Wait. Trust. Hope.

 

Our soul waits for the Lord;

he is our help and our shield.

For our heart is glad in him,

because we trust in his holy name.

Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us,

even as we hope in you.

Psalm 33:20-22

Trusting God is what faith is all about. It is putting our commitment to the Lord into the hardest test of its seriousness. To trust God is to believe Him with real life effort in real life situations. Three words are used in this psalm's ending to convey what it means for us to do so: Wait... Trust... Hope.

All three of those words are a challenge for us to do, but by far the hardest is probably waiting. In the age of microwave meals, one click purchasing on-line with same day drone delivery, and Google instant answers to any questions we can imagine, waiting seems so passé! We want it now and we think because we want it now we need it now. But the process of waiting on the Lord is very biblical. It is meant to build faith and not frustrate it. It is meant to live on eternity's frame of reference and not our sin-cursed mortal time scale. We must be diligent to repent of our fickle impatience with God. We are promised His help and protection if we will wait for it.

We must also trust in Him. There is joy promised to those who will trust in God's holy name. This involves another level of repentance and obedience. We must reject self-will and our unholy insistence upon doing things the way we want. We have to find joy in God's work and power on our behalf and not our own efforts. We must trust.

Then hope can be firmly placed in God if we truly trust and wait for Him. The reward of such enduring hope is God's great, gracious, steadfast love. He will not leave us alone. He will help us. God will shield us. God will be the joy of our hearts. God's grace will shower down on us as we hope in Him. And all of this is known in Jesus, Who showed God's love, grace, and faithfulness to us through His life, death, and resurrection so that we might be able to come to God in this way.