Read: Acts I:4-5; 2:1-4
Wait for the promise of the Father [and] . .. ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence (Acts 1:4-5).
When I Must Wait For The Promise
Our Lord promised His followers that if they would tarry they would receive the Holy Ghost “not many days hence.” Jesus himself knew that the blessing would come to them on the Day of Pentecost, but the disciples were not told this. They knew it was to be soon; it therefore might be any day or any moment. They were to be in a continuous state of expectancy. Their part was to act in faith upon the word of their Lord. This faith was to be expressed by continued tarrying — not for fifteen minutes, not for an hour, not for a day or for a week — not for any specified time, but “until ye be endued with power from on high” (Luke 24:49).
We also are to tarry for the Holy Spirit until He comes-even when His coming seems long delayed. Sometimes this delay in receiving the Holy Spirit is God’s way of making our experience with Him richer and deeper when He comes.
Too often we expect to come to an altar, make a full consecration, exercise sanctifying faith, and receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit in fifteen minutes. It can happen this way, but we should not count on it as a normal procedure. Only God knows when our human hearts are fully ready to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and He will fill us the moment we are really ready. Our own eager expectation and firm faith are always essential, and we must therefore be careful to maintain that expectation and that faith even though they are not rewarded immediately, in this attitude of faith and eager anticipation we offer our prayer today:
Father, Son, and Spirit, come And with Thine own abide. Holy Ghost, to make Thee room, Our hearts we open wide.
— Wesley’s Hymns