Our situation may demand additional strength. He never is weary. For every new occasion, every new trial, every new labour, we shall get new power. He gains wide outlooks; he breathes a clear and crystalline atmosphere. If we try to rise by means of faith alone we shall be like a bird with one wing. To make our religion a delight and a glory we must surely wait on the Lord with songs of gladness and joy, praising Him more for what He is, and for what He has taught us to know and believe Him to be, than for the good gifts which His bounty hath bestowed.2. Every moment the speed was reduced, and finally the carriages came to a standstill a foot away from those to which they were to be attached. Who, of all men who ever lived upon the earth, was the One who had the sorrow of the world nearest to His heart? There was a time when our human nature seemed to possess much spiritual strength, but there came a time when it was all lost; and from that time, in the experience of every human being, it has had to be renewed. It is for God's glory and our own usefulness.III. 3 I'd part with all the joys of sense To gaze upon thy throne; Pleasure springs fresh for ever thence, Unspeakable, unknown. We belong to a better time, but still we can feel its grandeur. Spasmodic efforts are dangerous. And this is true to life" "They shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run; they shall walk." All the motives which the Gospel presents before him feed his hopefulness and increase his working power. Usually we have, at any rate, just a little strength, and then waiting upon Him means not only prayer and uplooking, but doing His commandments like the angels, who because they do them excel in strength.II. I felt an ardency of soul to be what I know not otherwise how to express, emptied and annihilated; to love Edward M. BoundsThe Essentials of PrayerThe God of all Comfort"Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort; who comforteth us in all our tribulations, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God." That is the teaching of the prophet. In all godly "waiting" there lies the capability of Godward soaring. "They shall renew their strength." Other images are used; those of the runner in the stadium, and the wrestler in the arena; but it is always on the walking that stress is laid. The precept is the same in substance with the exhortation of St. Paul, "Be ye followers of God, as dear children"; or with that of St. James, "Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you." No doubt the allusion is to the velocity with which the eagle soars towards the sun, after the renewal of his feathers.(W. There are two wings in our spiritual ascent faith and obedience. Without warmth in our desires and feelings we shall be found sickly. He must give up all that he loveth for his Beloved, for Jesus will be loved alone above all things. Although we cannot always account for these moods of the soul, we might all experience them more frequently if our habitual attitude were more of a "waiting upon God." The older Jewish commentators imagined they discovered here a reference to an ancient belief that at a certain time the eagle plunged into the sea and bathed off his worn-out plumage, and that afterwards new feathers grew. We all, therefore, belong to it in one sense or another, and cannot pass out of it.(W. Who does not know the temptations of reaction, and the days when the lights burn low?2. All strength apart from God is derived strength, and is consequently measurable, and must come to an end. Dickson, D. D.)Strength by patienceT. "They Shall Mount up with Wings" (Isa. Waiting on God not only gives strength, it gives inspiration. A. IV. Though it seems tiny, it is real fire, and it can set the world ablaze. Forgetting the things that are behind, etc.2. I. My soul! They wait on God, asking counsel, seeking strength, and imploring pardon and peace. Men who live far from God are apt to grow sick and weary of the humdrum monotony of their daily life, especially if they have to bear some continuous burden from which they see little hope of escape. (3) But the essence of spiritual strength resides in the will A fixed purpose is that which more clearly characterise the genuine Christian than anything else. "(5) The only other ingredient of spiritual strength is zeal, zeal according to knowledge. Tymms. There are also occasions when the best thing the believer can do is to sit still and cease from his own exertions; when everything must be looked for from God. And what does God reveal in contrast with His great omnipotence? This threefold description of mounting up, running and walking, presents three aspects of the same character. Alexander MaclarenExpositions of Holy ScriptureThe Secret of Immortal Youth'Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. They that wait upon the Lord shall "change," that is, they shall have another strength bestowed upon them, and such as will be more useful to them. Then I repaired to one of the tonic springs and "waited" on its bubbling waters, trusting them and taking them into my system. And his incomparableness26. It is well to rise up on wings of eagles, but now and then we must come to the level of our fellow-creatures, and in their service we are to run and not be