The Word of the Lord tells us we’re not to be weary in well doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not (Galatians 6:9); also the prophecies have been telling us very clearly that this is a time to press in. However, a spirit of futility comes against us. One of the greatest instruments that Satan has is this principality that comes to produce a sense of futility. The problem exists, whether you want to recognize it or not, because it wars at your spirit.
That was the spirit that hit Elijah the day he laid down and requested for himself that he might die. The spirit of futility is often associated with the thought of self-destruction or the will to die. The spirit of futility hit Elijah and he forgot all about the prophets of Baal that had been slain and said, “I’m no better than my fathers. I want to die.” He was not insisting that he be a greater man than his father, his father’s father, etc.; it was just that everything suddenly seemed futile. “I haven’t attained anything more; I’m not getting into anything more than my fathers before me.”
That was not true. Elijah was moving in things that no prophet of God had moved in up to that time. The great victory that he had won even in a time of declension of those northern times of Israel was fantastic. He was a man that was feared; the first real man search that was ever conducted in the world was conducted for that man in the three and a half year period that proceeded it. King Ahab had affidavits, signed statements, from every king and governor in every region over the world that such a man as Elijah wasn’t there. Finally, Elijah appeared before Obadiah, the prophet.
“Go tell Ahab I want to see him.”
“Oh, please don’t do that to me—I know how the Spirit catches you hither and yonder. When I tell the king you’re here and he comes and you’ve gone someplace else, he’ll kill me.” Elijah said, “I’ll be here.”
Elijah had mastered the transportation problem. He didn’t have to worry about any freeway jams; he was transported instantly! Elijah had gone into marvelous things—but suddenly futility hit him. Moments of weariness are almost always associated with fatigue, and Satan brings it almost invariably after great victories. After you’ve won big victories, futility hits you and you ask, “Why?” Because after you have won great victories over almost all principalities and powers and devil forces that you can name, all Satan has left is the divinely imposed futility with which to prey upon you.
All creation was subject to futility. It has been the will of God that down through the years men would arise with a vision and strive and strive, but come up so far in this age that is closing, and see it come to nothing. This futility was on the world; Solomon talks about it in his lamentations how that man labors for the store that another will eat; he builds the house that another will live in. Every time a man works and begins to come up, the futility that is upon creation is such that birds of prey are ready to take it. That is divinely imposed by the Lord.
If the only thing that the devil can throw at us is that spirit of futility to prey upon that which rests upon creation, remember also, that there are prophecies, that in the end time you will not plant and another eat. There will not be any futility in it—a man who labors and attains is to find the reward of it. Would you like to feel in your heart that what we’re laboring to do is not in vain, that there is nothing futile about it? Every time we press in, and we get up sometimes torn and bleeding and we press on, it is in the will of God; for this is the generation in which the futility is to be broken—the futility that has rested on all creation.
The labors and the victories of the Lord must be entered into, yet suddenly that futility will hit you. “Oh, I’m tired.” Futility can hit your spirit, and what you are feeling is all creation groaning and travailing. But notice it was subjected to that futility upon it “in hope.” There have been civilizations as great as ours that have lived in this earth before. Species of life have come and disappeared—we’re doing our share killing off the species of animal life in the world today by poisoning and polluting. People have done that before: they built things up and suddenly it became top heavy, as if some restraint was put on it. How far can you go; how much can you do? Yet there is a hope. It was subjected to that futility with hope.
A man sits down and looks at the bills he can’t pay. He looks at his old hands, gnarled from years of work and wonders what he did wrong, but he kneels and prays that his children will find a better way of life. He struggles to see that they get a little chance at education that he didn’t have. Each generation says, Maybe it would be better for my children; maybe they’ll have better opportunities than I had.”So they work for it. All creation has that hope within them. Every mother and father want their little baby to have a college education or think what they’d like to see it have that they never had. Sometimes they go at it wrong—they shield, they protect them from the jungle and there are no instincts of defense in the children when they finally face life. All creation is subject to futility.
The Word says, “We ourselves are groaning within ourselves because we know we have to be the first ones to break through.” And, “The expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God.” All creation: all of the futility that is in the world in all types of creation is just waiting for us to break through. You think you get impatient—every realm of life is impatient for you to break through! It is in the revealing of the sons of God that God begins to lift the veil of futility off all aspects of life and existence, that creation itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. They’re going to be loosed into our liberty. Well, what does that mean to you and me? That means that the spirit of futility which hits you is the devil that is to be broken—not for the whole world yet, but for us.
