Micah 7: 7 NIV
But as for me, I
watch in hope for the Lord. I wait for
God my Savior; my God will hear me…
Why Is There So Much Waiting?
The other day I needed to call the city garbage
service because the church recycling dumpster hadn’t been emptied. I spent twenty minutes waiting on the phone
for someone to help me. Later I tried to
figure out how to get my new Bluetooth speaker to sync with my computer. I searched on line for solutions and nothing
worked. After an hour going through
various options trying to locate the Bluetooth device in my laptop, I
discovered that I did not have one so I would need to buy a device to plug into
it that would allow me to have Bluetooth.
The next morning I went down to an electronics store only to discover
that it did not open for another hour and so I returned to my office and went
on with my work. That night I returned
to the electronics store and purchased an inexpensive device that would give me
Bluetooth capability. In the morning I
opened the packaging and installed the adapter.
It worked. I excitedly turned on
my speaker and tried to connect to it with my computer. No sound came through my speaker…at least no
musical sounds. I could tell that it was
wirelessly connected to my laptop because the speaker actually told me it was
but I could not get it to play my songs from ITunes. I was able to finally get in touch with a
service representative from the company that made the speaker and after an hour
on the phone with her trying various suggestions for getting it to work, I
discovered that the Bluetooth wasn’t the problem nor was the speaker. It was ITunes. I then contacted Apple services to try to
find out why ITunes would not let me connect with the wireless speaker and all
the service rep could offer was to download the latest version of ITunes. This of course took time and didn’t change
anything. He was supposed to call me in
an hour to see if downloading the new ITunes version took care of the
problem. Hoping that he might be able to
provide a solution, I counted down the minutes until the Apple rep promised he
would get back in touch with me. I regretted
getting the speaker. I regretted getting
my laptop. I regretted having music on
my computer. Yet I still had hope that I
could eventually get the speaker to work with my computer but all the waiting
seemed like a terrible waste of time. What a hassle!
It may seem to you like half your life is spent
waiting. You wait for the traffic to clear. You wait in line at stores. You wait to see your doctor. You wait for programs to download. You wait for your children to finish their
work. You wait for phone calls or text
replies. You wait for work to end or
school to finish or graduation to come or the wedding to arrive. You wait to be loved. You wait to get over illnesses. You wait for answers that never seem to
come. Many times you wait and do not
even know if all your waiting was worth it.
Yet you do wait, hoping that something good will come of all your
waiting. For many the waiting is so
painfully long that they weep silently by themselves. Others get angry and take out their
frustration on their family members.
Some grow depressed. Plenty stop
trying. Many lose hope! Waiting takes its toll on you. It can break your heart and sometimes your
health.
One of the most famous verses in the Bible indicates
that waiting can be good for us. But it
is not just random waiting; it isn’t every kind of waiting that helps us. A particular type of waiting is what improves
our lives. The King James Version of the
Bible translates it this way. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew
their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and
not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31 KJV) Notice the difference in how the NIV
translates this same verse. …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) The King James version translates the Hebrew
verb Kavah as “wait” and the NIV makes it “hope”. The difference between the two at first
glance seems wide. Few of us like
waiting, but hope, that sounds good.
Hope is what you do within; wait is what is forced upon you. We wait because we have to wait. We hope because we choose to hope.
Yet if you think about it, waiting is something that
is required for hoping. Hope cannot
occur if there is not something delayed; something that potentially is on the
way. Hoping without waiting is like
having an ice cream sundae without ice cream.
Hope is by definition a form of waiting.
You can of course wait without hope but you cannot hope if you do not
wait. Now our verse that we just
considered makes a distinction that must be pondered. There is a waiting that is not “upon the
Lord” and hoping that is not “in the Lord”.
Only hoping or waiting that has the Lord at the center of it is promised
a renewing of strength. Your waiting
that does not make God its object might result in renewed strength but there is
no promise of it. Hoping or waiting that
makes God the reason for hope or the object of waiting always results in a
growing stronger, a moving forward and going somewhere.
