THE REFRESHING

I promised that the next issue would conclude our look at Hazael, but that will come later.  Instead, today I invite you to join me in celebration, for we are invited to the place of Rest!

THE REFRESHING

Key: Dm          

CHORUS:

You are the Refreshing

The Refreshing of my soul

You are the Refreshing

The Refreshing of my soul

And when I come to You

You hear my cry and heal me with Your Word and

When I run to You and You see my eyes

You fill me with Your joy

CHORUS

You see my hurt and you see my fear

And all I long for that is not here

I open my heart and

It is You that makes me whole

CHORUS

BRIDGE (1):

Your Eye is not blind

You see my future

Your Hand is not short

You move my every day

Your Heart is full of Love abounding

With Your grace I am restored

CHORUS

BRIDGE (2):

And I will run to You

Run to You and be saved

(repeat, then CHORUS)

There are two words for this refreshing in the Scriptures.  The first is the Hebrew word for "rest," menuchah, which means repose, consolation and comfort.   It’s used at Isaiah 28:11-12, where the Lord told Isaiah that to His own people, instead of the baby talk of Isaiah’s prophecies, which they would not hear, He would send stammering lips and a foreign tongue, whose actions would cause them to realize that they had failed to perceive the Rest with which He causes the weary to rest, and that "This is the time of Refreshing."

The second use of the word is in the Greek text as anapsuksis, at Acts 3:19:

Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the Lord! 

Here the translated meaning of the word for refreshing is a recovery of the breath or revival.

A person called to deliver the full counsel of the Lord may find himself (or herself) at times wishing he did not have to speak what was being said in his ear.  It must sometimes be a very unpopular position.   Those with that assignment will tell you they don’t get to choose what they say.  Scripture instructs us that we should judge before the Lord about when a thing may be revealed, but sometimes He also specifically commands the time of delivery, and from the history we have as precedent we should probably expect that it won’t always be the timing that we would prefer.  

God called Brother Noah to great ridicule before his own people for building an ark, but God, who knew Noah before he was born caused his parents to give him a name that derives from the Hebrew menuchah and actually means comfort.   So everyone who called out to Noah, whether in love, jest, ridicule or anger reminded him of God’s comfort, that had been planned for him before he was born, as he walked in his assigned place of discomfort.

Our brother Jeremiah wished he could say sweet words all the time!   He asked God to stay the fiery message, but prophetic platitudes were not God’s role for him, just as playing it safe or being politically correct was not his role for Noah.   Instead, God delivered his man from the need for the approval of men, and this man, His man, learned to serve to the people the word of the Lord. 

God is calling some to places of discomfort, rejection and inglorious opposition today, so that they may be prepared to do His bidding as we prepare for the return of the Glory, and He is delivering us from the need for the approval of men.  Does the journey find you in a place of discomfort today?  Man of God, are you digging a row by hand that seems to have no end in sight?  Woman of God, does it seem like the process of childbirth cannot reach an end?  Are you building an ark though there's no sign of rain on the horizon?  Are you calling out from the pit?   You are not alone, but this is the hope with which we are sustained:

Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her

that her hard service has been completed,

that her sin has been paid for,

that she has received from the LORD's hand

double for all her sins.

A voice of one calling:

"In the desert prepare

the way for the LORD;

make straight in the wilderness

a highway for our God.

Isaiah 40: 1-3.

A new Jerusalem!  A Bride prepared for the Groomsman!   The hard service will have been completed.  It is for us now to breathe deeply of Him and recover the breath of God. It's His breath that we will recover.   We recover His vitality as we enter His Rest, and find comfort, revival and restoration of hope long deferred. 

The Lord your God is fixing to come down a highway, not a path, not a rut, not a hole in the ground, but a broad way through the dry places at warp speed.  Are you ready?  Have you made ready?  Have you made yourself ready?  I'm longing for a direct collision with His trajectory - I don't want to miss a thing!  Hallelujah for the return of the Song!

A song in the rhythm of every mother tongue

I will give to you

A song in the rhythm of My breath in your heart

I will give to you

My Praise

I have ordained it

That you might know the health of life

My Song

I have maintained it

And will release it to your thirsty heart!

Hallelujah for the Song!

Hallelujah for the Dance!

Hallelujah for the Breath of Life!

(set to tropical rhythm)

Deanna

May 26, 2007