“Be strong and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the LORD.” – Psalm 31:24 (NASB)
It sounds like a contradiction, doesn’t it? The psalmist encourages us to be strong and wants us to be people of courage. But we’re not doing anything! We’re the ones waiting for the Lord to act.
What happens to us when we wait? We learn patience as we discover how little we control. We accept that we have to depend on others, especially on the Lord.
But is courage one of those lessons? How does inactivity make us stronger? And what are we supposed to do with the strength we gain?
The biggest insight we pick up is that waiting on God isn’t a waste of time. But it sure seems like it! When we cry out to the Lord and hear nothing but silence, our faith can weaken. When we devise plans but lack the wherewithal to carry them out, we can get frustrated.
At God.
Because He isn’t coming through.
He doesn’t seem to realize how important our wishes and desires are.
But He knows.
What we don’t have is full confidence in God, the kind that Jesus demonstrated when He laid down His life at the cross. He trusted that His Father would vindicate Him, that His suffering for us would not be in vain.
And God honored Him. As Paul says,
“For this reason also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, 10so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” – Philippians 2:9-11
When we follow the example of Jesus, He will teach us to let go. He will give us the strength to conquer our impulsive drives. Waiting on God, we begin to see everything from His perspective. This not only makes us more patient, it also directs our desires to what is proper. And His Spirit helps us to summon the bravery to take His side on the issues of the day.
We no longer strive for what we want. We pursue the Lord to realize what He desires.
Waiting on God isn’t a waste of time; not waiting on Him is!
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