Here is a very pertinent message for us today. David urges us, “Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait I say, on the Lord.” Do you know that waiting is the hardest thing in all of the world any of us have to do? When I was a boy growing up, I well remember how long it was to wait until Christmas. It just seemed as if the calendar and all time slowed down when it came to that season. Then in later years I think back to how long it seemed before I got my own. first car. (It was a 1934 Ply mouth coupe with a rumble seat.) Then in later years I think back to a long wait of three days. That was how long it took Margaret, after I had proposed to her, to make up her mind that she would marry me. Only three days, but it seemed an eter nity! Have you ever had to wait for someone? I’ve been in doctor’s offices where I’ve just about exhausted hope. Recently I had to wait over an hour. I became quite impatient. My eye doctor has said it would be four months before he could see me. Too busy! All of these things seem as nothing when compared to waiting upon the Lord which is so necessary. These are valuable lessons to be learned. Things are revealed to us sometimes only by patience. There’s a real purpose behind it, although it’s not easy. In James 1:4 we have a good explanation for this situa tion as we are exhorted, “But let patience have her perfecting work that ye may be spiritually mature and complete, not lacking anything.” No one likes to wait. We want what we want, when we want it. Perhaps it’s comparable to the lit tle boy whose father was extremely upset. The small child had gone out and picked the blossoms of his cher ished prize roses. The man had in tended to enter them in competition. It was too late now! The lad had gone out before him and had taken the rose buds all apart. When asked
why he did it he reasoned, “Oh, I was just in a hurry to see them bloom, so I went out and blossomed them.” Isn’t this the way so many of us are concerning God’s plans ? We thwart His directive will for us. He brews 10:36 is a verse of Scripture my wife and I took when we were first married. It has remained a text of importance and meaning through out life. Let me share it with you: “For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.” It was a little more than a hundred years ago, back in 1865, that Thomas Guthrie, a pastor of St, John’s Free Church, wrote these words: "Give God no rest, and take none yourself.” He had David’s exact thoughts, “Wait on the Lord.” Isaiah 40:30 says, “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.” That’s what David is say- The Christian can only find real satis faction in exactly the same place where he found eternal salvation! ing, too. “Be of good courage and He shall strengthen thine heart.” You see how Scripture coincides with Scripture? They are different hu man writers, but the same divine Au thor. How unfortunate and foolish is a man to put confidence in the laws and forces of nature, and yet for sake the time or opportunity to place his confidence in the Lord. Scripture says, “Cursed be every man who trusteth in man and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord.” To wait means to comply with the conditions of God’s promises. When we were growing up, there were al ways things that we as boys wanted to have. I can hear my mother even now as she would say, “Well, perhaps some day, when our ship comes in.” Then in later years, I came to the stark realization that our ship prob ably never would come in. In fact, 15
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