Grace in Galatians Part 174 – When Waiting Gets Hard: How to Stay in Faith Until Due Season
Today, we continue our focus on THE YEAR OF DISCOVERY, as we learn to maintain our posture of faith after God has revealed His plans for our future.
As part of this series, I am teaching a verse-by-verse exposition of the book of Galatians.
Key scriptures for this year:
2 Peter 3:18 GNT“But continue to grow in the grace and in the knowledge of our Savior, Jesus Christ. To Him be glory now and forever.”
Luke 10:20 Mirror“It’s time for you to rediscover who you are from Heaven’s perspective.”
1 John 3:10 Mirror“There is a very visible and vast difference between living one’s life from your God identity or from a fallen man’s mindset.”
Proverbs 25:2 NKJV“It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter.”
Jeremiah 29:13 NIV“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”
Scripture we will study today:
Galatians 6:9 NIV“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”
Galatians 6:9 TPT“And don’t allow yourselves to be weary or disheartened in planting good seeds, for the season of reaping the wonderful harvest you’ve planted is coming!”
Supporting scriptures:
Deuteronomy 8:2 NKJV“And you shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.”
Psalm 77:11-12 NKJV“I will remember the works of the Lord; surely I will remember Your wonders of old. I will also meditate on all Your work, and talk of Your deeds.”
John 16:21 NIV“A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her hour has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world.”
Genesis 16:1-2 NIV“Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; so she said to Abram, ‘The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.’ Abram agreed to what Sarai said.”
Genesis 17:19 NIV“Then God said, ‘Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.'”
Luke 15:25-28 NIV“Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’ The older brother became angry and refused to go in.”
Luke 15:31 NIV“‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.'”
Setting the Stage:
The Holy Spirit has me coming back to Galatians 6:9 over and over again. I believe it is because the waiting season is where good people get tired. Not tired of doing the wrong thing. Tired of doing the RIGHT thing. And Galatians 6:9 is not just a warning. It is a lifeline. It is God telling you, “Stay in faith. Stay in the field. Your due season is real. The harvest is scheduled. Do not give up.”
Being totally honest, the reason I keep coming back to this verse is not only because someone else needs it. I need it. This series is really ministering to me.
Today I want to show you what weariness is REALLY after. Weariness is not just after your strength. It is after your faith in the waiting. The Bible commands us to walk and live by faith. The Bible is full of examples of people who remained in faith for a long time. If you can be one of those people, then you will experience great exploits in your walk with God. But if you lack the ability to remain in faith and stay aligned until due season, you will get to heaven only to realize all the things you missed out on because you gave up before it was time. I want that to be me, and I don’t want that to be you. Let’s talk about it.
So, what does this mean for you today? A few things.
1. Weariness Can Produce Spiritual Amnesia; It Attacks Your Memory First.
If you are weary enough, long enough, eventually weariness will make you forget what God said. Weariness can erase the Word God spoke to you, the testimony already in your hands, and the evidence of God’s faithfulness. God spent most of Deuteronomy 8 commanding Israel to REMEMBER, and He did it repeatedly because He knew the longer the gap between the promise and the performance, the greater the risk of forgetting.
How this applies to you:
— The antidote to spiritual amnesia is not trying harder. It is remembering intentionally. Psalm 77:11 says, “I will remember the works of the Lord.” That “I will” is a decision, not a feeling.
— It is important from time to time to remind yourself of what God said. Maybe you need to go back and read your journal (or wherever you capture what God said to you). Go back to the prayer where everything became clear. Meditating on the record of God’s faithfulness will lift the fog that weariness creates. Sometimes you’re just in the middle of a fog, or you feel like you’re in the middle of a funk, but meditating on the word and going back to what God said will help you get through it.
— The Israelites watched God split the Red Sea and were complaining about not having water three days later. Weariness accelerates your forgetting. Grace accelerates your remembering.
— Some of you do not need a new word. You need to go back and stand on the last one He gave you. The promise has not expired just because you forgot about it.
— Romans 11:29 teaches us that the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable; God has not gone back on His Word, and He will never revoke what He said to you.
— Write down your testimonies, not so you can look backward, but so that when weariness attacks your memory, you have evidence ready. He has always come through, and He is coming through right now, you just don’t realize it, because you are weary in well doing.
— Guard what God said to you like it is the most valuable thing you own, because it is! Proverbs 4:23 in the GNT says, “Be careful how you think; your thoughts control your life.” You must protect your internal environment from the fatigue of the waiting season. If you allow weariness to settle in your thoughts, it will eventually poison your heart and sabotage your harvest.
2. The Enemy’s Greatest Attack Comes During The Final Stretch.
The enemy is not random. He does not attack hardest at the beginning. He attacks hardest right before the breakthrough. Jesus described it in John 16:21: a woman in labor has pain because her hour has come. The hardest part is not the beginning. It is the transition, the stage right before delivery, when the contractions are their hardest. The enemy concentrates everything in that final moment, hoping you will give up before the delivery.
How this applies to you:
— If you are experiencing the most intense pressure of your waiting season right now, do not interpret that as the promise collapsing. Interpret it as your season of transition. The delivery (your breakthrough) is closer than it has ever been.
— The enemy does not waste resources. He does not fight this hard against what is not a threat. Satan only attacks those who are worth attacking, and remember the attack is against the assignment.
— Heavy resistance is not a sign that God has abandoned you. It is confirmation that the harvest is real and the due date is close.
