March 9, 2010: Psalm 27:14: Wait For The Lord

I received a request to write about what it means to "wait on the Lord," a phrase found often in the Psalms.

I believe that "waiting on the Lord" involves deliberate and disciplined non-action on our part. When is it right to "wait on the Lord" rather than take the initiative ourselves? Whenever all our options for doing something are disobedient or unwise.

Some examples may help.

Abraham and Sarah declined to "wait on the Lord" when he told them they would have a son. Instead they took matters into their own hands by having Abraham impregnate Sarah's maid Hagar - a disastrous experiment in surrogate motherhood (Genesis 16). They should have just waited 14 years for Slowpoke Jehovah to give them Isaac.

Saul refused to wait for the Lord to bring the prophet Samuel to Gilgal to offer sacrifices (1 Samuel 13). Defying the Lord's command, Saul offered the sacrifices himself - only to see Samuel arrive just as he was finishing! (See verse 10.) If Saul had waited one more hour everything would have been fine.

Good King Josiah should have stayed home and played Scrabble when Pharaoh Neco went to fight Nabopolassar of Babylon in 2 Chronicles 35. But Josiah's tendency toward decisive action - so valuable in reforming fallen Judah - led him to err tragically when he meddled in the foreign conflict that God had told him to stay out of. Josiah suffered a fatal arrow wound in that battle. If he had waited for God to sort out the corpses he would not have become one of them.

Speaking of corpses, Jesus waited for his dead friend Lazarus to putrefy a lot before going to resurrect him (John 11). Lazarus' sisters were angry at the delay, but Jesus was, as always, going by his Father's timetable (see John 7:6: "The right time for me has not yet come.")

Jesus' disciple Peter was the kind of person who didn't know how to sit tight and do nothing. He learned the hard way. When Jesus was washing the disciples' feet, all Peter really had to do was lie face down and keep his mouth shut - but he couldn't. He raised such a fuss that Jesus had to stun him by threatening him with excommunication (John 13:8)!

Thankfully Peter learned the lesson of holy passivity so well that 30 years later he was urging other people to act that way. In 1 Peter 3:1-4 he did not tell wives of unbelievers to take the initiative with their husbands, but rather to submit to them and try to evangelize them wordlessly. He counseled a "gentle and quiet spirit" rather than an aggressive and noisy one. It is one of those situations where a person has to back off and wait for the Lord to act.

My favorite example of "waiting on the Lord" is David. He knew that he would be king some day - Samuel had already anointed him - but he religiously refused to hasten that process even when his own life was at stake. The current king, Saul, hated David and tried to kill him more than once. But David would not lift his hand against Saul. Twice he had an easy opportunity to take Saul's life (1 Samuel 24 and 26), and his own men were clamoring for him to do it (24:4 and 26:8), but he wouldn't. The Lord raised up Saul and the Lord would take him out. Though David had fought many battles and killed many foes, he knew that this battle was not his to fight.

Waiting on the Lord is not a matter of total passivity, however. It includes trust and prayer, and it demands the muscular effort of standing our ground when pressured to sin, fret, panic or flee. So, for some concrete examples:

If I don't lie on my resume I won't get this job!
Wait on the Lord to provide you with a job where you don't have to lie.

He insulted me by slapping me on the right cheek - I'm hitting back!
Turn the other cheek, and wait for the Lord to take vengeance on your behalf.

If I don't sleep with my boyfriend he'll leave me!
Wait for the Lord to provide you with an honorable man. Or be single.

My severe depression gives me permission to get drunk/commit suicide/cheat on my wife/bully the weak/apostatize/do something else wrong or stupid.
Wait on the Lord. Say a prayer. You may feel differently as soon as an hour from now. But even if you don't, still, wait on the Lord.