Mount Up!

Sunday's message started with one promise: those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength and mount up with wings like eagles. Isaiah 40 was written to a weary people who felt forgotten: “My way is hidden from the LORD” (v. 27). God's answer is that He “does not faint or grow weary,” and “gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength” (vv. 28-29). This promise isn't for people who have it all together. It's for the tired.

But Pastor Bryan was quick to say what kind of waiting this is. “We're not waiting like we're waiting at a bus stop,” he said, just sitting there asking the Lord when He's going to show up. If you wait like that, he said, “it's going to feel like forever.” Biblical waiting is active. It's serving, showing up, leaning in and expecting. Jesus told His followers “to wait for the promise of the Father” (Acts 1:4). They waited together in prayer, and “they were all filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:4). Waiting on God leads to power, and power leads to victory.

And look where it leads: wings. God used the same picture when He told Israel, “I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself” (Exodus 19:4). You were made to rise. “We don't dumb ourselves down to people,” Pastor Bryan said. “We bring ourselves up to the spirit of the Lord and what God has.”

Start today by settling it in your heart: I am not waiting at a bus stop. I am waiting on the Lord, and my strength is being renewed.

Pastor Bryan shared something he had just looked up: the Hebrew word for “wait” in Isaiah 40:31 also means “to be twisted together like the strands of a rope.” It's a word tied to hope, too. The psalmist uses it when he says, “I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope” (Psalm 130:5). Waiting on God is hopeful and expectant, never empty.

“God is not asking you to sit idle and hope,” he said. “He's asking you to do something.” A single strand alone is a difficult thing, but wrapped together it holds. Scripture says it this way: “Two are better than one,” and “a threefold cord is not quickly broken” (Ecclesiastes 4:9, 12). The church was born like that. The believers in Jerusalem, “with one accord,” were “devoting themselves to prayer” (Acts 1:14), and when Pentecost came, “they were all together in one place” (Acts 2:1).

Pastor Bryan saw the same picture in the end of a rope, which is sealed. “That's the sealing of the Holy Ghost,” he said. “The Holy Ghost is keeping you together.” Ephesians 1:13 says believers “were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.”

Then he said the word that hits home for a lot of us: “You were never supposed to run on your own fuel.” That's why some of us are tired, he said. We've been trying to do it in our own strength. “You were never supposed to go through this thing alone. You need your brothers and sisters.” Hebrews 10:25 says not to be “neglecting to meet together.” If you're worn out today, don't push harder and don't pull away. Get woven back in.

Pastor Bryan shared that after a week of ministry on the road, doing most of the music, he still had his voice. Normally, eight days of singing would take it. His reason: “As I'm serving the Lord, God's not gonna let me come back to you depleted.” Isaiah 40:31 gives three motions: mount up, run, walk. Some days faith soars, some days it sprints, and many days it just keeps walking. God promises strength for all three.

The first key is to run what God actually called you to run. “When it's sent from God, there is an easiness that comes with that thing,” he said. That echoes Jesus: “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:30). “Just because God gives you something doesn't mean you're supposed to be the one running it.” We are “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). He said that if you feel weary, maybe the Lord didn't call you to that thing to begin with.

The second key is that how you feel doesn't get the final vote. Is his body tired? “Yeah, of course.” But he said, “I command this body to go and do what God has called it to do.” Romans 8:11 gives you ground to stand on: the Spirit lives in you, and “he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.” Even while weary, Pastor Bryan said, “I felt God's renewing presence come on me every single day, because I was serving, I was waiting on the Lord.”

Don't let your body, your emotions or your circumstances make the call. Serve first, and let the strength follow.

Pastor Bryan told about a flight where he just wanted to be Bryan, not Pastor Bryan. Then the woman next to him, a nervous flyer, started getting out her pills. When she asked how he could be so calm, he said that was the door she opened, not him. He told her he was a preacher and could promise this: the road might get bumpy, but “this thing ain't going down today.” It was bumpy for about 45 minutes, and then it cleared. She said, “I felt a peace.”

Here's what he saw in it: “He was not only renewing my strength, He was sitting there renewing her strength.” He was tired and didn't feel like it, but “all of a sudden my strength came back.” God will seat you beside somebody and use you.

Then he gave his key and told us to write it down: “Stay in His presence. That's the key.” And, “Stay in His presence, that's as deep as you can get.” Psalm 91 pictures it. “Dwells” is a word of settling in, not passing through, and the psalmist says, “I will say to the LORD, ‘My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust’” (Psalm 91:2). Pastor Bryan claimed Psalm 91 over everyone listening as he closed in prayer.

Jesus said, “Abide in me, and I in you” (John 15:4), and Scripture promises that “times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord” (Acts 3:20). When you're in the presence of God, Pastor Bryan said, “everything else goes by the wayside,” and “staying in His presence will keep you out of trouble.” Stay connected all day, “praying in the Holy Spirit” (Jude 20). Dwell. Don't just visit.

Pastor Bryan took us to Deuteronomy 28 and to a mindset shift: “Stop thinking like a buzzard and start thinking like an eagle.” Moses spoke these words to Israel before they entered the Promised Land, and the blessing begins with listening to God: “if you faithfully obey the voice of the LORD your God... the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth” (v. 1).

What's the difference between a buzzard and an eagle? Buzzards and crows, he said, are “eating the things that were already dead.” Eagles are “catching something that's alive.” One lives on scraps. The other lives on what's moving. We have to “bring our thinking higher,” he said, and “bring our expectations higher.” Paul says it another way: “be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:2).

He wasn't shy about it: “I'm not going to sit here and preach poverty on you... He didn't call me to be a monk. He called me to be a king's kid.” And he widened the picture: “Prosperity is you being 80 and still walking and dancing. Prosperity is your family well. Prosperity is you living right.” John wrote, “Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, as it goes well with your soul” (3 John 2). The soul leads. Pastor Bryan said he's soaring in his finances, his health, his family life and spiritually.

He also reminded us who gets the credit. When you put your own name in front of the Lord's, you lose the blessing, because “it is he who gives you power to get wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:18). “Could you imagine if every Christian would actually start to believe what God says about them?” he asked. It's time to come out of that stinking thinking and raise your sights to what God has said about you.

Pastor Bryan shared a note on what “shall” means. When God says it, it isn't advice or a pep talk. It's a promise: you shall renew. “It's guaranteed.” That fits all of Isaiah 40, which was written to people who thought God had forgotten them. And 1 Corinthians 15:57 tells us why we can stand on it: “thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

So what does mounting up look like? It starts with a higher realization that God is the only one who can do it. “Stop striving in this thing yourself,” he said. “Mount up with God's strength... Mount up with His healing. Mount up with His prosperity. Mount up with kingdom thinking.” We rise with God's weapons, not ours: “the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds” (2 Corinthians 10:4). And we rise on the name above every name (Philippians 2:9). “Don't lower yourself to the name that is below the name Jesus,” Pastor Bryan said.

This week, take these steps:

• Serve. Find one place to wait on the Lord by serving.
• Stay in His presence. Set time each day, and keep Him on your mind.
• Think higher. Come out of the stinking thinking.
• Don't come down. Don't answer every talker, and don't lower your standards below the kingdom of God.
• Act on what He told you. Pastor Bryan prayed that this week we'd “act on some of the things” God has said, the things written down in our journals. “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it” (Habakkuk 2:2).

And don't let anything clip your wings. “This is harvest season,” he said, and the Word promises that “in due season we will reap, if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9).