Almost twenty-five years ago, I went through a very rough summer. I had painful major surgery at the beginning of the summer, followed by six weeks of convalescence during a genuine "heat wave" (with major humidity)--temperatures above 100 degrees for days on end -- that hit West Tennessee where we lived at that time. Too hot for the kids to be outside, they played inside our small house--(we had no "quiet wing" of the house to which I could retreat for peaceful rest)--where the (limited) air conditioning made it possible to breathe. In addition, Travis was managing a small city power utility at the time and was deeply conflicted as he looked ahead to the fall and winter months when some customers didn't pay their bills. If only adults were involved, especially if drugs or slothfulness was the cause, he usually had no problem shutting off their heat source (unless illness was involved). But where there were children in the home it was always a "crisis situation", and highly stressful, for him. We didn't have the personal resources to pay the electric bills for them (as the elderly--with no kids--previous manager had sometimes done). Hearing of promising job opportunities for electrical engineers internationally, Travis had sent an application and had received notice that he would hear from them further, with the implication that he would get the job after some mundane but necessary details were worked out. So we began waiting. Waiting and recuperating, and trying to stay as cool as possible. I was also pondering what I needed to be doing in case we got a letter saying we would be moving to another country.. Should I begin packing? Or at least making lists . . . ? At the same time all this was going on, I had personal growth issues challenging me, and praying always about the question "What is God's will for me?" And on top of everything else, there was "life"--duties, responsibilities, etc. -- going on as usual.

Just before my surgery, I had come across a little book by Andrew Murray, titled "Waiting on God". During my recuperation period, and in the middle of the issues at hand -- trying to stay cool, recovery from surgery, a possible international move, etc. -- I began reading this little book. Not only did it help to save my sanity, but it gave me direction and good instruction for the rest of my life. What I learned from the thoughts that Andrew Murray put forth in these meditations "centered" me during that stressful time, and in the time since then.

Re-reading this book recently I decided to pass along some excerpts from it to "Jerusalem's Daughters" readers. The book is set up as 31 "meditations", and is so rich with insights that it's difficult to know where to start and stop with the excerpts. Therefore, I may continue to post from this book in days ahead, but I encourage you to get a copy of it for yourself (if it's still in print). This book has had other publishers but I'm using the one published by Bethany House Publishers, Bloomington, Minnesota, 2001. If you're interested in getting a copy, you might try their website at http://www.bethanyhouse.com As always, all the usual disclaimers apply.

May we all find a refreshing of the Spirit as we wait on Him,
Elaine

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. . . continued below . . .

"My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from him." Psa 62:5

Andrew Murray begins the book by including a portion of an extract from an address he delivered in Exeter Hall, May 31, 1895 . . . . In this extract, he writes "Nothing has surprised me more than the letters that have come to me from ... devoted men and women around the world, testifying to the need they feel in their work for a deeper and a clearer insight into all that Christ can be to them. Let us look to God to reveal Himself among His people in a measure very few have realized. Let us expect great things of our God. At all our conventions and assemblies too little time is giving 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 limit of what God is willing to do for them? Surely not. . . . Let us enlarge our hearts . . . "

In the preface to the book, he continues: "I was recently impressed by the thought that in all our Christian life, personal and public, we need more of God .... to cultivate a deeper sense of His presence, of more direct contact with Him, and of entire dependence on Him . . . "The experiences of the past year, both personal and public, have greatly deepened this conviction. It is as if I am only beginning to see the deep truth concerning our relationship to God being centered on waiting on Him, and how little we have been sensitive to this need in our life and work. The following pages are the outcome of my conviction . . . . I send them out with the prayer that He who loves to use the weak may give His blessing with them. "I do not know if it will be possible for me to put into a few words the chief things we need to learn. In a note on William Law at the close of this book, I have mentioned some. But what I want to say here is this: The great lack of our Christianity today is that we do not know God. The answer to every complaint of weakness and failure, the message to every congregation or convention seeking instructions on holiness, should simply be "Where is your God ?". . . .Stop expecting the solution to come from yourself, or the answer from anything there is in man, and simply yield yourself completely to God to work in and through you. He will do it all. " . . . I can only cast these less-than perfect meditations on the love of my brethren and of our God. May He use them to draw us to Himself, to learn in practice and experience the blessed [discipline] of waiting on God. Pray that we might grasp the influence a life spent wholly waiting upon God could have, not by thought or imagination or effort, but by the power of the Holy Spirit. "With greetings in Christ to all God's saints it has been my privilege to meet, and no less to those I have not met, I offer myself, your brother and servant, Andrew Murray

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"Truly my soul waiteth upon God: from him cometh my salvation." Psalm 62:1

" . . . 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 on God. Let us strive to see what the elements are that make up this most blessed and needful waiting on God. It may help us to look into the reasons why this grace is so neglected and to feel how infinitely desirable it is that the church, that is we believers, should learn this blessed secret at any price." "The deep need for this waiting on God lies equally in the nature of man and in 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 intended each moment to be the communicator to man 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 blessed state before the Fall." "When he turned from God, he was still absolutely dependent on Him. There was not the slightest hope of his recovery from the state of death, except in God, His power and His 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. . . . " "Because [some] believers do not know their relationship to God of absolute poverty and helplessness, they have no sense of the need of absolute and unceasing dependence, or the unspeakable blessedness of continual waiting on God. . . . " . . . [Waiting on God] is ascribing to Him the glory of being all; it is experiencing that He is all to us. May God teach us the blessedness of waiting on Him!"
(continued ... "Part 2")