And if it could be of any comfort to you, so am I. And then it might just be appropriate to speak tonight on patience and endurance.
Because this is the last aspect in the royal training program: that the people of God would learn to wait, and to endure, to be patient—whichever expression you favor. We need them all.
So tonight we would speak of a heart of patience: a heart to wait.
In human nature, I do not think there is anything more difficult than to wait, to be patient. At least, I have found it to be one of the most difficult things for my own person: to wait and to be patient.
In Danish, we have a proverb that says, “If you wait long enough, you might just become king of Sweden.” I do not know why we Danes, if we wait long enough, could capture the throne of Sweden.
But we have a problem here, because Sweden has a fairly young king—and a very popular one too. There is no indication that the Swedish people should have any desire to get rid of him.
But still, in spite of that, it remains a spiritual fact: to attain to kingship in God’s kingdom, we must learn to wait. To be patient, we must have a heart to wait.
We have been hearing about God’s time, and God has His set time, as we have been listening. Unless we can wait for God’s time, we do not qualify for kingship.
I want to ask you to turn with me to James, the Epistle of James, chapter 5, reading from verse 7.
Be patient therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord.
Behold, the farmer waits for the precious produce of the soil,
being patient about it, until it gets the early and late rains.
You too be patient; strengthen your hearts,
for the coming of the Lord is at hand.
Do not complain, brethren, against one another,
that you yourselves may not be judged.
Behold, the Judge is standing right at the door.
As an example, brethren, of suffering and patience,
take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.
Behold, we count those blessed who endured.
You have heard of the endurance of Job
and have seen the outcome of the Lord’s dealings,
that the Lord is full of compassion, and is merciful.
One of the problems we have is that we want everything from God here and now. Some do believe also that, before the coming of the Lord, we must be one hundred percent holy. There must be an absolute unity among all believers. There must not be any problem left unsolved.
Because if that is not going to happen, then the Lord will not come back. Well, if this is true, I believe it is going to take maybe another thousand years before the coming of the Lord.
And then what would the coming of the Lord mean if everything was perfect when He came? Because when He comes, He will come with tremendous power.
So I do believe that we can expect His coming soon. I told you about when I visited Jerusalem. I had never seen anything in such bad shape, as far as the children of the Lord were concerned.
And if we were going to wait for them to be one hundred percent holy and perfect, it is going to take a very long time before the Lord will come back to this earth.
That is why we read 1 John. It gives us an idea of what will happen when the Lord comes back. There will be some glorious activity, and something will happen with us.
Beloved, now we are children of God,
and it has not appeared as yet what we shall be.
We know that when He appears, we shall be like Him,
because we shall see Him just as He is.—1 John 3:2
Oh, my heart is really looking forward. I am waiting, expecting the Lord to come. And when He comes, He will come with great power, and something will happen when He comes.
It is not all going to happen down here now. There is something that will happen when the Lord comes. So we must learn to be patient.
For instance, here when James speaks about this, he speaks about social injustice upon the earth. There will never be social justice until the Lord comes. We cannot expect that there will be social justice upon this earth before the Lord comes back.
So we must learn to wait and be patient. Everything is not going to happen overnight. It is not going to happen here and now. We must have a heart that can wait—a patient heart.
We can learn a lot from a farmer. You can learn much about weather conditions from a farmer. For instance, in our country, we have some farmers who are better able to foresee the weather of tomorrow than those who have been studying for eight or ten years at the university, with satellites and computer pictures and everything.
You can also learn from a farmer not to be too optimistic. I do not know how it is with American farmers, but I heard a story while I was in Delaware about an American farmer.
He was asked about the outcome of one year’s crop harvest and whether it had been a good harvest. He said, “No, it was really bad. I lost ten thousand dollars.”
But after inquiring some more, it came to light that last year he had one hundred thousand dollars in profit, while this year he had only ninety thousand in profit. So he lost ten thousand.
