What does it mean to "Wait upon the LORD"? (Isa.40:31)

But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength;

They shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run,

And not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

Isaiah 40:31

Thy Lord at Thy feet my prostrate heart is lying,

Worn with the burden weary of the way;

The world's proud sunshine on the hills is dying,

And the morning's promise fades with parting day;

Yet in Thy light another morn is breaking,

Of fairer promise, and with pledge more true,

And in Thy life a dawn of youth is waking

Whose boundless pulses shall this heart renew.

Lord, at Thy Feet

George Matheson

To wait upon the Lord, instead of being a weak or languid form of faith, is the form that shows most of its endurance and power. Not doubt it is an expression which brings out the quiet side of the spiritual life. But our text states this important and too much forgotten secret of that life – that it is just such quiet confidence in God that maintains and revives grace in the soul.

         It means an abiding attitude of trustful dependence upon God; it means all that is wrapped up on those beautiful verses, “O rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him”; it means trust in the Lord at all times, for with Him is everlasting strength, and have no confidence in self. But the prophet has a deeper thought than this. There are many things for which we can only ask and then wait in quiet stillness, things which we cannot help God to give us, things which God Himself bestows without our aid, if we are ever to possess them. There are times when the soul is so utterly spent that God bends over our voiceless misery as the Good Samaritan bent over the speechless man, and not waiting for those trembling pallid lips to ask, poured oil and wine into his wounds, and lifted up his almost passive frame, and set him on his own beast.

         The praying spirit can be granted to a man as his soul is in the attitude of prayer. Then we are like a bird with outstretched pinions, poised betwixt earth and heaven, waiting in the atmosphere of God for the knowledge of the work we have to do. And as the bird descends to the nest on the earth which it can see from afar, so we should descend to our duties unperceived except we were on high with God. There, the heart open to God, the soul responsive to His influences, lifted above the meanness of earth, we get a true perspective of our duty; we have a high courage, we see what is required of us, and seeing, we descend to do it. It is easy for us in our hours of silent communion with God to feel the meaning of things – the meaning never put into words, for heaven comes near and illuminates earth. Nay, rather we discover that earth and heaven are one.

JAMES HASTINGS

~Isaiah

"God forgives, not meagerly or stintingly, but royally, gracefully, abundantly."

…. Wherein He hath made us accepted in the beloved.  In Whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us.

Ephesians 1:6-8

Grace be unto you, and peace, from Him who is, and who was, and who is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before His throne; and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, and the first begotten from the dead, and the Prince of the kings of the earth.  Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood…

Revelation 1:4-5

Behold Him there the risen Lamb,

My perfect spotless righteousness,

The great unchangeable I AM,

The King of glory and of grace,

One with Himself I cannot die.

My soul is purchased by His blood,

My life is hid with Christ on high,

With Christ my Savior and my God!

CHARITIE BANCROFT

        Our Father instantly and freely forgives us according to the riches of His grace.  He is only too ready to forgive.  He yearns over the wayward and stubborn, who keep their faces averted from His. 

        As the hungry sea frets down the line of cliff to find an aperture through which to pour itself, and seethes and sobs until it find room; so does the love of God wait impatiently outside our hearts till we open to it in confession and repentance.  Then God forgives, not meagerly or stintingly, but royally, gracefully, abundantly.  His forgiveness is worthy of Himself, proportioned to the wealth of His glorious being, and according to the riches of His grace.  He does more than forgive; He "remembers no more."  He does more than forget; He sets the joybells ringing, and cries, "Let us make merry."  He does more then this:  He insets the scars of our sins with jewels~ where sin abounded His grace abounds much more~ and all because of the Blood that has set free this wealth of mercy.

 F. B. MEYER

~Ephesians

      How could I be anything but quite happy if I believed always that all the past is forgiven, and all the present furnished with power, and all the future bright with hope, because of the same abiding facts, which don't change with my mood, do not crumble, because I totter and stagger at the promise through unbelief, but stand firm and clear with their peaks of pearl cleaving the air of Eternity, and the bases of their hills rooted unfathomably in the Rock of God?

