Nancy B. Morris

If our GOAL is Revival, we will be quite unbalanced when it comes. If our goal is God, we will be able to walk with Him calmly and steadfastly through years of waiting and through the joys and victories of a season of refreshing. Christ crucified and risen is not only the Door, and the Way, but the End also. It is our personal relationship to Him which counts more than anything else. Oh, the need for men and women who know their God! The Church of Christ will only arise militant, triumphant, an "exceeding great army," when individuals get rightly related to God.”

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Hugh D. Brown

This season of waiting is always an essential qualification for successful service. God would have His children realize the utter inadequacy of all human means to accomplish His gigantic purposes, that thus the praise and glory might be afterwards ascribed exclusively to Him. The disciples were given ten days to review the field of battle, to recognize the difficulties that bristled round on every side, to measure the adversaries' strength, and to understand their own helplessness and weakness; thus were they driven to their knees in earnest, anxious prayer. Then came the answer. The promise was fulfilled, and the power stored up in the almighty Savior was brought down to His disciples in the person of the Holy Spirit.

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Andrew Murray

Beware in your prayers, above everything else, of limiting God, not only by unbelief, but by fancying that you know what He can do. Expect unexpected things,"above all that we ask or think." Each time, before you Intercede, be quiet first, and worship God in His glory. Think of what He can do, and how He delights to hear the prayers of His redeemed people. Think of your place and privilege in Christ, and expect great things!

D. E. Hoste

It is morally impossible to exercise trust in God while there is failure to wait upon Him for guidance and direction. The man who does not learn to wait upon the Lord and have his thoughts molded by Him will never possess that steady purpose and calm trust, which is essential to the exercise of wise influence upon others, in times of crisis and difficulty.

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prayer

faith

hope

grace

The Rock of Ages

(1) Perishing with thirst, the Israelites were let by Moses to the face of the rock in Horeb. Then the lawgiver lifted up his rod and smote the rock at God's command upon its naked face. Immediately it burst open, and from the cleft there poured a living stream, running through the camp in rivulets and floods of living water, until the thirsty thousands drank, and drank again, and gave their children and their cattle to drink until their thirst was fully satisfied. And they praised God for His great deliverance.

This incident has been applied with full Scriptural authority to the crucifixion of the Savior. He for us, was smitten by the rod of the Lawgiver and Judge as our sacrifice and substitute, and from His pierced side there flows for us the water of life, where we can drink of His boundless mercies.

(2) The Rock of Ages reminds of the rock in Kadesh: the type of Christ, a fuller and more perfect Savior. Forty years after the rock of Horeb was smitten, the camp of Israel came to Kadesh. The old story was repeated again. Thirsty and hungry they murmured instead of praying, and once again their lawgiver led them to the rock. This time the command was different. He was not to smite the rock as before, but to simply speak to it, and the promise was given that the water should immediately gush forth.

In a moment of haste and disobedience, he exceeded his orders and smote the rock repeatedly with words of irritation, perhaps of unbelief. God honored His promise by sending the water abundantly again, but He was grieved with His servant for disobeying the explicit command; and for this offense Moses was excluded from the promised land. The waters, however, came forth, and the people drank abundantly, and the river continued to flow through the desert.

This is the type of the deeper fulness of Christ our Savior, and of the infinite grace of the Holy Spirit, which is simply waiting the call of faith on the part of the believer. This is not the atonement which first opened the rock of salvation for us; but is the deeper fulness of the Holy Spirit, sanctifying and satisfying the soul.

The word "Kadesh" means righteousness, or holiness, and so this is the type of Christ our Sanctifier and Satisfier. This does not teach us of the Holy Spirit procured and sent down from heaven through the finished work of Christ, but the Holy Spirit already given and simply waiting the call of faith to be received.

We do not need now to smite the rock, to crucify Christ again, or to go through a desperate struggle and strain. We need simply to look and live, to take and have, to speak the simple words of trust, "Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove," and He answers quickly to our cry, and our prayer is changed to the song of praise.

(3) The Rock of Ages looks back to another beautiful picture: "For they drank from a spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ."

What can this mean? "spiritual rock that followed them." Not that the rock moved through the desert, but the river that ran from the rock followed them through the desert. The rock followed them with its floods of life and cleansing.

The Psalmist tells us that when once in the desert they were perishing for want of water, they simply gathered in a little circle upon the burning sands and with their staves dug a little well in the sand, and lifted their voices to God in song of praise. Immediately the waters sprang up from the depths below and overflowed again, as at Horeb and Kadesh, from the subterranean springs.

So the Rock of Ages sends its living fountains all along our way and although the desert may be all around us and the wells may seem dry, yet faith has only to make room and lift up the song of praise even in the hottest desert, and immediately the waters will spring forth in abundance, and we shall sing again.

by A.B. Simpson