Learning To Wait
by Ray Prinzing

"If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you."                                                                                           (John 15:7)

Abiding does not indicate a feverish activity, nor does it indicate a passive state, it is simply a state of being of living in Him,"  There is a beautiful example in the record of Mary and Martha.  (Luke 10:38-42).  Mary sat at His feet, to hear and receive what He had to say.  Martha was troubled about doing, while Mary was abiding.  For all of Martha's strenuous activity, she did not hear a word of what the Master taught Mary.  Methinks, that some people get so involved in their religious labours that they know less of the mind and purpose of God for this day, the harder they work in their programs. If our occupying is in harmony with abiding and waiting upon the Lord, then our understanding will be developed progressively, and we shall truly "grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ."

One day Simeon "came by the Spirit into the temple,"  (Luke 2:27) and saw the child Jesus, and recognized that this was the Salvation of the Lord.  We specifically note the word "by" from a Greek word translated three ways, in, with, and by, He did not start his abiding after he came into the temple, but he came WITH the Spirit, IN The Spirit, and By the Spirit, thus his abiding was continuous.  Had the God of Israel purposed for him to have met Mary and the child Jesus on the steps of the temple, he would still have known it was the Salvation of the Lord, for location did not alter his abiding.

"The upright shall dwell in Thy presence."  (Psalm 140:3).  Thus, abiding implies a fixedness in our position and relationship with God.  Most of man's wishy-washiness is not in his activity, but in his thinking. "A double minded man is unstable in all his ways."  (James 1:8).  One day he is sure he is in the will of the Lord, the next day he questions it.  Such instability disrupts the abiding.  There is need today to learn to dwell in His presence, to know that "Lo, I am with you always," both in God's being with us, and that we are with Him, for "in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
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