our dance

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

Ecclesiastes 3:1

God decrees our times and our seasons. We are born into a world that turns night to day, tilted to create winter and summer, orbiting a burning ball of gasses every year in a constant circle of synchronous seasons. And as we age we look back on days, months, seasons, and years. It is the handiwork of our Creator.

At our best we move to this seasonal, sovereign beat of the dance of the universe, part of the glorious worship that all of creation pours out in praise of the Creator. Yet in our brokenness, as years advance, we notice that despite the beauty, it is all marred… a red welt of a scar ripped  across a beautiful face… less than perfect. We experience sickness. We sorrow in death. There are atrocious evils done by people that hurt us. Realistically we know we do wrong as well. We feel dark nights of intense loss. We suffer shortened days of cold winter in long nights waiting for warmth. We then burn in the scorching heat of a blazing summer praying for shade. And yet, each morning we wake up, in the embrace of a new day’s dance grip, led to participate in it all once again… day after day after day.

The Preacher in Ecclesiastes, the old and jaded King Solomon, knew both the poetry of praise in this cycle of life, and the pitiful perspective of what feels like endless repetition in a broken universe. How then do we reject the pessimism of the latter viewpoint while joining in the songs of praise all creation still tries to sing? There are three perspectives elsewhere in Ecclesiastes 3 that clear us of “vanity thinking” and give us real hope. 

1. What God has made in each season is beautiful and purposeful (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Spring has fresh life. Summer has warm vitality. Autumn blazes in glorious color. Winter crystallizes beauty with frozen wonder.
2. God’s work endures forever (Ecclesiastes 3:14). These times will turn in a much bigger wheel…bringing us into eternity with God. And it will always lead to worship because forever with God is our destination.
3. Mortality forces our focus on what is really important. We are dust and return to dust (Ecclesiastes 3:20). We have an expiration date stamped on us. We don’t know when it is. We must make the most of what we have been given. We must then wring all we can by faith in God from our hours, days, months, seasons, years, and lifetimes… and then there is a glorious eternity made possible for us by the gospel of Jesus Christ!

discerning heart

The prudent sees danger and hides himself,

but the simple go on and suffer for it.

Proverbs 27:12

Lord give me a discerning heart

in a world full of danger

Your truth is no stranger

wisdom must lead me

prudent choices must keep me

Lord teach my wandering heart

what seems so attractive

is deadly radioactive

warm at first touch

but I’ll regret it so much

Lord lead my searching heart

a straight path for my feet

in Your Word I will meet

point me safely in narrow ways

all of my remaining days

Lord remember my hurting heart

be my strength and my might

be my wisdom and my sight

never leave or forsake me

in new life You’ll remake me

Lord keep my discerning heart

wisdom is all that I need

as in new directions I proceed

my God, how I need You

Jesus, always I believe You

waiting with certainty in Jesus

For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.

1 Thessalonians 1:9-10

Today ends over seven weeks of reading through the Bible to research and understand what it means to “wait on the Lord”. I began this personal journey in the Word well aware that God has sovereignly placed me in a new season of transformative waiting. I have been greatly encouraged to keep waiting, blessed by a flood of understandings and insights daily that the Holy Spirit has led me to experience. I have learned to embrace, love, learn from, and welcome the waiting! This final passage makes a good capstone for all of the lessons learned.

I’ve noticed how in the Old Testament waiting is heavily influenced by the hope of salvation. It is about God being Savior and His people patiently awaiting, crying out for a salvation yet to come. This makes sense because the wait was for Jesus to come to earth and to save us. There are episodes of waiting for God to judge in the Old Testament as well, but the judgment is often a “saving” judgment where the hope is that God will rescue His people and bring justice in their situation. Jesus does all that!

New Testament waiting, as shown so clearly in this passage, is more eschatological. It is future focused on the final picture of the redemptive story. We wait for God to have His day. We wait for a future glory. And that focus is also squarely on Jesus. Because we have a Savior we can confidently wait. The Thessalonian believers had turned to God by faith in Christ, forsaking the vain, false hope of idolatry for a living Savior. And they waited for this risen Savior… for Jesus… to keep delivering them. This wait is ultimately for a final deliverance Jesus gives from the final Judgment of God. This is the living hope that Jesus gives every Christian.