weary. The inimitable simplicity which characterizes every John NewtonMessiah Vol. Wrong may prosper for a time. To wait on the Lord is the drawing nigh unto Him, to pour out our wants before Him, though He knows them so well, to plead the necessities arising out of our own ignorance, waywardness, and poverty of soul, to ask for His light to shine in our darkness, to clear our minds of the mists and fogs of native prejudice and of traditional error, to make plain before us our path of duty, and to keep our feet steadfast therein, to take into His loving hands the discipline and correction of our hearts, and to make us willing to undergo it, to keep us from all vanity and lies, and from every form of subtle self-deception, so that we may ever be true to Him and to ourselves. Spasmodic efforts are dangerous. If not, some other hope will be cherished, for not to hope is not to live. A. Health, hope, and desire pass quickly away together, and a loaded table becomes an object of revulsion. And, at any cost, let him who speaks from the mouth of the true God himself be true. The period of fresh, wild enthusiasms; the season of zeal without discretion, when all sorts of impossibilities are dreamed, all sorts of vain things attempted. )Recuperative powerF. There is a type of soul which soars like the eagle, its daring eye not flinching from the dazzling sun itself but drawn by it higher and higher with steadfast gaze till it is lost to sight of those on earth below. They earnestly desire the enjoyment of His favour. "Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father." xl. There are many things for which we can only ask and then wait in quiet stillness, things which we cannot help God to give us, things which God Himself bestows without our aid, if we are ever to possess them. First, the purged ear of the prophet hears the divine command to him and to his brethren--Comfort Jerusalem with the message of the Alexander MaclarenExpositions of Holy ScriptureThe Shepherd and the Fold Thou hast guided them in Thy strength unto Thy holy habitation.' Forgetting the things that are behind, etc.2. God is so near. This posture of mind becomes the ignorance and guilt and unworthiness of the creature; the perfection, the wisdom and love of such a Being.5. There, throughout, we find the Divine life in man described as a "walk." Chapters 40-55 lift up the promise of redemption for a people who are experiencing the judgment about which the prophet warned in the earlier chapters. (2) For the means, we may take them thus: In the renewing of their repentance; in the renewing of their covenant; in the renewing of their obedience; in the renewing of their faith.(T. Our Lord trusted to faith to subdue humanity. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. These two things seem very far away: man with his faintness, God with His eternity and inexhaustible omnipotence. It is the daily walk along the beaten path that reveals the depth and sincerity of our religion. And this we cannot set aside. I turn now to dwell on THE NATURAL EFFECTS OF WAITING ON THE LORD, as stated by the prophet, and vouched for by myriads of the faithful and devout in all ages.1. He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might He increaseth strength.' Hidden in that secret pavilion we see things as they really are. THE DUTY HERE RECOMMENDED. Alexander, D. D.I. The result will be as it is figuratively expressed: We shall mount up; we shall run; we shall walk.I. There is nothing that is so helpful to a soul as the contact of another soul.6. Is this really so? The strength of wit, and reason, and understanding, and memory, and the like, while their heart and will and affections have no saving work at all upon them. The word does not say anything about the rate at which they go, and is used of the flight of the arrow through the air, or of the way of the ship driven before the wind, or of the gait of a swift-footed animal, or of the ordinary pace of man. There is something very grand in these august and mysterious voices which call one to another in the opening verses of this chapter. These are all comprehended in one expression, "waiting on the Lord. 29 He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Greed, unrighteousness, sensuality, may appear to be more stable than granite. In consequence of the exhausted spirits of the weary traveller never being renewed, some who did run well are hindered, and halt in their career; while others adopt altogether a retrograde movement, return to the path of their former delights, apostatise from the faith, and become worse than infidels.2. (2) The continuance of this motion. But I believe that the preaching of the high ideal, divorced from the preaching of its attainment by the power of the Lord Jesus Christ, is the reason for more than one-half the cynicism that you find amongst men from thirty-five to forty at the present day. Such strength of rising as this can only come by closest communion with God. He who has only seen the sorrow, the grief, the sin of the world has not penetrated to the depth of the problem. The justified believer derives strength to advance to closest fellowship with God from the hope that he may meet Him in likeness of character. 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