One of the great dangers
of life is that of losing sight of God's great design in
the details by which that design is worked out; and it
has been well said that we entirely lose the value of any
experience if we isolate it. That is, if you take your
sorrow and regard it apart from the great designing love
of God, if you take your losses, your temporary setbacks,
your momentary depressions, and dwell upon these things
as if they were the only experiences of God's providence,
and as if they were not related to the great central
control of His love - you will entirely miss their value.
It is that we may be saved from such peril that we are
meditating together thus on some of God's unlikely but
never unkindly ministries.
With this brief
recapitulation let me ask you to turn to the word which
is the occasion of our thought this morning in regard to
the Divine ministry of delay by which God oftentimes
tests His people. I will ask you to turn to the words of
Jeremiah the Prophet, in the book of Lamentations, in the
third chapter, at the twenty-fourth verse:
"The Lord is my
portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in Him. The
Lord is good unto them that wait for Him, to the soul
that seeketh Him. It is good that a man should both hope
and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord" (verses
24-26).
It is especially on
those last words that I want our meditation to be based: "It
is good that a man should both hope and quietly
wait for the salvation of the Lord."
Let us frankly admit at
the outset that one of the great difficulties of life
with many of us is concerned with the fact that God
sometimes seems to delay His answers to our prayers. The
most perplexing problem of many a Christian life is just
this: that God apparently does not answer, and apparently
does not even heed much of our crying. By His grace our
faith in Him has not been finally disturbed. By His grace
this conflict has been carried on courageously in secret.
Outside our own heart no
one even suspects that there is such a conflict. But you
know that there is, and I know that there is, and
sometimes the only word that rises from our hearts when
we come into God's presence is almost the last word which
came from the Saviour's lips: "My God, why?"
This is not the first question of the Christian life.
Faith's first question is usually "How?" There
is a stage in Christian experience when we are constantly
saying "How?" - "How can a man be born
when he is old?" "How can these things
be?" "How can this Man give us His flesh to
eat?" "How are the dead raised up, and with
what body do they come?" These are some of the first
questions of the Christian life. But as we go on with
God, as life deepens, as its necessities become heavier,
its sorrows more acute, and our perceptions more alert
also, the question which rises from the heart of many a
disturbed and distressed believer is: "My God,"
not "how?" but "WHY?"
I have already suggested
that what many of us are seeking at this time is not
comfort, nor sympathy, nor even the lightening of our
loads. We are seeking some explanation, some
interpretation from God Himself as to what He is doing in
these our lives. Some of us are distressed almost to the
point of desertion - desertion of our own allegiance, and
desertion of His colors, because He seems to delay,
indeed almost to deny the things we ask Him.
Yet, I would remind you
that there is nothing which the Word of God so amply
encourages men to do as to pray. There are promises
attached to prayer which do not attach to any other
condition. There are riches which are covenanted to men
as the result of prayer and waiting upon God, which they
can obtain in no other way. And it is just because the
promises with regard to prayer are so great, so high, so
wide, that these delays of God perplex us, and we cry out
this morning, "My God, why?" There are times in
life when nothing but sheer belief in God's goodness
saves us from despair; when nothing but simple reliance
upon God's love, without any present evidence of it, can
save us from hopelessness; when nothing but almost
reckless faith in His omnipotent wisdom, will prevent us
from sinking into positive moral apathy and spiritual
lethargy.
Therefore, it is my
present endeavor to help some here to a recreation of
that sheer belief, that simple reliance, and that
reckless faith in God which trusts Him when His face is
veiled, and they do not even feel the grip of His hand.
Faber well sang:
"Thrice
blest is he to whom is given
The instinct that can tell
That God is on the field, when He
Is most invisible."
That is the instinct
which may God grant every one of us to have in these
days.
Now these words were
spoken by the Prophet Jeremiah in a day when the nation's
desire, its best desire, was perhaps never so evident.
The people had begun to see the fulfilment of God's
promises and the working of His providence. Their foes
were being pushed from their land, the beginnings of
recultivation were taking place, and the broken-down
altars of God were being rebuilt. But all was being done
so slowly that they could not reconcile the slowness of
God with the implicit assurances upon which their faith
in Him rested. They were impatient and restive under His
apparent inactivity. Faith saw God's beginnings and, like
the disciples of later days, "thought the kingdom
must immediately appear!"
