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Waiting on the Lord
#3.
The waiting upon God that respectfully waits "for" Him.
p. 144
We saw in Volume XXXI, page 131, that there is a silent waiting upon God, a being
silent in His Presence, and a patient waiting in quiet expectancy.
We now turn our attention to a further aspect of waiting which is expressed in
Isa. 30: 18:--
"Therefore will the Lord wait, that He may be gracious . . . . . blessed are all they that
wait for Him."
Here the waiting is on both sides. The Lord waits, and His people wait. This follows
well upon the waiting in silence already considered, for we read:--
"Now Elihu had waited till Job had spoken, because they were elder than he"
(Job 32: 4).
It was because he discovered that neither Job nor his friends had uttered all that was
true that Elihu was at length constrained to speak. But the reasons that kept Elihu
"waiting" are only fully justified when we enter into the presence of God. Elihu said:--
"I am young, and ye are very old: wherefore I was afraid, and durst not show you
mine opinion. I said, Days should speak, and multitude of years should teach wisdom"
(Job 32: 6, 7).
This consciousness, deepened as it must be when we enter, not the presence of our
elders, but the presence of "The Ancient of Days", "The Only Wise God", is well
expressed by the attitude of "waiting".
We wait in silence, we wait expectantly. We wait, for the One in Whose presence we
tarry is great and wise, just and holy. We do well therefore to hear the injunction of the
book of Ecclesiastes:--
"Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear, than
to give the sacrifice of fools: for they consider not that they do evil. De not rash with thy
mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter anything before God: for God is in
heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few" (Eccles. 5: 1, 2).