Lord Jesus,

All my waiting is in You, for You. You deliver me from sin and demolish my worthless trust in idols. Some idols have been torn from my heart these past six months. Thank You for using this season as Your good work in me. You keep me now as I serve You. You are my hope, Risen Son! You deliver me. You will lead me as I wait. You will show me how to serve until I am in Your presence. You will keep me, bring me into Your Kingdom, provide all my heart truly needs right now, and rule me with Your love!

Amen

the focus of all waiting

For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.

Galatians 5:5

The hope the apostle Paul is waiting for in this passage is a gospel hope. It is a future experience of complete righteousness found only in Christ. We “eagerly wait” for this hope as Christians with him. What could he possibly mean? What is this hope for which we must eagerly wait?

Paul has been addressing the awful false gospel of legalistic religious “salvation” which the Galatian church had drifted towards. They had begun with “Christ alone” but had been led astray into a false gospel that taught “Christ” + “good works” + “keeping the Law” = salvation. This sort of heretical equation places hope on human efforts. It misses grace altogether. In fact, Paul says it leads people to “fall” from grace (Galatians 5:4). And when you lose grace, you lose the righteousness of Christ. When Christ’s righteous work is not the saving power, you lose the future hope because you are leaning on a righteousness that your sinful self can never achieve. Legalism is powerless to save. All true hope is found solely in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ!

We can wait for many things in life: God’s provision of a job for our needs… Our kids to grow up well and successful… a relationship of love and mutual nurture with a life partner… contentment in service to Jesus in a church of loving people. All of those, though very important things, are not the main hope for which our focused waiting is directed. As a Christian, my eager hope, the focus of all for which I wait, the future that I must anticipate… all of those are only fulfilled in the perfect Son of God, Jesus Christ my Lord!  Jesus is my hope. I wait for His will and work. I wait for His return. I wait for my redemption to be complete in Him for eternity. I wait for Him to set this world right in His kingdom as He presently aligns my heart to His priorities, and as His future reign reorders a new heavens and a new earth… the home of righteousness.

my small wait

I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge— even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you— so that you are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ…

1 Corinthians 1:4-7

All present waiting has both a past and a future. There is a past enriched by the grace of Jesus Christ. There is a future focused on the coming kingdom of Christ. Present waiting should keep both of these firmly in view.

My past is enriched by the grace of Christ. Just like Paul praised God for what He had blessed in the church at Corinth, so I can see the same blessings in my life. God’s gracious fingerprints are all over my story! He has blessed me immensely in many years of living in the faith of the gospel. My life is rooted in Jesus, transformed and led by grace. In every way I am spiritually enriched, even embarrassingly so. God is making me, growing me, maturing me, and despite my broken, stubborn heart. God is using my life even as I still figure out this waiting thing! I lack no good gift of His good grace!

I have been in what seems like a long season of temporary waiting, put on what feels like extremely annoying “hold” by God as I converse with Him. This condition of being widowed has six distinct seasons that have emerged in 2023: 1) sickness, 2) shock, 3) sorrow, 4) survival, 5) solo, and 6) settled. Although from season 2 on it has been something of a sliding continuum, I feel like I am comfortable now in a contented solo season and moving toward being settled into a new present… seeing a hopeful future. God is using these circumstances to show me through His Word and in the gifts He has bestowed upon me what He has now so that I am trusting what His grace has waiting for me next.

But I must wait most for the even bigger picture… far more important than the lessons of being widowed. I must shift my focus away from my small relational situation and lifestyle arrangements. What is that bigger picture? Jesus is on the horizon of human history. He is standing ready to be the Judge of all the earth and to set-up His kingdom. I wait for that day the most. My “little” personal season of waiting is virtually insignificant in comparison to the gracious perspective He gives in the light of His coming kingdom.

Lord,

You hear my prayers. You know I have begged for my soul to be settled and content again in all this loss and change. And yet now, I realize that the vision of Your Kingdom puts that all in proper perspective. May my soul truly long and wait for that above all other waiting I am currently doing. I trust Your grace. You have poured it all over me again and again. And You are making from even my pain a purpose to make Yourself known so that Your kingdom will come and Your will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven. I will wait. I will tell my heart to confidently and faithfully wait.

