All God's dealings with man are characterised by two stages. There is the time of preparation, when command and promise - with the mingled experience of effort and inability, of failure and partial success, with the holy expectancy of something better that these awaken - train and discipline men for a higher stage.
Then comes the time of fulfillment, when faith inherits the promise and enjoys what it had so often struggled for in vain. This law holds good in every part of the Christian life and in the pursuit of every separate virtue. This is because it is grounded in the very nature of things.
In all that concerns our redemption, God must take the initiative. When that has been done, man's turn comes. In the effort toward obedience and attainment, he must learn to know his weakness. In self-despair, he must learn to die to himself, and so be voluntarily and intelligently equipped to receive the promise from God.
The Father will complete what man had accepted at the beginning in ignorance. So God, who had been the beginning before man rightly knew Him or fully understood what His purpose was, is longed for and welcomed as the end - as the all in all.
- Andrew Murray, Humility
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