I’d like to enter into something which I feel is meat in due season. It is the Word of God to our heart. Young and old alike, whatever your circumstance, whatever is hitting you, I want you to rise up in the Spirit of the Lord and come against that futility, that feeling of futility and declare, “This is the enemy that our spirits shall overcome and we shall rise in the victory of the Lord. It is not going to be futile!” Things are being done in the spirit that have never been done in the history of the world. We are breaking through like Elijah. We are moving in where our fathers have not moved before us, and we shall not allow the feeling of futility to hamper or cripple us in any way.
Do you find what bothers you sometimes, is that feeling of futility which gets hold of you, causing you to say, “I’m going to be a victim of my circumstances just like everybody else. I’m going to bog down—oh, I can’t make it. I guess I can’t make it in this walk”? Oh, what a lot of garbage the devil throws at us! And he can only throw that at you after you’ve come through to some marvelous victories. He has nothing left to throw, so he brings that one thing that is divinely imposed on the earth—until the sons of God come forth! So do some groaning within yourselves and get loose from it because it is the time that God has ordained you to be loosed from futility!
For Zion’s sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until her righteousness go forth as brightness, and her salvation as a lamp that burneth. And the nations shall see thy righteousness, and all kings thy glory, and thou shalt be called by a new name, which the mouth of the Lord shall name. Thou shalt be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God. Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hepzibah, and thy land Beulah; for the Lord delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married. For as a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee; and as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee.
I have set watchmen on thy walls, O Jerusalem; they shall never hold their peace day nor night: ye that are the Lord’s remembrancers, take ye no rest, and give him no rest, till he establish, and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth. The Lord hath sworn by his right hand, and by the arm of his strength, Surely I will no more give thy grain to be food for thine enemies, and foreigners shall not drink thy new wine, for which thou hast labored: but they that have garnered it shall eat it, and praise the Lord; and they that have gathered it shall drink it in the courts of my sanctuary. Isaiah 62:1–9. No more futility. In fact, it’s going to work the other way.
The Christians that worked down through the years have been victimized. They’ve been robbed, cheated, abused, and they’ve turned the other cheek because they were Christians. But God speaks of a time in which the wealth of the nations will flow to them because God has seen all of the hardships that have passed through the centuries and is going to start reversing that. Instead of constantly being the victims of some misplanning, misfortunes worked against them because they failed to read the fine print, God will start working for His people to give them a double portion. It is time it began to come back to them and God sees that. The futility is to end, and when it does, it will be like a great reservoir breaking. The wealth that belongs to the people of God is going to flow to them. That has to be, because God has to be just. The things that have been held back from God’s people during the period of futility must give way with the glory of an overwhelming thing that comes in the end time. That is why the spirit of futility tries to hit you—because he’s already a plucked bird.
Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated, so that no man passed through thee, I will make thee an eternal excellency, a joy of many generations. Thou shalt also suck the milk of the nations, and shalt suck the breast of kings; and thou shalt know that I the Lord am thy Savior, and thy Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob. For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I will bring silver, and for wood brass, and for stones iron. Isaiah 60:15–17. In other words, He is upgrading us all.
The day is coming in which the sons of God come into maturity, with the restoration of glory and power. God is not doing this for us alone, but we’re the firstfruits of it, and all creation will enter into the glorious sharing of the liberty that we receive. It was made subject to futility—but in hope, waiting for the sons of God to come forth. This means that the sons of God must be the first ones to break through that blanket of futility that is upon the earth, and we shall do it, by the grace of God.
Say not in thine heart, “Behold, my way is futile—yea, the Lord has blessed, but who can deliver me from my circumstances?” Let the head that is bowed be lifted up and rejoice. Let him that hath been crippled in the battle rejoice that the Lord shall heal the lame. Let him that has been defeated know that this is the day that the Lord calleth the lame and the halt and the blind and He says, “If thou shalt come and feast at My table, thou shalt feast of the supper that hath been prepared for thee in this day.” Thou shalt not say, “Behold, I am defeated,” but thou shalt be blessed of the Lord to inherit of His goodness. Say no more in thine heart, “It cannot be,” but say in thine heart, “It is the Lord that giveth to His elect in this hour the spirit of expectation and of glory to come.” And ye shall rejoice in it. Let thy heart sing; let thy heart be glad, and thou shalt have faith to walk in all that thou hast received by the Lord. In hope shalt thou rejoice in the promises of the Lord, for the time of expectation is upon all creation! Yea, thou shalt enter in and possess. Amen.