JAMES SMETHAM

~1821-89

                        

"All the crowns of power flashed upon His brow. All mighty angels called Him Lord."

So it was, that while they were there, the days were completed for her to be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the Inn….                                                                                                                                 

And they came with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the Babe lying in a manger…. And the shepherds went back, glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard and seen, just as had been told them.                                                                                                                                                                                                         Luke 2:6-7, 16, 20

Sleep! Holy Babe!

Upon Thy mother’s breast;

Great Lord of earth and sea and sky,

How sweet it is to see Thee lie

In such a place of rest.

Sleep! Holy Babe!

Thine angels watch around,

All bending low with folded wings,

Before th’ Incarnate King of kings,

In reverent awe profound.

Sleep! Holy Babe!

While I with Mary gaze

In joy upon that face awhile,

Upon the loving infant smile

Which there divinely plays.

Sleep! Holy Babe!

Ah! take Thy brief repose;

Too quickly will Thy slumbers break,

And Thou to lengthened pains awake

That death alone shall close.

EDWARD CASWALL

~ Sleep! Holy Babe

How wonderful this was!  We must remember who it was that was thus born.  The birth of another child in this world was nothing strange, for thousands of children are born every day.  But this was the Lord of glory.  This was not the beginning of His life.  He had lived from all eternity in heaven.  His hands made the universe.  All glory was His.  All the crowns of power flashed upon His brow.  All mighty angels called Him Lord.  We must remember this if we would understand how great was His condescension….  

      Christ’s glory was folded away under robes of human flesh.  He never ceased to be the Son of God; and yet He assumed all the conditions of humanity.  He veiled His power, and became a helpless infant, unable to walk, to speak… lying feeble and dependent in His mother’s bosom… He laid aside His sovereignty, His majesty. What condescension!  And it was all for our sake, that He might lift us up to glory.  It was as a Saviour that He came into this world.  He became Son of man that He might make us sons of God.   He came down to earth and lived among men, entering into their experiences of humiliation, that He might lift them up to glory to share His exaltation.               

J.R. MILLER~

Come Ye Apart

        How gentle the coming!  Who would have had sufficient daring of imagination to conceive that God Almighty would have appeared among men as a little child?  We should have conceived something sensational, phenomenal, catastrophic, appalling!  The most awful of the natural elements would have formed His retinue, and men would be chilled and frozen with fear.  But He came as a little child.  The great God “emptied Himself”; He let in the light as our eyes were able to bear it.

J.H. JOWETT~

My Daily Meditation

"Hope for the future comes down in every tiny snowflake."

He gives snow like wool;

​​He scatters the frost like ashes;

 ​​He sends out His word and melts them;

​​He causes His wind to blow, and the waters flow.

Psalm 147: 16,18

“For He says to the snow, ‘Fall on the earth’;

Likewise to the gentle rain and the heavy rain of His strength.”

Job 37:6

​

The heavens were gray and dull and low,

The earth was old and stained and sere,

When God outspread His spotless snow, ~

A carpet for the coming year.

Above it, sunshine came again,

Beneath it, many a weary thing

From summer heat and autumn rain

Found rest, and waited for the spring.

Lord, I am clouded like the air,

And withered like the flower and sod;

Oh! spread o’er all my sin and care,

Like snow, the perfect peace of God

Within its folds I still shall feel

The sun above, the growth below;

And the new springtime shall reveal

What things were nourished by the snow.

Then peace shall meet to joy and praise

And o’er the fruitful gardens blow,

While heaven and earth one chorus raise

To Him who giveth sun and snow.

It is not only that the snow makes fair what was good before, but it is a messenger of love from heaven, bearing glad tidings of great joy. Hope for the future comes down in every tiny snowflake. The spring sun will mount higher and higher in the heavens; the sweet snow will sink down into the arms of the violets; and, at the word of the Lord, the earth shall come up once more, as a bride adorned for her husband.

