Excerpted from
The Low Road to New Heights: Following the Only Path to True Success
By Wellington Boone
As we spend time waiting before God, we begin to put into practice one simple truth: Our time belongs to the Lord of our lives. His timetable is different from ours. So are his plans and his ways of accomplishing them. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:9).
When we toss off hast}' prayers, refusing to wait on God for a response, it is almost always because we believe we know what needs to be done . . . and when . . . and how. Why wait? Often, we are very wrong.
Several years ago, as I saw how people were responding to the word that God had given me when I was interviewed on Christian television, I thought that I should find a way to teach more regularly on national TV. However, my spiritual father, Jay Grimstead, cautioned me to wait. He said it was not quite my time yet, and I should wait on God a little longer. How right he was. As I concentrated on prayer and pastoring my church in Richmond, Virginia, and then responded to requests to travel and speak nationally, God taught me much more that I needed to know, and in the process He began to bring my ministry to the attention of national leaders. By waiting, I allowed God to make the moves His way.
Augustine, the Church father and theological giant of the fourth century, understood that true prayer begins as we set aside our own agendas to listen, and to wait. He warned that those in the Church who only know how to ask God for what they want have a weak faith. He referred to this as an "Ishmael" kind of faith, because it never leads us to the kind of relationship with God where we rise above our earthly needs and come to understand His mind and heart. If we don't understand. His goals, we will not be alert enough in spirit to recognize when they are fulfilled. "Ishmael therefore was in darkness, Isaac in light."
Waiting on God is the first step in giving up our agendas, our plans, our ways, so we can hear His voice. Quite simply, waiting gives us time to realize and acknowledge the presence of another Person as we listen for His voice. Brother Lawrence was a seventeenth-century French monk whose life of simplicity and devotion to God has become a model for many generations. It was said "that his prayer was nothing else but a sense of the presence of God." The goal of prayer is to have fellowship with our Lord, because fellowship is the attitude of life in which we need to walk every day.
The "other Person" in prayer is not just another friend, he is Lord. It is His agenda that is important, not ours. He is weaving together the circumstances of our lives-yes, even the tribulations and trials-into something we cannot see. He has a plan for us beyond our understanding. That is why we can say that prayer is more than just a time to receive "marching orders." It is the way we draw closer to understand the heart of the Father.
Perhaps one of the clearest insights into this truth is Jesus' prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. In the hours before He was to be arrested and crucified, enduring the wrenching loneliness of seeming abandonment by His Father, Jesus prayed with intensity, "Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me" (Matthew 26:39). Though we cannot understand this prayer as fully as it was prayed, we do sense that Christ was looking for the possibility of a way out-another way to accomplish the redemption of the world.
Yet, in the end, Jesus did not resist God's will. He knew His Father's heart. They shared a perfect unity, a perfect love (see John 17:23). That is why Jesus could say to His Father, "[Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done" (Luke 22:42). In this humility, Jesus could submit Himself even to death on the cross. He knew God had a plan and a purpose that could only be realized through His humility. The relationship He had with the Father helped Jesus stay focused on the joy while He endured the pain (Hebrews 12:2).
In the relationship of prayer-the steady practice of God's presence-God teaches us how to give up our concerns and worries so we can hear His voice. Giving our cares to God is one of the steps that leads us to a lifestyle of fellowship-even intimacy. It is an important means that God uses to train us to surrender ourselves to Him. We learn to yield to God not because we are forced, but because of love.
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