Daily Devotionals

Those who hope in ADONAI will renew their strength (Isaiah 40:31).

If you're like me, you hate to wait. I become impatient standing in line. I get exasperated when I'm stuck behind someone who's driving too slowly. So for me, one of the most difficult commands to obey is the command to wait on the Lord.

There is an old Jewish proverb that says, "Patience is half of wisdom." If we have enough wisdom to wait for God, he will provide us with the other half of the wisdom we need. God wants us to slow down enough so that we can hear the sound of his still, small voice, so that we can be fed and built up through spending time with him. Only then can we have the strength to run with God and not grow weary.

But some people think that waiting on the Lord is a passive behavior rather than an active one. They use the command to wait as an excuse for their own indolence: "I don't want to do this or that because I'm waiting on the Lord."Waiting on God is active, not passive. We wait on God through actions like prayer, fasting, worship, and meditation on God's Word. It requires devotion, concentration, thought, and it has a goal. The goal for those who wait on God is to have strength renewed, to soar like eagles, and run the race God has set before them.

...renew my strength through actively waiting on the Lord.

DB