Those who wait for the Lord

I am one of those people who likes to use the lapel of my jacket to display a badge! Sometimes someone will actually ask me what a particular badge signifies, and I am happy to explain. One of my badges is an eagle. Now the truth is that it was an award, many years ago, given by an organisation of which I was a part. However, I always refer to some words from the book of the prophet Isaiah: "...those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint." (Isaiah 40:31).

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. The answer, we are told, is to "wait upon the Lord."

 

But what does this mean? The Hebrew word (qavah) 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 wait 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 the Christ foreshadowed in the 40th Psalm. "I waited patiently for the Lord; He inclined unto me, and heard my cry" (Psalm 40:1).

 

"The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary," (Isaiah 40:28), and His gracious promise, in v.31, is that we can "renew [our] strength" (literally, "exchange our strength," our weakness for His strength!) by "waiting upon [Him]." (v.31). 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! 

What a blessing it is to be able to wait upon the Lord!

Things of the World

The apostle John, in his first letter to the early Christian Church at large is, as my own third volume in the "Faith" series (originally the "Getting to know you" series) seeks to show, defending "... the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints." (Jude 1:3). However, he also exhorts his readers, and one of those exhortations reads: "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world." (I John 2:15).

We must be wary of the world's "things," because although we are "in the world," we are not "of the world" (John 17:11, 14). The command is that we are not to love the world or its things, not that we should remain blissfully ignorant of them. We are to be "wise as serpents, and harmless as doves" (Matthew 10:16).

 

There are big things of the world like "kingdoms" and "nations" (Matthew 4:8; Luke 12:30), as well as cares and riches (Mark 4:19), that can sap our focus and drain our loyalties. And there are "elemental spirits" and "regulations," (Galatians 4:3; Colossians 2:20) that can twist our thinking and "make a prey" of us (Colossians 2:8).

 

We are warned that friendship with the worldly lifestyle and that which espouses the "things" of the world leads us to "enmity with God" (James 4:4). That is because such people embrace the "spirit of the world" and not "the spirit which is from God" (1 Corinthians 2:12). Those people speak about the things of the world, and the world listens to them (1 John 4:5).

 

God's people may be "low and despised" and "weak" — even "foolish" in the eyes of the world (I Corinthians 1:27-28). Of course, since the great Creator God has chosen us out of the world (John 15:19), it should not surprise us that the world "has hated", and continues to hate, those who belong to the Lord Jesus (John 17:14). Hence, the ungodly passions that drive the ungodly behavior of the world, "the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world". (I John 2:16).

 

Those passions and the people who embrace them will "pass away." But "he who does the will of God abides for ever." (I John 2:17).