The Bible warns about certain kinds of hope. Command
those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their
hope in wealth… (1 Timothy 6:17 NIV)
Likewise, it is foolish to hope your power can protect you. When a wicked man dies, his hope perishes;
all he expected from his power comes to nothing. (Proverbs 11:7 NIV) Entire countries and city states have hoped
that all they have accumulated in trade and industry will keep them safe but
they have been proven to be terribly wrong in such hope. Tyre
has built herself a stronghold; she has heaped up silver like dust, and gold
like the dirt of the streets. But the Lord will take away her possessions and
destroy her power on the sea, and she will be consumed by fire. Ashkelon will see it and fear; Gaza will
writhe in agony, and Ekron too, for her hope will wither. Gaza will lose her king and Ashkelon will be
deserted. (Zechariah 9:3-5 NIV)
The horse in the Bible and other ancient writings has long symbolized
the vast assortment of weapons of warfare that armies count on to bring them
victory but there is not a weapon invented that can save a nation from God’s
judgement. A horse is a vain hope for
deliverance; despite all its great strength it cannot save. (Psalm
33:17 NIV) In the end, death puts a stop
to all hope not resting in God. For what hope has the godless when he is cut
off, when God takes away his life? (Job 27:8 NIV)
What is often misunderstood about hope is that there
are two types of hope. The first is a
hope based upon evidence that is contrary to what will take place. It is like hoping you will be proven right
that the earth is flat. Adam was wrong
to hope that following Eve’s lead would make them both happy. King David was wrong to think that gathering
more wives would improve his life and Sarah was wrong to put her hope in
letting her husband sleep with the slave girl Hagar. The outcome of hope is not always happiness or
peace or security or contentment.
The second sort of hope is built on evidence that is
aligned with what shall take place. The
evidence may be slight, nearly nonexistent, like Mary and Martha hoping Jesus
would save their brother Lazarus but what hope they had was placed in something
that would happen. Their hope of course was proven right when Christ raised
their brother fron the dead. Neither the
amount of evidence nor the sort of evidence is what determines if a particular hope
should continue. All that matters is
what the outcome will be. Now this is
where it gets tricky. When God looked at
Adam and Eve, even after they sinned, He had hope that He could turn their
lives around. Why? Because He knew what He was going to do for
them! When Jeremiah looked back at
Jerusalem and the walls of the city that had been destroyed, the buildings that
had been wrecked and burned to the ground, the dead bodies scattered about, he
had hope that it would be rebuilt because the Lord told Him it would be. The thief dying on the cross next to Jesus
had hope that he had a wonderful life ahead of him because Jesus told him that
the same day he would be with Christ in paradise.
What makes hope, hope? It is not the evidence you possess or the
lack of evidence there, it is the fact that the object of your hope has not yet
come to pass. Hope must always involve
waiting. Hope does not exist if there is
no waiting. What you want to happen or
expect to happen or dream of happening is stalled for one reason or another;
that is why you hope. Hope though must
be carefully considered. Not all hope is
the same. There is hope that will break
your heart and hope that will give you joy.
In the Bible there is the account of a woman who seemed to be infertile
or perhaps was. Her misery over being
childless was extreme. When God told
Hannah through a prophet Eli that she would have a child, she left the Temple
happy because she was certain that it was God telling her she would become
pregnant. All the time she stayed in Jerusalem
with her husband and as she traveled back to her home, this woman maintained
hope that she would eventually be a mother.
It had not happened and even when she became pregnant, before she knew
she was pregnant, she had to rely upon hope to see her through. But then when she gave birth to a son, Hannah
no longer had hope of motherhood because hope did not exist there any
longer. When Josiah the King gathered
his army and went off to fight the Egyptians, he had hope that he would defeat
them. But, he did not have any
indication from God that he would succeed and when he died in battle, Josiah’s
hope died with him. It matters what is
the basis of our hope.
Years ago the Lord told me that Mary Jo and I would
have Rachel our daughter. It was just as
certain that Christ spoke to me about this as if a voice filled with thunder
burst into my ears. Of course, we did
not have Rachel yet. I had hope that we
would have Rachel and now we do. I also
at one time hoped that I would make my high school basketball team but I did
not. My hope was based not upon what God
shared with me but upon my own desire to make the team. It matters what your source of hope is. How do you know if your hope is built upon
God or not? It is difficult at
first. Many times you will be wrong. But
there are certain things in the Bible that are clear and sure but have not come
to pass yet. You know your hope in those
things is hope generated by God. You
must never back off from hoping about them.
But what about praying for things to come to pass? Why is it so important that we pray for
things? Prayer is hope…it is always
hope. But it is a mixture of hope in God
and hope in what you want, hope generated by your thoughts. How do you know that when you pray, your hope
is from God or from you? For a while you
don’t. You are guessing. But as your ability to hope in God grows by
means of your experience of faith in Him and love for Him, you will hope more
and more through God and less and less through yourself. You will begin to realize what should be an
object of hope for you and what shouldn’t because you will know what Christ is
saying to you about it. Eventually, your
hope will be the same as God’s hope and when that is so, every prayer you pray
will come to be.
But as for me, I watch in hope for the Lord, I wait
for God my Savior; my God will hear me.
Micah 7: 7 NIV