Day 9—With the Heart

Psalm 31:24 - Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the LORD!

The words are nearly the same as in our last meditation. But I gladly avail myself of them again to press home a much-needed lesson for all who desire to learn truly and fully what waiting on God is. The lesson is this: It is with the heart we must wait upon God. "Let your heart take courage" All our waiting depends upon the state of the heart. As a man's heart is, so is he before God. We can advance no further or deeper into the holy place of God's presence to wait on Him there, then our heart is prepared for it by the Holy Spirit. The message is, "Let your heart take courage, all you who wait on the LORD."

The truth appears so simple, that some may ask if not all believe this. Many Christians have no sense of the great difference between the religion of the mind and the religion of the heart, and the former is far more diligently cultivated than the latter. It is in this that one of the chief causes must be sought of the feebleness of our Christian life, and it is only as this is understood that waiting on God will bring its full blessing.

Proverbs 3:5 may help to make my meaning plain. Speaking of a life in the fear and favor of God, it says, "Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding." In all religion we have to use these two powers. The mind gathers knowledge from God's word, and prepares the food by which the heart is to be nourished. But here comes in a terrible danger, of our leaning to our own understanding, and trusting in our apprehension of divine things.


It is with the heart man believes, and comes into touch with God. It is in the heart God has given His Spirit, to be the presence and the power of God working in us. In all our religion it is the heart that must trust and love and worship and obey. My mind is utterly impotent in creating or maintaining the spiritual life within me: the heart must wait on God for Him to work it in me.

This is now the blessedness of waiting upon God, that I confess the impotence of all my thoughts and efforts, and set myself still to bow my heart before Him in holy silence, and to trust Him to renew and strengthen His work in me. And this is just the lesson of our text, "Let your heart take courage, all you that wait on the LORD." Present it before Him as that wonderful part of your spiritual nature in which God reveals Himself, and by which you can know Him. Cultivate the greatest confidence that, though you cannot see into your heart, God is working there by His Holy Spirit.

No knowledge of the air or the food around me can nourish me, except it enters into my inward life. And no knowledge of the truths of God can profit me, except as He, by His Spirit, enters into my inmost being and dwells within me. It is with the heart I must wait upon God; it is into the heart I must receive God; it is in the heart will give His Spirit and every spiritual blessing in Christ. He wants the heart, and takes it, and as God dwells in it. "Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all ye that wait on the LORD."

"My soul, wait only upon God!"