Farmers are very special people. I know quite a few of them, and I love farmers.
But what we can learn from farmers is to wait. The farmer has to wait until the work of nature has done what it is supposed to do.
He cannot go out one day and sow in his field, then expect that the next day he will have a harvest. He must wait. It takes time. He must learn to be patient.
He cannot go out there a few days after he has sown the seeds into the soil and take them up to look at them, just to make sure they are growing. He has to trust the word of God in nature.
Also, we have to trust the Lord for the work that is to be completed. It takes time. Sometimes I feel that the Lord has all the time in the whole world, while I cannot wait for what is going to happen and what must happen in my own life.
I want it done now, here and now. I suffer from this instant mania sickness. I want everything done now. If I see something in the Word of God, I want to put it into practice tomorrow. If I get a revelation, I want the whole church to enter into that revelation next Sunday.
I cannot wait. It is a problem that I have. I am confessing my things tonight. This is the last night.
We must learn to wait and be patient, because God is working in His own way. And it seems to me He has got a lot of time.
In Ecclesiastes, there is another Scripture that I would like to quote in this connection, in the eleventh chapter.
Cast your bread on the surface of the waters,
for you will find it after many days.—Ecclesiastes 11:1
In the Danish Bible, it says that when you cast your bread on the surface of the water, there will be a long, long time to wait.
This speaks also about the things we do for the Lord. We want to see quick results. If you pray for somebody, you want the one you pray for to be instantly healed, instantly blessed, instantly helped, or something else instantly. But God takes His time when He does His work.
Further on, in verse 4, it says:
He who watches the wind will not sow;
and he who looks at the clouds will not reap.
Just as you do not know the path of the wind
and how bones are formed in the womb of a pregnant woman,
so you do not know the activity of God who makes all things.
Sow your seed in the morning and do not be idle in the evening,
for you do not know whether morning or evening sowing will succeed,
or whether both of them alike will be good.—Ecclesiastes 11:4-6
In other words, do not look for a quick result. Do the work of God, and be patient. Let Him work in people’s lives and in your own life. He will never be too late, but He is very often late.
We must learn to be patient. We must learn to wait.
Here in James, we can see what causes some of the problems in the church. He mentions complaining in James 5:9:
Do not complain, brethren, against one another,
that you yourselves may not be judged.
Behold, the Judge is standing right at the door.
What is the background of much complaining, dissatisfaction, and even fighting among brothers and sisters in the church? It comes from unfulfilled needs.
There are always unfulfilled needs, and that is quite natural. But this is not the problem. The problem is that we want to get our needs met so quickly. We cannot wait. We have no patience.
Thus we get impatient, and we begin to complain. And sometimes we even begin to fight.
We must learn to wait. And it is a hard thing to wait.
That may be why the Lord has taken me through quite a few experiences where I had to wait. The last time was when we moved the church to a new place for the fifth time.
Last summer, we got notice that we had to be out of the place we rented for the meetings within a few months’ time. This was very surprising, because we had a contract that we could stay there for five years, and we had only been there for two and a half years.
So I had to begin to look for some other place. This is my temperament: the day after, I began to drive my car around Copenhagen, seeing all the real-estate dealers and inquiring for another place.
I think I visited several hundred places, looking at different facilities in the whole area of Copenhagen. When I got the message that we had to be out in a few months’ time, I was quick to try to work.
Today, if I had been able to wait and listen more to the voice of the Lord, I could have saved myself a lot of effort. But that is the way I am. I trust that I will get changed.
After searching for several weeks, finally we found a beautiful hall and office facilities that had been used by a big firm as a recreation area for their employees. It was beautifully done, and there was even a sauna in the place. Everything was perfect.
We felt that this was of the Lord. We had that wonderful feeling you get when you enter into something that is of the Lord. You know, “This is the place. This is where the Lord has prepared for you.”