There is a great deal to
be said for the faith of a little child which cannot
understand the reason of delay. But you will not
misunderstand me when I say that there is a great deal
more to be said for the faith of a grown man who has come
to know that God has an entirely different scale for the
measurement of time from those we commonly use. There is
still more to be said for the faith of the man who is
perfectly content to rest in the fact that a thousand
years are as one day with Him, and one day as a thousand
years. This was the faith of Jeremiah. He had looked into
the depths of the Infinite God, and had seen that He was
unhurried, and that His ways were the more certain
because they were not the more obvious. So he waited
calmly, and sought to renew courage and patience and hope
in the people, just because these things were the
expression of his own soul. Hence he says: "It is
good for men that they are kept waiting, that they have
to quietly hope for the salvation of God."
You will readily
understand that these words of his are of infinitely
wider application than to the Israel of that day. I
believe they are apposite to the case of every one of us
here today who is perplexed because, for instance, the
expected deliverance from sin in his own life does not
come as he thought it would. Or the petition he offers
for some good of which he conceives himself to be in
great need is not granted. Or the loved one for whom he
prays is not immediately converted; and though he goes on
praying he has almost lost heart about it. Or the revival
in his work, for which he has conscientiously wrought to
the very last ounce of his strength, does not seem to be
even on the horizon. We want to know why this delay, and
what the spiritual good of having quietly to wait and
hope so long.
I am very sure that when
the last word of human experience about prayer has been
said, we are still in the presence of the greatest of all
mysteries. The man who thinks he knows so much about
prayer, that he can frame a philosophy of prayer, really
confesses that he knows little indeed. How prayer
liberates spiritual forces, who knows? Why God has
ordained that men should wait upon Him, uniting their
wills with His in order to exert the saving power of His
grace both in their life and through them in the lives of
others - who can say? With regard to this greatest of all
subjects, there is really nothing further to be said than
that which Paul said about all knowledge of God -
"We know in part, and we prophesy in part."
But, thank God, we do know! What we know we know with a
certainty which nothing can shake. But we only know in
part. Therefore they are mere suggestions that I venture
to offer you today, suggestions which have come with some
degree of light and encouragement to my own heart in
regard to this assertion - that it is good for a man to
wait and hope for the salvation of God.
It is almost unnecessary
to say that there is no thought in this word of any man
having to wait until God is willing to bestow upon him
the primary gifts of pardon and peace and forgiveness,
the salvation which is His free gift in Jesus Christ. The
sinner who cries for pardon, the weary and heavy-laden
who ask for rest of heart, the lonely who seek the
fellowship of love, are never kept waiting for the
fulfilment of their desires. The prodigal is welcomed
before he utters his prepared confession. The sinking man
who cries "Lord, save me", is at once conscious
of being grasped by the Hand of power. The Evangel of
Christ bears the ageless superscription that "now is
the day of salvation". In this respect, indeed, it
is never God who keeps men waiting, but men who keep Him
waiting. But, in regard to that aspect of His mercy which
is concerned with the strain of our present discipline,
with the anxiety of future uncertainty, with the relief
of immediate discomfort, with the weariness of unremoved
burdens - it is in that realm of life that we want to
know why God delays. Nor is it unnatural that we should
be impatient.
For instance, here is a
good man who reads that "All things work together
for good to them that love God", but who sees
nothing in his life today but chaos. His affairs have
been completely ruined. His home has been invaded by
sorrow and disappointment, until the nerves of all are on
edge, and no one knows with certainty what an hour is
going to bring forth of fresh calamity. That man has
rested upon that Divine Word with implicit confidence in
its truth, but the delay in realizing its fulfilment has
almost staggered his faith. Is it to be wondered at that
he should be asking today what it all means?
