Wait on the Lord

Our spiritual lives are a lot like the young tree in this picture. Someone had to take a great deal of time to tend it - water it, turn its soil, etc. - in order for it to grow into what you see here. Such care requires a great deal of patience. Trees don't grow overnight. Neither does our spiritual life. It must be tended with great care and patience, and growth will result. The young bud of our spiritual life might not be growing as rapidly as we would like, but, with the Lord's help, it will eventually blossom into a full-grown, mature testament to His work in our lives.

Perhaps the growth rate of your spiritual life isn't what's worrying you right now. You may be facing a trial or difficulty that, if you're honest, you want out of as quickly as possible. God has a reason for allowing that trial to come into your life. Your job is to patiently endure through the trial as long as God allows it to remain in your life and to learn as much as you can from it (much easier said than done, I know).

Trees are strengthened by storms. We are spiritually strengthened by trials.


"It may seem an easy thing to wait, but it is one of the postures which a Christian soldier learns not without years of teaching. Marching and quick-marching are much easier to God's warriors than standing still. There are hours of perplexity when the most willing spirit, anxiously desirous to serve the Lord, knows not what part to take. 

"Then what shall it do? Vex itself by despair? Fly back in cowardice, turn to the right hand in fear, or rush forward in presumption? 

"No, but simply wait. 

"Wait in prayer, however. Call upon God, and spread the case before Him; tell Him your difficulty, and plead His promise of aid. In dilemmas between one duty and another, it is sweet to be humble as a child, and wait with simplicity of soul upon the Lord. It is sure to be well with us when we feel and know our own folly, and are heartily willing to be guided by the will of God. But wait in faith. Express your unstaggering confidence in Him; for unfaithful, untrusting waiting, is but an insult to the Lord. Believe that if He keep you tarrying even till midnight, yet He will come at the right time; the vision shall come and shall not tarry. Wait in quiet patience, not rebelling because you are under the affliction, but blessing your God for it. 

"Never murmur against the second cause, as the children of Israel did against Moses; never wish you could go back to the world again, but accept the case as it is, and put it as it stands, simply and with your whole heart, without any self-will, into the hand of your covenant God, saying, 'Now, Lord, not my will, but Thine be done. I know not what to do; I am brought to extremities, but I will wait until Thou shalt cleave the floods, or drive back my foes. I will wait, if Thou keep me many a day, for my heart is fixed upon Thee alone, O God, and my spirit waiteth for Thee in the full conviction that Thou wilt yet be my joy and my salvation, my refuge and my strong tower.' "                                           

- C.H. Spurgeon

Let none that wait on thee be ashamed:

Psalm 25:3

Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD.

Psalm 27:14

Those that wait upon the LORD, they shall inherit the earth.

Psalm 37:9

I will wait on thy name; for it is good before thy saints. 

Psalm 52:9

My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from him. 

Psalm 62:5

I wait for the LORD, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope. 

Psalm 130:5

Wait on the LORD, and he shall save thee.

Proverbs 20:22

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. 

Isaiah 40:31

The LORD is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD. 

Lamentations 3:25-26

I will wait for the God of my salvation: my God will hear me.

Micah 7:7