‘‘Wait on the LORD; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart; wait, I say, on the LORD!’’ —Psalm 27:14 (NKJV)
The Pslamist said in the previous verse, ‘‘I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.’’ If it had not been for his faith in God, his heart would have given up. But in the confident assurance in God that faith gives, he urges himself and us to remember one thing above all—to wait on God. The deliverance we often wait for is from our enemies, in whose presence we are powerless. The blessings we plead for are spiritual and unseen, things impossible with men. Our heart may well faint and fail. Our souls are unaccustomed to holding intimate fellowship with God. The God we wait on often appears to hide.
We are in such a habit of evaluating God and His work in us by what we feel that it is very likely that on some occasions we will be discouraged because we do not feel any special blessing. Above everything, when you wait on God, do so in the spirit of hope. It is God in His glory, His power, and His love who is longing to bless you.
The blessedness of waiting on God has its root in the fact that He is such a blessed being, full of goodness and power and life and joy. God is love! That is the one and only all-sufficient reason for your expectation. Love seeks out its own: God’s delight is to impart himself to His children. Come. However weak you feel, wait in His presence. Just as a weak and sickly invalid is brought out into the sunshine to allow its healing warmth to go through his body, come with all that is dark and cold in you into the sunshine of God’s holy, omnipotent love, and sit and wait there. As the sun does its work in the weak who seek its rays, God will do His work in you. Trust Him!
(Excerpted from The Andrew Murray Daily Reader in Today’s Language, pg. 26)
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Andrew Murray (1828 - 1917)
Brother Andrew Murray was a well-known writer/preacher in South Africa who ministered amongst the Dutch Reformed churches. His writings now are widely accepted by modern evangelicals and he is published more than ever in his life-time.Some of his better known books titles are: "Abide In Christ", "Absolute Surrender," and "Humility." His burden for the body of Christ were teachings on the abiding Spirit of Christ in the believer, the life of faith with God daily, and the life of intercession and prayer in the Church.
Andrew Murray was possibly the strongest spokesman of the Philadelphian age to expound the Body's necessity to abide in Christ, like the Apostle John before him.
Murray was born into a family of four children in the then remote Graaff-Reinet region (near the Cape) of South Africa. Educated in Scotland, which was followed by theological studies in Holland, Andrew returned to his native land to work as a missionary and minister. Given the daunting task of ministering to Bloemfontein, a remote region of 50,000 square miles and 12,000 people beyond the Orange River, Murray already began to sense the need to for the "deeper Christian life".
Though successful in preaching and bringing many to Christ, Murray found many of his greatest lessons in the School of Suffering, as will all who follow in the path of obedience.
Andrew Murray was one of four children born to Pastor Andrew, Sr., and Maria Murray. He was raised in what was considered to be the most remote corner of the world - Graaff-Reinet, South Africa. Educated in Scotland and Holland, in 1848 Andrew, Jr., returned to South Africa as a missionary and minister with the Dutch Reformed Church. His first appointment was to Bloemfontein, a territory of nearly 50,000 square miles and 12,000 people.
Andrew and his brother John had been in close contact with a revival movement in Scotland, an evangelical extension of the ongoing Second Great Awakening in America. He prayed for the same sort of awakening for the church in South Africa and wrote, "My prayer is for revival, but I am held back by the increasing sense of my own unfitness for the work. I lament the awful pride and self complacency that have till now ruled my heart. O that I may be more and more a minister of the Spirit." (J. du Plessis, The Life of Andrew Murray)
In 1860, revival did come to the churches of Cape Town, South Africa, and subsequently spread to surrounding towns and villages. Even remote farms and plantations felt the impact as lives were changed. Where once the churches had not been able to find one man ready to be a leader for God, the revival raised up 50 in Murray's Cape Town parish alone. There were more conversions in one month in that parish than in the whole course of its previous history. (Leona Choy, Andrew Murray: Apostle of Abiding Love)
Greatly concerned for the spiritual guidance of new converts and renewed Christians, Andrew Murray wrote over 240 books. His writings reflect his own longing for a deeper life in Christ and his prayer that others would long for and experience that life as well.