What does it mean to wait on God?
How do you hear God’s voice and follow God’s direction?
Lettie Cowman provided a 1936 case study that touches Eastern Europe even today.
Rees Howells intervenes
In 1936, Lettie Cowman toured Oriental Missionary Society (OMS) ministries in Japan, Korea, and China.
She returned to her Hollywood, California base exhausted. Her doctor told her to end her traveling.
Except a letter awaited her from Bible College of Wales president Rees Howells. He asked her to be the keynote speaker that summer at his first Every Creature Missionary and Intercessory Conference.
She’d never met Howells before. She knew nothing of him.
But, as was her custom, Lettie decided to wait on the Lord for direction. She prayed about the invitation until she had peace that God wanted her to go.
Over her doctor’s objections, Lettie caught a train across the United States to New York where she boarded a ship to Wales.
Rees and Elizabeth Howells met her at the dock and took her to the school.
She told the OMS story of the Great Village Campaign over five nights to great interest.
But then Lettie’s story got interesting.
“Wait on God” until He tells you what to do.
After the convention, Howells asked Lettie to remain in her room to pray. “We will send meals. God has something to tell you. ”
What does that mean? How do you wait on God?
Early in her Christian life, she’d learned the secret.
(OMS archives)
Lettie spent hours reading her Bible and searching for answers to her questions. Her time of prayer and searching the Bible lay at the heart of her faith and confidence.
Lettie trusted that God would answer her question, but the answer had to “line up” with the truth of Scripture.
Asking questions and seeking answers—with plenty of verses in between—helped Lettie wrestle through a subject with the Bible on her lap and her heart open to hear God.”
The Visionary Behind Streams in the Desert (to be published in 2022)
Rees Howells presented her with an opportunity to step out of time for as long as she needed.
As Professor George P. Pardington explained:
Our hearts are like a sensitive photographer’s plate; and in order to have God revealed there, we must sit at His feet a long time. . . . Our lives must be quiet and restful if we would see God. The vision of God always transforms human life.”
Streams in the Desert, September 18
The answer surprised her.
At 6:00 am on Sunday morning, August 10, 1936, the Lord speaks:
“I sanctified thee a prophet unto the nations.” She sees that before she was born, God planned her life.
She is guided to Psalm 139. She is awed. Even in her ancestry God had her in mind. She wonders what it means to be ordained, “a prophet unto the nation.” It is too strange to take hold of all at once.”
The Vision Lives p. 134
Wait on God, yes, but how about a confirmation?
But, when you wait on God and believe He’s given an answer, you need confirmation.
At six o’clock Sunday morning, August 10, 1936, she read in Jeremiah 1:5: “I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.”
The Vision Lives p. 135
Why that verse?
(OMS archives)
Something about it jumped out to her.
Lettie finally left her room to attend the chapel service that morning.
A missionary took the pulpit and read from the Bible: Jeremiah 1.
The passage gave Lettie an inkling, but she didn’t know for sure. She asked the Bible college community to pray for her.
Lettie returned to her room with her Bible and her prayers.
Three days later, she told a physician, “God has been telling her she was to live now, not just for China, but for every creature.”
Lacking a clear path of how or what, Lettie continued praying and scouring her Bible.
An opportunity arises
The following Sunday, after ten days in her room, Lettie took a stroll.
There in the beautiful gardens, she met a Finnish couple, Sanfrid and Anna Matteson.
They’d been praying, too.
They sat on a bench together for three hours as the couple poured out their burden for Finland after hearing about the Great Village Campaign.
The couple published and aided with Scripture distribution in Finland, and they worked with prisoners and the poor. They wanted to make sure every Finnish household had a copy of the gospel.
Could Lettie help make that happen?”
The Visionary Behind Streams in the Desert
As Lettie explained that night, her wait on God produced an amazing new commission: the evangelization of the world.
And the “glory of God came down on us all and we had a time of rejoicing.”
But when would she travel?
Just because you wait on God and accept the answer, doesn’t mean the way will be easy.
This is the first post of three.
Next post: Satan’s reaction to God’s new work.
Tweetables
What does it look like to “wait on God?” Click to Tweet
Practically speaking, how do you wait on God? Click to Tweet
Lettie Cowman demonstrates how to wait on God and get answers. Click to Tweet
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