Amen

waiting… hope unseen

But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Romans 8:25

I face these circumstances now.

What do they mean?

My soul asks deep questions as

my hope is unseen.

You are my salvation.

You make me clean.

I stand in Christ now forgiven as

my hope is unseen.

I groan inwardly as I wait

from sin’s curse now freed

waiting for final adoption

while my hope is unseen.

I trust Your Word even

if I have never yet been

at the end of my journey

trusting Your hope that’s unseen.

Hope that is possessed

becomes something that is seen.

Hope that I wait for

is real hope still unseen.

Waiting then requires patience.

You always say what You mean.

You promise to take me to future glory

while now hope is unseen.

So with patience I will stand here.

On Jesus I will lean.

His promise is ever with me.

I believe hope that’s unseen.

waiting for the promise

And while staying with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”

Acts 1:4-5

Waiting on the Lord is not just an Old Testament concept. At the very birth of the church in the New Testament there was a short period of waiting for the promise of the Holy Spirit to come upon the disciples. Jesus Himself commanded His disciples to wait for this to happen. This must have been difficult and yet they waited. They had to be thrilled with their resurrected Savior. They had to be slightly rattled after they watched Him ascend back to the Father. But they were encouraged to obey the command to wait for the promise from Jesus that a coming baptism of the Holy Spirit would fall upon them.

And not many days later, at Pentecost, as they waited, God’s promises to them in Christ was fulfilled. The waiting was rewarded. The Holy Spirit blew into their house, filled the disciples, and enabled them to speak the gospel clearly in all the languages of all the scattered Jews gathered in Jerusalem for the feast. The promised Spirit led them to see three thousand conversions to the gospel as Jesus’ promise to them was wildly fulfilled. This was a work of God well worth the wait!

As evidenced in Acts, waiting on what God promises is rewarded. Obeying with patience so that God’s power can provide gives God all the glory. It is SO worth it! And the rewards of waiting are the work of God. We should be encouraged in that knowledge when we wait. The power of God provides while we wait and the work of God moves forward when He moves after the wait. Both of those experiences grow us as we obey Jesus.

Lord,

In seasons of waiting, Your power will be known. I rest in that. I trust You. I will wait. You will blow into this life and show Yourself wonderful!

Amen

Waiting for THE Day

“Therefore wait for me,” declares the LORD,

“for the day when I rise up to seize the prey.

For my decision is to gather nations,

to assemble kingdoms,

to pour out upon them my indignation,

all my burning anger;

for in the fire of my jealousy

all the earth shall be consumed.”

Zephaniah 3:8

Sometimes we wait for what we do not want to see. There is a time appointed by God yet to come in which all the world WILL answer to Him. We generically refer to it as Judgment Day. The Bible most often calls it “The Day of the Lord”. In that day all the world will be judged. It will be found guilty of sinful rebellion against God. Humans will bow before God as Judge. Those who do not know Christ as Savior will know His justice and His wrath against sin. The picture here is of a lion seizing his prey. Nothing escapes this grip. The world cannot evade the judgment that is certain to come from the Lion of the tribe of Judah.

Yet even as that fearful vision is part of what the saints should wait to see God do, that alone is not the end. Instead, that final “Day of the Lord” reckoning with all people of all time will transform the universe into a new heavens and a new earth. Emerging from that day is a new world in which all people “call upon the name of the Lord and serve him with one accord” (Zephaniah 3:9). Worship of God will by untainted by sin and human pride (Zephaniah 3:11). People will be humble, worshipful, truthful, love justice, and the world will be at peace (Zephaniah 3:12). This is the scene we are waiting for! It comes first by fiery judgment, but after the ashes, beautiful new worlds will blossom like a new Eden!

Lord,

Your Day will arrive. All my waiting now, in a broken world, in the sorrow of sin’s losses that inevitably come to me, in my repentance and pain, all of that will literally one day melt away! Thank You, Lord for this big picture of both Your justice and Your redeeming re-creation. That vision makes all my present waiting well worth it!

Amen

the Word of God, waiting, and faith

For still the vision awaits its appointed time;

it hastens to the end—it will not lie.

If it seems slow, wait for it;

it will surely come; it will not delay.

“Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him,

but the righteous shall live by his faith.

