“Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

“You are witnesses of these things.

“And look, I am sending forward the promise of My Father upon you.

“But you are to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”

-Jesus, Luke 24:46-49

Stay? Wait? What?

To me, once the objective is fixed, then it’s full speed ahead. Sometimes even sooner.

But the objective is not enough. Power is needed. And not just any power; power from on high, the promise of the Father, sent by Jesus.

A vector has direction and magnitude. Direction has no quantity. There is no such thing as more or less direction.

But the nature of magnitude is gradient. In fact, that is the very point (so to speak). The questions of a vector are: where is it pointing (direction); and how much is the magnitude.

God’s answer: THIS MUCH. Because it is Him.

God gives us both direction and magnitude. Both.

We are often pining to know God’s will. To know His direction. This job or that one? Move here or there? Invest time, money and effort in this manner or not? Once answered, my default intention is to act immediately.

God says wait. This grinds my gears. I want action. I want results. I want it now. Once I think I know what action it is that God wants, I think that is enough. Hardly.

Wait. Wait in the city. I like mountains. I like open seas. Cities are fine, but they are not the place I want to wait. Cities are a place for action, for work, and for community. The power in the person of His Holy Spirit is not to be given to me alone, but to be given in community. Cities are handy for this.

Wait in community. One-hundred twenty waited to be “clothed with power from on high.” The immediate result was 3,000 were saved in that first day, and an unparalleled movement of 2,000 years and counting was launched. That is power worth waiting for.

Wait to be clothed with power. Is being “clothed” merely external? I think of power as an internal source, and it is. But this reference to being clothed is a reference to baptism. “Baptism” has become an obscure word, and distractingly religious. We have no satisfactory native English equivalent for the Greek, “baptisma,” and so it is transliterated into the made up English word “baptize.” Baptisma, i.e., baptism, is roughly a combination of wash, flood, fill, and immerse. And “clothe.”

If one stands under a massive waterfall, one experiences all these effects at once. Or if one soaks porous wool in a vat of crimson dye, the wool is both immersed into the dye, and the dye soaks into the wool. Experts on such things say that dyeing is more effective if the dye is heated, acid is used, and the wool is soaked longer.

The dyed wool appears red on the outside. But it is actually red through and through. The dye soaks into every fiber, not just around each fiber, but actually in to the fiber itself. The dye is in, out, all around, especially the longer it is soaked.

So it is with the promise of the Father. Clothe, yes, to be sure. But He hardly stops there. To be “clothed” is to be dunked into the Holy Spirit, to be saturated with Him, and to soak there for a while. It is to be immersed into the Holy Spirit, and for Him to be immersed in me. Heat, acid and patience here can be a useful thing.

A generation or more ago, some used to talk of “tarrying” for the Holy Spirit. Now, tarrying is often thought of negatively, as dallying or wasting time. Our culture does not value musing, or a contemplative life. Some things take time. Babies gestate. Seeds germinate. Plants grow, and a harvest takes a season. Maturation takes time.

This is why I don’t like fishing. It seems boring, sitting there with a pole in my hand, nothing happening, not doing anything. The action, if there is any, is unseen. My experiences fishing were usually so unproductive that the waiting really did seem like a waste of time, and hardly inspired more of it.

God is not in a hurry. He is purposeful. Jesus said to wait. This is not inactivity or passivity. It is anticipatory. It is active. It is hopeful, forward looking. And something is happening, though unseen, and not of my own effort.

So – wait for it. Wait for it. Wait for it. Wait for Him.

LORD, I wait for You and Your power. I give up rushing ahead in my own strength. Fill me with Your power, in Your timing, to do Your will.

~~~