WAITING ON GOD OR JUST WAITING…..

I recently I was challenged in a church context on what exactly does it mean to ‘wait’ so far as the Bible teaches. I had never really thought about the issue before and so I felt it would behoove me to investigate the concept before landing on any final opinion on the matter. Having studied the various biblical texts I must first say that the issue of waiting is subject to a whole variety of contexts and scenarios that renders any one answer insufficient. I certainly don’t expect this brief post to put this issue to bed. However I do believe that they Bible sufficiently deals with the concept of waiting so that general principles can be gleaned and unbiblical behavior avoided. What has provoked this inquiry was this nagging angst that I have always felt when some have said they were waiting on God when it seemed that clear duty called them to action. I was left with this uneasy feeling that the excuse of ‘waiting’ was masking an underlying issue that lay behind this very spiritual sounding statement. Indeed I began to suspect that many Christians were cloaking some deep fears behind a spiritual façade. I know this to be true because I myself have used the ‘waiting’ excuse to avoid a clear and present duty. What then is the appropriate time to wait and when is it not. Let us go to the Bible to see what it says about waiting. So here we go.

The Hebrew word for waiting qaw·wêh is used 49 times in the Old Testament. In the New Testament the corresponding Greek word, ἐκδέχομαι (endechomai) is used only 7 times. In both testaments the word is tied to the idea of ‘looking expectantly.’ Since the Old Covenant is the covenant of anticipation and the New Covenant the covenant of fulfillment we would expect the idea of waiting to far more prevalent in the Old than in the New. So what does the Bible teach about waiting? The answer is simpler than I first imagined. In almost every case the equates waiting with that spiritual grace that inspires the godly person to endure injustice or pain as he expectantly looks to the day of salvation. In negative terms waiting is one’s refusal to manipulate events in order to escape the full weight God’s training in trials. Waiting is the believer’s call to endure all circumstances in the midst of an unfulfilled but real expectation. “Let patience (waiting) have its perfect work,” is the way James describes it. In almost every case where the word is used, the author describes a situation where one is waiting on God’s salvation or waiting on a clear divine promise. In essence these are the same things. We patiently wait for God’s deliverance because our present circumstances are painful and confusing. Let us look at some of the biblical texts where the word ‘wait’ is used. In Genesis 49:18 Jacob is blessing his children one by one. One of his blessings he gives is to the tribe of Dan (or is it a curse?). He says, “Dan shall be a serpent by the way, a viper by the path that bites the horse’s heels.” The word ‘heel’ turns our mind toward Genesis 3:15 where Satan, the serpent, is the one who shall one day ‘bruise’ the heel of Messiah. With the mention of the serpent and biting the heel it seems that Jacob is prophesying that from Dan will come one who shall oppose the Messiah. That strange blessing is followed by, “I have waited for your salvation, O Lord!” What is to be the attitude of the believer knowing Satan will oppose Messiah? He must wait for God’s ultimate victory. And this is the primary way waiting is used throughout the Bible. We as believers must wait for that which we know will someday come. We would expect the Book of Job to have much to say about waiting because Job was subjected to a horrific set of earthly tragedies. In 7:2 Job speaks autobiographically as he compares his own life to ‘a hired man who eagerly looks for (waits) for his wages.’ Job is trying to hold on to hope by convincing himself that there is light at the end of his long, dark tunnel. In a more sobering passage, 17:13, Job is so downtrodden that he is thinking about death. But in the end he knows he must wait on God for their is no benefit in the grave. Even as he dwells in darkness Job will wait for the light. This theme of waiting runs throughout the entire book. Job will choose to wait on God to vindicate him. When we get to the Psalms the idea of waiting is almost always used in the sense of waiting on God’s deliverance. Psalm 25:3 declares, “Indeed, none of those who wait for You will be ashamed.” In Psalm 27:14 the author is waiting on God for deliverance from his enemies. In 37:7 he commends those who wait on the Lord for they shall inherit the earth (experience a final vindication). In verse 34 the godly man is waiting for the demise of the wicked. In 39:7 the tried believer knows he must wait because ‘my hope is in You.’ The same goes for Psalm 40:1 where a vexed David waits patiently for God and cries out to Him. In 52:9 David is waiting on God to destroy the wicked man (probably Doeg the Edomite). In Psalm 130:5 the sinful and depressed writer is waiting in the Lord’s healing. In Proverbs 20:22 the author warns us not to ‘recompense evil’ but rather to wait on the Lord’s salvation. Isaiah, a prophet who lives in difficult days, writes many verses about Israel’s waiting for better days to come. In 8:17 he encourages Isaiah to be patient for God’s plan for Israel even though He is about to punish that nation. In the song of praise in 25:9 the message is the same. In the end God will wipe away all tears from His people’s eyes for they once waited for Him and He saved them. In 26:8 we have the song of salvation in which Isaiah looks forward to better days to come. In 33:2 Israel pleads for God’s grace as she waits for His salvation. In 49:23 Isaiah once again looks forward to better days and concludes with a blessing upon those who wait for Him. In 51:5 and 60:9 Isaiah broadens his message to the nations, or coastlands, who will anticipate the Lord’s full redemption as they wait on Him. The book of Lamentations is essentially a book of bad news to Israel but in its central verse a note of redemption sounds forth. Says Jeremiah, “The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him; it is good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.” The message of waiting is similar in Hosea, a contemporary of Isaiah. God calls upon the nation to return and be merciful and to ‘wait upon your God continually’ (12:6). In all these cases waiting is looking forward to God’s promised redemption in the midst of trial and disappointment. The same theme folds into the New Covenant. The oppressed workers of James’ day who were getting cheated out of their wages are to be ‘patient until the coming of the Lord.’ Then he gives an agricultural illustration; “See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, waiting patiently for it until it receives the early and the latter rain” (5:7). The concept of waiting in the New Covenant usually revolves around waiting for the Second Coming. This is true of the Parable of the Ten Virgins (Matt 25:1-13). Waiting for the return of the Lord is spelled out in Titus 2:13 where Paul says that we should be denying worldly lusts and fighting sin as we are ‘looking for (waiting) that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.’ Believers are to wait for the ultimate redemption of the Lord when He returns. Again, waiting is linked to deliverance and promise. There are a few cases where people wait but have no real basis for thinking that God will save them. This was the case in the Book of Jeremiah. In that prophet’s day the nation had gone so far into idolatry that God promised to exile them to Babylon. In their ignorance and self-deception they yet believed that God would come and save them. In both 8:15 and 13:16 the nation is foolishly waiting for better days while God has already determined to bring them to ‘the shadow of death.’ In 14:19 the nation waited for peace (as the false prophets had told them) ‘but there was no good’; the nation waited for healing but ‘there was trouble.’