— When Elijah hit his lowest point right after Mount Carmel, that was the enemy’s strategy. The highest moment followed immediately by the lowest. Elijah is one of two men in the Bible who did not die (outside of Jesus, of course), and Elijah was taken up to heaven shortly after an incident where he wanted God to take his life.
— When you consider the timing of this attack against Elijah, you can learn something about your own life as well. The enemy attempts to attack you with weariness right after your greatest victories because he’s trying to keep you from the next one. Elijah just had a tremendous victory where he confronted the prophets of Baal, called down fire from heaven, and called the rain to come back after three and a half years. After all of that, he was afraid of Jezebel, and he wanted to die. Sometimes your low points come right after your high points because the enemy is trying to keep you from your next high point.
— If you are being attacked harder than ever, it means you are closer than ever!
— In THE YEAR OF DISCOVERY, discover that the intensity of the battle is often a clue about the size of the blessing.
What the enemy is fighting the hardest is what God values the most.
3. Weariness Will Make You Settle for an Ishmael When God Promised You an Isaac.
Weariness does not always make you quit. Sometimes it makes you substitute. You stop waiting for what God actually said and start engineering your own version. Abraham and Sarah are a clear example of this. God promised them a son. But after 10+ years, Sarah came to Abraham with a plan: “Go to my servant Hagar. Perhaps I can build a family through her.” Abraham’s wife said, “I want you to have sex with my servant,” and Abraham, being a man (even though he was a man of God, he was still a man), agreed. The result was Ishmael, and he caused problems for them then, and this relationship is still causing problems today (it is the rift between Jews and Muslims). The war we are dealing with in Iran today is because of an issue between Israel and Iran, but really, it started with two women in a tent thousands of years ago, and it will not be settled until Jesus comes back. This could have been avoided if Abraham and Sarah had not come up with a substitute for what God said. They only came up with that substitute because they grew weary.
How this applies to you:
— Some of you are in danger of planting an Ishmael right now. You have been waiting on the real thing, and a plan has shown up that sounds close enough. But consider this: Ishmael always costs more than Isaac.
— Weariness makes you call the substitute faith. But discernment under grace asks a harder question: Is this God’s seed, or is this my impatience wearing spiritual clothing?
— You cannot manufacture what God has to deliver (selah).
— When you are tired of waiting, your mind starts producing solutions. Not every creative idea in a waiting season is a word from God. Some of them are survival strategies from a weary soul.
— The promise did not change because the timeline got long. God told Abraham years later, “Sarah will bear you a son.” The original word was still the word. God’s plan for you did not get updated just because you had to wait longer than you expected.
— Some of you are sitting next to an Ishmael right now, trying to get a substitute to produce what only God’s original promise can produce. Stop pouring energy into the substitute. Go back to the word and stand on it.
— In THE YEAR OF DISCOVERY, discover that weariness does not have the authority to downsize what God declared. Isaac is coming. Do not let Ishmael distract you.
4. Weariness Plus Comparison Will Turn Your Faithful Sowing Into Resentful Serving.
When weariness cannot make you quit, it tries one more thing: it makes you resent someone else’s harvest. You have been faithful for a long time. Then you look up and see someone else receiving what looks like your promise. The weariness you were managing meets comparison, and together they produce resentment. The prodigal son’s older brother had been doing the right thing for years. When his brother came home to a party, he refused to go in. His father came outside and said: “Son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.” The harvest was already his. It had always been his. But weariness plus comparison had blinded him to what was right in front of him.
How this applies to you:
— Weariness and comparison together make you misread God’s faithfulness to someone else as neglect toward you. God blessing them is not God forgetting you.
— The older brother’s harvest was not taken from him when the father threw the party. It was still intact. Comparison will blind you to a blessing that is already yours.
— When you see somebody else celebrating, do not call it your loss. Call it your confirmation. If God did it for them, the system is working, and your due season is still on the calendar.
— When you are weary, and you see someone else celebrating, the enemy will use that moment to convince you that your faithfulness was wasted. Your sowing is not wasted just because someone else’s harvest showed up first.
— A person who cannot celebrate someone else’s harvest is not yet ready to steward their own. Do not let weariness rob you of the joy of rejoicing with your brothers and sisters.
— In THE YEAR OF DISCOVERY, discover that your Father is saying to you right now what He said to the older brother: “You are always with me, and everything I have is yours.” That is not a consolation. That is the promise. Stand on it.
By the way: I needed this message myself!
That’s enough for today.
Declaration of Faith:
Father, I thank You that weariness cannot take from me what grace has already provided!
I refuse to let weariness give me spiritual amnesia — I choose to remember what You said, what You did, and how You came through!
My testimony is a weapon, and I will speak it out loud every time weariness tries to erase it!
Father, I will not engineer my own version of Your promise — I will wait on You, because what only You can deliver, no one else can produce!
I will not settle for an Ishmael — I go back to the original word You spoke over my life and I will stand on THAT until Isaac arrives!
I refuse to misread pressure as punishment — the hardest attack means I am in transition, and the delivery is coming!
I will not give up in the final stretch, because the enemy concentrates his greatest fire right before my greatest breakthrough!
I will not let comparison turn my faithful sowing into resentful serving — somebody else’s harvest is proof that the system works!
Father, I receive what You said to the older brother: I am always with You, and everything You have is mine!
I am living in THE YEAR OF DISCOVERY, and weariness will NOT win — GREATER IS COMING FOR ME, and IT’S ALREADY DONE!
I declare this by faith. In Jesus’ name. Amen!
This is Today’s Word. Apply it and prosper!
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