Habakkuk 2:3-4

Three important spiritual concepts are linked together in these two verses: vision, waiting on the Lord, and faith. It is good to understand how they are related to one another.

VISION. The vision specific to this concept harkens back to Habakkuk 1:17 where the prophet questions how long the cruel Chaldeans (whom God has revealed will destroy Israel) will be allowed to be brutal. It does not seem to square with God’s fairness and justice. God has already revealed to the nation through Habakkuk that a day will come when rebellious Israel would be mercilessly invaded and absorbed by Chaldea. But in answer to the prophet, God also sends a “vision” that the Chaldeans themselves would eventually be judged. So the vision is referring to two clear concepts: 1) the revelation only God can give. 2) the certainty of what God has revealed. The “vision” WILL come. It will not delay. God’s revealed truth is thus always fact… especially when it comes to prophecy.

WAITING. From our perspective sometimes the revealed truth seems slow to come to fruition. But God’s Word is not bound by the same rules of time as our day to day lives. An eternal God (Who has always been, is, and always will be… think about that for a few minutes and your mind will blow!) will surely do His purposes in His time. We must wait for His will to be done… His kingdom to come. It will. 

FAITH. We believe and trust God. The proud and the wicked dismiss both vision (God’s revelation in His Word) and waiting. To wait then as a believer in God is to patiently trust in His promises. How do we wait on the Lord? “…the righteous shall live by his faith.” Human pride rejects revelation, patience, and faith. But God’s redeemed people will treasure all three and are kept in their waiting by faith in God’s certain Word.

Determined

But as for me, I will look to the LORD;

I will wait for the God of my salvation;

my God will hear me.

Micah 7:7

As I wait through these changes

You are bringing in me, Lord,

I will wait with determination,

You comfort, strengthen, lead me by Your Word,

Looking around me, circumstances

just might intimidate me.

But trusting to look to You my Lord,

Your grace and providence invigorate me.

As I look by faith, never really alone,

I see my Lord’s love and tender care

and in that waiting I am sure

His provision and purpose meet me there!

The God Who did not spare His Son

to save my sinful, wandering soul

will be equally magnificent in this time

to heal my loss and make me whole.

To God I cry, my God I praise

and find confidence in my crying out.

He holds me close, He bends His ear,

He shelters me without a doubt.

I am determined to look to the Lord.

I am determined to know His love in my life.

I am determined on God to wait.

He will hear me, heal me, make me thrive!

Waiting: fruit of repentance

So you, by the help of your God, return,

hold fast to love and justice,

and wait continually for your God.

Hosea 12:6

God, through His prophet Hosea, makes an appeal to His people Israel to return in repentance to Him. This appeal to repentance comes in the midst of God’s indictment against Israel. It is a gracious offer. Israel had a slippery past. God remembered that Jacob, the heel-grabbing conniving patriarch who wrestled with God, had always struggled. He wept and fought with the angel of the Lord, begging God’s favor (Hosea 12:4a). The patriarch met with God in Bethel and there God spoke to Jacob and to all his descendants (Hosea 12:4b). God affirmed His covenant with Jacob, renaming Him and all His future generations “Israel” - strives with God.

It is to this past that God appeals. He wants His people to remember all the good He has done with them even with the baggage of that kind of past. He wants them to repent of their present idolatry, greed and unfaithfulness. He wants to once again help them find His blessing as they obey the covenant. And what God waits for as they return to Him shows us what He expects of people who are committed to faithfulness.

Here is what God wanted of Israel:

1) He wanted them to hold fast to love. Just like Jacob clung to the angel begging for blessing, God wanted Israel to hold fast to love… to love the Law… to love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. Faithful love is worth the tenacity to keep believing God.

2) He wanted them to hold fast to justice. If God’s people love God, they will love His righteousness and want to see it NOW in the world. They will not tolerate the way sin creates inequities, injustices, and awful discriminations. They will want to see sin punished and righteousness exalted. They will want to see sin forgiven and grace rolling like a mighty river through the world.

3) He wanted them to continuously wait on the Lord. To hold fast to love and justice in an unloving and unjust world absolutely REQUIRES we faithfully, patiently wait by faith for God’s will to be done. This insight into waiting is important. God wants me to wait, holding fast in grace to His love, righteousness, and justice. How I wait will show the quality and perseverance of my faith.

