I read somewhere about a lady who brought her watch in to be repaired. She told the watch repairman that the problem seemed to be that the watch just wouldn’t run. She wound it and wound it up each day but it would not run. The man looked at the watch and looked at the lady and told her: "Lady, your problem is that this watch doesn’t run by winding it. It must have a battery. All of the work you’ve been doing won’t make that watch run. All it needs is internal power."
I wonder if we have been winding and winding and see no movement in our life?
Christianity is not a wind-up philosophy; it is a relationship with a living Lord Jesus Christ requiring internal power.
120 disciples are gathered together waiting, as Jesus had instructed them to do. What are they waiting for? In Acts 1.4, Jesus ordered the disciples not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father. That baptism of the Holy Ghost came to a people who were waiting. God aims to exalt himself by working through those who wait for him.
God didn’t just send the disciples out into the world at the beginning. He told them first to wait. He wanted them to know that the mission to go into the whole world was not going to be accomplished with mere dedication or human commitment. It was going to take a literal act of God to make it happen. They had to wait—until endued with power from on high!
Wait? Just sit and do nothing? I like the explanation I heard one preacher give concerning waiting: “The individual in a restaurant that ‘waits’ on the table is called a ‘waiter.’ This ‘waiter’ does not just sit and do nothing, rather he performs the chore of ‘waiting’ on a table. He ushers food, he fills glasses, he carries requests from the table to the chef, he is busy ‘waiting.’ So is the Christian, as he waits on God. He prays, worships, witnesses and seeks to please his Lord and Master.”
Are you waiting? Or just winding?
