The moment you pile up so many names and titles, as if by a kind of holy repetition you might make your prayer to be heard, you are already forgetting that the Most High is not served by words nor moved by forms of speech. The way of wisdom is not found by stringing together every sacred name you know, as though the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were an idol that responds to long chanting. There is a path which the vulture’s eye has not seen, and the lion’s whelps have not trodden; that path is the way of God’s own working, and it often goes clean contrary to our expectations. Your land claim, with its title deeds and compensation, may seem to you a wilderness in which you are shut in, Pharaoh said of Israel, "They are entangled in the land, the wilderness has shut them in", but that was the very moment when deliverance was drawing near. What you call an extraordinary supernatural breakthrough may already be in the hand of Him who weighs the mountains in scales, and before whom the nations are as a drop in a bucket.
You cry out for expedited intervention, but wisdom teaches that God is never before His time nor behind it. The Lord of hosts is not to be hastened by our impatience, yet He is never tardy for the faith that clings to Him. Have you considered that this long delay in your land matter may be the very crucible in which the dross of your trust in means and methods is being burned away? God’s commendation of His love is not in words but in deeds, and He often works most mightily when we are brought to an end of our own scheming. You ask for wisdom, but where shall wisdom be found? Not in the land registry, nor in the cleverness of advocates, nor in the casting about for some miraculous intervention as though faith were a lever to move the wheels of state. The price of wisdom is above rubies, and it is found alone in the person of Christ, who is the power of God and the wisdom of God. If He chooses to let the compensation tarry, it may be that He is teaching you that your inheritance is not of this world, and that your true title deeds are written in the blood of the Lamb.
Beware of entangling yourselves in the land. You pray for breakthrough, but what if God should grant you the desire of your heart only to send leanness into your soul? There is a peril in setting all your hopes upon an earthly portion, and the enemy would gladly see you so tangled in the boundary lines of this world that you forget you are but pilgrims and strangers here. Your very prayer, as it came to me, is full of insistence upon immediate, spectacular action, yet the God of mercy often chooses to work in the quiet, ordinary course of things, and to teach us to trust Him without the spectacular. The way of wisdom is to trust in God, and lean not to our own understanding. He who handles a matter wisely shall find good; but the man who is hasty in his spirit exalts folly. If you believe the promise, wait upon the Lord; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart.
You mention your posterity and generations to come. That is a noble thought but remember that the greatest legacy you can leave them is not a parcel of ground but a pattern of faith. What will it profit your children’s children if you win this land claim and yet lose your own soul in the fever of the conflict? Or if you gain the compensation but leave behind a testimony of fretting and unbelief? The God of my mercy, and see how sweet the possessive word is, "my mercy", will not fail to care for your household and for the seed after you, but He will do it in His own way. He may grant the land or He may withhold it; in either case, if you are in Christ, you possess all things, for all are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or things present or things to come. Your title deed to the heavenly Canaan is signed and sealed by the blood of the eternal covenant; shall you then make so much ado over a few acres of this passing earth?
I do not bid you stop praying, but I bid you pray with submission. Put your Isaac upon the altar and say, "Let God take the compensation if it be His will, only give me Thyself." Faith hand in hand with fear, that is, a reverent holy awe of God’s majesty, will bring you into the haven far sooner than all this clamoring after miraculous expedited intervention. The ship was at the land whither they went as soon as Jesus came aboard; and so, if you will but receive Christ into the very center of this matter, you will find your soul at rest though the legal battle rage on. The wilderness may seem to shut you in, but you have a Guide who makes a highway in the deep and a path in the mighty waters. Trust in Him and He will bring it to pass, either by award or by resignation, for sometimes the greater deliverance is to be delivered from the love of the thing craved.
Let your chief wisdom be this: to know Him and the power of His resurrection. Commend yourselves, not by the volume of your supplications, but by a quiet confidence that speaks louder than many words. The Lord claims you on the ground that He has made you, and therefore He will not forsake the work of His own hands. Yet His claim upon your obedience is bound up with His bringing you out of a fiercer bondage than any land dispute, the house of bondage of sin. Will you not acknowledge that claim by leaving the ultimate issue in His hands? Cease from the tumult of striving, and remember that the meek shall inherit the earth. The topaz of Ethiopia may be carved by the lapidary’s skill, but the wisdom that comes from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated. Seek that wisdom, and whether you hold those title deeds or not, you shall be rich beyond all reckoning.
