When I was a young child, my mother wanted me to learn how to fish as a practice and lesson in patience. A large part of fishing in a pond, as I learned, is watching and waiting. You must be attentive or you might miss the fish biting at your hook. Or even worse, your fishing pole might get pulled into the water by the fish! This patience I learned from fishing has paid off in my life with watching and waiting on God. There have been several points in my life where God’s solution, in His perfect timing, has broken through murky water. Knowing Who we’re waiting upon helps us be patient and confident in Him, and waiting upon the Lord enables us to keep moving forward in our lives with strength!
Who is it that we are waiting upon? It is God, the Creator of the heavens and the earth.
Isaiah 40:28,29:
Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding.
He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.
When we understand Who it is we are waiting upon—the Lord our God—it helps us to be patient and confident in Him. Psalm 62:1-8 says that God is our Salvation, our Rock, our Defense, the Source of our expectation, our Glory, the Rock of our strength, and our Refuge. When I was growing up and going fishing on my grandfather’s property, I was confident that, not only would I catch fish, but I would also catch an abundance. The pond was well supplied, and in one day I could count on catching between sixty and seventy fish. I was confident because I knew what was in the pond and what was available. God has a never-ending source of supply that we can confidently tap into when we wait upon Him.
Waiting upon the Lord enables us to keep moving forward in our lives. It can be so easy to get bogged down by what our five senses show us. But thanks be to God for His great love for us and for His promises.
I Thessalonians 1:10:
And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come.
E. W. Bullinger’s A Critical Lexicon and Concordance to the English and Greek New Testament defines “wait” in this verse as “to remain firm, hold out, to wait for as the coming of the morn.” Just as surely as the sun comes up each morning, Jesus Christ will come back. God will fulfill His promise; therefore, we remain firm in our expectation. And as we do, we continue to move ahead with life. A great example of someone patiently waiting upon the Lord for a promise He made and moving ahead in life is Abraham. He didn’t stagger at God’s promise of offspring (Romans 4:20,21); he simply praised God. It was as if he said, “God, I just thank You for bringing this promise to pass.” Abraham claimed the promise and moved ahead with firm expectation that God would fulfill it.
Waiting strongly, steadily, and patiently on the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, is one way that we can tap into His vast power and strength.
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.
“Wait” in this verse means “to hope strongly, to trust…to hope that a thing will be effected, and to wait steadily and patiently till it is effected.” God has all that we need—we can look to Him for power to renew and increase our strength, to mount up with wings as eagles. As we wait on Him, we will not remain weary nor faint! When we are looking to God rather than what is right in front of us, it becomes dramatically easier to wait expectantly for Him to fulfill His Word in our lives. Our wonderful heavenly Father has promised that He will never leave us nor forsake us (Hebrews 13:5). He will always be there to fulfill His promises, so we can have confidence in Him and patiently wait upon Him with expectation.
Knowing Who we’re waiting upon helps us be patient and confident, and waiting upon the Lord enables us to move forward in our lives with strength. Just as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow, God will fulfill His promises.