Waiting’s good.

The LORD is good to those who wait for him,

to the soul who seeks him.

It is good that one should wait quietly

for the salvation of the LORD.

Lamentations 3:25-26

And so I start my work week with a fresh reminder this Monday morning that, contrary to my default settings, I must love and appreciate the God on Whom I wait. There are two reasons from these two verses that lead me to believe this. And their perspective is wonderful. I reflect on them and find comfort and encouragement.

REASON ONE: God is good to me as I wait. Waiting is not a punishment. It isn’t some kind of mean-spirited “test” meant to bring me pain or frustration. God is good in the waiting. I repeat: He is good to me as I wait for Him. God will bring good to me as I wait. He will do it as I simply by faith trust Him still. I wrongly bring frustration to the wait with my impatience, a demanding spirit, distrust, myopic focus of my limited viewpoint, and wrong expectations. But God will bring good if I repent of my own self-directed agenda in the waiting. I will seek that level of trust in God. He is good as I seek Him!

REASON TWO: Waiting is a good process. Why? It will result in deliverance because ultimately all waiting points to salvation. And that makes waiting “good news” — a gospel experience. It points to Jesus Who has delivered me from all my sins, all my suffering, all my sorrows, having carried them all on the cross. The gospel is the salvation for all that’s wrong in my life: my sin AND my suffering. The gospel is sufficient! All I need to trust is that, waiting quietly for the final outcome of my salvation to arrive. This is a good thing. It makes me trust. It quiets my soul. It brings the peace that surpasses understanding as in prayer I release my needs and wait in that peace for God to do His good work!

Lord,

You are good as I wait. Thank You for pouring grace upon me in this season. And the waiting itself is good because from it I will see my salvation in You Lord Jesus! Help me wait on a good God for the good for me that is sure to come.

Amen

Waiting for nothing less than God

From of old no one has heard

or perceived by the ear,

no eye has seen a God besides you,

who acts for those who wait for him.

Isaiah 64:4

Unless I am waiting on God, I am waiting on the wrong things. There is only One Who acts for those who wait for Him. No other false idol will truly satisfy. False idols create false hope that always disappoints. But God will be there for those who by faith in Him will wait for Him. And I will take my comfort, find my courage, and place my confidence in this fact!

I have been learning that in seasons of intense change, I am given the opportunity to really stretch my faith. Will I trust God to heal my past? Will I trust God to provide right now in my pain, confusion, or heartache? Will I trust God to bring a remade new life to my future that feels so uncertain? Will I wait in faith in Him as I long for these answers and lament my situation? Those are the questions I must entrust to the Lord by faith right now. It is too easy to be distracted by all kinds of false hopes that become false gods to me.

So far in this season of grief and growth I am learning to avoid a few false hopes that have been disappointments to me. Here are three of them:

• The false hope of artificial community. In the age of Facebook and Instagram it is easy to think there is comfort in words and pictures. There is not. Give me face-to-face, heart-to-heart, soul-to-soul real fellowship around the common bond of Jesus Christ instead! Yes, some helpful communication can come via electronic means, but it always comes from people with whom I already have a strong personal, face-to-face, loving relationship.
• The false hope of superficial change. I can make physical changes that are not addressing my true spiritual need. I might benefit from healthier living, but that alone does not alleviate my loneliness. I might buy a new wardrobe. I might lose weight. I might improve my appearance. I might, and have, done all those things, but really, I just look better while still dealing with the same issues! Nothing superficial will create the comfort and change that God will bring as I wait for Him.
• The false hope of intoxicating busy-ness. I can pour myself into new activities and full ministry. In so doing, I have found myself trying to fill a void by “making” myself feel wanted, indispensable, and needed. The brief high I get from this only leads to a crash again once I am all alone. Serving as a “man pleaser” is not service waiting on God to supply. It is a false hope when done with my selfish energy and not from devotion to Christ. 

Lord, 

There is nothing like You. You act for me, in me, with me, for Your glory and my good. I hope ONLY in You! I turn from false hopes, from idols I have worshiped instead of You. You are my hope because You act for me!

Amen

In the waiting God draws near.

My righteousness draws near,

my salvation has gone out,

and my arms will judge the peoples;

the coastlands hope for me,

and for my arm they wait.

