Wait on the Lord!

“He that believeth shall not make haste.” (Isaiah 28:16)

In an age of supersonic travel and highspeed communications, in a culture where hurry is the watchword, it brings us up short to learn that haste is seldom used of God in a good sense in the Bible. Seldom, I say, because there is the instance where the father runs to meet the returning prodigal, suggesting that God hastens to forgive. But generally speaking, God is not in a hurry.

When David said, “The king’s business required haste” (1 Sam. 21:8), he was guilty of subterfuge, and we should not use his words to justify our frenetic rushing back and forth. The plain truth is, as our text states, if we are really trusting the Lord, we don’t have to be in a hurry. The urgency of our task can be better served by a quiet walk in the Spirit than by a frenzy of carnal activity.

Here is a young man who is in a hurry to get married. He reasons that if he doesn’t act quickly, someone else might get the girl. The truth is that if God wants that girl for him, no one else can get her. If she is not God’s choice, then he will have to learn the hard way, “Marry in haste; repent at leisure.”

Another is in a hurry to go into so-called full-time work. He argues that the world is perishing and that he cannot wait. Jesus did not argue that way during the years in Nazareth. He waited till God called Him forth to public ministry.

Too often we are in a hurry in our personal evangelism. We are so anxious to rack up professions that we pick the fruit before it is ripe. We fail to allow the Holy Spirit to thoroughly convict the person of sin. The result of such a method is a trail of false professions and of human wreckage. We should “let patience have her perfect work” (James 1:4).

The true effectiveness of our lives lies not in rushing madly about on self-appointed missions, but in Spirit-directed activity that is ascertained by patiently waiting on the Lord.

W.D.