Word Study: Wait

But you must return to your God; maintain love and justice, and wait for your God always. Hos. 12:6

                How long, O Lord? We cry out, how long, O Lord. Wicked men seem to prevail. Injustice seems to prevail. There are millions who are starving to death. Thousands of women are bought and sold; children are abused. Perhaps personal injustice or despair looms large: you are tired; you are exhausted. The world is dark. You hurt. Your very body seems to ache with the emotional pain that constantly vibrates through your body. How long, O Lord?

                The Scriptures, in narrative and poetry, reveal an answer: Wait on the Lord.

                The same Scriptures acknowledge prideful humanity’s difficulty in doing so. The struggle to wait is manifested in Sarai’s doubts to Job’s questioning demands, David’s cries, Saul’s impatient actions, and Jeroboam’s idols. Waiting is an act that stretches our faith and tries our courage. It feels as if we are standing still while the world is wildly swinging around us in a dizzy, spiraling whirlwind, a blur of motion and color. The temptation is to act, to take matters into hand, and bring something to pass now. It is the temptation to doubt God.

                The Scriptural idea of waiting is founded in God’s character. The Hebrew words for wait (qavah, yachal, sabar) include the ideas of “to hope” or “to expect.” Waiting is not just pausing and sitting still. It is not apathetic or a form of despair. Rather, the idea is waiting, hoping, expecting. We know that the Lord will come through because we know who he is.           

                Many of the calls to wait on the Lord were written in the context of injustice. The stakes are huge—their life, their prosperity, or their reputation. The psalmist or the prophet is surrounded by evil men who often seem to have the upper hand and be winning. What is one to do?

                Waiting on the Lord is asking him to take matters into his own hands. It is asking him to come through in big situations where there is blatant injustice, or when your whole life seems on the line, or in the daily quotidian decisions. My daily temptation is to take things into my own hands—my reputation, provision, security, etc. I want to self-protect. I seek approval and love, and attempt to secure them by my own means. It is a daily act of faith to look to the Lord for my provision, to be sufficient, to defend me, to fill me. This is waiting on the Lord—trusting him to come through when I am tempted to act on my own and for my own sake.          

                Waiting on the Lord is keeping our eyes focused on him in eager expectation, looking for his subtle whispers of where to turn and what is next. In this way, with our eyes focused on him, we learn to walk rightly with him. As David acknowledges: “Let integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I wait for you” (Ps. 25:21, NASB). Waiting on the Lord indicates a right relationship with him—acknowledging he is Sovereign God, our Rock, our Defender, our Savior and that we are not.

                Like our faith ancestors, we wait on the Lord in the context of injustice, be it global or personal. Like our faith ancestors, when we wait on the Lord we are a people of justice. It is more than that we do not take matters into our own hands and wreak vengeance with our finite minds and devious power. It springs from on whom we hope—we see he is a God of justice and we are transformed into his image as we wait on him. Yet also, when we wait on God, we surrender our own efforts to advance ourselves—we set aside the innate, fleshly desire to scratch and claw our way to the top in a dog-eat-dog world and to watch out for “number one” first. We let go of our desperate attempts to gain love from others. We let him provide for us, deliver us, exalt us, and love us. Only when we are in a right relationship with God, finding him as our all-sufficient one as we wait on him, can we be in right relationships with others. This is justice—building right relationships one at a time. I do not think that the biblical idea of justice is the Platonic or Enlightenment notion of an “ideal” concept, an ethereal idea. It is concrete and individual. Our God is a just God; our God is a personal and relational God who is active in this world in individual lives.

                Waiting on God also allows us to be pro-active at justice. He is our Light so that we can go into dark areas. He is our strength to serve. He is our firm foundation in which we can go to the storm-shaken and politically unstable countries. He is our security in which we can advance into risky situation. He is our faithful love from which we can love. He has given us everything so that we can give. If we are not waiting on him, we will be pulling from our own reservoirs—and there is not an adequate foundation. When we cease to wait on him, our attempts at justice may come from a heart that seeks to earn a pat on the back for ourselves; our attempts at justice will drain us; we will falter at sacrificial gifts because we fight the fleshly tendency to look out for number one. It is only when we know that Christ has gone into the dark places, has become weak, has suffered injustice so that we might have the ultimate provision, security, and love in God that we can act justly.

                Furthermore, the psalmists and prophets outline promises for those that wait on the Lord. They promise that when we wait on the Lord, we will be strengthened in heart and given courage, and our strength will be exchanged for his strength when we wait on him (Ps. 27:14; Is. 40:31). We look to him for our food and provision (Ps. 104:27; Ps. 145:15). We wait for his truth and his salvation. In other words—he provides all we need so that we can wait on him and can advance in the name of our God to carry out his will on earth.  What a gracious God! Not only does he bless those who wait on him (Is. 30:18), but he also provides what we need to wait on him! He has shown his faithfulness time and time again. He has revealed himself—and it is he himself who is the reason we can wait on him.

                David, the other psalmists, Jeremiah, and Isaiah urge us to wait on the Lord because of who he is. He is powerful. He is compassionate and merciful. He alone is sovereign and able to govern the world (Jer. 14:22). We wait on him because he gives full redemption (Ps. 130:7), because he is our portion (Lam. 3:24). We wait on him because we have seen how he has acted powerfully and faithfully and in loving-kindness in the past (Ps. 42:5; Ps. 52:9).  It is because of who he is that we can wait on him. If he was any less omniscient, omnipotent, or omnipresent, we could not wait on him. He would not be good enough or powerful enough or know enough about our situation to be there for us and come through for us and we would have to act. Yet, he is God, and we are not. So we wait and hope and expect.

                The Scriptures also hold out the hope of waiting on the Lord. Paul writes of the future glory that awaits us, which gives us hope to persevere (Rom. 8:18). What is the hope of waiting on the Lord? “And now, Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you” (Ps. 39:7). Those who wait on the Lord inherit the earth (Ps. 37:9); they will not be ashamed (Ps. 25:3; Is. 49:23); be strengthened in heart (Ps. 27:14*); led into truth and taught by God (Ps. 25:5); will rejoice in his salvation (Is. 25:9); have their strength exchanged for the Lord’s strength (Is. 40:31). The Lord is good to those who wait on him (Lam. 3:25) and he takes pleasure in those who wait on him (Ps. 147:11).

                Waiting is hope. It is faith and expectation for redemption and justice in this broken world that seems to be chaotically spinning on the whims of wicked men. Waiting is looking past this and seeing God’s sovereignty, looking to our Lord for justice, and relying on him to be his ambassadors of justice in this world.

                 

* “Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord” (Ps. 27:14, KJ21).