Prayer may be indeed waiting upon God, but there is a great deal of prayer that is not waiting upon God.  Waiting on God is the first and the best beginning for prayer.  When we bow in the humble, silent acknowledgment of God’s glory and nearness, ere we begin to pray there will be the very blessing that we often get only at the end.  From the very beginning I come face to face with God; I am in touch with the everlasting omnipotence of love and I know my God will bless me.  Let us never be afraid to be still before God; we shall then carry that stillness into our work; and when we go to church on Sunday, or to the prayer-meeting on week-days, it will be with the one desire that nothing may stand betwixt us and God, and that we may never be so occupied with hearing and listening as to forget the presence of God.

Oh, that God might make every minister what Moses was at the foot of Mount Sinai; “Moses led the people out to meet God,” and they did meet Him until they were afraid.  Let every minister ask with all the earnestness his soul can command, that God may deliver him from the sin of preaching and teaching without making the people feel first of all:  “The man wants to bring us to God Himself.”  It can be felt, not only in the words, but in the very disposition of the humble, waiting, worshiping heart.  We must carry this waiting into all our worship; we will have to make a study of it; we will have to speak about it; we will have to help each other, for the truth has been too much lost in the Church of Christ; we must wait upon God about it.  Then we shall be able to carry it out into our daily life.  There are so many Christians who wonder that they fail; but think of the ease with which they talk and join in conversation, spending hours in it, never thinking that all this may be dissipating the soul’s power and leading them to spend hours not in the immediate presence of God.  I am afraid this is the great difficulty:  that we are not willing to make the needed sacrifice for a life of continual waiting upon God.  Are there not some of us who would feel it an impossibility to spend every moment under the covering of the Most High, “in the secret of His pavilion?” Beloved, do not think it too high, or too difficult.  It is too difficult for you and me to attain, but our God will give it to us.  Let us begin even now to wait more earnestly and intensely upon God.  Let us in our homes sometimes bow a little in silence; let us in our closets wait in silence, and make a covenant, it may be, without words, that with our whole hearts we will seek God’s presence to come in upon us.

What is religion?  Just as much as you have of God working in you, that alone is religion.  And if you want more religion, more grace, more strength and more fruitfulness, you must have more of God.  Let that be the cry of our hearts,—­More of God!  More of God!  More of God!  And let us say to our souls, “My soul, wait thou upon God, for my expectation is from Him.”