Waiting On God E-Book

Andrew Murray

• Herausgeber: Andura Publishing
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Experience the life-changing power of Andrew Murray with this unforgettable book.

Leseprobe

Waiting On God

Andrew Murray

CONTENTS

DEDICATION

TO Mr. AND MRS. ALBERT A. HEAD

WHOSE LOVE GAVE US SUCH A BRIGHT HOME

DURING OUR ABSENCE FROM OUR OWN

AND TO WHOSE LABOURS AND PRAYERS

THE DAYS OF QUIET WAITING ON GOD

IN WHITE CHAPEL

AND THE DAY OF UNITED PRAYER

IN EXETER HALL

OWED SO MUCH

THIS LITTLE VOLUME

IS

AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED

WAIT THOU ONLY UPON GOD

“My soul, wait thou only upon God.” —Ps. 62:5.

“A God…which worketh for him that waiteth for

Him.” —Isa. 64:4 (R.V.).

“Wait only upon God”; my soul, be still,

And let thy God unfold His perfect will,

Thou fain would’st follow Him throughout this year,

Thou fain with listening heart His voice would’st

hear,

Thou fain would’st be a passive instrument

Possessed by God, and ever Spirit-sent

Upon His service sweet—then be thou still,

For only thus can He in thee fulfil

His heart’s desire. Oh, hinder not His hand

From fashioning the vessel He hath planned.

“Be silent unto God,” and thou shalt know

The quiet, holy calm He doth bestow

On those who wait on Him; so shalt thou bear

His presence, and His life and light e’en where

The night is darkest, and thine earthly days

Shall show His love, and sound His glorious praise.

And He will work with hand unfettered, free

His high and holy purposes through thee.

First on thee must that hand of power be turned,

Till in His love’s strong fire thy dross is burned,

And thou come forth a vessel for thy Lord,

So frail and empty, yet, since He hath poured

Into thine emptiness His life, His love,

Henceforth through thee the power of God shall

move

And He will work for thee. Stand still and see

The victories thy God will gain for thee;

So silent, yet so irresistible,

Thy God shall do the thing impossible.

Oh, question not henceforth what thou canst do;

Thou canst do nought. But He will carry through

The work where human energy had failed,

Where all thy best endeavors had availed|

Thee nothing. Then, my soul, wait and be still;

Thy God shall work for thee His perfect will.

If thou wilt take no less, His best shall be

Thy portion now and through eternity.

FREDA HANBURY

EXTRACT FROM ADDRESS IN EXETER HALL

May 31st 1895

I have been surprised at nothing more than at the letters that have come to me from missionaries and others from all parts of the world, devoted men and women, testifying to the need they feel in their work of being helped to a deeper and a clearer insight into all that Christ could be to them. Let us look to God to reveal Himself among His people in a measure very few have realised. Let us expect great things of our God. At all our conventions and assemblies too little time is given to waiting on God. Is He not willing to put things right in His own divine way? Has the life of God’s people reached the utmost limit of what God is willing to do for them? Surely not. We want to wait on Him; to put away our experiences, however blessed they have been; our conceptions of truth, however sound and scriptural we think they seem; our plans, however needful and suitable they appear, and give God time and place to show us what He could do, what He will do. God has new developments and new resources. He can do new things, unheard of things, hidden things.

Let us enlarge our hearts and not limit Him. “When Thou camest down, Thou didst terrible things we looked not for; the mountains flowed down at Thy presence,”

ANDREW MURRAY

PREFACE

Previous to my leaving home for England last year, I had been much impressed by the thought of how, in all our religion, personal and public, we need more of God. I had felt that we needed to train our people in their worship more to wait on God, and to make the cultivation of a deeper sense of His presence, of more direct contact with Him, of entire dependence on Him, a definite aim of our ministry. At a ‘welcome’ breakfast in Exeter Hall, I gave very simple expression to this thought in connection with all our religious work. I have already said elsewhere that I was surprised at the response the sentiment met with. I saw that God’s Spirit had been working the same desire in many hearts. The experiences of the past year, both personal and public, have greatly deepened the conviction. It is as if I myself am only beginning to see the deepest truth concerning God, and our relation to Him, centre in this waiting on God, and how very little, in our life and work, we have been surrounded by its spirit. The following pages are the outcome of my conviction, and of the desire to direct the attention of all God’s people to the one great remedy for all our needs. More than half the pieces were written on board ship; I fear they bear the marks of being somewhat crude and hasty. I have felt, in looking them over, as if I could wish to write them over again. But this I cannot now do. And so I send them out with the prayer that He who loves to use the feeble may give His blessing with them. I do not know if it will be possible for me to put into a few words what are the chief things we need to learn. In a note at the close of the book on Law I have mentioned some. But what

I want to say here is this: The great lack of our religion is, we do not know God. The answer to every complaint of feebleness and failure, the message to every congregation or convention seeking instruction on holiness, ought to be simply, What is the matter: Have you not God? If you really believe in God, He will put all right. God is willing and able by His Holy Spirit. Cease from expecting the least good from yourself, or the least help from anything there is in man, and just yield yourself unreservedly to God to work in you: He will do all for you. How simple this looks! And yet this is the gospel we so little know. I feel ashamed as I send forth these very defective meditations; I can only cast them on the love of my brethren, and of our God. May He use them to draw us all to Himself, to learn in practice and experience the blessed art of WAITING ONLY UPON GOD. Would God that we might get some right conception of what the influence would be of a life given, not in thought, or imagination, or effort, but in the power of the Holy Spirit, wholly to waiting upon God.

With my greeting in Christ to all God’s saints it has been my privilege to meet, and no less to those I have not met, I subscribe myself, your brother and servant,

ANDREW MURRAY.

WELLINGTON,

3rd March, 1896.

P.S.—In this little book I have more than once spoken of our waiting on God in our Conventions.

I have been much interested in noticing in the life of Canon Battersly how prominent the thought was in his mind. In a paper preparing the way for Keswick, he speaks of three steps needful to the attainment of true holiness. The two first are: A clear view of the possibilities of Christian attainment, and a deliberate purpose to live the life. And then the third: ‘We must look up to, and wait upon our ascended Lord for all that we need to enable us to do this.’ In a letter written a few days after the first Keswick Convention in 1875, he writes again: ‘At the first meeting the keynote was struck which vibrated through all our meetings: “My soul! wait thou only upon God, for my expectation is from Him.”’ And farther, ‘There is a very remarkable resemblance in all the testimonies which I have since received, viz. the ability given to make a full surrender to the Lord, and the consequent experience of an abiding peace.’

Day 1. THE GOD OF OUR SALVATION

“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 the work that 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.