Waiting
on God
by
Andrew Murray
(1828-1917)*
Edited
by Doktor Riktor Von Zhades
Preface
Brethren:
Consider
this day in your reading of the sermon herein below Psalms 37:34,
38:15, 130:5-7, 131:3
The
Psalmist likewise wrote that we should; “be still and know that I
am God”**. Now many theologians rightly believe that taken in the
context of the psalm that he was referring to the nations that
persecuted Israel. But also, this editor believes that it is a
message intended for the individual; that is to say to be silent and
wait upon Him that will do all for you according to His will.
Doktor
Riktor Von Zhades - Servant of Christ
If
salvation indeed comes from God, and is entirely His work, just as
our creation was, it follows, as a matter of course, that our first
and highest duty is to wait on Him to do that work as pleases Him.
Waiting becomes then the only way to the experience of a full
salvation, the only way, truly, to know God as the God of our
salvation. All the difficulties that are brought forward as keeping
us back from full salvation, have their cause in this one thing: the
defective knowledge and practice of waiting upon God. All that the
Church and its members need for the manifestation of the mighty power
of God in the world, is the return to our true place, the place that
belongs to us, both in creation and redemption, the place of absolute
and unceasing dependence upon God. Let us strive to see what the
elements are that make up this most blessed and needful waiting upon
God: it may help us to discover the reasons why this grace is so
little cultivated, and to feel how infinitely desirable it is that
the Church, that we ourselves, should at any price learn its blessed
secret.
The
deep need for this waiting on God lies equally in the nature of man
and the nature of God. God, as Creator, formed man, to be a vessel in
which He could show forth His power and goodness. Man was not to have
in himself a fountain of life, or strength, or happiness: the
ever-living and only living One was each moment to be the
Communicator to him of all that he needed. Man's glory and
blessedness was not to be independent, or dependent upon himself, but
dependent on a God of such infinite riches and love. Man was to have
the joy of receiving every moment out of the fulness of God. This was
his blessedness as an unfallen creature.
When
he fell from God, he was still more absolutely dependent on Him,
There was not the slightest hope of his recovery out of his state of
death, but in God, His power and mercy. It is God alone who began the
work of redemption; it is God alone who continues and carries it on
each moment in each individual believer. Even in the regenerate man
there is no power of goodness in himself(Read Romans3:9-13): he has
and can have nothing that he does not each moment receive; and
waiting on God is just as indispensable, and must be just as
continuous and unbroken, as the breathing that maintains his natural
life.
It
is, then, because Christians do not know their relation to God of
absolute poverty and helplessness, that they have no sense of the
need of absolute and unceasing dependence, or the unspeakable
blessedness of continual waiting on God. But when once a believer
begins to see it, and consent to it, that he by the Holy Spirit must
each moment receive what God each moment works, waiting on God be
comes his brightest hope and joy. As he apprehends how God, as God,
as Infinite Love, delights to impart His own nature to His child as
fully as He can, how God is not weary of each moment keeping charge
of his life and strength, he wonders that he ever thought otherwise
of God than as a God to be waited on all the day. God unceasingly
giving and working; His child unceasingly waiting and receiving this
is the blessed life.
'Truly
my soul waiteth upon God; from Him cometh my salvation.' First we
wait on God for salvation. Then we learn that salvation is only to
bring us to God, and teach us to wait on Him. Then we find what is
better still, that waiting on God is itself the highest salvation. It
is the ascribing to Him the glory of being All; it is the
experiencing that He is All to us. May God teach us the blessedness
of waiting on Him.
'My
soul, wait thou only upon God”
*
Andrew Murray was a South African Pastor and Christian missionary
during the 19th and 20th centuries.
**
Read Psalm 46:10
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