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THE GOD OF OUR SALVATION

"My soul waiteth only upon God; from him cometh my salvation "-Psalm 62:1 (A.S.V.). If salvation truly comes from God and is entirely His work, just as our creation was, it follows that our first and highest duty is to wait on Him and to do that work which pleases Him. Waiting then becomes the only way to the experience of a full salvation the only way to truly know God as the God of our salvation. All the difficulties which are brought forward, as keeping us back from full salvation, have their cause in this one thing: the defective knowledge and practice of waiting upon God. All that the Church and its members need for the manifestation of the mighty power of God in the world is the return to our true place, the place that belongs to us, both in creation and redemption, the place of absolute and unceasing dependence upon God. Let us strive to see what elements make up this most blessed and necessary waiting upon God. It may help us if we discover the reasons why this grace is so little cultivated. We must feel how infinitely desirable it is that the Church, that we ourselves, should learn its blessed secret at any price. The deep need for this waiting on God lies equally in the nature of man and the nature of God. God, as Creator, formed man to be a vessel in which He could show forth His power and goodness. Man was not to have, in himself, a fountain of life or strength or happiness. The ever-living and only living One was to each moment communicate to man all that he needed. Man's glory and blessedness was not to be independent, or dependent upon himself, but dependent on a God of such infinite riches and love. Man was to have the joy of constantly receiving from the fullness of God. This was his blessedness as an unfallen creature. When he fell from God, he was still more absolutely dependent on Him. There was not the slightest hope of his recovery out of his state of death, but in God, His power and mercy. It is God alone who began the work of redemption. It is God alone who continues and carries it on each moment in each individual believer. Even in the regenerate man, there is no power of goodness in himself. He has and can have nothing that he does not each moment receive. Waiting on God is just as indispensable, and must be just as continuous and unbroken, as the breathing which maintains his natural life. It is then because Christians do not know their relationship to God as absolute poverty and helplessness, that they have no sense of the need of absolute and unceasing dependence, or of the unspeakable blessedness of continually waiting on God. But, once a believer begins to see it and consent to it-that he must, by the Holy Spirit, each moment receive what God each moment works-waiting on God becomes his brightest hope and joy. As he begins to understand how God, as God, as infinite Love, delights to impart His own nature to His child as fully as He can-how God is not weary of keeping charge of his life and strength -- he wonders why he ever thought that God could not be waited on all day. God unceasingly giving and working and His child unceasingly waiting and receiving; this is the blessed life. "Truly my soul waiteth upon God; from Him cometh my salvation." First, we wait on God for salvation. Then, we learn that salvation is only to bring us to God and teach us to wait on Him. Then, we find what is better still, that waiting on God is itself the highest salvation. It is ascribing to Him the glory of being All; it is experiencing that He is All to us. May God teach us the blessedness of waiting on Him!

My soul, wait thou only upon God!