Post 11 in Lifting up the Soul
“For thou art the God of my salvation;
For thee do I wait all the day.” Psalm 25:5b ASV
David clung desperately to God’s salvation. From killing the bear and the lion when he was shepherding his father’s sheep to running for his life from King Saul and his own sons, David needed saving. When he was wrongly accused, he waited on God to save him because God knew the right solution to David’s dilemma. When he was hunted and hiding from Saul, he had no idea whether he would find his food or shelter. But David didn’t rush out to come up with his own solution. He knew that God could supply him with what he needed. David didn’t give up on God. He was patient, knowing that God works on His timeline. David sought God above all things because he trusted God to save him.
God is faithful. David reminds us that all the things we need and want are taken care of by God. These blessings aren’t given all at once. They are given as we walk with God. Just as God prepared David for his role as king, God prepares all of His children. No service is too small or too great. God tells us that the things in this life will “work together for good” (Romans 8:28). Ultimately, God is preparing us for His eternal home. We wait on God. We wait all the day long for His salvation.
Matthew says to “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added unto you” (Matthew 7:33). This verse implies that some things we need we can’t obtain without seeking God and putting Him first. We are on this earth waiting to obtain. Sometimes we wait to obtain food or shelter. Sometimes we wait to obtain relationships and build character. Sometimes, like David, we wait to obtain peace or deliverance from evil.
As human beings, we wait to obtain because we are made to need. That need was placed within us to bring us closer to God and closer to each other. One of the most difficult issues we face in our current, ad-crazy society is wanting stuff. Do you find yourself thinking, “If I can just have this or that, then I’ll be set?” But the more we get, the more we seem to “need.” And the things we amass seem to require more things. Buy a special cooking appliance, and it needs a certain kind of spatula or cleaner. Every new technological device needs a protector case, chargers, and accessories for daily use. There are just more and more things, more “needs” and “have to haves”. Thinking about obtaining stuff becomes a hard habit to break. Those things aren’t even worth waiting for in the eternal sense. The Devil is constantly bombarding us with stuff to distract us from keeping our priorities straight. God is our priority. Further, the adversary wants us to believe we must have solutions right now. We get anxious that God is not going to meet our timelines. But God’s timing is perfect. The long wait will be worth it.
Waiting reveals and strengthens us. It’s the process of patience that teaches us so much. The more one works at it, the stronger she becomes—not strong in self but in closeness to God. God made this need within us which causes us to work harder and love more for having to work for it. And, unlike human relationships, our relationship with God is solid. He is always faithful to see us through, but we have no way of experiencing the rock-solid dependability of God unless we try Him and prove Him. As Christian women, we wait on God and that waiting brings us more and more deeply into a reliance on Him. He is in control, and the more we test Him, the more He assures us. Our role is to wait.
David’s waiting was the waiting of suffering in extreme circumstances. There are many faithful souls we read about in the Bible who suffered in the extreme. When waiting is long and suffering is extreme, that’s when anger rears its head. People who endure long spans of suffering can become bitter and want to blame others for their pain. In the middle of the trial, it’s difficult to focus on what the waiting will produce in a Christian’s heart. Often, we wait without understanding why things have turned out like they have. It helps to remember where we fit into the scheme of things. While a Christian daughter’s suffering and frustration is very important to God, He is seeing it from the perspective of thousands of years of men and women and children being enslaved by the Devil. Consider the past, present, and future, along with all the humans who have lived on this earth. What each of us has had to go through in the past, or what we are going through now, can be entirely unfair. And, naturally, we can be angry or distrustful. But mankind’s wrath doesn’t work the righteousness of God (James 1:20), and this becomes clearer as we wait on God. When God is in charge of a Christian’s life, the things she needs—that she thinks she needs right now!—will not always be as pressing. Ten years down the road we may feel differently about what is happening today. Yes, we humans think we know how things should work out in the moment. It seems so clear to us, but God says what we think is the right way to handle things can be the way to death (Proverbs 14:12). God’s wisdom far exceeds ours. He looks at the whole picture, and though the anger and injustice are real and ever present in our thoughts now, there’s more to the story.
Dear sister, you’ve probably done a lot of waiting in your life. This is part of your work in Christ—to wait and trust that He will work things out for the best. He is not holding back some blessing from you. He wants to give you everything you desire. You’ve already told Him your greatest desire is to be with Him, so He is guiding you and training you and developing love and trust within you. Learning to wait will give you a deeper relationship with Him. It will help you see the bigger picture and know that He is always in charge, and He knows the plan. He made the plan! Years later, you may look back and thank Him for not doing what you thought was best in the moment.
God tells us to wait on Him:
Wait on the Lord; Be of good courage, And He shall strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the Lord! Psalms 27:14NKJV
Take, brethren, for an example of suffering and of patience, the prophets who spake in the name of the Lord. Behold, we call them blessed that endured: ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord, how that the Lord is full of pity, and merciful. James 5:10-11
Do not say, “I will repay evil”; wait for the Lord, and he will deliver you. Proverbs 20:22ESV
This is the eleventh post in the Lifting Up the Soul study from Psalm 25. Subscribe to WomEnCourage to be notified as this study continues.