Patience is not indifference; patience conveys the idea of an immensely strong rock withstanding all onslaughts. The vision of God is the source of patience, because it imparts a moral inspiration. Moses endured, not because he had an ideal of right and duty, but because he had a vision of God. He "endured, as seeing Him Who is invisible." A man with the vision of God is not devoted to a cause or to any particular issue; he is devoted to God Himself. You always know when the vision is of God because of the inspiration that comes with it; things come with largeness and tonic to the life because everything is energized by God. If God gives you a time spiritually, as He gave His Son actually, of temptation in the wilderness, with no word from Himself at all, endure, and the power to endure is there because you see God.

"Though it tarry, wait for it." The proof that we have the vision is that we are reaching out for more than we have grasped. It is a bad thing to be satisfied spiritually. "What shall I render unto the Lord?" said the Psalmist. "I will take the cup of salvation." We are apt to look for satisfaction in ourselves - "Now I have got the thing; now I am entirely sanctified; now I can endure." Instantly we are on the road to ruin. Our reach must exceed our grasp. "Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect." If we have only what we have experienced, we have nothing; if we have the inspiration of the vision of God, we have more than we can experience. Beware of the danger of relaxation spiritually.

The life of Moses was a much-enduring one. He endured the banishment from palatial surroundings and the most brilliant court then in existence; he endured the forfeiture of privilege and the renunciation of splendid prospects; he endured the flight from Egypt and the wrath of the king; he endured the lonely exile in Midian, where for years he was buried alive; he endured the long trudge through the wilderness at the head of a slave people, whom he sought to consolidate into a nation; he endured the ill manners and the countless provocations of a forward and perverse generation; he endured the lonely death on Nebo and the nameless grave that angels dug for him there! And here we have the secret of his wondrous fortitude disclosed to us:

“He persevered because he saw him who is invisible.”

He realized the presence of God. He lived in the consciousness, “Thou God seest me.” He looked up and had an habitual regard to the heavenly and eternal. In the upper chambers of his soul, there was a window that opened skyward and commanded a view of things unseen. As an old author puts it, “He had a greater view than Pharaoh in his eye, and this kept him right.” Yes, and this will keep any of us right: to live under the sense that God is overlooking us—to walk by faith and not by sight. “There is nothing,” says a great modern preacher, “that enables a man so well to carry on things that are terraqueous and material, as to have in ascendancy every day that part of his nature which dwells with the invisible.” S. LAW WILSON

There are times when everything looks very dark to me—so dark that I have to wait before I have hope. Waiting with hope is very difficult, but true patience is expressed when we must even wait for hope.

When we see no hint of success yet refuse to despair, when we see nothing but the darkness of night through our window yet keep the shutters open because stars may appear in the sky, and when we have an empty place in our heart yet will not allow it to be filled with anything less than God’s best—that is the greatest kind of patience in the universe.

It is the story of Job in the midst of the storm, Abraham on the road to Moriah, Moses in the desert of Midian, and the Son of Man in the Garden of Gethsemane. And there is no patience as strong as that which endures because we see “him who is invisible” (Hebrews 11:27).

It is the kind of patience that waits for hope.

Dear Lord, You have made waiting beautiful and patience divine. You have taught us that Your will should be accepted, simply because it is Your will. You have revealed to us that a person may see nothing but sorrow in his cup yet still be willing to drink it because of a conviction that Your eyes see further than his own.

Father, give me Your divine power—the power of Gethsemane. Give me the strength to wait for hope—to look through the window when there are no stars. Even when my joy is gone, give me the strength to stand victoriously in the darkest night and say, “To my heavenly Father, the sun still shines.”

I will have reached the point of greatest strength once I have learned to wait for hope. GEORGE MATHESON

Strive to be one of the few who walk this earth with the ever present realization—every morning, noon, and night—that the unknown that people call heaven is directly behind those things that are visible.

In Hebrews 11:27, we read that Moses “persevered because he saw him who is invisible.” Yet in the above passage, exactly the opposite was true of the children of Israel. They persevered only when their circumstances were favorable, because they were primarily influenced by whatever appealed to their senses, instead of trusting in the invisible and eternal God.

Even today we have people who live an inconsistent Christian life because they have become preoccupied with things that are external. Therefore they focus on their circumstances rather than focusing on God. And God desires that we grow in our ability to see Him in everything and to realize the importance of seemingly insignificant circumstances if they are used to deliver a message from Him.

We read of the children of Israel, “Then they believed his promises.” They did not believe until after they saw—once they saw Him work, “then they believed.” They unabashedly doubted God when they came to the Red Sea, but when He opened the way and led them across and they saw Pharaoh and his army drowned—“then they believed.” The Israelites continued to live this kind of up-and-down existence, because their faith was dependent on their circumstances. And this is certainly not the kind of faith God wants us to have.

The world says that “seeing is believing,” but God wants us to believe in order to see. The psalmist said, “I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living” (Psalm 27:13 NASB).

Do you believe God only when your circumstances are favorable, or do you believe no matter what your circumstances may be? C. H. P.

Faith is believing what we do not see, and the reward for this kind of faith is to see what we believe. SAINT AUGUSTINE