Twenty-Sixth Day.

WAITING ON GOD:

In Holy Expectancy.

'Therefore will I look to the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me.'—Micah 7: 7.

HAVE you ever read a beautiful little book, Expectation Corner? If not, get it; you will find in it one of the best sermons on our text. It tells of a king who prepared a city for some of his poor subjects. Not far from them were large storehouses, where everything they could need was supplied if they but sent in their requests. But on one condition—that they should be on the outlook for the answer, so that when the king's messengers came with the gifts they had desired, they should always be found waiting and ready to receive them. The sad story is told of one desponding one who 123 never expected to get what he asked, because he was too unworthy. One day he was taken to the king's storehouses, and there, to his amazement, he saw, with his address on them, all the packages that had been made up for him, and sent. There was the garment of praise, and the oil of joy, and the eye salve, and so much more; they had been to his door, but found it closed; he was not on the outlook. From that time on he understood the lesson Micah would teach us today; 'I will look to the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me.'

We have more than once said: Waiting for the answer to prayer is not the whole of waiting, but only a part. Today we want to take in the blessed truth: It is a part, and a very important one. When we have special petitions, in connection with which we are waiting on God, our waiting must be very definitely in the confident assurance: ‘My God will hear me.' A holy, joyful expectancy is of the very essence of true waiting. And this not only in reference to the many varied requests every believer has to make, but most especially to the one great petition which ought to be the chief thing every heart seeks for itself — that The Life of God in the soul may have full sway; that 124 Christ may be fully formed within; and that we may be filled to all the fullness of God. This is what God has promised. This is what God's people too little seek, very often because they do not believe it possible. This is what we ought to seek and dare to expect, because God is able and waiting to work it in us.

But God Himselfmust work it. And for this end our working must cease. We must see how entirely it is to be the faith of the operation of God who raised Jesus from the dead—just as much as the resurrection, the perfecting of God's life in our souls is to be directly His work. And waiting has to become more than ever a tarrying before God in stillness of soul, counting upon Him who raises the dead, and calls the things that are not as though they were.

Just notice how the threefold use of the name of God in our text points us to Himself as the one from whom alone is our expectation. 'I will look to The Lord; I will wait for The God of my Salvation; My God will hear me.' Everything that is salvation, everything that is good and holy, must be the direct mighty work of God Himself within us. For every moment of a life in the will of God, there must be the immediate operation of God. And the one thing I have to do is this: to look to the Lord; to wait 125 for the God of my salvation; to hold fast the confident assurance, 'My God will hear me.'

God says: 'Be still, and know that I am God. '

There is no stillness like that of the grave. In the grave of Jesus, in the fellowship of His death, in death to self with its own will and wisdom, its own strength and energy, there is rest. As we cease from self, and our soul becomes still to God, God will arise and show Himself. 'Be still, and know,' then you shall know 'that I am God.' There is no stillness like the stillness Jesus gives when He speaks, 'Peace, be still.' In Christ, in His death, and in His life, in His perfected redemption, the soul may be still, and God will come in, and take possession, and do His perfect work.

'My soul, wait thou only upon God!'