Day 54 - Issue 23
Luke 1:56 NLT
Mary stayed with Elizabeth about three months and then went back to her own home.
Waiting on God requires, rather obviously, waiting. It requires me to stay where I am and to delay any action. Wired as I am for action, this is tough. Even if I stay put physically, my mind imagines and works through the action. So in reality I’ve stopped waiting and started doing.
As a church leader, I was forever driving a vision forward. No sooner did God show up than I sought to capitalise upon it. I remember what we called ‘refreshing meetings’. We’d all been impacted by the way God appeared to move in Toronto’s Airport Vineyard church and consequently established refreshing meetings virtually every night of the week – the danger being we got exhausted and the meetings degenerated into pursuing manifestations and becoming overwhelmed in the Spirit. I admit my guilt.
Somewhat tired, maybe cynical, caring for Katey in the early days with MS, I found myself in America. The church I was visiting had heard of the refreshing and asked if I would hold a meeting Saturday morning. Weary, I arrived to the largest church hall, empty with just a handful of chairs in a circle. No musician, so it was me and the half-dozen who showed up. All looked at me and I felt the pressure to perform. Setting such feelings aside I decided just to pray, imagining this would be a very short meeting. I gave no introduction, simply stood and prayed with the first person. Well, this prayer meeting lasted from 8am until 13.30. God moved, to my great surprise; individuals were deeply impacted, people reported what was happening and the room filled with increasing numbers of expectant, hungry people.
I discovered God will be God, and I am merely his servant. It remains a most powerful experience in my life, one I’ve not felt any call to repeat. As with Mary and Elizabeth, following the excitement of the Spirit’s involvement with them, they settled to three months of everyday life, waiting, no doubt pondering and praying about what all this might mean in God’s kingdom economy.
QUESTION: Do you find it hard to be still and in one place?
PRAYER: Lord, your will be done and I will wait on and for you.
