Wait for the Lord [Devotion]

Isaiah 40:28-31

28 Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
    the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
    his understanding is unsearchable.
29 He gives power to the faint,
    and to him who has no might he increases strength.
30 Even youths shall faint and be weary,
    and young men shall fall exhausted;
31 but they 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.

I really needed to read this passage this morning. The last two months since the Christian Worldview Film Festival have been a bit rough for the Prodigal project. With theater shows, work, travel, and all the other craziness that is life right now I’ve barely had time to sit and work on this project at all. And that’s been discouraging. I’ve felt powerless, as though I was not in control enough to even work on this project when I wanted… which is true… I’m not in control.

And in this I am so grateful for the fact that the Lord’s mercies are new every morning. No matter how many times He’s had to teach me this lesson He is patient to teach me again. And having said that this morning’s passage from Isaiah was exactly what I needed to hear.

We have said from the beginning of this project that we were going to submit to the Lord’s timing that we only wanted to move in His step. And yet when it seems as though things aren’t moving forward I panic and wonder if it will ever happen at all. But I’m missing the point.

Isaiah helps us here to understand two things about the Lord. First off in verse 29 we find that, “He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength.” The Lord is the source of the energy and strength we need to follow Him. I love how Paul puts it in Colossians 1:29 when, speaking of the gospel he says , “For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me. “ (emphasis added). Paul’s energy was not his own. He did not rely on what he had but rather what he had in Christ!

But there is something else we see in this passage of Isaiah. In verse 31 he says, “they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;” it’s something we see on coffee mugs and inspirational calendars but I’d never really stopped to consider the fact that it implies that God allows, causes, even commands times of waiting so that those who do will have their strength built up for whatever is next. We see times of waiting as wasted or tests of patience. But what if we understood that if we are waiting on the Lord in those times then He is preparing us for whatever is next!

My encouragement to you… and to myself… is never despise the times of waiting. If you feel that you’re stuck in a holding pattern or that your life isn’t progressing how you think it should then wait on the Lord. Do what He has put in front of you for this season with all your might and trust that His ways are higher than yours!