So we went into negotiations with the real-estate dealer, made a contract, and everything seemed so bright. I called the city administration to inquire whether there was any hindrance for a group of people to meet there, have meetings, singing, music, and whatever we do in the church.
They said they could not see that there should be any hindrance, so we could go ahead. Then I left for the States and came over here last October.
While we were at Highland Lake and had a conference on Long Island, there came a phone call from one of the brothers in the church home in Copenhagen. Some problems had arisen with our new place.
The authorities in the city administration had found an old law from 1937, a law that would forbid any activity other than industry in that particular area and building.
Immediately when this message came, the Lord spoke to me and gave me Luke 18, the old widow who kept pressing. I had the impression that this was the enemy, so we should not give up. We should persist, and we should start to pray.
At that time, I did not realize it would take as long as it did. When I came home, we had applied even to the Ministry of Environment of the Danish government, trying to get permission to use the place. Everywhere they refused us and shut the door.
We were supposed to leave our old facilities on Saturday, January 22. Even at the beginning of January, there was no way to go, no place to take the whole church.
We had only two weeks, and I began to become a bit desperate and impatient, because I knew that somebody would blame me. It is not always pleasant to be in a leadership position.
Sometimes I can identify a bit with Moses in the wilderness, although I make no comparison with him. But I knew that somebody would come and say, “Well, you have not sought the Lord, and what a poor leader you are. Here we are with two hundred people, and we have nowhere to go, no place to worship the Lord. What should we do?”
It was a complete mess. So I prayed and said, “Lord, is there not any way in which You could open up for us? Because I still believe this is the place.”
Then the Lord gave me a Scripture from Hebrews 11, about Abraham, verses 17 through 19.
By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac;
and he who had received the promises
was offering up his only begotten son;
it was he to whom it was said,
“In Isaac your seed shall be called.”
He considered that God is able to raise men even from the dead,
from which he also received him back as a type.—Hebrews 11:17-19
It was as if the Lord said to me, “Just rest. Just relax, Grant. Just be willing to let Me have My way, even to the point of giving up the church.”
This is not easy—to give up the church—because then I had a problem: where to go? I am working in the church.
But I said to the Lord that day that I would be willing. Even if it were His will that we should not meet any longer as a group, perhaps we should divide the whole fellowship into small groups and meet in various homes. I was willing to let it go, if this should be the will of the Lord.
I was willing just to give it up and wait and see what the Lord would do. And such a wonderful rest came into my heart.
Then an elderly brother in the fellowship called me. He said the Lord had spoken to him that we should make one last try: go directly to the Lord Mayor of Copenhagen.
Now, he is a very great man, because he is not only mayor; he has several mayors under him. He is the biggest man in Copenhagen.
I felt that perhaps we should try to go to this man and explain the whole situation, because it was the city administration that had to give us permission.
So he phoned the Lord Mayor and arranged for a meeting on Wednesday morning. We had to be out of the old place the following Saturday. There were only a few days left.
On Wednesday morning, I drove in my car with the whole case. It was a rather huge pile of papers: all the letters we had sent, the replies we had received, and so on.
The elderly brother and I sat down in the office and waited for the Lord Mayor to receive us. We were supposed to see him at nine o’clock in the morning, but then it was five minutes past nine, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes past nine.
I could hear through the door that people were coming and going from his office, the telephone was ringing, and there was a lot of activity. Finally, he opened the door, with his secretary, and invited us into his big office.
The secretary offered us a cup of coffee, and I thought, “At least we get something out of it today.”
We wanted to behave well, because he was a fine man. He was the biggest man in all of Copenhagen, which is the biggest city in all of Scandinavia.
The Lord Mayor saw all my papers. I had prepared a defense speech during the night and put everything in the right order. I had all the points, you know.
Then he looked across the table and said, “Well, I think it is already fixed.”
The elderly brother burst out laughing. Then he looked at me—I think he forgot that the Lord Mayor was in the office—and tapped me on the shoulder, saying, “What are we doing here then?”
