Wait Upon the Lord

 

Isaiah 40:31 "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." 

 

This is one of the best-loved promises of the Bible, for it is easy to grow weary and faint in our mortal bodies, even when doing the work of the Lord. Stress is nothing new. Noah had it when he was building the ark with no rain in sight. Martha had it when she was preparing a meal for our Lord. Stress is the gap between the demands placed on us and the strength we have in meeting those demands. It is not a sin to be stressed, nor a sin to be weary. It is a sin, though, not to seek a lessening of that stress which tears down the temple of the Holy Spirit, your body. 

 

What does it mean to “renew” your strength? It literally means “changed,” as if you changed clothes. You remove your rags of weakness and put on God’s royal robes of strength. God promises to exchange our strength with His strength. You see, the Christian life is not just simply a changed life, it is an exchanged life. God doesn’t just change us from what we were to something better. He exchanges His life with us. He takes our sin. We take His holiness. He takes our weakness. We take His strength. He takes our anxiety. We take His peace. Sounds great. But, what’s the problem? We get tired of waiting for the change. 

 

Where is your answer? The answer, we are told, is to "wait upon the LORD." But what does this mean? The Hebrew word (gavah) does not mean "serve," but rather to "wait for" or "look for." It is translated "waited for" the second time it is used in the Bible, when the dying patriarch Jacob cried out: "I have waited for thy salvation, O LORD" (Genesis 49:18).

 

The first time it is used, surprisingly, is in connection with the third day of creation, when God said: "Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place" (Genesis 1:9). That is, the all-pervasive waters of the original creation, divided on the second day of creation, now are told to wait patiently, as it were, while God formed the geosphere, the biosphere, and the astrosphere, before dealing again with the waters.

 

Perhaps the clearest insight into its meaning is its use in the picture of Christ foreshadowed in the 40th Psalm. "I waited patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry" (Psalm 40:1).

 

"The everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, faint not, neither is weary" (Isaiah 40:28), and His gracious promise is that we can "renew our strength" (literally, "exchange our strength," our weakness for His strength!) by "waiting upon |Him|." In waiting upon the Lord — waiting in the midst of demands. When you learn to wait on Him, God steps in to bridge the stress gap with His mighty strength. We wait patiently for Him, we gather together unto Him, we look for Him, we cry unto Him, we trust Him, and He renews our strength!

Blessings