Day 5—For Instruction

Psalm 25:4-5 - Make me to know Your ways, O LORD; teach me Your paths. Lead me in Your truth and teach me, for You are the God of my salvation; for You I wait all the day long.

I spoke of an army on the point of entering an enemy's territories. Answering the question as to the cause of delay: "Waiting for supplies." The answer might also have been: "Waiting for instructions," or "Waiting for orders." If the last dispatch had not been received, with the final orders of the commander-in-chief, the army dared not move. Even so in the Christian life: as deep as the need of waiting for supplies, is that of waiting for instructions.

The Father in heaven is so interested in His child, and so longs to have his life at every step in His will and His love, that He is willing to keep his guidance entirely in His own hand. He knows so well that we are unable to do what is really holy and heavenly, except as He works it in us, that He means His very demands to become promises of what He will do, in watching over and leading us all the day. Not only in special difficulties and times of perplexity, but in the common course of everyday life, we may count upon Him to teach us His way, and show us His path.


And what is needed in us to receive this guidance? One thing: waiting for instructions, Waiting on God. "On You I wait all the day." We want in our times of prayer to give clear expression to our sense of need, and our faith in His help. We want to definitely become conscious of our ignorance as to what God's war may be, and the need of the Divine light shining within us, if our way is to be as of the sun, shining more and more unto the perfect day. And we want to wait quietly before God in prayer, until the deep, restful assurance fills us: It will be given—'the meek will He guide in the way.'

'On You I wait all the day.' The special surrender to the Divine guidance in our prayer must cultivate, and be followed up by, the habitual looking upwards "all the day." As simply as one can walk all day in the light of the sun, so simple and delightful can it be to walk all the day in the enjoyment of God's light and leading. We only need the real knowledge and faith of God as the only source of wisdom and goodness, as ever ready, and longing to be to us all that we can possibly require. If we but saw our God in His love, if we but believed that He waits to be gracious, that He waits to be our life and to work all in us—how this Waiting on God would become our highest joy, the natural and spontaneous response of our hearts to His great love and glory!

O God! teach us, above everything, the blessed lesson, that all the day, and every moment of it, You are around and within us, working out Your work of love. Show us that You only ask us to wait on You. And so teach us to say, ‘On You I wait all day.'

"My soul, wait only upon God!"