It was all fixed. I never opened the papers.
But then we began to speak to the Lord Mayor, and we had the most unique opportunity to witness to that man about the Lord Jesus Christ. For a whole hour he listened. He asked questions—questions about salvation.
After I came out, I realized why the Lord made us wait that long. If we can wait until the hour has come, there is no problem for the Lord to give us a church hall. No problem. He is interested in other matters.
He knew that this man needed to have a testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ.
By the way, during the three months of waiting, the whole church underwent a transformation. There had been some complaining now and then in our fellowship, as in any other fellowship, I guess, if you are normal human beings.
But as soon as the brothers and sisters were confronted with the possibility of losing their spiritual home, it did something to them. There was such a transformation. Suddenly they began to be grateful and give thanks to the Lord for the joy of having a spiritual home and having brothers and sisters.
The nearer we came to the deadline, the more loving they became, because they were faced with the real possibility of having to depart from one another.
I found in my heart that this is so often what happens when we wait. I was tempted to do a little Ishmael thing. I could not wait for this hall.
Right in the middle of the period, I thought, “Well, maybe it is not of the Lord. We will go into a public school and ask if we can have our meetings there.” Which I did.
We got permission to use the auditorium in that public school, but it was a huge place. The loudspeakers were no good, people could not hear what we said, and it was a complete disaster.
That is always what happens when we are impatient and do things just because we cannot wait until God moves.
But when the Lord moved, right on that Wednesday when we got the signal to go ahead, we managed in two days to fix all the papers. On Saturday, January 22, we moved right into the new facilities.
Oh, if we could have a heart to wait patiently before the Lord.
David had to wait. He had to wait for a long time—many years—from the day he was anointed until the day he was actually enthroned as king in Jerusalem.
Although, as we saw last night, he could have made a shortcut to the throne by killing Saul, he decided to wait for the Lord, until the hour of the Lord had come.
He had to go through a very slow process. He had to wait until the day came. All those who run for kingship will have to learn to wait for God’s hour in their life and experience.
Abraham had to wait beyond any human limit of patience. He had to wait until the day came when the son was born and the promise of the Lord was fulfilled.
And thus, having patiently waited, he obtained the promise.
—Hebrews 6:15
We have to learn to wait patiently if we want to obtain the promise and attain to our glorious destiny as kings in the kingdom of God.
Moses had to wait for an extra additional forty years. He could never have anticipated this when he first began to feel zeal for his own people in bondage in Egypt.
When he went out in his own zeal to release them from their sufferings, he could never have anticipated that another forty years would pass before he could do what he felt the Lord had called him to do.
There was nothing wrong with his calling, but there was everything wrong with his timing.
The Lord Jesus, of course, serves as a confirmation of this message concerning God’s time. It is unbelievable to think that the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, for thirty years of His life had to live an ordinary life and wait for the day and time the Lord had set apart for Him to enter public ministry.
Consider His heart, His gifts, and His calling. For Him to see mankind suffer, to watch sinners, and to realize that He was called to release them from their bondage and bring them into redemption and salvation—for Him to wait thirty years before entering His public ministry—it must have been very, very hard.
Even when He entered into His ministry, people saw His quality and gifts, and they wanted to make Him king.
Jesus therefore perceiving that they were intending to come and take Him by force to make Him king, withdrew again to the mountain by Himself alone.
—John 6:15
What did He do on the mountain? He waited for God. He waited for His Father. He waited for the time that His Father had set.
Even He had to wait a long time before He could be enthroned as King.
In John 7, His brothers said to Him:
Depart from here and go into Judea,
that Your disciples also may behold Your works which You are doing;
for no one does anything in secret when he himself seeks to be known publicly.
If You do these things, show Yourself to the world.For not even His brothers were believing in Him.
Jesus therefore said to them,
“My time is not yet at hand, but your time is always opportune.”—John 7:3-8
He was waiting patiently for the time that the Lord had set.
