These all wait for You, That You may give them their food in due season. What You give them they gather in; You open Your hand, they are filled with good. You hide Your face, they are troubled; You take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. You send forth Your Spirit, they are created; And You renew the face of the earth. Psalm 104:27-30
Wait (H7663): to inspect, examine, wait, hope, wait upon, examined, to hope (for)
The writer of Psalm 104, recounts the acts of the powerful God in Creation. The writer examines the strength and the character of God while waiting. God almighty is capable of bringing magnificence out of nothing and bringing order out of chaos!
This examination is also important for us while we are waiting. Sometimes the very thing we have been waiting for, looks impossible because we have waited so long for it. In the process of waiting, what we are longing for takes a life of its own, and it looks bigger than any provision that God has blessed with us. It also causes us to question God’s ability and power to give us a breakthrough in that area. However, just as the Psalmist began with Creation, it is important to remind ourselves of the God who has the power to make something out of nothing, to erect the mountains, and to place boundaries around the oceans.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me away from Your presence, And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, And uphold me by Your generous Spirit. Psalm 51:10-12
When we remind ourselves of who God is, we become the inspectors and examiners of His character. This process helps us to go back to the basics of our faith and to be grateful for His character and what He has done in our lives. In Psalm 51, David asked God to renew a steadfast spirit in him and to restore the joy of his Salvation. While this Psalm was written after David was confronted about his sin with Bathsheba, it is still applicable to other areas of life as well. If waiting on God causes us to lose the purity of our hearts, we will lose the joy of our salvation. The very thing we are waiting for can become an idol in our lives, and it can make us think that we cannot be happy until we receive what we have been waiting for.
Most of us experienced great joy and peace when we received salvation. Nothing at the moment mattered because we were in love with Jesus. However, overtime, other things cloud our relationship with the Lord, and they seem to become more important to us. Suddenly, we find Christianity as something we do and put on, but, on the inside, it is a different story. The pain of waiting and the longings of our hearts cause us to lose joy and intimacy we once had with God.
Waiting also examines and inspects what is in our hearts. Waiting can touch the core of our identity. It can cause us to question ourselves, our abilities, and our relationships. Jealousy and envy can arise because others have what you have been waiting so long for. The enemy also whispers in our ears that there is another way to get what we want and that we don’t have to wait. This is the fire that purifies our hearts, strengthens our faith, and establishes our character. How we respond to it is critical to our spiritual destiny.
Just as the Psalmist declares in the above passage in Psalm 104, God is the giver of everything to us. We have nowhere to go except Him. People may leave relationships, jobs, or churches for the sake of dissatisfaction with life, but they still can’t get what they want with their own strength. Is it possible that the waiting has made us lose focus of what is really important? We need a restoration and renewal of our relationship with God that is not dependent of when the breakthrough comes. We are dependent on the Lord to move in our lives , and we really have not place to go except to run to Him.