Isaiah 51:5

As God’s people wait for Him, the experience is NOT that God grows distant in the waiting. Rather, God comes NEAR as we wait. This short section of Isaiah 51 shows us how God promises to draw near as His people hope in Him and wait for His will to be done in their lives.

There is in this passage first a call to pay attention. It is issued to the Jews as God promises that in their return from exile there would come a time (I believe this particular prophecy is clearly fulfilled in a future kingdom of Christ) when the land of Israel would be light to all the nations of the earth. God will rule, with Israel at the center of a new kind of world, one where justice and a perfect planetary order exists (Isaiah 51:4).

With that kind of future in view, God’s people were then called to trust Him as they waited for it to happen. We are still called to do so. In the meantime, in the gospel, in the redeeming work of Jesus, God’s righteousness is very near. He is not far away. Christ has come. God’s salvation has arrived. The kingdom is still around the corner, but SALVATION IS NOW HERE! The gospel has gone out and continues to be the good news this world desperately needs. Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead to reconcile us with God forever in eternal life. This is our happiness. This is our “near” experience with God as we still wait for a bright future that absolutely will come to be. It is certain. God is near as we wait. 

All the waiting I do now is in anticipation of this greater future hope. Eschatology isn’t about charts, graphs, or news headlines forced upon the biblical text. It is instead about all our hopes, all our pains, all our grieving over what is wrong in this world, finding complete fulfillment in Jesus, Who is not only Savior and Lord, but coming Sovereign of all the earth! He will reign as He is ever and always near now to save us!

Lord,

In my present waiting may I hold my hope out in the beauty and the comfort of this much bigger picture of Your coming Kingdom. You are near now and Your rule is here now as I wait. You are near in the experience of my salvation. You are also my only expectation!

Amen

well worth the wait

Kings shall be your foster fathers,

and their queens your nursing mothers.

With their faces to the ground they shall bow down to you,

and lick the dust of your feet.

Then you will know that I am the LORD;

those who wait for me shall not be put to shame.

Isaiah 49:23

There is a unique promise meant only for Israel in this verse. But there is also a universal principle for all those even now who must wait upon the Lord. The promise illuminates the principle. The principle encourages us as we wait.

First, the promise… This is a direct “thus says the LORD” message to the nation of Israel through the prophet Isaiah. The direct message begins in context with Isaiah 49:22. It is a promise of great hope — of a complete turnaround of circumstances. God would not let the Jews stay captive among the Gentiles forever. In fact, when the time would come, the nations into which they were scattered would carry them back to Israel. Kings would treat them like foster princes and princesses, supplying all they needed. And history records their promise as completely fulfilled. In fact, we have the books of Ezra and Nehemiah to see just how true this promise was. The Persian kings provided safe passage back to Jerusalem as the exiles returned. Funds from their former captors rebuilt the temple and the walls of the city. A generation that was born in captivity returned to the full experience of the freedom of this promise as they grew up waiting on God to make it come true. The Jews returned home to find an open door from God all ready for them to occupy. He did it all.

This then leads the the principle… those who wait on God will not be disappointed. God will reward our waiting. God is in our waiting. God IS what we wait for. God also waits with us. God waits for us. Waiting on the Lord NEVER lets anyone down. Not once. Not ever! Waiting on the Lord gives us perspective and brings peace when we really trust the God Who works it all for His glory and our good. And we will never be put to shame as we wait on Him!

Lord,

I will not be disappointed in this season. I will wait with joy. In fact, You are now my reward IN THIS WAITING! I see Your good hand at work even now as I wait. I will know You are the Lord as You continue to bring new life, new experiences, new perspectives, and new hope to me! And in all this, I am confident, You will bring me home again.

Amen

God’s performance in the waiting

…but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength;

they shall mount up with wings like eagles;

they shall run and not be weary;

they shall walk and not faint.

Isaiah 40:31

There is an encouraging general promise here for those who “wait for the LORD”. This is one of those few “poster child” verses on the subject of waiting. It is popular as an athletic motivator. It was the “theme verse” for my Christian high school soccer team. I remember mentally quoting it on hill runs and on the daily workout routine while soccer season was going. We love the motivation to “run and not be weary” (even though we still get side stitches and cramping muscles!) 

