This is what the Lord says to Zerubbabel: It is not by force nor by strength, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. Zech 4:6 (NLT)

Freedom and Hard Work – The Spirit Series – Part 2

Go to  PART 1  |  PART 2  |  PART 3  |  PART 4  |  PART 5  |  PART 6  |  PART 7  |  PART 8

Zechariah found himself in the middle of where he always wanted to be. But at the same time, he realised that when dreams come true, it often leads to hard work. And in his and Israel’s case, a heck of a lot of it. After generations of captivity in Babylon, the Israelites were free to return to Jerusalem and rebuild it. The miracle of their freedom brought them to a place of challenge and change like they had never experienced before. And not just in the physical. Imagine being denied something your whole life, only then to be given it? You have to learn how to embrace and think and live in this new freedom.

Breakthrough sometimes ends up like this, right? We get what we could have only hoped for, only to find that we need to learn how to live within our new paradigm.

The Israelites turned up to Jerusalem in their new found freedom full of joy and hopeful expectation, only to find a ridiculous mess of a city in ruins – a way of life yet to be formed.

It was in this season that Zechariah had a vision. He saw a gold lampstand with a bowl on it, 7 other lamp stands, and two olive trees which supplied oil through the 7 lamps and into the bowl.

(Yep – read it again if you have to. I did.)

In the Old Testament and to the ancient Hebrews, oil represented the ‘anointing’ and ‘spirit’ of God. Just as the olive trees provided oil for the lamp stands, the spirit would provide energy and light – it would be their grounding source of strength for the task ahead. The spirit would move again, and again, and again. There was no need to force the rebuilding – conjure up strength, manipulate and whip the people into working. They had to live their way into their freedom. Day in, day out. Take the time and go through the paces. The spirit was with them, empowering them as they went.

The spirit is in the work. Discipline, devotion, attention – it's a spiritual practice.

Don’t force what you feel is coming, don’t push and strive in your own strength to bring about an early outcome; trust that the ’spirit’ is at work. Just as God is in all things and through all things, he is with you when you ask “how on earth am I going to do this.” Jesus had those moments himself: early in the morning, late in the evening, on mountain tops praying, in the desert wandering, in a garden sweating blood…

Surrender your awareness to the Spirit that divinely connects us all and works mysteriously behind the scenes weaving faith and hope into our lives, unseen and unknown. Sometimes we cannot know how long the work will take, and we have to choose to trust. And then, just as the Israelites did, we have to pick up that shovel and get to it one scoop at a time, one brick at a time, one day at a time: the spiritual practice of living into our freedom.

It’s all spiritual if we would dare look.

Go to Part 3 – Not Just Any Promise »
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