Hope Deferred | Pregnant with Zion

 

Hope Deferred | Pregnant with Zion

by Donna Diorio

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when the desire comes, it is a tree of life.  Proverbs 13:12

When we live for a long time with our hopes deferred (postponed, delayed or held to a future pointed date) in time our lives can become conditioned to low or no expectation. Instead we begin to face our days waiting for the other shoe to drop, because that is what "heart sick" means. 

     Before anyone gets on their faith high horse, some of you have not lived in a situation where your hopes were postponed, delayed or held to an appointed future date. You just haven't. We ALL have our trials, but some of you have not endured long standing "deferred hope" that drags on and on with a deferred hope that is big enough even in a person of faith, to establish a "heart sickness" like Proverbs 13:12 is talking about. Be glad you have not, but don't gloat thinking your faith is superior — just stronger and better, because it just hasn’t been equally tested. 

     In Revelation 12 the apostle John sees a dragon, a serpent that releases a “flood” like a “river” to “sweep away "a woman clothed in the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and crying out in the pain and agony of giving birth."

     Everyone pretty much realizes by now that the flood of water is a flood of words - evil words, words meant to tear down, steal from or destroy the target of the serpent’s words. A flood - a relentless, powerful torrent sweeping away everything in its path, carrying everything off to utter destruction. It sounds like the last 2,000 years of Jewish history to me.
     Some have interpreted the woman in Revelation 12 as being the Church because she is clothed in the sun; others believe the woman represents Israel, the Jewish people because she is wearing a crown of twelve stars representing the 12 tribes.  I believe the woman is both: the One New Man in Messiah made up of a Church that is in one-unity with the body of MESSIANIC BELIEVERS.  The church is the mid-wife interceding for Israel's salvation and actively helping their Israeli MESSIANIC brethren to bring salvation to birth in Israel.
     Israel is pregnant with God's salvation. It is going to take the midwife of the Church helping the pregnant Israeli believers in Israel to bring forth this only awaited salvation of "all Israel," to bring forth Zion.  It is God's end game as the apostle Paul said in Ephesians 2, to make of two (Jewish and Gentiles BELIEVERS) one new man in Him, Messiah, Jesus/Yeshua.  This is Zion in the making.

     But the dragon, the serpent, has been dragging on and on what is hoped for : Zion.  So the Church gets the message to love Israel, but continues to fail to fulfill GOD's DESIRE to fully unite with the Israeli MESSIANIC body, so this pregnancy can come to full term, and all Israel be birthed into the kingdom of Messiah.

     Even many Messianic Jews have such "hope deferred" over the Church failing to see what God wants from us that they have become heart sick. The expectation of change, where the church isn't focused on the wrong things, but on the spiritual pregnancy of Israel, they have almost – not quite — lost hope about their Christian family. God will not let them lose hope entirely because He will revive hope for His desire will be fulfilled at the appointed time. We sure seem to be in the contractions already.

     When the spiritual birth comes in Israel it will be a "tree of life" not only to those whose hopes have been so deferred for so long, or to the newly saved, but it will be a tree of life to peoples in all the nations. When Israel comes at long last to the spiritual birthing that God has held back to these days in front of us - the appointed time – the nations will see it and rejoice that in their own nations too they are seeing so great a salvation.

     I relate these things on a personal level and also on the level of being an advocate for the Israeli Messianic community. I believe God has shown me that He has a certain end game for Israel where Israel comes to faith by Messiah Yeshua, and He has made me understand through the things I have experienced in life, many aspects of what Israel has gone through to get to this very pregnant stage of His plan.

     Over the past couple of years, if there is anything that God has been working on me about, it is to break me from my heart sickness of low to no expectation because of hope deferred.  Repeatedly that has been His message to me as I experienced perils and unexpected rescues. He has used the repetition to speak to my hope-deferred-heart, because trust requires repetition. He has been renewing my hope so I could exercise my faith, that it is indeed as He promised:  "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you." Jeremiah 29:11-12

     I say to the Messianic Jews of Israel who have experienced the heart sickness of hope deferred in seeing the Church truly come alongside you for your labors in God’s harvest field of Israel: Look up for Israel's redemption draws near: "For the vision awaits an APPOINTED time; it testifies of the end and does not lie. Though it lingers, wait for it, since it will surely come and will not delay." Habakkuk 2:3

     We are very close.