We must learn to wait. There are times when the righteous response is to wait on the Lord for His direction, even if the time of waiting extends to many years. Although we are not out trying to save the world while we are waiting, we are credited with righteousness. Why? Because we are obeying God. The correct response is to wait, and it is the correctness of the response that brings righteousness.

Then there are times when the Lord tells us to get busy because the time is short. Now we have to keep looking to the Lord for strength and wisdom so our efforts are precisely what He desires. Now our response is to act, and we act in obedience to His will. Therefore righteousness is ascribed to us. It would not be ascribed to us if we did not act when He told us to but kept on waiting instead.

It is the response to God that brings righteousness, not the fact that we believed without doing anything.

We cannot add to the marvelous salvation that has come to us through the Lord Jesus Christ. We cannot add one drop to it. But we have to work it out. The correct response, the response that brings righteousness, is to work out our salvation.

How do we work it out? By looking to God day and night for His Presence, His will.

The Lord Jesus told us in the fourteenth chapter of the Book of John that He would come to us and not to the world. He was not speaking here of His descent in glory when every eye would see Him. Rather He was speaking of His coming to us personally to prepare us to be with Him where He always is, that is, in the center of the Person of the Father.

I do not know about past eras but I do know the Lord is coming today to each Christian who is performing His will. He is very real today. All we have to do is to look up to Him with a pure heart, desiring His will, and sooner or later He becomes real to us.

Look up to Jesus right now and see if you do not become aware of His Presence.

But you always must do what He commands. True faith, as we have said, is our response to the immediate will of God for our life.

The Lord has a present truth for every generation. Today in America the Lord Jesus is standing at the door of our heart. He wants to come in and drive out the moneychangers, so to speak. He wants to drive out our love for the evil world spirit. He wants to drive out our slavery to the bondages of sin in our flesh and soul. He wants to drive out our self-will and self-love until our will is in total agreement with His will.

We now are in the spiritual fulfillment of the Jewish convocations of Blowing of Trumpets and the Day of Atonement. We are moving past the Jewish convocation of Pentecost.

To be continued.