We must continually come before the Lord with expectancy. This cannot be emphasized too much. Something happens to people: they come to church, but they do not come with a full expectation that in that place, at that moment, God is going to meet them. Draw nigh to the Lord, and He will draw nigh to you (James 4:8).
In our singing and worship we are doing it in a measure, but we have yet to see what will happen in one service when the people come really expecting God to move. I can’t emphasize that expectancy too strongly. Believe that something will happen!
Sometimes when a change comes, it tears you apart. A situation is changed, and you don’t know what to do. But you should live with expectation, knowing that whatever has been, there is something better to come. Whatever situation you are in, the Lord is not forsaking you. Yet, so often He dries up the brook of Cherith, and the ravens feed you no more; nor is there any water in the stream. That happens so you can move on to the next miracles and to the next way of life.
Perhaps God has put you in a time of shaking, and your unbelief is coming out because you are fearful and you are hanging on for your life. I have done that so much. I have found myself thinking, “Oh, I just can’t let go.” Nevertheless, you have to learn to let go, so that God can lead you into the next step.
God has worked many good things in my life, but one of the greatest things I have to learn is that the best is always yet to come. It is like the marriage feast at Cana when the Lord turned the water into wine at the last. Usually, after people were well drunk they would bring inferior wine, but the governor of the feast said to the bridegroom, “Thou hast kept the good wine until now” (John 2:1–11). The best wine is saved till last, and the Lord has saved the best for us now. That expectancy has to be in your heart. You have to believe that God has something better for you than you have ever known before.
You say, “I’m afraid I’m going to lose something I have.” No, you have to believe God. Remember the word that came from Paul in I Corinthians 3:21, “All things are yours.” Yet we still do not sense the great qualities and blessings, covenants and provisions that are like a storehouse laid up for us, and because we still hang onto many things, we are afraid to make the next step.
Here is an illustration from the Scriptures. You could become very accustomed to manna. You could write books and treatises about manna: “How We Survived for Forty Years on Manna,” “The Vitamin Content of Manna,” “The Mineral Content of Manna,” showing that this is the natural food for us, not processed at all, that it contains within itself natural carbohydrates necessary for energy to march through the wilderness, that man can be sustained on an all-day march by eating only one bowl of manna. Think of all the books and treatises that could be written on manna. Then cross over into the land of Canaan. You have built up quite a life around manna in your mind, and then suddenly, you go out one morning (you have been reading a beautiful book on manna that just came out), you look around, and there is no manna.
“No manna? What are we going to do? There’s no manna!”
This is the day you eat of the old corn of the land. This is the day you go up and rob the granaries of the giants. This is the day you take their vineyards and pull down their high-walled cities, because God has given you this land. Manna was fine, and you hung on to it, but the time has come for change.
God is doing that with us. He is saying, “Come on! You would have stayed on that level forever. How about moving up to a walk with God that you have not had before? Why don’t you open up to change?”
“I’m afraid! I’m afraid!”
Don’t be afraid. You will not lose anything in God; you will gain everything. If you wonder what is going to happen to you next, I will tell you. You are going to seek God, and something wonderful is going to happen to you, something too wonderful to know.
Now they will spring forth, things that you know not of; new things do I declare. And not anything you have known about before lest you would say, “Yes, my heart knew it.” In Isaiah 42:9, God is saying, “I am going to do something so great that when it happens no one will be able to say, ‘I told you it was going to happen.’ ” God wants us to live in that expectancy—that something is about to happen.
You cannot have the Lord deal drastically with you without the ultimate end being joy. This is the way of renewal. The Lord just deals with your heart and shakes you up. Then what a joy, what a peace, what a blessing is there. Sometimes we do not like the chastening, but afterwards it is so joyous. It yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness in them that are exercised thereby-Hebrews 12:11