This is a difficult discipline really to understand. We understand the discipline of going on—this suits our impatience and our littleness; but the discipline of standing still, simply waiting, doing nothing, who can understand that? And yet this is the way in which we are sometimes trained. How shall we accept it?
You want the appointment now; you want to come into your blessing today; you want the answer to the great question you have put, immediately; and God says,
“No, not today, nor tomorrow, nor this year, but by and by.”
How do you take that answer? Do you fret, chafe, kick, rebel? or do you say,
“Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in Thy sight” (Matt. 11:26).
If you can say this, your lesson has been learned; you are matured under the blessed and all-comforting sun of God’s glory. This is the last conquest of grace, the supreme acquisition of the soul, to have no will but His, to be ready to stand, to go to fight, to wait, to suffer, saying always,
“Not my will, but Thine be done” (Luke 22:42).