Saturday, November 25, 2023

Great Expectations: by Andrew Murray

 

Micah 7:7

Therefore I will look unto the LORD; I will wait for the God of my salvation: my God will hear me.

Have you ever heard of a book, Expectation Corners? It tells of a king who prepared a city for some of his poor subjects. Not far from them were storehouses where everything they could need was supplied if they sent in their requests. But, on one condition—they should be on the lookout for the answer, so when the king’s messengers came with the answer to their petitions, they should be found waiting to receive them. The sad story is told of one person who never expected to get what he asked, he was too unworthy. One day, he was taken to the king’s storehouses, and there, to his amazement, he saw all the packages that had been made up for him and sent. They had been to his door but found it closed; he was not on the lookout. From that time on, he learned the lesson from Micah: “I will look unto the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation: my God will hear me.”

A joyful expectancy is the essence of true waiting. Not only in reference to the many requests every believer has to make, but most to the one great petition which ought to be the chief thing every heart seeks—that the life of God in the soul may have full sway, that we may be filled to all the fullness of God. This is what God has promised. This is what God’s people too little seek, because they do not believe it possible. This is what we ought to seek and dare to expect, because God is able and waiting to work it in us.

But, God Himself must work it. And for this end our working must cease. We must see how entirely it is to be the faith of the operation of God, who raised Jesus from the dead. Just as much as the resurrection, the perfecting of God’s life in our souls is to be directly His work. And, waiting has to become, more than ever, a tarrying before God in stillness of soul, counting upon Him who raises the dead and calls the things that are not as though they were.

Romans 4:17

as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

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