“Be Brave, Be Strong, Don’t Give Up, Expect God To Show Up Soon!”
Psalm 31:24 (KJV)
24 Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the LORD.
Psalm 31:19-24 (MSG) 19 What a stack of blessing you have piled up for those who worship you, Ready and waiting for all who run to you to escape an unkind world. 20 You hide them safely away from the opposition. As you slam the door on those oily, mocking faces, you silence the poisonous gossip. 21 Blessed GOD! His love is the wonder of the world. Trapped by a siege,
22 I panicked. “Out of sight, out of mind,” I said. But you heard me say it, you heard and listened. 23 Love GOD, all you saints; GOD takes care of all who stay close to him, But he pays back in full those arrogant enough to go it alone. 24 Be brave. Be strong. Don’t give up. Expect GOD to get here soon.
“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not upon thine own understanding.” In all religion we have to use these two powers. The mind as to gather knowledge from God’s word, and prepare the food by which the heart with the inner life 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. People imagine that if they are occupied with the truth, the spiritual life will as a matter of course be strengthened. And this is by no means the case. The understanding deals with conceptions and images of divine things, but it cannot reach the real life of the soul. Hence the command, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not upon thine own understanding.” It is with the heart man believeth, and comes into touch with God. It is in the heart God has given His Spirit, to be there to us 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.
Waiting on God.
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 own work in me. And this is just the lesson of our text, “Let your heart take courage, all ye that wait on the Lord.” Remember the difference between knowing with the mind and believing with the heart. Beware of the temptation of leaning upon your understanding, with its clear strong thoughts. They only help you to know what the heart must get from God: in themselves they are only images and shadows.
“Let your heart take courage, all ye 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. Let the heart wait at times in perfect silence and quiet; in its hidden depths God will work. Be sure of this, and just wait on Him.
No knowledge of the air or the food around me can nourish me, except it enter 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. Give your whole heart, with its secret workings, into God’s hands continually. 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 thou only upon God!”
Waiting on God by Andrew Murray