GAIL HAMILTON

December is month of bitterness and mirth; for is it not the inaugural month of Winter and the sole month of Christmas?  Before Christ came it was only month of icy Winter fierce in onset of frost and snow and raging icy wind, but since His coming December, however angry its beginning, its ending has always been in a burst of laughter, wild, hilarious, all but universal…December is month of singing beyond rose-embowered June.  There is no mirth like Christmas mirth.  Never has there been since this old world was young such inextinguishable laughter as in the Merrie Christmas time…When December begins wild winds and spitting snow, shivering is in fashion even with sparrows and squirrels; and frosts nip you in fun or earnest, you can't figure which, and when Spring comes to you more as a myth than as a memory, when it seems as if the warm south wind never drowsed past you, and as if you never had heard the drone of bees and the click of the grasshoppers' wings or smelt the heavy odor of the milkweed and had never seen the swallow glass fair form in the quiet of the evening river.  All these things are past and remembered as if they had been seen in dreams, in happy dreams.

        When, O wonder! ~ when December is at its frozen noon and riot is king, all on a sudden mirth invades this spacious Winter and voice of man and woman, youth and maid, schoolboy and little toddling child, leaps to a song, and the icy church bells sing a carol and Christmas chimneys have radiant light and everybody hangs his stocking up…. anyhow December has been silenced of his boisterous good nature of the whole sweet world of happy hearts.  And unregenerate December himself learns a Christmas tune and sings with tempestuous mirth a melody, the burden of which I catch to be: "Merry Christmas, Peace on Earth, good will to men.  Christ is come and has changed my Winter into laughing Spring.  I am less December now than June.  My flowers are children's smiling faces and my birds' singing is the Christmas laughter of such hearts as have heard that in Bethlehem a Child is born and the angels sing and I, December of the frozen heart, have caught the angels' tune, 'Praise! Praise!' "

        December, myself will learn your tune.

WILLIAM A. QUAYLE

God’s Calendar

                                                                           

Offering a Sacrifice of Praise

And let them sacrifice the sacrifices of thanksgiving, and declare His works with rejoicing.

Psalm 107:22

By Him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name.                                                                                            Hebrews 13:15

Our restless spirits yearn for Thee,

Wherever our changeful lot is cast;

Glad when Thy gracious smile we see,

Blessed when our faith can hold Thee fast.

O Jesus, ever with us stay,

Make all our moments calm and bright;

Chase the dark night of sin away,

Shed over the world Thy holy light.

BERNARD of CLAIRVAUX

Jesus, Thou Joy

God's definite will for the believer is that he shall be a fountain of praise and that his life shall be in thanksgiving to God at all times and in all circumstances.  The Lord God, who is the Author of all our blessings, appreciates, desires, and even seeks our praise and thanksgiving.  "Whoso offereth praise glorifieth Me" (Psalm 50:23).  And the Psalmist also said, "Every day will I bless Thee, and I will praise Thy name for ever and ever" (Psalm 145:2).

      We are to thank God in all things; the Lord knows what is best for us, and He is ordering the course of our life, bringing the details to pass in the time and manner of His desire.  He has never made a mistake, and what He allows to come into the life of His child is for the good of that child and for the glory of God.  Any chastisement that ever reaches us comes for our profit, that we might be partakers of His holiness. (Heb. 12:10).

DONALD GREY BARNHOUSE

To be out of harmony with the things, acts, and events, which God in His providence has seen fit to array around us— that is to say, not to meet them in a humble, believing, and thankful spirit— is to turn from God.  And, on the other hand, to see in them the developments of God's presence, and of the Divine Will, and to accept that Will, is to turn in the opposite direction, and to be in union with Him.

THOMAS  UPHAM

Autumn Devotional in Honor of Pastor Chuck Smith

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.

And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13:12-13

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God.

Revelation 21:3

Beyond these chilling winds and gloomy skies, —

Beyond death’s cloudy portal —

There is a land where beauty never dies,

Where love becomes immortal.