What disqualified Saul as king was exactly this thing we are talking about tonight. He could not wait for the Lord.
Look in 1 Samuel 13:8. When Saul was facing the Philistines:
Now he waited seven days, according to the appointed time set by Samuel.
But Samuel did not come to Gilgal,
and the people were scattering from him.
As I said, the Lord is never too late, but He is very often late. Sometimes He will come in the last minute.
Because in the time when we have to wait, the Lord will do a marvelous work in our hearts. There was no problem for the Lord to give us our new church hall in a matter of a couple of days. But He wanted a new church. He wanted a renewed fellowship.
This is more important to Him. A new church hall can be found and given in a few days’ time, but a renewed church takes longer. Forget it. The Lord is very often late, but He is never too late.
Saul was cracking up. He was getting nervous and desperate because he saw that the people were scattering. They said, “It is no good. Let us go home. The prophet will not come, we cannot have the sacrifice, and we cannot get on with the warfare.”
Humanly speaking, you can understand that he was desperate.
So Saul said, “Bring to me the burnt offering and the peace offerings.”
And he offered the burnt offering.
It came about as soon as he finished offering the burnt offering,
that behold, Samuel came;
and Saul went out to meet him and to greet him.But Samuel said, “What have you done?”
Saul said, “Because I saw that the people were scattering from me,
and that you did not come within the appointed days,
and that the Philistines were assembling at Michmash,
therefore I said, ‘Now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal,
and I have not asked the favor of the Lord.’
So I forced myself and offered the burnt offering.”Samuel said to Saul, “You have acted foolishly.
You have not kept the commandment of the Lord your God,
which He commanded you;
for now the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever.
But now your kingdom shall not endure.
The Lord has sought out for Himself a man after His own heart,
and the Lord has appointed him as ruler over His people,
because you have not kept what the Lord commanded you.”—1 Samuel 13:9-14
His kingdom did not endure because he himself did not endure. He could not wait for the Lord. He did not have a patient heart—a heart to wait. Whereas David waited.
While I was down in Jerusalem, in the Prayer Bible League, we were praying very much for Israel. A sister came to me, and she was very burdened.
She had been living in Jerusalem for a long time, and she said, “Can we pray that Israel finally will get peace now? They are tired to death after thirty-five years of nonstop war. Every day they lose young men in the war now in Lebanon.”
She said, “After all, we are told to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Can we pray that Israel finally may have the peace that they long for?”
It is true: they are tired to death of war in Israel. They tell me that families are giving up too much discipline with their boys because they reckon the boys may soon have to join the army, and many of them may be killed.
So they think, “Why not let them have a time of enjoyment and entertainment while they are still alive?” They have big problems in the schools and in the families because they are so sick of this nonstop state of war.
You can understand how such a desire can arise: “Oh, if we could pray that Israel might get peace now.”
But I said to this sister, “It depends on what kind of peace you want Israel to have.” There is a peace-now movement in Israel. They want to stop all wars and all conflict. They want the PLO to have the West Bank. They are tired, and they want to compromise now.
But the kind of peace we must pray for Jerusalem is God’s peace. God’s peace is something quite different from human peace.
God will never listen to our prayers for peace for Jerusalem if we mean anything other than the peace of God. God’s peace means that some requirements must be met in the people before peace can come to Jerusalem and Israel.
God’s peace is always founded on reconciliation between the people and God. Israel is not yet in that position. They have not yet been reconciled with God.
They have come back to their land, but they have not yet come back to their God.
I was shocked when I walked in the streets of Tel Aviv and saw pornography openly exhibited at the newspaper stands. I was even more shocked when I found out that some of the pornography was produced in Denmark.
Israel cannot have peace now. They cannot have God’s peace until the hour comes when they are reconciled with God.
We shall have to wait. We will go on praying for the peace of Jerusalem, but by this we mean that we will pray until the people have come back to God, been reconciled with God, and found their Messiah.
