Jr. emphasizes the necessity of waiting on the Lord as a divine posture essential for spiritual growth and understanding. He highlights that true strength and patience come from God, not from human effort, and that waiting allows us to align our thoughts and actions with His will. Beach warns against the distractions of modern society that hinder our ability to wait and encourages believers to seek God's patience and strength through prayer and dependence on Him. He draws from Isaiah 40 to illustrate that waiting on the Lord leads to an exchange of our weakness for His strength, enabling us to partake in His divine purposes. Ultimately, he calls the congregation to cultivate a heart of waiting, which is vital for recognizing and responding to God's movements in our lives.

Everything that the Lord Jesus wants to produce for himself in us comes through waiting. I think this is a real word from the Lord, a prophetic word that God is speaking into our hearts. He's speaking it into our hearts this morning. I really believe that the scripture in Isaiah chapter 40, we've all read it many times, is a word that the Lord is really wanting to speak to us. We are living in a society, in an age that is antagonistic toward this very word. That Jesus wants to speak to us. We're living in an age where this very truth is dreadfully resisted in our lives. And I believe the Lord, in his mercy and grace and in his unfathomable love, just came and visited us this morning and spoke a word to us to empower us and strengthen us to continue. To look to him to maintain in us that posture of waiting. The Lord does nothing in us of eternal value without having it be born and wrought through a posture of waiting. Everything of eternal significance is wrought in us through God establishing in us a posture of waiting. Therefore, think this through now, it would be to the enemy's advantage to distract us from seeing our need to enter into the, actually it's the very waiting and patience of the Lord himself. Because he himself possesses this incredible quality. It comes from him. He's not asking us to conjure up, as Alan said, a counterfeit, you know, a human's waiting. We can, in a humanly way, wait for something. But this is far different than any kind of a thing that we can produce in ourself. There is a quality that comes from God that God himself possesses that needs to be communicated to us and maintained to us of waiting, patiently waiting. It's an inward state that only God can produce. This state of inward waiting upon the Lord is imperative for us to come into and walk in because it's only in that state that we learn how to cooperate with the Lord and his movements. It's in that state that we learn the distinction between himself and ourself, his movement and our movement, his thoughts and our thoughts. His divine response to a given situation versus our human reaction to a given situation. It's all learned and caught and raw in that state of waiting upon the Lord. And so, I think that it would be very advantageous to us this morning to make this a point of real thoughtful prayer. I believe the Lord is doing something in our lives. I believe the Lord wants to do something in our midst. I believe the Lord, he's doing something in his body, but he's saying to us, we can't see it. We can't partake in it outside of that state of inner rest and wait and hope and patience. We can't partake of it. The absence of that indicates that there is human movement, human anxiety, human action, human labor, human plans, human endeavors, and that is contrary to the Lord. Just read this scripture and then we're going to go to 1 Corinthians. In Isaiah chapter 40, verse number 28, Hast thou not known, hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary. There is no searching of his understanding. He gives power to the faint, and to them that have no might, he increases strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. Verse 30 indicates that even the incredible resources and zeal that is characterized by youthfulness will fail and come to an end when it comes to this spiritual waiting upon God. This spiritual rest, this spiritual posture of humble, quiet dependence and trust upon God for his movement, for his voice, for his direction. If this lesson had been learned in the church, we would not have at the current time all the kingdoms that are being built in the name of the Lord that are basically for men. We wouldn't see that. Because there would be a sense of only moving as he moves. Only speaking as he speaks. And that would prevent our own kingdom from being built. It would prevent our own movements. It would prevent our own labors. So, verse 30 indicates that even the vintage of human zeal, the best of human energy, which of course is characterized in young people, they've got this incredible amount of energy, this incredible amount of resources. But God says even that good energy compared to the energy that begins to be demonstrated as we get older, it's of a different quality than the youthful energy. But God says put it all together. Youth or old energy, it's not going to work. It's going to faint. It's going to fall. It's going to fail. So, you cannot find the ability to wait upon God through mustering up in your own self. You can't say, well, I'm going to be patient today. I'm going to be quiet before the Lord. You can't do it. The beginning of entering into these realities is the acknowledging that, Lord, I do not have it. You do. You are the God of