There is a young man
yonder, and there has been illumined to his soul's vision
this word: "In all things we are more than
conquerors through Him that loved us." And yet he
has been defeated ever since he came to Keswick, and this
morning his face is toward the ground, and not toward the
Lord. He says, "What does it mean? I have rested my
whole weight, as I believe, upon this promise of God, and
my Lord delays His coming in power to me. What does it
mean?"
There is the busy worker
- I have met him since I came to Keswick - who has come
from some far-off missionary field, in which for the last
ten years he has been pouring out his life, seeking to
live the life of a citizen of the Kingdom of God, resting
upon that word - "My word shall not return unto Me
void, but it shall accomplish that which I please"
(Isa. 55:11). And he confesses today that he has seen it
accomplish hardly anything. What does it mean?
There is the great
promise upon which every member of Christ's Church just
now is building more solidly than ever a temple of hope:
"Behold, I come quickly" (Rev. 3:11; 22:7). It
seems as though Christ was never so much needed as He is
today. It seems as though international relationship can
never again be restored as we have known it. It seems as
though the scattered units of Christ's Church can never
be gathered together again in one, save by His coming.
And the Church cries out: "Amen. Come quickly, Lord
Jesus" (Rev. 22:20). But there is not a sign of His
coming. What do these delays of God mean?
I am going to suggest
three things, and they are mere suggestions; but may they
bring light to you, as they have brought to me in past
days. The first thing I want to say about God's delays is
this: It is only by enforced waiting upon Him that
we come to know God with that knowledge which is the
foundation of all character. I use the word enforced
waiting upon God, because it is only by being forced to
wait upon God that some of us ever do wait on Him. We are
naturally impatient, we are naturally impulsive, we
naturally chafe at anything like slowness; and God, by
withholding the answer for which we have looked, keeps us
at His feet in order that we may come to know Him. He is
infinitely more concerned in the making and remaking of
our lives than in the gratifying of our minds. He is
infinitely more concerned in making us men and women of
His own pattern, and to deepen His life in our souls,
than to gratify some of the desires which we often
express in unconsidered prayer. For we cannot come to
know God, and inferentially we cannot come to know
ourselves, in an hour. God's delays do not indicate any
caprice on His part, but rather His concern and
compassion for us. They are directed toward saving us
from hurrying away from His presence before the lessons
of His grace have been more than mentally received. God
is preparing us, by keeping us waiting upon Him, worthily
to receive, to interpret, and then to use the gifts He
will yet give in answer to prayer and in fulfilment of
His word.
I constantly see tourist
visitors to London rushing about from Park to Palace,
doing what they call the "sights". And after a
fevered week they go back home thinking they know London.
But do they? One of Ruskin's students once said to him,
on returning from a first Italian visit: "Sir,
immediately I entered the Gallery at Florence, I knew in
a moment what you had always impressed upon us as the
supremacy of Botticelli." Ruskin's reply was
somewhat cutting. He said: "Oh, you found that out
in a moment? Well, it took me twenty-two years to
discover it!" And there are a great many people who
think they know God in the light of a single experience!
We are kept waiting upon Him that we may become of the
number of those who really do know their God, and who
consequently are empowered to do exploits.
God is making us; do not
let us be impatient under the process. God is making us;
do not let impatience and impetuosity take us, therefore,
from under the hand of the Master Workman. He is
eliminating the flaws, and remaking the marred vessels.
The two qualities which we need most - endurance and
radiance - are not imparted to any man in a single hour.
God keeps us waiting that in His presence, beholding His
glory, we may be changed into the same image from glory
unto glory.
The second thing I want
to say is this. Many of our prayers must be passed
through the refining medium of God's wisdom, that is, of
God's love; many of them must be edited by God before
they are answered. For well-intentioned prayer is not
always well-informed. Like those who made requests of the
Saviour, God often has to say to His children, "Ye
know not what ye ask". If some of our prayers were
immediately answered, the consequence would be almost
certain moral and spiritual disaster. Our prayers have to
be passed, I say, through the refining medium of God's
wisdom, sometimes with regard to their motive. "Ye
have not because ye ask amiss."
There are men and women,
for instance, who pray for power, while their real
objective is pre-eminence. What they really mean by power
is that which will make them prominent in His service.
