“Lead me in Thy truth, and teach me: for Thou art the God of my salvation; on Thee do I wait all the day.” Psalm 25:5
Dear Ones:
The man who lives by faith is the one who lives in the expectation of seeing the glory of God. How can we say this? We see in the book of Exodus where Moses petitioned God that he might SEE the glory of God. God granted his request, making all of his goodness pass before Moses. In Psalm 90, a psalm of Moses, we see where he again prays, asking God that He would reveal His glory to the children of His servants. In the gospels, we find where the Lord asks Martha, at the time after her brother Lazarus had died, “Said I not unto thee, that if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?” (Jn. 11:40) In every one of these examples of seeing the glory of God, there is the expectation of doing so, because of the mercy, goodness, and faithfulness of God. Even in Psalm 34:8, David writes: “O taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man that trusts in Him.” Here, as in the former examples of waiting on God, there is the very real experience of becoming God-conscious in a very particular way, with respect to the revelation of His goodness. This may take different forms, from that of Moses being in the cleft of the rock, seeing the glorified Lord’s back, to seeing one who has died risen from the dead, to simply tasting the goodness of the Lord, with regard to His blessing. The certain element here is where there is the true seeking of God, and faith laying hold of Him according to His promises, then there will be the “finding,” the seeing of His glory. How then is one to live in this expectation? One is to learn to wait on God. The psalmist even goes so far as to say, “…on Thee do I wait all the day.” But, what does waiting on God mean, and how is it to be done?
In the book of Isaiah, we find a most remarkable unveiling of the meaning of this subject of waiting on God. Isaiah writes: “And therefore will the Lord wait, that he may be gracious unto you, and therefore will He be exalted, that he may have mercy upon you: for the Lord is a God of judgment (justice): blessed are all they that wait for Him.” (30:18) The first thing we discover here is that God waits on us first. He is living in the anticipation that we will look to Him, trust Him fully according to His word. He longs to be gracious to us, and will be, if we turn to Him with the whole heart, to wait to receive from Him that which will glorify His name. In Psalm 123, we have a clear picture of what “waiting” means. The psalmist writes: “Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters, and as the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress; so our eyes wait upon the Lord our God, until that He have mercy upon us.” (v.2) Here you have a “looking” to the hand of the master, …a look with great expectation to first know the will of the master, but then to act according to it. Of course, when we look to the hand of the Heavenly Master, it is not only a hand of authority, but one of compassion, which gives life and goodness, that the servant will have that which is good to give to others.
There are wonderful promises of God to those who wait upon, and for Him, in this manner. In Isaiah 40, we read: “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint.” (v.31) The individual who will truly wait upon God, will certainly taste of His goodness, receive His strength, power, and sustaining grace.
Dear Father, Give us grace to truly wait on Thee. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Love, Dad