all patience. You are the God of all longsuffering. The Lord hath great patience, the scripture says in James. The Lord hath great patience waiting for the fruit of the earth, waiting for the crop to come to maturity. Let me tell you, beloved, in order to come into the reality of what the Lord communicated this morning, we've got to come to Jesus. We can't hear this word that he is speaking to us and then say, ah, I'm going to be more patient now. We've got to go to the master who alone possesses the incredible patience. Think of it. The Lord Jesus is the master of the vineyard. He's the owner of the vineyard. If anybody needs patience, it's him because it's his crop, it's his life. It's all got to do with his work and his finished work and his life and his grace and all of the things that will bring glory to him. Yet he has great patience to wait. Whenever God gives us light and we come into a knowledge of this great plan that he wants to work in our lives, we'll get discouraged so quickly unless we come to him and ask him to replicate in us, to reproduce in us the patience that he himself possesses as the master vineyard keeper. So. Verse 31, but they that wait upon the Lord to wait upon means to not simply. It's not to wait upon. The Lord is not something that is initiated from human. It is divine initiation. God enables us to wait by literally it's what it suggests is to intertwine oneself like a rope. Our ability to wait is in direct relation to our inner relatedness and intertwining with the Lord himself, who becomes the anchor, who actually becomes the source from which we wait. We wait because we wait in his waiting. We are patient because we are patient through his patience. The kingdom and the patience of Jesus Christ, the scripture says in the book of Revelation. John acknowledged that it was the patience of Christ. The patience of Christ, the kingdom of Christ. It comes from him. So there's an intertwining. The actual Hebrew suggests the way a rope is made strong by all the cords wrapped around one another. And this is the idea of the Lord. The Lord's people will be strong as they are enabled to wrap themselves in and intertwine with God himself. And therefore, he becomes the cohesion. He becomes that which holds us together. Now, in 1 Corinthians, well, let's finish this. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. Now, actually a literal translation to renew something would suggest that you're taking a product and you are maybe strengthening it or making it better. That's a misleading idea there. This literally means they that wait upon the Lord shall exchange their strength. It is an exchange. As we wait upon the Lord, we literally exchange our human strength for God's divine strength. It is an exchange. We come into a posture where in waiting we lose what we are, we lose the busyness and all of the goodness that we possess in ourselves, and we exchange it for himself. That's what we need, an exchange. We don't need a renewal in the sense of pulling the bootstraps of our own patience up and making it stronger. No, we need his patience in our life. And then they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. I certainly sense from the Lord this continuous admonition to us all, this waiting is imperative if we are to be partakers of what He is doing, what He has done at Calvary, and what is secured in Himself because it is God's intention to take the full work that Christ secured in Himself and work it in the church. That's what the Lord's intention is. But if we're to partake of all that the Lord has intended for us, we must come to Him and we must pray that He would enable us to partake of this call to wait in quietness before Him. It's not a passivity. There is a difference between being passive and waiting on the Lord. The Eastern religions, such as New Age and those who are engaged in that mysticism, they are teaching incorrectly that the way to attain to spiritual heights is to come into a posture of meditation where we cease from activity, where we enter into a state of neutrality, where our minds cease from working, where there's no movement in us, and then we become susceptible to the higher power. That is absolutely not the thought of God or the thought of the Holy Spirit. God never calls His people to be passive in the sense of ceasing from activity. The difference between the lie of Eastern meditation and the truth of Bible meditation is when God calls the church to cease from activity and to cease from our own works, He is calling us to come to the cross where we come to an end in our earthly energies, but our minds are stayed upon Him. You see, Christian meditation is not ceasing from activity. It is being delivered from the energizing of what we are in ourselves to being energized by the power and might and strength that comes through Christ. But the mind, when the Christian is meditating, is not ceasing from activity, but is steadfastly upon the Lord. The Scripture says that, Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. For his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he doth meditate day and night. So the Christian, when called to cease from activity, to cease from fleshly labor, is called to stop trying to do what only God can do, but to come to God and to steadfastly place all of your energies upon Him. And then as you look to Him, He becomes the author and the energizing power working within you, enabling you and strengthening you. For it is God that worketh in