When our motives are altogether unworthy of the words we
express, we have to be kept waiting until God turns upon
us the searchlight of His love, and learning the
untrustworthiness of our own impulses, we yield us to
that gracious Spirit Who makes intercession in us
according to the will of God.
Not only in regard to
the motive, but in regard also to the content of
our prayers, Christ has to say again and again, "Can
ye drink of the cup that I drink of; are ye able to be
baptized with the baptism wherewith I am baptized?"
For often we know not what we ask, and hence God's delay
in response. I have seen children - we have all seen them
- who have been utterly spoiled by the weak good-nature
of parents who gave them at once everything they wanted.
For human love may be entirely lacking in wisdom. But the
love and wisdom of God are one. When He keeps us waiting
for secondary mercies, it is in order to make us know the
value of the primary and spiritual. We have to learn that
God's "No" is just as much an answer as God's
"Yes". We have to learn that God's "Not
yet" is just as truly an expression of Divine love
as God's "Immediately". The day will come to
every one of us when we shall know that God's silence was
in reality His most loving speech to us. For we shall see
that while seemingly inactive God has all the time been
working in us, bringing us into moral correspondence with
His will, which alone capacitates men to receive His
gifts.
Well do I recollect,
some years ago, in the city of Dublin, a man coming into
the vestry-room of a church and saying: "Sir, I want
to thank you for that message about God's love. I believe
every word of it now, but I did not six months ago."
His eyes filled with tears; and as I said: "What
does it mean, my brother?" He went on: "Six
months ago my home was bright and happy, and the shadow
fell. I prayed earnestly that God would save my wife and
our infant. But He took them; and I have come to know
that He took them only in order to bring me back to
Himself, from Whom I had wandered." God's silence in
that man's life was His richest and kindest speech. And
others of us have found this to be true also; and more of
us will find it so ere these dark days in which we live
have passed away.
The things we try to get
rid of by prayer are often the very things we can least
afford to lose. Some of those things we call burdens, of
which we try to get rid in the Sanctuary, are the things
that God has placed upon us for the steadying of life and
the guiding of our energies into channels which otherwise
we should overlook and miss. Paul learnt that there was
something infinitely better than the removal of the
thorn-pain - infinitely better! Thrice he besought the
Lord to remove it - with what interval between those
prayers we know not. But surely Paul, like the rest of
us, was perplexed at God's delay. And he ultimately found
that God was preparing something far better than the
extraction of the thing which caused a throbbing wound -
"My grace is sufficient for thee." If he had
not had the thorn-pain, like the nightingale which is
said to sing sweetest when its breast is pierced, he had
never learned the song: "Most gladly will I glory in
my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon
me!" We learn, as we are kept waiting at His feet,
that the cord which we would have had God cut, He
disentangles, and so saves for purposes of His service.
God's ways are always justified of His children, if they
will patiently tarry His leisure.
Ere I pass on to the
third and last suggestion I have to make, may I say that
surely we get an illustration of all this in the burden
of prayer which is increasingly descending upon us for
our nation. There are not a few of us who are perplexed
that God has not already intervened to stay this terrible
conflict. We look out from this place of quiet rest, and
see across the Channel the sons of God being butchered
upon the fields of France and Belgium; and we cry to God
to give victory to the cause which is inherently right,
and about which we have no shame. Yet He does not do so.
After a whole year, and despite the sacrifice of
thousands of precious lives, the battle-line is drawn
substantially as it was at first. Why does God not put
forth His power through our Forces, and by scattering the
nations that delight in war bring this unspeakable strife
to an end? Why have we no answer back from Heaven that
our cry is heard? Why does He delay His coming when by
one word He could end the whole conflict?
An! it is not that God
cannot, nor that He will not; but that an immediate
victory for our land might only mean a revival, in the
basest form, of our national sins. As a nation we are far
from being morally ready for victory, for there are few
signs in our common life that we have learned and taken
to heart the lessons of this chastisement. That is why
God is keeping our nation waiting. We have to be brought
infinitely lower yet. We have to learn yet what the law
of God stands for. We have to learn yet what the
hideousness of sin in a man or nation means. We have to
learn that sin brings pain and bloodshedding to man, as
it brought pain and bloodshedding to God. Then when the
nation is morally prepared and renewed I believe that
victory will not be delayed by an hour. But it will not
come one hour sooner. Hence the necessity of our quietly
waiting for the salvation of God. Though remember, in the
last analysis, it is not He Who delays the answer to our
prayer for victory. It is we who delay Him.
