Photo taken along the St. Maries River in Idaho by Michael Clark

…Saul was still at Gilgal, and all the people followed him trembling. He waited seven days, the time appointed by Samuel; but Samuel did not come to Gilgal, and the people began to slip away from Saul. So Saul said, “Bring the burnt offering here to me, and the offerings of well-being.” And he offered the burnt offering. As soon as he had finished offering the burnt offering, Samuel arrived; and Saul went out to meet him and salute him. Samuel said, “What have you done?” Saul replied, “When I saw that the people were slipping away from me… so I forced myself, and offered the burnt offering.” Samuel said to Saul, “You have done foolishly; you have not kept the commandment of the Lord your God, which he commanded you. The Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever, but now your kingdom will not continue; the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart; and the Lord has appointed him to be ruler over his people, because you have not kept what the Lord commanded you.” (1Sam 13:7-14, NRS)

Have you ever noticed how hard it is to wait on the Lord? His sense of timing seems to be so much slower than our “need.” This story of King Saul’s panic because he was losing his following strikes close to home in my case. It has been a few weeks since I felt the anointing of the Lord to write a blog article. As time has gone on I could see that there were fewer and fewer visits to the blog. After leaving FaceBook a few weeks ago and no longer visiting all bloggers that visited my blog (I only visit the ones I feel God is sending me to), many dropped off  my “following” list. I have a whole website of articles I wrote with George Davis that I could re-post here daily and not run out of material for many months, but I would have to do so without the leading of the Lord. Waiting on the moving and leading of the Spirit before we act has a cost attached to it. You often feel like you are being cut-off from fellowship with those around you. At one point Jesus was left with only the twelve disciples as all His other followers left Him, because He only spoke the words that His Father gave Him. But there is also a reward as we rely on God alone.

Andrew Murray of South Africa gave three wonderful teachings at Exeter Hall in England in 1895. Here is an excerpt from one of them that speaks of the importance of waiting on the Lord in our Christian walk.

 “My soul waiteth only upon God [marg: is silent unto God]; from Him cometh my salvation.” (Ps. 62:1)

If salvation indeed comes from God, and is entirely His work, just as 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: 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 only 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 of 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 becomes 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!” (http://lovestthoume.com/PDF-Files/murraywaitingongod.pdf)

Remember that the Lord is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Those who wait upon Him will be given new strength, will eventually mount up on wings as eagles, and will not always have to sit on their perch. Bless you all as you wait on Him.