Wait for iiit...

“Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.” Isaiah 30: 18

How do we get to the point where “He Leadeth Me” is a reality? This will sound simple enough but I find it personally to be a gargantuan task; running up to the top of Canyonside Road on my old and rickety knees sounds easier and more enjoyable – after all, surrender to another’s will is not a native part of my being. We must though, if we want God leading us, we must pray, listen, wait, and after that follow. It requires that we surrender our comfort; didn’t Jesus tell us that the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head and so that if we follow him it will be thus for us.

For this post I reviewed two sources; “Celebration of Discipline” by Richard J. Foster and “The First Principles” by the late John Robert Stevens. These are/where two godly and spiritual men who, typical of me, I have not grasped the complete depth of their teaching nor followed completely the maps that they’ve laid out. My lack of discipline is sometimes appalling to me; then I run with it for a while, make progress, and then let up. Time for me to wind it up and make another run.

In his lesson “Waiting on the Lord”, John Robert Stevens defines this as “active faith which seeks direction and revelation and sustenance from the Lord that His life and will might be manifested in us. It means renouncing of our wills and decisions to wait for the revelation of His will in our lives.”

I recommend reading Isaiah 30: 15-21, for now here is verse 21: “And when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left, your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’”

After laying out several biblical examples Richard J. Foster, in his chapter on The Discipline of Meditation, tells us this about meditation: “This, in brief, forms the biblical foundation for meditation, and the wonderful news is that Jesus has not stopped acting and speaking. He is resurrected and at work in our world. He is not idle, nor has he developed laryngitis. His alive and among us as our Priest to forgive us, our Prophet to teach us, our King to rule us, our Shepherd to guide us.” Also in the chapter Foster cites Dietrich Bonheoffer when asked why he meditated, Bonheoffer replied “Because I am a Christian.”

The prayer for us as seekers, and we all should be whether we are firmly ensconced in a worshiping church or on the road to one, is this: We surrender all. We wait for your word as the watchman waits for the dawn. We know from where our help comes from, it comes from the Lord. Wherever you lead, we will follow, first and always to the foot of the cross, and then? Wherever, whenever… We know you are speaking to us, let us hear your word. We know you are leading us, let us see the path. In all things, let us see your hand.

In His grip, jerry