Waiting on God

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

Waiting on God is a small book of daily readings for a month, each built round a verse of Scripture that uses the word wait. Murray wrote it in the mid-1890s, in his late sixties, and near its beginning he admits something surprising for a man who had been teaching the deeper life for decades: that he felt he was only beginning to see how the deepest truth about God and our relation to Him centres in this waiting. He had come, as he put it, to regard waiting on God as the keynote of life.

What waiting is

What does Murray mean by waiting? Not idleness, and not simply patience in trouble, though it includes that. He means the settled posture of a soul that expects everything from God and nothing from itself. It combines, in his words from the reading on Jacob’s cry, the deep sense of our entire helplessness and the perfect confidence that God will work it all.

I have waited for thy salvation, O LORD. GENESIS 49:18

We have already met the foundation of this in his teaching on the creature. A creature lives by receiving. Waiting is simply that dependence made into a habit of the heart. In the introduction to the book Murray draws the comparison with breathing: even the regenerate man, he says, has no power of goodness in himself, and “waiting on God is just as indispensable, and must be just as continuous and unbroken, as the breathing that maintains his natural life.”

Praying and waiting

Is waiting on God different from praying? Murray thought it was, and his answer is one of the most useful things in the book: “that there may be much praying with but very little waiting on God.”

We can pray the way we fill in a form: state the request, sign off, and go about our business. Waiting is what happens when we linger. It is the pause in which we stop talking and turn our attention to God Himself — to His presence, His will, His timing. Murray thought much prayer was hurried and self-directed, and that it would be transformed if believers learned to spend even a few minutes simply waiting before God before they asked anything.

Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. PSALM 46:10

He was also frank about the church’s neglect of it. At all our conventions and gatherings, he observed, too little time is given to waiting on God. Meetings are filled with speaking, and the silence in which God might speak is crowded out.

God waits too

One of the loveliest readings in the book turns the whole subject around. It is titled Who Waits on Us, and its text is from Isaiah.

And therefore will the LORD wait, that he may be gracious unto you, and therefore will he be exalted, that he may have mercy upon you: for the LORD is a God of judgment: blessed are all they that wait for him. ISAIAH 30:18

The Lord waits to be gracious. Murray thought this changed everything. If we saw God in His love, he wrote, and believed that He waits to be gracious, waits to be our life and to work all in us, then waiting on Him would become our highest joy, the natural response of our hearts to His love. We do not wait on a reluctant God who must be persuaded. We wait on a God who has been waiting for us.

Strength renewed

Murray drew out many of the fruits of waiting across the readings: supplies for every need, instruction, light in the heart, courage, hope in times of darkness, and the new song. The most famous is in Isaiah 40.

But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. ISAIAH 40:31

He noticed the order: mounting up, running, walking. The spectacular comes first, the ordinary last, and the ordinary is the hardest. To walk day after day and not faint is the real test of a life renewed by waiting on God.

Murray also had a reading titled Patiently, and another titled Quietly, and he was honest that waiting often involves delay. God’s timing is not ours, and the soul that waits must learn to rest in not knowing when.

It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD. LAMENTATIONS 3:26

Continually, and only

The last readings of the book press two words. The first is continually: waiting is not an exercise for the morning only but the undercurrent of the whole day. The second is only. Its text is from Psalm 62.

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

Only is the hard word. Most of us are willing to wait on God as one support among several. We wait on Him and also on our plans, our contacts, our savings and our cleverness. Murray was not against plans or work; he founded institutions and raised money for missions. But he believed the heart must rest on God alone, so that every other support is held loosely and none is trusted in His place.

Where care is needed

Waiting on God can be misunderstood as passivity, and some readers of Murray have used it as a reason not to act. That was never his intent. The same book that tells us to wait tells us to keep God’s ways, and Murray himself was one of the most active men of his generation. Waiting is not the alternative to obedience; it is the spirit in which obedience is done. And waiting is not a technique for extracting answers. It is fellowship with a Person. The blessing of waiting, Murray says, is that it is itself the highest salvation — to be near to God is already the answer.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Before you pray tomorrow, spend five minutes in silence simply turning your attention to God, asking nothing.

2. Notice this week how much of your praying is hurried. Try once to linger, and to wait.

3. Meditate on Isaiah 30:18. Let the thought that God waits to be gracious to you reshape how you come to Him.

4. Name one thing you are trusting alongside God. Hold it more loosely, and let your expectation be from Him.

5. Read one day of Waiting on God in the Ochorus library each morning for a week.

A PRAYER

Lord, my soul waits upon You. I have prayed much and waited little, and I have filled my life with noise.

Teach me to be still and know that You are God. Teach me to linger in Your presence and to expect everything from You.

Thank You that You wait to be gracious. Let my waiting be the answer of my heart to Your love.

Renew my strength, that I may walk and not faint. Be my only expectation. Amen.