But there is much more here than just a Nike commercial version of trusting in Jesus. In order to understand the promise of strength that comes as we wait on God, we need to see this verse as the strong conclusion to a much bigger message found in the fortieth chapter of Isaiah.

The bigger message of Isaiah 40 is tied to three bigger themes that are the message being preached to us: 1) God is our comforter (Isaiah 40:1-5); 2) Our lives are transient but God’s Word stands forever (Isaiah 40:6-8); and the biggest major point, 3) God’s power is great beyond description (Isaiah 40:9-31). It is within this message that the promise for “power as we wait” is given to conclude ALL these points. It isn’t at all about our ability to achieve by our own performance. It isn’t even about winning anything at all by our own efforts. It is every bit about God’s ability. We are just what He will choose to use… even in our weakness and weariness, to display His glory! I will run my life with these three thoughts in mind…

God displays His glory by comforting me. God comforts repentant sinners in sorrow and confession (Isaiah 40:1-2). God then repairs in me what sin damages so that His glory is clearly shown in my life (Isaiah 40:3-5).

God displays His glory through His everlasting Word in my brief existence. I am just summer grass, a wildflower blooming in a vast pasture that may briefly blaze into beauty only to eventually wither, brown, and fade. God’s Word is what will remain forever. I have my only hope and my only significance in centering this brief flowering existence around all that God says (Isaiah 40:8).

God displays His glory in all His actions toward me. He restores, rules, and rewards me (Isaiah 40:9-10). He leads me like a shepherd in love and wisdom (Isaiah 40:11). He controls all the physical universe AND all the nations led by people (Isaiah 40:12-17), and this implies nothing is an accident in my life either. He rules and overthrows human idols, even the ones I have foolishly followed (Isaiah 40:18-26). My questions ARE ANSWERED in waiting on the God Who does all this in my life (Isaiah 40:27-31). 

This is how Christians are empowered by waiting for the Lord. This is how I too can wait and find strength. When I know the God Who displays His glory ALL THE TIME, I can find in the waiting His glory revealed, and that will strengthen me to run on.

together we wait

O LORD, be gracious to us; we wait for you.

Be our arm every morning,

our salvation in the time of trouble.

Isaiah 33:2

We wait, Lord, for You.

What else can we do?

You have all power.

In You we wait now

knowing You will show us how

You care and make right

what bothers us day and night.

Be gracious, Lord, we pray.

What else can we say?

You will do good for us

because You’ve given Jesus.

Salvation has for us come

in the saving life of Your Son.

In anticipation we wait with prayer

until Your answer You make clear.

We wait, Lord. You will do it…

How else can we know it?

Your arm in the morning reveals

how You save us, our wounds healed.

Our salvation in our troubled cry.

You bring mercy from on high.

Grace to us, peace, salvation, power

all in Your time… at Your perfect hour.

God waits too.

Therefore the LORD waits to be gracious to you,

and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you.

For the LORD is a God of justice;

blessed are all those who wait for him.

Isaiah 30:18

God waits too. He waits for people to repent. He works His discipline on His children so that they may change, repent, come to see His ways, and return from times of straying to be changed by a new appreciation of His grace. That is why the word “therefore” begins this verse. We have to go back in the context to see just why God is “waiting to be gracious”.

If we go back just a few verses to Isaiah 30:15 we see a wonderful offer of rest made by God to His people. He wanted them to return and rest in Him for salvation. He asked them to quietly trust Him for strength even as His judgment was beginning to bring difficulties to them. But Israel refused this gracious offer: “But you were unwilling.”

Instead of returning to the Lord in repentance, God’s people fled from God (Isaiah 30:16a). A reverse exodus occurred in which many of them tried to flee to Egypt (Isaiah 30:17a). But pursuing enemies still swiftly caught them (Isaiah 30:16b). Those left in Jerusalem were few and the city was decimated by the refusal of God’s people to return to God in His just discipline of them (Isaiah 30:17b).

So God waited for them. He would wait out the entire seventy year exile for them to again return to Him. During this time God would show His power, sustaining the Jews even in far-off Babylon. He wanted to be gracious, and again He would be. He showed them mercy even as His discipline worked to change their hearts. His justice prevailed as He waited, and as they learned to wait on God to restore a people upon whom God waited as well. This mutual waiting worked God’s will for a new generation.

