Beloved, I do not believe that one can go on very far in inward stretching without this one thing, this Divine priority, becoming very real. The Apostle Paul said: "This one thing I do...", and Jesus said of Mary, who was sitting at His feet, "Mary hath chosen that good part" (Luke 10:42).
What is this 'one thing' of which David is speaking? Oh, how our soul-life will pull at us to get us into busy activity for God! I know a little bit of what it is like to have our emotions touched by the suffering of people, and you can expect this kind of inner argument to go on. Your inner spirit will say: 'It is time to be quiet and dwell,' while your soul is rising up to say: 'Get to work! Look at all the needy people!' Listen to this verse where the spirit is speaking to the soul: "Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me?" (Psalm 42:5). In my own words I would say: 'Soul, you be quiet and listen to the spirit!' You see, the soul wants to run away and act independently of the inner spirit, but God made the soul to be subservient to the spirit, so he ends it by saying: 'Soul, you be quiet now and give praise for the help of the Lord.'
Now, remember, when we talk about 'waiting' we are not speaking of passive waiting, but an active waiting. Oh, how many of the Lord's children are wasting their strength with just activity! I remember how a few years ago the Lord taught me this lesson in a very real way. I had been away from my family, about two thousand miles from home, for ten weeks, and oh! how I was looking forward to being home! As I drove in that afternoon I met my wife and my little boy in the drive, and I hugged them and thought: 'Oh, it is so wonderful to be home!' but in about a minute my little boy was gone. I said to my wife: 'Where is DeVon? I am home and I want to be with him.' So I walked to the garage door, where I heard him, and said: 'Son, Daddy's home. Don't you want to be with him?' His little voice answered back: 'Oh, Daddy, I am so busy!' and I realized that you cannot force fellowship when it is not wanted! So I began to get busy myself, but I was hurting deep within. The next morning, as was our custom, we went up town to the Post Office, for he always loved to come with me. But, as I was coming down the steps of the Post Office, I chanced to see the other side of my car, which I had not been able to see when I got into it. It looked so strange that I wondered if it really was my car! There, plastered all over the side of the car, were pieces of paper and cardboard, attached with my best insulating tape! Then it was that I realized what he had been so busy doing, and when he saw that I was observing all his handiwork, he looked up at me with such glee, as if to say: 'Don't you like it, Daddy?' I was about to scold him, and then the Lord spoke to me. He seemed to say: 'This is the same trouble that I have with you, My son. You get so busy doing things I have not asked you to do.' So all I could do was to pick DeVon up and say: 'Daddy likes it.' But from that day on the Lord began to make this sense of priority much more real.
It is so easy to be busy going from here to there, preaching and teaching and doing, but what is the one thing that the Lord wants most? It is to know intimate fellowship with the Lord. I do believe that if this priority becomes very real in us, God will cut off a lot of good and apparently important things - but how do things really measure up in the light of eternity? This can apply to us in so many ways. For over twenty years I have gone here and there, holding meetings, but more and more the Lord is saying: 'A sharper focus on priority.' About the time that we sense the flow of life we feel that we really want to go out to help, but it is quite a stretching thing when the Lord begins to restrain us to this one thing. I believe that 'to dwell in the spirit' means for our spirit to be very sensitive to the Holy Spirit instead of to all the pulling of the soul.
