Dear People Who Keep Company With God,
This year God has spoken to my heart through the life of Simeon, which is surprising since there is so little written about him (Luke 2:25-32). It has been both inspiring and challenging. Here is some of what He showed me.
In the Hebrew Simeon means God hears. There has been some moments this year when I literally did not know how to pray. I had prayed every way I knew, but with no apparent response from God. It was then that I remembered Romans 8:26-28. When we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He will do the praying in and for us. When I came to the end of my prayers and began to pray in tongues things started to shift.
God also hears all the other words that come out of our mouth. This year the reality that Eugene Peterson phrases so well, “Words aren’t just saying something they are making something,” hit home hard. Among other things I discovered my vocabulary was riddled with the language of duty instead of the language of privilege. I get to versus I have to is a world of difference in heart attitude. Not only does the Holy Spirit desire to tame our tongue He wants to retrain our tongue.
It seems Simeon waited a long time to see Christ and He saw Him, plus as a bonus he held God in his arms! The wait was worth it in the end, but the process of waiting can make or break you. This year I took a deeper look at waiting on the Lord not because I wanted to, but because I had to. Among other things, I discovered waiting brought out hidden leaven in my heart, which is challenging until you see God allows it not to judge or chastise you, but to help you see the things that limit your potential in Him. Waiting also reminded me that I am not in control.
There have been a few times this year I wanted to give up. I felt like a failure. It seemed all my dreams and much of what I had worked toward over the past years was imploding. The Wuest Expanded Translation of the Bible brings out something about Simeon that spoke volumes to me. It says in Luke 2:26, “And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit, and to this revelation he was holding fast…” He was holding fast to the revelation that he would see Christ before he died.
Here is what is important; Simeon was able to recognize Christ in the way He came, not the way he supposed he would come. He was holding fast not to how he thought the revelation would unfold or look like, rather, that he would see Him.
I discovered I had a lot of presuppositions about the revelations God has given me. When the outworking did not go according to my plans it was disheartening. It made me question if I heard God in the first place, but I have come to see God is not committed to my presuppositions about what He reveals, but He is committed to what He says. This year, many presuppositions were stripped from me and I getting to the core of what He spoke and I have purposed to hold on to that.
Many Blessings, BW