Then peace—not only to Jerusalem, but to the whole earth.
We must have a heart to wait. The hasty thing is a bad thing.
Also, it is not good for a person to be without knowledge,
and he who makes haste with his feet errs.—Proverbs 19:2
An inheritance gained hurriedly at the beginning
will not be blessed in the end.—Proverbs 20:21
If things are happening too quickly, it will not turn out to be a blessing in the end. We must wait for God to do His work patiently.
He has promised that in these last days He would speed it up and do things in haste. But we must wait for Him to do His work—in Israel, in the church, and in our personal life.
We must trust Him, because to wait is to trust Him. If you cannot wait, it is because you cannot trust Him.
I could not trust Him in the beginning, but I learned the lesson. You can always trust the Lord. He may be late, but He is never too late.
This Scripture is illustrated by what happened to the prodigal son. An inheritance gained hurriedly at the beginning will not be blessed in the end.
The younger brother came to his father and wanted his share of the inheritance. That was all right, because it was his privilege. The only thing wrong was the timing.
I do not believe that the father immediately said, “Well, that is all right. Take it, and God bless you.” I do not think so.
I believe the father had an argument with his younger son. He tried to persuade him: “Wait a few years. Grow up a little more, and then you will be able to administer this kind of money in a much better way.”
But the son insisted. He wanted an instant inheritance. He wanted a quick answer. He insisted so much that the father finally gave in.
This is very often so with our heavenly Father. Because He is a Father, you might just be able to put pressure on Him, and He will give in in order to teach you a lesson, like any other father.
So he insisted, and finally the father said, “Okay. Here is your money.” And that inheritance, given hurriedly in the beginning, turned out to be a curse in the end.
He who makes haste with his feet will easily err.
David also had some problems in his life waiting upon God. You have that story in 1 Chronicles 13, when he wanted to take the ark of the covenant and bring it up to Jerusalem.
Then David consulted with the captains of thousands and hundreds, even with every leader.
David said to all the assembly of Israel,
“If it seems good to you, and if it is from the Lord our God,
let us send everywhere to our kinsmen who remain in all the land of Israel,
also to the priests and Levites who are with them in their cities with pasture lands,
that they may meet with us;
and let us bring the ark of our God to us,
for we did not seek it in the days of Saul.”Then all the assembly said that they would do so,
for the thing was right in the eyes of all the people.—1 Chronicles 13:1-4
It is really amazing. David said, “If it seems good to all the people, and if it seems good to our Lord, let us bring the ark of God to us.”
But when the story goes on, he asked the captains, the leaders, and all the assembly. They all thought it was a glorious idea. But he forgot to wait upon the Lord. He forgot to ask the Lord.
They had a unanimous decision, a democratic decision. David could say, “We have unity in the church in this matter. We all have one heart and one mind to bring the ark of God to Jerusalem.” But that is not enough.
There is no unity without the Head. If the Head has not taken the initiative, the unity of the body is of no significance.
Do not think that if you can get your fellowship to become one and agree on a matter, then you can go ahead and experience the power of God. If you have not learned to wait upon God before you enter into anything, you will fail.
There can be no true unity in the church if the unity is not initiated by the Head.
David forgot about it. He did not seek the Lord. He did not wait upon God, and therefore he failed.
Because he did not wait upon the Lord, he adopted a wrong way of doing the thing. The thing itself was right; he ought to have done it. But he did it in the wrong way because he did not take time to wait for God.
Whenever we encounter God, we deal with a matter of time. Our problem today is that we have not got time for God. We cannot set aside time for God.
Our God is that kind of God who has a lot of time. If you do not have some time, you will not get to know Him, you will not hear from Him, and you will not get directions from Him.
Then you will be tempted to come up with your own bright idea, to find a new cart, a new method, or a new pattern, and do the things of God according to that pattern. And you will fail.
You will not only fail, but you will cause spiritual death in the church because we have not got time.