So in my waiting I will let the Word of God and the Spirit of God search my heart. I am sure I need to change. I am sure God is working a new thing in me in this season of change. God is certainly patient with me as I grow, sometimes even as I have resisted that this current season is definitely His work in me. I come to believe that I must rest in Him as I wait, and as He waits. I will wait on the God Who graciously, mercifully, and mightily works to build a better work in me in this waiting, It is a waiting that both God and I must do.

walking and waiting

In the path of your judgments,

O LORD, we wait for you;

your name and remembrance

are the desire of our soul.

Isaiah 26:8

Waiting on the Lord… waiting in the Lord… waiting for the Lord… all are focused on God’s greatness and power to be known in His work as we wait. We wait though in “paths of His judgments”, which means that His past work, which we remember by knowing His Word, informs our hope for what He will do as we wait.

To understand the “path of judgments” in Isaiah 26:8, we should look back one verse at the path described in Isaiah 26:7. There the “path of the righteous is level”. God makes the path that way for those who will obey and follow His will as revealed in His Word. His previous judgments (another description of God’s Word or His Law) straighten and level the way we are currently traveling. It is in that level path that we wait, trusting God for where it leads as we walk it.

As we walk the path God has set before us, we wait for Him. We don’t stand still. There isn’t a bench to rest on. We are IN THE PATH. We are ON THE PATH. We are moving forward, we just may not see the end destination. We hike along as we wait. Waiting then isn’t as passive as we may think. God lays a way before us as we wait and in that level path we begin to grow in our faith and our trust in Him. We focus on God as we look ahead along the path we are traveling.

The straight and level path of His judgments is before us. And also, we worship as we focus upon waiting for what comes. We remember past joys. His name is indeed great! We know it. We know it because of the gospel’s work in us. We know it because of Who Jesus is to us. We praise the God Who saves! And we remember. All believers in Jesus know what we are delivered from: a past life dominated by sin and destined for judgment in the Second Death. But in Christ we are delivered from sin, death, and hell. We have hope… always. And in that hope we wait as we walk forward on the path that God has made for us that leads from the cross and the empty tomb, on to the glory God will reveal in us! Walking and waiting we press on to this high calling.

He “hides” when we have turned from Him.

I will wait for the LORD, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him.

Isaiah 8:17

This commitment to wait for the Lord is part of a bigger message the prophet Isaiah received from the Lord and proclaimed to God’s people. The Lord was bringing a swift and catastrophic judgment on Israel for their rejection of Him. God would become both a sanctuary for a few remaining righteous remnant AND an offense and cause for stumbling for the majority of Israel and Judah. God would ensnare and trap in judgment the people of Jerusalem. The sinful nation would fall and be broken —  would be captured and taken away by enemies. God would indeed seem to be hiding, but even His judgment is the means to bring glory to Himself and to draw hearts to Him again (Isaiah 8:13-15).

The reason God would seem to be hiding was because the people would not be seeking Him. Don’t expect to find what you will not look for! Instead, they had turned to spiritualism, mediums, and necromancers for their spiritual advice. They would neglect God and His Word in the most occultist way possible in their culture (Isaiah 8:19). This rejection of the light of God’s Word led to immense emotional distress, physical loss and hunger, and then rage against God, as they stupidly did not recognize their own rejection of God had led to all their pain, gloom, and darkness (Isaiah 8:20-22).

Yet the prophet chose to wait on the God Who had turned away from the people that had turned away from Him. The nation may have rejected God and borne His judgment as a result, but the faithful still had hope. God would spare a remnant. God would be worth waiting for. Hope remained even when the darkest sins brought the most dangerous times of judgment. This shows us a contemporary truth: God’s mercy and grace are still our hope in difficult times.

Lord,

We live in a dark world too. People reject You, and although in this day You have no covenant of the Law with us like You did with Israel, You do still reward the faithful and punish the faithless. As many stumble in the dark, turning from the dawn of Your teaching and testimony to the darkest of sins and spiritualism, may Your people still faithfully wait, hope, and trust You still. You are our hope, dear God! The light of Your testimony and truth shines on us! Be our hope as we wait.

Amen