you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure. So we want to make a distinction between this call to wait and to cease from our own labor from the erroneous false idea that many times comes into the church. God does not want us to give up our minds, to give up our thinking, to give up a meditative attitude upon Him. God never calls us to do that. He calls us to recognize that the cross is the place where we and our earthly sinful self come to an end and where Christ now is the energizing force, the energizing life, our righteousness, our holiness that we are to glory in. You see? So let's turn to 1 Corinthians 2. And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring to you the testimony of God. Do I for a moment have a quick time? Okay, 5 to 12. Only going to be a few more minutes because we're leaving early today in light of the wedding. For I determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in the demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. How be it? We speak wisdom among them that are perfect, yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world that come to know. But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world unto our glory, which none of the princes of this world knew. For had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written, I hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. In particular now, these following verses. But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit. The only way to come to an understanding of the things that Paul was referring to, in particular, verse 7, the wisdom of God is a mystery to the natural mind, as we'll read in a few moments here. The only way to come to the knowledge of these things is as God reveals them to us. Now, this revealing, God revealing to us, is directly related to Isaiah 40, they that wait upon the Lord. God must work in us a heart, a spirit, an inner life that's been exercised and disciplined by His hand so that we have learned the posture of waiting on Him. We are guarded against distractions. Not so much activity. It is not activity that we're guarded against. It's not physical activity that hinders the work of God. It is inward distraction. It is a posture whereby inwardly our spirit has been knocked off kilter and we're no longer looking to the Lord. You can be quiet outwardly and sitting outwardly, and nobody can be around. You can even be in a monastery, but inwardly you might be very distracted. So this need for the Lord to reveal the things of Christ to us directly relates to Him exercising our spirit into a posture of waiting. Verse 10, But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God knows no man but the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teaches, but with the Holy Spirit teaching, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God. For they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned. That is, they are discerned by the Spirit. They are discerned by the Spirit. The activity of God in relation to revealing Christ essentially springs out of the redeemed spirit of man as that spirit is in a quiet posture looking to the Lord Jesus Christ. And so a natural man is not necessarily someone who doesn't know the Lord, although that could apply. But a natural man can also be a Christian who is governed by his soulical nature, or governed by his outward life, his outward senses, or governed by a mind that has not been renewed or is not being renewed. And this natural man can miss the things of God, the deeper things of God, not necessarily deep teachings, but when the Scripture speaks of the deep things of God, it refers to, my God, there's nothing deeper that God has to reveal than the Lord Jesus Himself. The Lord Jesus came from the bosom of God. So the deep things of God is an ongoing relationship with Christ whereby we are enabled to partake of the depths of His heart, know His heart, know His thoughts, know His voice, know His movements, know the things that grieve His heart, know the things that make Him happy. A union with Christ is the deep things of God. Many Christians think the deep things of God have to do with understanding the book of Daniel or understanding the book of Revelation, having these weird teachings. They're not the deep things of God. Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world. There's the deep thing of God. That's as deep as it gets. The reality of it. The reality of it. Coming into a reality of that is the deep thing of God. That whole realm of knowing the deep things of God and knowing what God is doing and knowing what God is saying and as a corporate body, knowing the movement of God. What is God saying to us as a body? What is God wanting to do in 99? What is He wanting to do in our families? What is He wanting to do? What is His movement? We can't know that. That's why the Lord brought this to us this morning. Because He is wanting us to prepare ourselves by praying that we might come to know this waiting posture inwardly, so that when He's ready to speak, when He's ready to reveal Himself, when He's ready to take the cloud and move it here or move it there, together we can move with Him and walk in union with Him. Amen? So, that's all that we really have time for this morning. So, let's be thankful for the Lord's faithfulness and His ministry to us and let's ask Him just for a moment together that He might work this in us. As you feel led of God, pray out and let's just let the Lord seal this in a real way.