We have so much death in the church because we do not have a heart to wait upon God. There are so many dead things, dead deeds, and dead words in the church of God today.
We may have become spiritual and know some things in the Word of God. I tell you, you can know the whole Book, every Scripture, but if you do not wait upon God, you will fail anyway.
We have so much knowledge that we think we can handle the affairs of the church right away. We think that because we have been taught, have had some life, and have received some revelation, we can just go ahead by that revelation.
No, we have to wait upon God for Him to show us how to do the things that we know we ought to do.
It is not enough to know that God will build His church. It is important to know how He will build it in your area, in your locality.
It is not enough to have a revelation that God will build His church and then launch out according to a fundamental scriptural pattern. You must be in touch with Him. You must wait on God. You must have time to wait on Him, because He is not easy to find sometimes.
David suffered also from this dangerous virus of instant doing. He so badly wanted to get that ark of God for himself. But because he had no time to wait for God, he did it in the wrong way.
Disaster came out of it, and one man died. David became very fearful of the Lord that day.
The second time, in 1 Chronicles 15:2, he had learned the lesson:
Then David said, “No one is to carry the ark of God but the Levites;
for the Lord chose them to carry the ark of God
and to minister to Him forever.”
If you look into this matter of how they had to transport the ark of God, you will find that it was a very slow process. It had to be carried by the Levites.
And not only that. In 2 Samuel 6:13, there is something else:
And so it was, that when the bearers of the ark of the Lord had gone six paces,
he sacrificed an ox and a fatling.
I do not know whether I have the right interpretation, but it could mean that for every six paces there had to be a sacrifice. Can you imagine? It takes time to sacrifice an ox and a fatling.
Can you imagine that for every six paces they had to stop the whole procession and offer a new sacrifice? Oh, my. That required a heart of patience.
Brothers and sisters, I do feel that by the grace of God and by the Spirit of God, I am touching on something that the Lord wants to say to His people in these last days: we must have time for God.
If we have not got it, we must take it. We must be radical and brutal to make sure that we have time to wait upon God.
Because if we have not got time for God, we are helpless. We live in a situation where death will come into the church because we go on out of our own understanding and with our own ideas.
If we have not got the time, let us buy it and pay the price. Let us cut down our business. Let us cut down our working hours. Let us cut down our entertainment time. Let us cut down every area so that we can get time to wait on God.
Otherwise, we cannot reign or rule with Him, or even overcome the enemy.
It is wonderful about God’s servant Moses, how this man waited and waited and waited for the Lord—to such a degree that the people of Israel in the wilderness got upset with him.
Do we know what really started that awful thing of idolatry when they made the golden calf? Have you noticed what sparked that event? Go with me to Exodus 32, verse 1.
When Moses had gone to be with the Lord and wait upon the Lord, it is amazing to me. In one place, when the Lord called Moses up the mountain, He said, “Just remain here and wait for Me.” Moses had to stand still there and wait. I do not know for how long.
Now when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain,
the people assembled about Aaron and said to him,
“Come, make us a god who will go before us;
as for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt,
we do not know what has become of him.”—Exodus 32:1
The amount of time Moses spent with the Lord was so long that the people thought he had disappeared and resigned from his position.
It does take time to wait on God.
It is said about this servant of God in Exodus 34:29:
It came about when Moses was coming down from Mount Sinai,
and the two tablets of the testimony were in Moses’ hand as he was coming down from the mountain,
that Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone
because of his speaking with Him.
He had been with the Lord, and as it says in another place, he saw the Lord face to face.
In order to come into that position where we can see the Lord face to face, one element is needed: time. Do you have a heart to wait for the Lord?
It took a lot of time until finally Moses was face to face with God, and he talked with Him as a man talks with a man. When he came down, his face was shining with the glory of the Lord.
What we need more than anything else is to find time to wait on God and come to see His face.
I have a good friend in Sweden. Two years ago, his church experienced a major crisis in missionary work. They had missionaries in Pakistan and needed around fifty thousand dollars a year for that part of the ministry.
