Many passages in Psalms admonish people to “wait on the Lord.” One of them is Psalm 27:14, "Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord." Isaiah gave promise to those who wait upon the Lord, "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). What
does it mean to wait upon the Lord? It means to let the Lord have the lead! Run not before Him! One of our hymns says, "...And run not before Him, whatever betide" (Take time to be Holy). Some folks want to get ahead of the Lord and go their own way at their own pace. They believe the Lord will surely approve of their religious
entrepreneurship when they build their own churches and formulate their own creeds. When they do this, they are not waiting upon the Lord: they are running ahead of Him, and they have lost their way. Those who wait upon the Lord accept His church, the one that He built (Matthew 16:18). They accept the organization He gave for the church and His plan of worship in the church. They accept the New Testament as the only "credal statement" for the church – receiving it as the pattern for all faith and practice. They realize that a person cannot direct his own steps and must rely on the Lord to properly direct his steps (Jeremiah 10:23). To do things the Lord's way is to wait upon the Lord.
It means to have patience! Give the Lord time to work out His plan and complete His work upon the earth – and in your life. He will do things just like He said in the Scriptures that He will do. You can trust Him. King Saul became impatient with the Lord. The Israelites were going up to battle against the Philistines. They needed a sacrifice. The Lord's spokesman, Samuel, was delayed in his coming, so Saul decided to offer the sacrifice himself (which was not lawful for him to do). Just as he was making an end to the sacrifice, Samuel arrived. He said to Saul, "Thou hast done foolishly: thou hast not kept the commandment of the Lord thy God, which He commanded thee: for now would the Lord have established thy kingdom for ever. But now thy kingdom shall not
continue" (1 Samuel 13:13). Christians are told to "Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain. Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh" (James 5:7,8). We should do whatever the Lord said do, then trust Him to keep his promises in His own good time (2 Peter 3:9).
It means to focus our desire upon the Lord. Instead of our desire being solely upon ourselves, our feelings, our "needs", our woes, our pleasures; we should be more concerned with serving and pleasing the Lord. He will not disappoint us! Paul informed Timothy that the role of the Christian soldier was to please his commander-in-chief: "No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier" (2 Timothy 2:4), Paul told the Thessalonians that they "ought to walk and please God" (1 Thessalonians 4:1). He was concerned that Christians "might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing" (Colossians 1:10). We are servants of the Lord. The faithful servant does not focus on himself but upon the one he serves. He delights in his Lord. In a literal sense, we wait on the Lord in His second coming. We must with patience wait for this, because we know not when it is. No man knows (Mark 13:32, "But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.") The
time of the Lord's second coming is with the Father and we can't hurry it up. We eagerly anticipate it because it will be a time of great resurrection, great reunion, great reward; but we must wait upon the Lord until He brings it about.
Marvin Rickett
Via Lemmons Aid