Precipitancy is one of the weaknesses resulting from our fall.

To rush forward in our thinking and speaking and acting, proves a lack of faith, and want of apprehending the presence and dominion of God over all things. It is true in a thousand different things, that he that believeth will not make haste. To act prematurely is a characteristic of infancy, it shows a rawness of the mind. Hence one of the lessons which we learn more and more as we become intimately acquainted with God, is the celestial art of walking slow. To learn to move slowly with God is not laziness, nor over-lateness, for it is the very highest type of zeal, which is a watchful promptness.

The fault of being behindhand is one of the effects of over-hastiness of spirit. Whereas the most perfect vigilance which keeps its eye ever on God, and moves with him in the present moment, is too wakeful to be rash, and too prompt to be over-hasty. To learn how to take time, will introduce the soul into a whole world of progress in the religious life.

We must take time to pray. The greatest lack of Christian life to-day, even among people professing holiness, is a lack of taking time for deep, thoughtful, exhaustive prayer, that is taking time to pray any subject out in all its details before the Lord, taking time to put our whole heart and mind intensely in the prayer, and then taking time for the Holy Spirit to speak to us in the depths of our spirit and reveal to us the will of God.

If all the time that Christians spend in anxiety, or in seeking advice from other people, or in foolish speculation, or in making plans and building air castles, was spent in patient and thoughtful prayer, what vast fields of satisfactory light and clear divine guidance would be opened up to them. They would learn the knowledge of God’s will on all lines, such as would give a deep, restful assurance which would make them spiritual giants. If ministers and evangelists, who are supposed to give their time to soul-saving, would take time to spend hours each day in prayer to God they would acquire more light on divine things, and a brighter range of scriptural knowledge, and an interior vision into all creation and providence which all the universities of earth could never impart, and also they would obtain a depth of sweetness of experience which would make them channels of divine life to other souls.

It is amazing how little time even ministers, yes even holiness preachers, spend in secret prayer. This is because we foolishly imagine that we have so many other things to attend to that we cannot take time to pray; but some day we may find that time was the raw gold, and that prayer was the mint in which moments were coined into heavenly wealth.

Take time to prepare for our work. The greater the work we are to do, the longer preparation does God give us for it. How eager human nature is to get into an enterprise, or a field of work, before there is a thorough preparation. To be prepared for a great mission is a great deal more than to go through a school or to learn a trade or to pass a good examination; the preparation must go deeper, and enter into the very qualities of the heart and will. There must be the patient endurance, the breadth of apprehension, the quickness and sweep of mental vision, the balancing of the judgment, the impartiality of decision, and a largeness of divine gentleness for those with whom we deal; an inexpressible preparation which oftentimes nothing but suffering, or lonely sorrow, or years of patient waiting can develop in us. What a whole world of knowledge we learn from God by studying how he deals with his creation, and with his servants, in the time consumed in preparing them for his purposes. Volumes could be written on this. He was eighty years training Moses for the work of forty. John the Baptist was thirty years preparing for the work of two years; and the incarnate God was thirty years getting ready for the ministry of three.

It seems to have been the life mission of good old Simeon to hold the infant Jesus a few moments in his arms, and pronounce a glorious prophecy over him; and he was over eighty years preparing for these few moments.

 What we call preparation for a life work is often so utterly human, and so stuffed with man-made theories, as to be a positive hindrance to the Holy Ghost. A preparation, according to God’s idea, involves many things beyond the grasp of our thought. A short work, with a thorough, divine preparation behind it, will accomplish more than a work of many years with only a human qualification for it.

We should take time to keep recollected in God. That is, to recollect who we are, where we are, what we are doing, and to keep before the mind the divine presence. This will cause us to move quietly and slowly, keeping pace with God’s will; it will give us equipoise of soul, calmness amid all circumstances, sweetness of spirit amid many provocations; it will prevent us from uttering rash words or forming harsh judgments, or giving too quick decisions, or by any impetuosity breaking the beautiful flow of the Holy Spirit through our hearts. How many thousands of times in our past lives we have seen that we made a bargain, or wrote a letter, or gave a decision, or uttered a rebuke, or in a prayer or conversation expressed thoughts just a little too soon; and that, if we had been perfectly dead to all our impetuosity, and in deep, quiet union with God, and taken time to move gently and slowly with his will, almost infinitely better results would have been accomplished.

Who of us are learning the art of walking slow in God’s time?