4 final lessons to help us wait on God
Toward the end of Andrew Murray's 1896 book, Waiting On God, several lessons stand out.
1. We are wise to wait on him; patiently sitting at his feet and expecting him to do what is best honors the King. In our human weakness, waiting is also a powerful way we can love him and relate to him.
"Do believe that in waiting on God, His greatness and your littleness suit and meet each other most wonderfully."
2. When we seek gifts or specific outcomes from the Lord, he longs to give us himself, satisfying us with his goodness.
"It is just for this reason that He often withholds the gifts, and that the time of waiting is made so long…. He wishes that we should not only say, when he bestows the gift, How good is God! but that long ere it comes, and even if it never comes, we should all the time be experiencing: 'It is good that a man should quietly wait': 'The Lord is good to them that wait for Him.'"
3. Waiting itself is a doorway to greater intimacy with God.
"As the soul learns its secret, every act or exercise of waiting just becomes a quiet entering into the goodness of God, to let it do its blessed work and satisfy our every need."
4. Waiting is foundational to the Christian life.
"Do you not begin to see that waiting is not one among a number of Christian virtues, to be thought of from time to time, but that it expresses that disposition which lies at the very root of the Christian life?"
The writer of Hebrews reminds us of the future gift that fills every Christian heart with anticipation: "[S]o Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him" (Heb. 9:28, NIV).
Maranatha,
Tom Harper
Founder, BiblicalLeadership.com
LinkedIn profile | My books
 | Tom Harper is publisher of BiblicalLeadership.com and executive chairman of Networld Media Group, a business-to-business publisher and event producer. He has written five books, including Servant Leader Strong: Uniting Biblical Wisdom and High-Performance Leadership (DeepWater Books, 2019) as well as the Christian business fable Through Colored Glasses and its sequel Inner Threat (DeepWater, 2022). Learn More » |
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