Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast on this Monday, and thanks for listening. Tomorrow we read Isaiah 62–64 together in our Bible reading plan. And that leads to today’s question from a listener named Mattie: “Pastor John, hello to you! I’m a doer. I’m always doing the next thing. I have a lot of energy. If I see something I need, or that others need, I get to work. And then I read a verse like this one in Isaiah: ‘No eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him’ (Isaiah 64:4). I’m not a wait-er. I don’t wait for anything. My groceries, my coffee — everything — I preorder on an app so I can just drive up to the store and get my stuff and drive off. What does an active person like me need to learn about waiting on God to act? What does waiting look like for an active person like me?”

Tony, one of the things that you and I both hope for in doing these podcasts is that, over time, people will not only get answers from the Bible to their questions but will learn how to go to the Bible and get answers for themselves. And it may be helpful with this particular question to give a simple glimpse into how I prepare to answer a question like this, or how she might answer her own question.

Searching the Scriptures for Ourselves

I do this with most episodes. I take the key word or idea that someone asks — in this case, “waiting for the Lord.” I use a concordance or the word-search feature of my Bible software to look up how that word or idea is used in the Bible. So, if you look up in the ESV, for example, the word “wait,” with all of its forms (like “waited” and “waiting”), you get 135 uses in the Bible. If you look up the phrase “wait for,” you get 75 uses, and if you look up the phrase “wait for the Lord,” you get 12 uses with that precise wording. So, that’s what I did.

The point of reading all of these uses of the word “wait” in the Bible is to see what we can find out about how God intends for us to understand and practice this reality of waiting in all kinds of circumstances, including living a very busy, active life, which Mattie lives and most of us live today. I take then a piece of 8.5-by-11 paper — I do this for sermon preparation; I do this for APJ preparation — and I fold it in half. I fold the 8.5-by-11 paper in half. I use a lot of scrap paper, so that I can just fold it and use the back side, and as I read all those uses in the Bible, I make notes on the paper how it’s being used.

“The Christian life is essentially a waiting, longing, expecting, hoping life, because Christ is our supreme treasure.”

Then, as I collect all these notes, I mark similarities and differences. I’ll circle, “Oh, there in that psalm it had this meaning. Down here in Proverbs, it has a very similar meaning.” I’ll circle those and draw a line between those two so I can connect those and see if there’s a pattern emerging. When I’m done, I step back and look at that big messy piece of paper and try to fit it all together to see whether or not there’s some pattern that’s emerging or some unifying theme that’s growing out of it. So, that’s what I did with “wait for the Lord.”

When We Wait for God

So, here’s a glimpse into what I saw concerning the meaning of “waiting for the Lord.” I’ll just give my running glimpses and then draw some inferences for Mattie at the end.

1. Psalm 106:13: “They did not wait for his counsel.” So, the first meaning of waiting that I saw was this: when you have a decision in front of you, don’t run ahead, consulting your own intelligence, your own preparation, consulting your own expert, your own doctor first. All that’s fine, of course, but first, consult the Lord. There are a lot of texts in the Bible that criticize God’s people for running ahead to Egypt or running ahead to some helper rather than running to the Lord. So, turn to the Lord first and wait for his direction rather than just blundering ahead.

2. Psalm 33:20–21: “Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and our shield. For our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name.” So, waiting for the Lord means not only that we pause to consult his will, searching his word, but that, once we know God’s direction, we trust him. We trust him. There’s a heart disposition to expect and wait for him to act in a trustworthy way.

3. Psalm 39:7–8: “Now, O Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you. Deliver me from all my transgressions.” Psalm 130:6: “My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.” So, waiting for the Lord means not only taking time to consult him, then trusting him, but also eagerly expecting and hoping that he will act. We are looking for his action in our lives. That’s the text she quoted: the Lord “acts [works] for those who wait for him” (Isaiah 64:4).

4. Proverbs 20:22: “Do not say, ‘I will repay evil’; wait for the Lord, and he will deliver you.” In other words, since God says that he will settle accounts for you and that you should not return evil for evil, then don’t take matters into your own hands. Go about your business and wait for the Lord to bring justice. Wait for the Lord to vindicate your cause.

5. Isaiah 8:17: “I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him.” There are times in the Christian life when God hides his face from us and puts us to the test. Will we forget him? Will we start to build our lives on another foundation when his visage has grown dim? Or will we wait for him with patience in seasons of darkness until God returns and gives us light?

6. Romans 8:23: “We . . . who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies,” and “we wait for it with patience” (Romans 8:25). The whole posture of the Christian life is one of eagerly waiting for the coming of Christ and the redemption of our bodies. The absence of the one we love, Jesus Christ, from this earth — his absence physically from our presence and this earth — implies that the Christian life is essentially a waiting, longing, expecting, hoping life, because Christ is our supreme treasure, nothing on the earth.

7. Finally, there is a cluster of texts that make clear that this life of waiting is a life full of Spirit-dependent action. Now Mattie’s ears should perk up. For example, Titus 2:11–14: “The grace of God . . . [is] training us to . . . live self-controlled, upright, godly lives” — it sounds like Mattie is very self-controlled — “in this present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself . . . [to make us] zealous for good works.” So, this is a very active, zealous, working waiting. We are “waiting for our blessed hope,” and he makes us in that waiting zealous for good work.

Busy but Waiting

So, we step back from our very brief survey of some of those 135 instances of waiting. We step back from our collection of biblical revelation concerning the meaning of waiting and ask, Are there any common denominators running through all of these uses of the word “waiting”? And I would sum it up like this:

1. The person who waits for the Lord is first continually conscious of God — his will, his promises, his grace to help. It’s a God-conscious person, not a person who forgets God all day long. You’re not waiting for God all day long if you’re forgetting God all day long.

2. The person who waits for the Lord is desiring God to show up and reveal himself and act in whatever way is needed.

3. The person who waits for the Lord has a spirit of moment-by-moment dependence on the ever-arriving future grace of God — like a river coming toward you moment by moment. We’re depending on that.

So, for Mattie, this would mean that, in all her busyness, she doesn’t lose her consciousness of God, she doesn’t lose her continual desire for him to act, and even in her most busy moments, she realizes that, unless the Lord acts for her, in her, through her, all her busyness is in vain. So, she’s ever expecting, ever waiting for the moment-by-moment arrival of the sustaining, guiding, helping grace of God.