The Purity of Waiting

This morning when I came to prayer I immediately saw a picture I have received before: a long line of us, side-by-side along the seashore, all standing still and looking expectantly out to sea. There was a sense of resolute waiting – that we had been waiting for a while but still refusing to look elsewhere. These are those who have turned their backs on the world, with its distractions and temptations, and who are waiting for what is to come; focused solely on Jesus, waiting for His arrival, His command.
We know something is coming and we don’t want to miss it.
And I heard the phrase “let striving cease” – to drop all busy effort and driven-ness, or fretting over what we should do. Looking it up took me to Psalm 46:10: “stop your striving and recognise that I am God” (NET). It is also translated as ‘stop fighting’ or ‘calm down’, or in the Amplified version: “Be still and know (recognise and understand) that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations! I will be exalted in the earth”
This is something that God has said often during this past season: to be still and know Him. And I believe He is asking us to hold our positions in that place of waiting, not to rush into any appearance of busy-ness, lest we miss what is coming.

I am generally quite happy to be in that place of set-apart-ness, though it does sometimes bother me that it feels indulgent to be just gazing on Him when there are people lost and dying in sin. But whenever I have mentioned that to God I have felt again that His answer would be found in the waiting – so I have waited still, trusting that I am not missing something

Then God took me to Ezekiel 42, where Ezekiel had a vision of priestly rooms around the holy place in the temple. These were individual chambers set apart for the consumption of holy things (the sacrifices) and for changing into/ out of the holy garments.
v14 “once the priests enter the holy precincts they are not to go into the outer court until they leave behind the garments in which they minister, for these are holy. They are to put on other clothes before they go near the places that are for the people”
v20 “He measured the wall on all four sides. Each wall was eight hundred seventy-five feet. The wall separated the holy from the ordinary”
And I received a real sense that just as these priestly chambers were a place of transition, from ministering to the Lord, to moving among the world, so we are still in that place of holy separation to Him, just focusing on Him – and a season is coming when He is going to release us back into the world in a fresh anointing – and we will be able to live in that place of dual commission: to minister to Him in the Holy Place, and then to go into the world in the power received in His presence.

And I heard Him say again, as it says in Luke 24:49, to “wait… until you have received power from on high” There are many distractions in the world and in our religious efforts, but there is a purity in just waiting; standing still and refusing to move until we see what He has promised – and the pure in heart will see God.