Man, I hate to wait!

So here I sit waiting on a man form the city water department to come and repair our water meter.  When the appointment was set, it was made for 8 AM to noon.  I assumed that this meant it would take four hours to repair the device. Well what it really meant was that sometime during these four hours he would show up and make the repair. So here I sit - waiting.

When I set an appointment for my doctor, I never have to wait, but I am quickly taken to the little room and he soon appears. My dentist is even more efficient. I sit down in the waiting room and before I can finish the People magazine article on Tiger Woods, she calls be back. Even my plumber arrives when he says he will arrive.  Why then do I have to wait for this service?

While I am waiting I thought that I would consider what it means to wait upon God.  I began to look at verses and search the internet for articles on this subject. While on the internet I came across Andrew Murray's book Waiting on God. Murray was a Dutch Reformed pastor that served in South Africa.  From my understanding he wrote devotional literature. Waiting on God is such a book.  It takes the subject and divides it up into 31 days. So I thought I would take the 31 day challenge, read his thoughts and comment on them.

Day One
Murray starts with Psalm 62:1 and titles the first day "The God of Our Salvation."  (I wish that he had included Psalm 62:2 and 62:5-6 in this first day, for they flesh out the idea of waiting.)  God is the God of my salvation! And He is my rock, my defense, and I know that because of Him, along with salvation, or victory over sin, I shall not be moved!   Thus I depend on Him for salvation and defense.  Because of Him alone, I can stand.  It is in that place, dependence upon God, that believers need to wait.  Murray says, "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."

Why then do I, and probably you, hate to wait?  Even on God we show this impatience.  Because we either do not understand our dependence upon Him or we would rather attempt it on our own. The latter idea, attempting on our own, is part of our fallen nature.  So the old man calls us to abandon God and return to doing things like we used to do.  Also, I think it is because we do not know or understand Psalm 62:5-6, "...for my expectation is from Him."  My hope is found in and only in God.  Take a moment and think upon your hopes and dreams.  Are they the hopes and dreams God has for you or are they void of Him?  Murray says it this way, "It is, then, 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 the unspeakable blessedness of continual waiting on God."

For me to learn to wait I must realize my absolute poverty and then turn to Christ and find my hopes in Him, my victory in Him, and my salvation in Him.

See you tomorrow.  You can read an online version Murray's book Waiting on God here. There's the doorbell. I think the repair man has finally arrived!

-Mark