In these examples, whether well grounded or not, waiting always rested on the perceived promises of God. Thus, the only kind of waiting the Bible acknowledges is that which rests on a future hope. The people of God are called upon to wait for God’s plan even in the midst of suffering or persecution. But here is the point. Waiting is never to be a substitute for inactivity. Waiting is never to be something to cloak one’s spiritual lethargy or mask one’s disobedience to God’s clear commands. Accordingly, to wait on God does not mean to cease all doing. During times of waiting one must still be active. This is manifestly the case in the most famous verse on waiting, Isaiah 40:31. Listen to the words: ‘“Yet those who wait for the LORD will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary.” Those who truly wait on God are still running and walking, still serving, still evangelizing, still pursuing, still studying, still planting. As one waits for God one must always be busy doing God’s prescriptive will. “Occupy till I come,” was the warning of Jesus. And that is exactly what the church must do as she waits. The problem is that duty is difficult. We all naturally shy away from obeying God clear commands for they encompass risk, danger, self-sacrifice and the potential for failure. So what are the clear commands of God for the church in this age? I think the Great Commission in Matthew 28:19-20 makes it very clear. The church is to go out and preach the gospel to every creature, establish churches and to baptize and disciple young converts. The church is to spread the word of the cross at every opportunity to every person. She is to go into lands unknown depending on nothing but divine care. But many today fail to do this. Why? They are waiting. So we wonder, waiting for what? Waiting for one more Bible class? Waiting for a sign in the sky that says, ‘go to Brazil’? Waiting for more training, more discussion, more preparation, more resources ……more, more, more. How common it is to see Christian churches use the pious excuse of ‘waiting’ as a theological warrant for disobedience. It all sounds so spiritual, does it not? But in waiting to do later what God clearly commands that I do now is a egregious form of disobedience. All the time we hear people say, “I am waiting on God to see if I should serve in the nursery, or teach Sunday School, or join the homeless ministry.” So often people of this kind are secretly looking for some kind of sign as to what they ought to do… but no such sign will ever come. The spirit of Felix infects us all who, when confronted by Paul to be saved said, ‘“Go away for now; when I have a convenient time I will call for you” (Acts 24:25). In other words Felix was putting off a clear duty to be saved by invoking the pious excuse of ‘waiting for a better time.’ Oh how this spirit permeates the church today. I can see a potential conversation Abraham had with God when God called him to an unknown land. “Well, God,” says Abe, “when I have everything in order and my wife is fully on board I’ll obey your command to go to this unknown country. I need to make sure all the providential signs align as well.” Well if Abraham had responded in that way there would never have been an Israel, a Messiah, a redemption. But this is not what the Bible says happened. Rather Abraham obeyed, lived as a stranger in a foreign land and continued to wait as he stayed active in the land waiting ‘for a city that has foundations whose Builder and Maker is God.’ Abraham was an active waiter.

So what is the point here? All too often we use the excuse of waiting when we confronted with duties that make us uncomfortable. God’s word clearly teaches that Christians are to wait on God when they are in the midst of deep trials or when they are patiently waiting for the fulfillment of one of God’s clear promises. But God’s people are never to wait when asked to obey a clear command. Waiting is in season in specific situations; obeying is always in season. So Christians are to wait for God as they look for His promised salvation. But Christians are never to wait when God gives a clear commission or command. So Christian, be active, yet patient. Such is the mystery of the Christian life.