They That Wait Upon the Lord
Learning to hope, wait, abide, and trust
I’m a collector of personal journals, and sometimes I sift through my completed ones. I enjoy looking at the varied covers and reading the thoughts and memories held within. So often, it seems like my life circles back to the same themes over and over again. It’s as if God wants me to learn these lessons and is using spaced repetition to help me to “get it”!
Waiting on God
Waiting on the Lord is one of those circling-back kind of themes.
Two years ago, I journaled about how the word, “hope,” in the Bible is sometimes translated as “wait.” For example, the NIV translates Isaiah 40:31 as “hope,” while the KJV opts for “wait”:
“But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” (NIV)
But those 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. (KJV)
Reading these verses this transports me to the 1980s, and I picture a congregation singing the chorus, “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength…teach me Lord, teach me, Lord, to wait.” Waiting is hoping and hoping is waiting.
I also studied two years ago how the Hebrew word used here for “wait” or “hope” is qavah, which has to do with binding together like a braid. That is, the strands need to stay or abide together, much like the vine and branches metaphor. Remain in Him, keep in step with the Spirit, abide, hope, and wait. All interrelated concepts.
While Isaiah 40 ends with waiting on/hoping in the Lord, it begins with:
Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. (Isaiah 40:1, NIV)
God is all-caring. He is also all-powerful, and much of the rest of Isaiah 40 focuses on this. For example,
Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood since the earth was founded? He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. (Isaiah 40:21–22a, NIV)
And,
Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. (Isaiah 40:28, NIV)
He is answering Israel’s spoken and unspoken questions, as well as ours. Does God care? Does He hear? Is it worth waiting for Him to respond?
God’s words here help to shift our perspective. Do we really think that Someone Who is the Everlasting God and Creator has anything at all hidden from Him? That the One who made us is now unconcerned and disregards us?
No.
But He doesn’t give us pat answers, either. He is not to be held accountable to us — we are to be accountable to Him. This is where the passage builds toward the beautiful conclusion of waiting on and hoping in the Lord, and therefore soaring like eagles.
Waiting on God is connected to abiding, and these are both tied into trusting Him. Trust in God is truly the answer to all things, and it is certainly the answer to fretting about whether the Lord hears us.
He doesn’t promise that everything will work out swimmingly. As I told someone recently, God might give you more than you can bear. After all, I Corinthians 10:13 is about God not giving us more temptations than we can bear. But, as that verse does say, He will always provide a way out.
That’s another reason to wait upon and abide in Him…so we don’t miss the way out!
Waiting on God’s provision
I’m reminded of a story that seems to be a favorite among pastors. There’s a man trapped in his house during a flood, and he prays for God to rescue him. God sends neighbors to help him, a boat, and a helicopter with a rope. At each time, the man refuses help, saying, “God is going to rescue me!”
This is us. We want a hand reaching down from heaven and may miss the help that may come in the form of the rather quirky acquaintance who offers a cup of blessing to us.
I have definitely had humans act almost like angelic visitors to me, and I would think that they truly were angels except that I’ve known them for a long time and am pretty sure they exist as real humans! I’ve experienced many times when I am just beyond myself, and then I happen to have an encounter in which someone says the exact thing I need to hear.
This is Elohim in action. He gives promises about His care and power, as well as promises for our renewal. We need only to trust Him.
The Challenge with Trusting
Trust is a core psychological concept. My favorite theorist, Erik Erikson, has Trust versus Mistrust as his foundational crisis for infancy. That is, developing trust in ourselves and the people around us is the first and essential emotional task of our lives. Failure to do this can mean a lifetime of distrust toward other people and significant issues with future close relationships, such as marriage. Successful establishment of trust with a parent can mean a healthy model for all future relationships.
We know that none of us do this perfectly, and Erikson acknowledged that we may need to revisit this crisis on and off again throughout our lives. Apparently, he understood the need to circle back to certain themes across one’s life! I feel heard!
Much has been written of the troubles that people face with establishing trust in God when their trust in a human father or mother has been so fraught. Erikson is right; it is very difficult to feel that deep, abiding sense of trust in anyone or anything if our lives have instead taught us that the people closest to us are not to be trusted.
I heartbreakingly had a little girl that I barely know tell me a few days ago that she looks at other families who love one another and asks God why she doesn’t have that. She sees my family having regular dinners together and wonders why her mom had to have a restraining order put against her father. What will this model of fatherhood do to her model of God the Father?
These are serious concerns, and yet God, throughout Scripture, tells us that He is the Father to the fatherless.
Even David, whom we may think that, except for that Bathsheba thing, had it all together, seemed to struggle quite a bit with his family of origin. I’ve always been fascinated by the preamble to the Goliath fight. David’s dad sends him to the Israel-Philistine front with food for his brothers who are serving in King Saul’s army. Young David gets interested in what is happening and asks about what will be done about Goliath, given his boasts against Israel, which have a blasphemous vibe to them. The soldiers answer him, and David’s oldest brother overhears it and speaks to David harshly, calling him conceited and wicked.
“Now what have I done?” said David. “Can’t I even speak?” (I Samuel 17:29).
These are such honest questions of frustration. We experience this in families, in workplaces, and with friends. What did I do now? How is my parent/boss/friend/coworker constantly offended and angry at me no matter what I do?
This question reveals a lifetime of issues in David’s family of origin.
It is heartbreaking to know of people who really struggle with trusting in God and waiting on Him because of the terrible model of parenthood that they have personally experienced. I pray that God will indeed be an extra loving parent to them and that others can surround them with love and care. Jesus said, “With God, all things are possible.” (Matthew 19:26).
But the rest of us aren’t off the hook. If we’re honest, we also have off-kilter views of how reliable and trustworthy significant others can be. Attachment theorists in developmental psychology speak of secure attachment, and some of us are healthier and more secure than others, but we are all, to some extent, a little off, a little insecure.
We bring this to our relationship with the Lord, and so he needs to remind us frequently to trust in Him, to abide in Him, to wait on Him.
Let’s give it a go and actually listen. Let’s take Him at His word that He is trustworthy.
After all, He is the Everlasting God, who created us and everything around us, the all-powerful Trinity who offers us comfort and love.
