Strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord

Isaiah 40: 30-31

Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; 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.

We are told throughout the Bible to be patient and wait upon the Lord, but what exactly are we waiting for? I have been rolling this question around in my head for quite awhile. Am I like a kid on Christmas Eve waiting for my Santa/God to deliver everything I asked for this week in my prayers?

Or, am I simply to wait for the Lord to reveal his path to me.

As Christians we are called to seek our Father’s guidance in everything we do and every decision we make, however sometimes the timing of what we want to do and what God brings us is off, sometimes by quite a large margin of time. This can sometimes drive a believer to do some crazy things and believe what they think they should do is the righteous will of God and should be carried out immediately.

Look at Israel, when they decided to attack a nation that the Lord told them not to they suffered the consequences. We as Christians can actually blatantly disobey God’s will (which is a sin BTW) completely thinking we are walking in his will…until everything falls apart because we were selfish and impatient and didn’t wait upon the Lord.

Sometimes we even try to make deals with God so he will give us what we want in our time and not his.

Example; this is kind of random, but related.

In Judges we are told the really sad story of Jephthah. Jephthah made a vow to the Lord that he would sacrifice the first thing that came through his house if the Lord would deliver over to him the Ammonites. As the story goes Jephthah defeated the Ammonites and when he returned home after his victory, believing that it was the will of God, his daughter and only child meets him at the door.

Jephthah made a hasty and unwise decision because he did not wait for the Lord to reveal the right path to him.

Now this is an extreme example that most of us have never or will ever have to deal with, but we have all done something completely unwise that at the time didn’t really seem bad but was not the will of God. One of the hardest things to learn in our walks as Christians is the virtue of patients. We live in a society of instant gratification, however our God has been around for quite a long time and will be around for even longer than we can imagine. He works on his timeline, not ours.

Timing is everything.

So, you have been presented with a decision in your life and you want an answer now. I know this is a hard concept for most of us to grasp (even myself), but what If we just aren’t ready? What do we do while we wait? We grow. I believe we grow as we wait for the Lord. I look at it like this; there is a path to the path of God’s will. If I believe I want something but the Lord just is not letting me have it or presenting a path for me to walk on to get there, then I must not be able to handle it just quite yet. Someday the Lord will present me with what I have waited on, when he knows I am ready, not when I think I am. Also, while waiting we must seek the Lord and worship and grow in him and gain wisdom and this will grow us and prepare us to handle what the Lord has for us. Our strength really does rise as we wait.

Ask with the right intentions.

Sometimes what we want is selfish. Sometimes we wait on the Lord for something we are never going to get because it is not what we need at all.

James 4: 2-3 you desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and you do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.

Some translations of these verses say "you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures”

We have to ask ourselves, why do I want this promotion? Why do I want this relationship? Why do I want to move to this city? If the answer is anything less than to serve God and his people…then it’s a selfish one.

I think as Christians we get so scared that we are going to miss God’s will that we make up in our own heads what his will is for us and what we’re ready for because we are scared and really selfish creatures.

But our God has called us to be bold and step out in our faith and lean on him. This is the God who measured the waters of the earth in the hollow of his hand, He’s got you.