As they came to the end of that particular year, they had not been able to send the money for the missionaries in Pakistan. They were rather desperate.
Somebody suggested they take up a collection or an offering. But this man is really a man who knows the Lord, so he said, “No, we are not going to take up a collection. We are going to set aside some days and wait on God.”
He did it together with the elders of the church. They went out to a summer house, began to wait upon God, and began to pray.
After they had been there for one or two days, suddenly in their small prayer meeting, one of the brothers began to laugh. He laughed and laughed.
They were amazed and stopped him. They said, “What are you laughing at? This is a serious matter. We lack fifty thousand dollars, and we must have it within a few days.”
The brother said, “Yes, but while we were seeking the Lord and worshiping the Lord, I caught a glimpse of the face of the Lord, and I saw that the Lord was laughing.”
You know, that is virtue.
As he unfolded the vision, they all began to laugh. They went on laughing for hours.
When this Swedish Pentecostal pastor came back to his house late in the evening, his wife opened the door. He said, “Please do not tell me any funny stories, because I have been laughing for hours and I am so tired of it.”
He should not have said that, of course, because then she got curious. He had to tell her, and she began to laugh. So they laughed for another couple of hours that evening.
As they were sitting there, an old sister phoned him. She said, “I have been in prayer, and I just wanted to ask if you could come to my house tomorrow.”
He came to the house of this dear old sister. As he entered, she said, “The Lord just put upon my heart to give some money to the church.” She handed him a cheque.
They needed fifty thousand dollars, and on the cheque was the amount of five thousand dollars. This brother could not believe it because, to his knowledge, something was lacking in the amount—just a zero or two.
When he stood with that cheque, he began to laugh. The sister said, “What are you laughing at?” Then he told her the whole story, and she began to laugh.
She said, “Well, now I understand, because really I thought it should have been more. Would you please go with me to the post office?”
So they went, and she took out of her account another forty-five thousand. This man went home with the whole amount, and they were able to pay on time for the missionary work.
They saw the face of the Lord.
I do believe, dear people of God, that in these critical days we need to see His face.
Psalm 2 tells us that when God looks down upon these earth things—rumors of wars, earthquakes, famines, sufferings—and when He looks upon the enemies who are trying to rebel against His kingdom and authority, He cannot but laugh.
God is so great that He has not even got anything you could call an enemy or an opponent. Satan does not have the outstanding privilege of being called God’s enemy; he is called our enemy, our adversary.
God is too great to have anybody as His opponent. But the church has an enemy. We have an enemy.
And so He laughs. I think we need, by the grace of God, to be allowed to catch a glimpse of a God today who laughs, because we need to laugh too.
We need to laugh that releasing, spiritual laughter over the whole situation, in order not to be depressed.
So, brothers and sisters, it all has to do with a heart of waiting, a heart of patience. It all has to do with this matter: Do we have time to wait upon our God?
So that we can know Him in His glory, be impressed with His majesty, be impressed with His power, come to know His ways, and live according to His heavenly plan.
Unless we have time for Him, to wait upon Him, we cannot enter into kingship and be among those who would reign and rule with Him.
Maybe we have a word of prayer.
Dear Lord, we just want to commit this word to Your Holy Spirit, and ask You to impart it into our inner man.
Lord, use it to bring us into that position of waiting upon You. Oh, Lord, we see today this problem of the busyness of this life and all the things that we have to do.
We do confess, O God, that we have not given You sufficient time. Lord, we want to repent. We want You to have the best time. We want You to have the first priority.
So we want to repent in these last days. We want to come to know You in a more intimate way, to know Your ways, and to look upon Your face.
So, Lord, we ask that You would pierce us tonight with Your Word, so that it may lead us to change our ways.
May we, from this night on, from this day on, enter into this training program of waiting upon God.
We ask it by Your grace and for Your glory, in Your own name. Amen.