Be Strong and of Good Courage
The sermon encourages listeners to wait on God in faith and hope, trusting in His goodness, power, and love to strengthen their hearts and bring them blessing and deliverance.
Andrew Murray emphasizes the importance of waiting on the Lord with courage and faith, as expressed in Psalm 27:14. He highlights that true strength comes from trusting in God's goodness, even when we feel powerless against our challenges. Murray encourages believers to maintain hope and to seek God's presence, reminding them that God's love and power are always at work, even when they may not feel it. He illustrates this by comparing waiting on God to basking in the healing warmth of the sun, which brings restoration to the weary soul. Ultimately, he reassures that God's delight is in blessing His children, urging them to come to Him in their weakness.
Text
''Wait on the LORD; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart; wait, I say, on the LORD!'' --Psalm 27:14 (NKJV)
The Pslamist said in the previous verse, ''I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.'' If it had not been for his faith in God, his heart would have given up. But in the confident assurance in God that faith gives, he urges himself and us to remember one thing above all--to wait on God. The deliverance we often wait for is from our enemies, in whose presence we are powerless. The blessings we plead for are spiritual and unseen, things impossible with men. Our heart may well faint and fail. Our souls are unaccustomed to holding intimate fellowship with God. The God we wait on often appears to hide.
We are in such a habit of evaluating God and His work in us by what we feel that it is very likely that on some occasions we will be discouraged because we do not feel any special blessing. Above everything, when you wait on God, do so in the spirit of hope. It is God in His glory, His power, and His love who is longing to bless you.
The blessedness of waiting on God has its root in the fact that He is such a blessed being, full of goodness and power and life and joy. God is love! That is the one and only all-sufficient reason for your expectation. Love seeks out its own: God's delight is to impart himself to His children. Come. However weak you feel, wait in His presence. Just as a weak and sickly invalid is brought out into the sunshine to allow its healing warmth to go through his body, come with all that is dark and cold in you into the sunshine of God's holy, omnipotent love, and sit and wait there. As the sun does its work in the weak who seek its rays, God will do His work in you. Trust Him!
(Excerpted from The Andrew Murray Daily Reader in Today's Language, pg. 26)
Sermon Outline
- The Importance of Waiting on God
- The Nature of God
- The Power of God's Love
- God's love seeks out its own
- God's love is all-sufficient for our expectation
Key Quotes
“Wait on the LORD; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart; wait, I say, on the LORD!” — Andrew Murray
“God is love! That is the one and only all-sufficient reason for your expectation.” — Andrew Murray
“Come. However weak you feel, wait in His presence.” — Andrew Murray
Application Points
- We must learn to trust in God's goodness, power, and love, even when we don't feel His presence.
- Waiting on God is not just about feeling His presence, but about trusting in His promises and character.
- God's love is the all-sufficient reason for our expectation, and we can trust in it to bring us blessing and deliverance.