A land whose light is never dimmed by shade,

Whose fields are ever vernal,

Where nothing beautiful can ever fade,

But blooms for aye eternal.

The city’s shining towers we may not see,

With our dim earthly vision:

For Death, the silent warder, keeps the key

That opes these gates elysian.

But sometimes, where adown the western sky

A fiery sunset lingers,

Its golden gates swing inward noiselessly,

Unlocked by unseen fingers:

And while they stand a moment half ajar,

Gleams from the inner glory,

Stream brightly through the azure vault afar,

And half reveal the story.

O land unknown ! O land of love divine !

Father, all-wise, eternal,

Oh, guide these wandering, way-worn feet of mine

Unto those pastures vernal.

Heaven

NANCY A.W. PRIEST

         There is an “eventide” in the year, -- a season, as we now witness, when the sun withdraws his propitious light, when the winds arise, and the leaves fall, and nature around us seems to sink into decay. It is said, in general, to be the season of melancholy; and if by this word be meant that it is the time of solemn and of serious thought, it is undoubtedly so; yet it is a melancholy so soothing, so gentle in its approach, and so prophetic in its influence, that they who have known it feel, as instinctively, that it is the doing of God, and that the heart of man is not thus finely touched but to fine issues. When we go out into the fields in the evening of the year, we regard, even in spite of ourselves, the still but steady advances of time. A different voice approaches us ... A few days ago, and the summer of the year was grateful, and every element was filled with life, and the sun of heaven seemed to glory in his ascendant.  He is now enfeebled in his power; the desert no more “blossoms like the rose;” the song of joy is no more heard among the branches; and the earth is strewed with that foliage which once bespoke the magnificence of summer…. Such also in a few years will be our own condition…. If there were no other effects, my brethren, of such appearances of nature upon our minds, they would still be valuable; they would teach us humility, and with it they would teach us charity.

ARCHIBALD ALISON

  Sermon on Autumn

In Heaven God will give Himself wholly to us, even as He is One and Undivided; yet He will give Himself variously to the innumerable blessed ones around Him.  And we shall give ourselves to Him in like manner, for we shall see Him Face to face in all His Beauty, and love Him Heart to heart. 

F. DE SALES

Of the Love of God

~This Devotional is dedicated to Pastor Chuck Smith who has arrived to his true Home.

"Temperament we are born with, character we have to make..."

Does He not see my ways,

And count all my steps?

Job 31:4

For as his share is who goes down into the battle, so shall his share be who stays by the baggage. They shall share alike.”

1 Samuel 30:24

Take my life, and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee.

Take my moments and my days; let them flow in ceaseless praise.

Take my hands, and let them move at the impulse of Thy love.

Take my feet, and let them be swift and beautiful for Thee.

Take my will, and make it Thine; it shall be no longer mine.

Take my heart, it is Thine own; it shall be Thy royal throne.

Take my love, my Lord, I pour at Thy feet its treasure store.

Take myself, and I will be ever, only, all for Thee.

FRANCES RIDLEY HAVERGAL

Temperament we are born with, character we have to make; and that not in the grand moments when the eyes of men or of angels are visibly upon us, but in the daily, quiet paths of pilgrimage, when the work is being done within in secret which will be revealed in the daylight of eternity. Habits, like paths, are the result of constant actions. It is the multitude of daily footsteps which go to and fro which shapes them. Let it light up your daily wanderings to know that there, —in the quiet bracing of the soul to uncongenial duty, the patient bearing of unwelcome burdens, the loving acceptance of unlovely companionship, — and not on the grand occasions, you are making your eternal future. It is the multitude of little actions which makes the great ones.

        J. BALDWIN BROWN

 Our common, everyday lives are the means God implies by which we shall build our Christian lives. A farm or an office are not places to make crops or money, but men.  All the little things about our daily toil are the framework and scaffolding of our spiritual life. 

HENRY DRUMMOND