The third thing I want
to say is this. Faith can only be trained by being
tested. As a man's muscles are only hardened by exercise,
so his faith only becomes strong and ultimately
invincible by being subjected to the discipline of
strain. For until it accepts the will of God, not under
compulsion, nor because there is no alternative, but by
free choice and glad surrender, faith is lacking in
essential quality. But when we are unmoved by the fact
that we are kept waiting, calmly conscious that God's
glory is intimately bound up with our lives and prayers,
and content that if He can afford to wait, so too can we,
one of life's greatest lessons has been learnt. For faith
reaches its triumph only when its exercise ceases to be a
deliberate activity and becomes an instinctive attitude.
Sometimes we learn this
by our own impetuous efforts to hurry God. There are two
conspicuous examples of this. Do you remember Moses and
his undisciplined effort at the deliverance of his
people? How disastrously it ended for him! God had to
take him into the schoolhouse of the desert and keep him
there for many a weary year. By his impetuosity he had
embarrassed God; and so, too, do many of us. Do you
remember Abraham with a wonderful promise to support him,
with a vision so great that it staggered him, attempting
to expedite God's purpose? You know the dark story of
Hagar and Ishmael, and all that it afterward led to.
Sometimes God likewise delays the promises of His
faithfulness in order that we too may learn the utter
futility of our every effort, and all the sweat of our
souls, apart from Him. For remember that the faith of God
must be vindicated in us before it can be verified
through us, and before we can be His effective messengers
to the world.
One last word. There is
nothing in common between quiet waiting upon God and
lethargic indolence. We have known those who excuse their
non-participation in the enterprises of Christ's Church
because of this necessity of quiet waiting on God. Let me
say that there is no greater mistake than to wait for
subjective manifestations and to neglect objective
opportunities. True waiting upon God expresses itself in
the expenditure of every energy of the soul at the clear
directions for whose interpretation we do not need to
wait an hour.
Oh, the supine folly of
the man who in these days of tremendous opportunity is
content to "wait upon God" to open doors, to
"wait upon God" to enlarge opportunities, to
"wait upon God" to organize success and
influence for him, while he himself does nothing in the
way of sacrifice - of giving himself, of losing his life,
for the Kingdom's sake! God does not co-operate with
dreamers. We cannot live in fellowship with God and let
evil stalk unchallenged, by neglecting the wide-open
doors of the world which call to our faith and our
loyalty.
I cannot forget that God
did once say to His people: "Stand still, and see
the salvation of God." But I also remember that that
word was given to men and women, a great host, who were
walking in implicit obedience to His leadership, and who
in that pathway had come up against the impassable. There
are times in life when God says these words to us, but
only when, like Israel, we are walking in the light of
His will.
"We are not here to
play, to dream, to drift;
We have hard work to do, and loads to lift;
Shun not the struggle! face it! 'Tis God's gift.
Say not, 'The days are
evil! Who's to blame?'
And fold the hands, and acquiesce - oh, shame!
Stand up, speak out, act bravely in God's Name.
It matters not how deep
entrenched the wrong,
How hard the battle goes, the day how long;
Fight on! fight on! tomorrow comes the song!"
As we wait upon God in
this energy of implicit obedience to Him, He will
vindicate all His delays. He will do it as we stand, like
men who wait for their Lord, doing His will to the very
utmost of our power; knowing that when He comes He will
perfect that which concerns us; pushing the battle to the
gate, in the confidence that at the strategic moment He
will bring up reinforcements which shall mean the final
factor in victory; quietly hoping for that we see not;
saying to our souls again, and yet again, "We see
not yet all things put under Him, we see not yet the
fulfilment of our every desire; but we see Jesus crowned.
Blessed be His Name for ever!"
J.S.H.