Waiting

“Wait  on the Lord,
Be of good courage
And He shall strengthen your heart:
Wait, I say, on the Lord!”
Psalm 27;14 (NKJV)

One reason we enjoy reading the psalms  is that they’re poetry. The New King James Version of Psalm 27  is written in verse form, emphasizing its poetic nature. However, our focus verse is far  more than lovely poetry; it lets us know  that waiting on God is important.

Waiting. It’s not  something  we’re good at,  especially when we think we have an urgent need that’s not getting the attention we believe it deserves. There are endless numbers of times and places  where  our ability to wait gets tested: for instance,  in hosptal emergency rooms, at doctors’ offices, and in the line at the grocery store. They present situations that raise our anxiety level.

And we don’t fare any better in our reaction when it comes to waiting on God. We often become impatient and testy, questioning why it’s taking so long for our health  problem, for example,  to clear up, despite our fervent prayers.  At these  moments of seeming delay, God is saying to us,  “Wait,” but are we  listening?

Think of Abraham whom God called out of his  home country and told him to go to a place that He would give to him and his descendants. God  promised to  make Abraham’s descendants  as numerous as the sands of the sea.  Abraham had a long wait; and  although  his impatience kicked in at times, he trusted God and waited.   He waited 25 years before he saw the  son who would get the promise moving toward fulfilment.  How many of us could wait that long for an answer  from the Lord?

Wait on the Lord has been seen by some Bible commentators  as a command to wait for the Lord. Wait for  the Lord to show the way forward. Look to see the direction in which  He is pointing and follow it. The hymn “Take Time to Be Holy” has a line that says, “And run not before Him,” but  our problem is that we’re always trying to preempt  God, going ahead of Him instead of waiting for Him.

The directive to wait comes with a prominse: “He shall strengthen your heart.”  In our time of waiting, the Lord  will strengthen us with the patience to be still,  to learn where He is leading, and to have the courage to follow.  The psalmist repeats: “Wait, I say, on the Lord!”  Today and every day, this is just what we need to do.

Always,

Judith

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Waiting on God requires the
willingness to bear uncertainty.”
Elizabeth Elliot

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