Day 8—Strong and of Good Courage

Psalm 27:14 - Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!

"Be strong and of good courage." These words are frequently found in connection with some great and difficult enterprise, in prospect of the combat with the power of strong enemies, and the utter insufficiency of all human strength. Is waiting on God a work so difficult that such words are needed, "Be strong, and let your heart take courage"? Yes, indeed. The deliverance for which we often have to wait is from enemies, in presence of whom we are impotent. The blessings for which we plead are spiritual and all unseen; things impossible with men; heavenly, supernatural, divine realities. Our heart may well faint and fail. Our souls are so unaccustomed to hold fellowship with God; the God on whom we wait so often appears to hide Himself. We who have to wait are often tempted to fear that we do not wait aright, that our faith is too feeble, that our desire is not as upright or as earnest as it should be, that our surrender is not complete. In all these causes of fear or doubt, how blessed to hear the voice of God, "Wait on the LORD! Be strong, and let your heart take courage! WAIT ON THE LORD!" Let nothing in heaven or earth or hell—let nothing keep us from waiting on thy God in full assurance that it cannot be in vain.


If you say you are afraid of deceiving yourself with vain hope, because you do not see or feel any purpose in your present state for such special expectations, my answer is, it is God who is the purpose for your expecting great things. You are not going to wait on yourself to see what you feel and what changes come to you. You are going to WAIT ON GOD, to know first, WHAT HE IS, and then, after that, what He will do. The whole duty and blessedness of waiting on God has its root in this, that He is such a blessed Being, full to overflowing, of goodness and power and life and joy, that we, however wretched, cannot for any time come into contact with Him without that life and power secretly, silently beginning to enter into us and blessing us. God is Love! That is the one only and all-sufficient purpose of your expectation. Love seeks out its own: God's love is just His delight to impart Himself and His blessedness to His children. Come, and however feeble you feel, just wait in His presence. As a feeble, sickly invalid is brought out into the sunshine to let its warmth go through him, come with all that is dark and cold in you into the sunshine of God's holy, omnipotent love, and sit and wait there, with the one thought: Here I am, in the sunshine of His love. As the sun does its work in the weak one who seeks its rays, God will do His work in you. Oh, do trust Him fully. "Wait on the LORD! Be strong, and let your heart take courage! Yes, wait thou on the LORD!"

"My soul, wait only upon God!"