Having to Wait

Isaiah 40:31 NASU

Yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary.

   

Are You Tired of Waiting?

The other day I forgot to make a sandwich for lunch but had a bag of walnuts and blueberries and cashews so I made that my lunch.  Walnuts and blueberries are considered “super foods” by some nutritionists and I had more than enough in my bag to satisfy my appetite.  When I got off work though and headed back to the church to build the sermon for today I was hungry.  In five minutes I would be at the office where I had soup and broccoli waiting for me but I did not want to wait.  I could not wait.  I pulled off the freeway and went to McDonald's because I had to have onions and ketchup and American cheese food and a couple of pickles with a beef patty that may or may not be all beef and two buns of white bread.  Of course there was nothing reasonable about my decision to satisfy my hunger that way; it was much smarter to have waited and had that broccoli and soup.  Not all of us are good at waiting though!

Do you ever get aggravated about having to wait?  Are you ever frustrated by the slow driver who won’t move out of your lane and let you pass?  Have you gotten uptight about someone who speaks too slowly and had to fight the urge to finish off her sentences?  Are you the one who grinds his teeth when a movie or video is buffering?  Do you ever turn to the back page of a novel because you can’t wait to see how it ends?  Are you unable to carry on a conversation without looking at your phone?  Have you ever been frustrated by more than three people in your line at the bank or the store?  What do you do when you are put on hold?  Do you wait patiently for the person to return to the line or are you ready to hang up after a few minutes?  Have you ever snapped at someone who made you wait for an unreasonable amount of time?  Is “wait” a four letter word in your dictionary?

One of the more misunderstood terms found in the Bible is “lust”.  We think of it almost exclusively as a term about sex and sexual attraction but it is much more encompassing than that.  Lust is the determination that you must have something immediately.  We lust because we are unwilling to wait for God’s order of things.  We don’t have what we want and so we lust.  The emotional reaction most closely connected to lust is anger.  You will see it in a check-out line and at the dinner table.  I don’t get what I want when I want it and I get mad.  Even the satisfying of a lust can generate anger.  Some of the most bad-tempered human beings are those who will not wait but always demand they get what they want when they want it.  You see this clearly illustrated by the son of King David who wanted his half-sister and would not wait for her to ask their father to let them marry.  Instead he raped her and immediately afterward became angry with the girl and had her thrown out of the house.  But he (Amnon) refused to listen to her (his sister), and since he was stronger than she, he raped her.  Then Amnon hated her with intense hatred. In fact, he hated her more than he had loved her. Amnon said to her, "Get up and get out!" (2 Samuel 13:14-15 NIV) Nothing is so dangerous as a lust that has been satisfied for more often than not it warps the human personality and makes it irascible.  Cain who became furious that God liked his brother Abel’s sacrifice more than his and rather than taking the time to offer a better sacrifice the next time, in a fit of rage generated by an unfulfilled lust killed his brother.  Nearly every single ungodly moment of anger can be traced back to a lust, whether it is satisfied or left unfulfilled.

We even see lust in so-called “spiritual matters”.  It is not unusual for Christian people to get angry with God when He does not give them what they want when they want it.  Countless numbers of once God-fearing people have left their Christianity behind them because they got mad that God did not answer their prayers.  When Jezebel asked her husband Ahab why he was so sullen, it was because he could not get a landowner to sell him his vineyard.   He answered her, "Because I said to Naboth the Jezreelite, 'Sell me your vineyard; or if you prefer, I will give you another vineyard in its place.' But he said, 'I will not give you my vineyard.'" (1 Kings 21:6 NIV)  How many Christian people have reacted in the exact same way to God when He would not give them what they wanted when they wanted it?

There is an enlightening verse in Isaiah that expresses precisely how God makes His people spiritually and psychologically strong.  Yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary. (Isaiah 40:31 NASU)  The Hebrew term translated “wait” is rooted in the idea of a rope being stretched, pulled to its limits.  Wait means precisely that.  Those who develop God’s strength and endurance wait for the Lord like a rubber band being pulled back so far it is in danger of snapping.  Throughout Scripture God’s people are told to wait for God.  Wait for the Lord and keep his way. (Psalm 37:34 NIV) I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.  My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning. (Psalm 130:5-6 NIV)  It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. (Lamentations 3:26 NIV) 

The New Testament encourages God’s people to wait upon God also.  For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has?  But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. (Romans 8:24-25 NIV)  The fundamental quality of all hope is waiting.  Without waiting, hope is not real, a concept rather than actual act of faith.  Lust and ungodliness are to give way to waiting for God.  For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men.  It teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope — the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, (Titus 2:11-13 NIV) Waiting though is not a passive acceptance of delays in life but an active participation in God and His personality. Keep yourselves in God's love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life. (Jude 21 NIV)

If we did not know that God is love and all He does with us is rooted in love, we would perhaps pass judgment on His way of dealing with us.  Just consider the pattern we see in Scripture.  Noah waited one hundred years for God to finally flood the earth.  The Hebrew people waited four hundred years for the Lord to begin to bring them out of Egypt and the terrible slavery they endured.  For seventy years they suffered from the captivity after the Lord drove them out of Israel.  Hundreds of years they waited for a Messiah to come and bring them salvation.  Forty years Moses had to wait before the Lord finally gave him his assignment of leading Israel out of slavery.  Abraham waited sixty years before he had a child and his wife Sarah waited seventy years.  Isaac had to wait until he was sixty before God let him be a father and Jacob was forced to wait more than twenty years before he could return home.  Nearly every time God wants to do something important with a person, He makes that one wait, sometimes for an intolerable length of time.

Consider again our oft quoted verse in Isaiah 40.  Yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary. (Isaiah 40:31 NASU)  This verse is widely misunderstood!  The common thinking about it is that if we just wait long enough for God, finally He will give us new strength and enable us to persevere in whatever task we face.  That is not at all the point of this teaching.  The wait is not the delay to getting God’s help and strength; it is the means by which it comes.  It is in waiting upon the Lord that all He has for us is put into place in us.  Isaiah the prophet makes this clear in the sixty-fourth chapter. Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him. (Isaiah 64:4 NIV)  Waiting is not what brings about our transformation but waiting for the Lord is the way He changes us.  Prayer is nothing more than waiting for the Lord.  It is giving Him access to us that He might pour Himself into us and as we pray, for whatever it might be, God gives us new strength…the strength that is Christ Himself.

We wonder why God doesn’t instantly give us everything we ask of Him.  What a childish way of seeing prayer!  Prayer is the means by which God and His strengths become a part of us and as He pours Himself into us through prayer, what our Lord wants for us and for those we care about comes in His timing.  Sometimes as we pray and wait for God, our Lord makes it clear He does not want those things we are asking for ourselves and others and it is a stormy time for us as we learn to accept it.  Yet even then, God’s strength and patience and hope and peace get worked into us and we stop being impatient, self-absorbed children and grow mature in our Lord’s invading personality.   Why does God make us wait for Him?  It is because He wants us to have supernatural strength and peace and contentment and these great workings of God take time to be worked into us…the time we spend in prayer as we wait for Him to finish what He has already started.