God Works While We Wait

Week 46, Friday

Mary Mohler

For the evildoers shall be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land. Psalm 37:9 (esv)

We turn to the Psalms again to find that we should wait expectantly. There will be results. Expect them! Yet we know that a day is like one thousand years with the Lord and one thousand years is like a day (see 2 Peter 3:8).

This means that the water will eventually boil. The sun will eventually set. The situation in which we are found waiting will eventually be resolved—perhaps as we want it to be, perhaps not.

While we are resting, God is at work as He deals with the evildoers. He has no need to rest. He is working out His perfect plan before our very eyes—and teaching us valuable lessons in the process.

Expectantly wait for those lessons. There are a few that come to mind.

First, He is teaching us to be fully dependent on Him since we are totally helpless. We are familiar with the analogy of the Shepherd and His sheep seen so often in Scripture. We are such clueless little lambs who are doomed without the Shepherd’s constant care.

Second, He is teaching us that He will sustain us in all circumstances. Some of those circumstances are desperate for some people. However, there are no exceptions to His care. As the psalmist says in Psalm 37:25, “I have not seen the righteous forsaken” (esv).

Third, He is teaching us that every time we are forced to wait on Him, we should be drawn closer to Him as a direct result. Sadly, there are those who foolishly pull back when they don’t seem to be getting their way. If only they would instead make much of Christ and see their selfishness diminish to His glory.

Fourth, He is teaching us that we must turn over every concern to Him—not just the ones that we diligently dare to entrust to Him. There must be no cherished holdbacks.

Finally, He is teaching us in some instances to see good from His timing that will serve as an encouragement to others. What a blessing it is to us and to those who hear our story when we can clearly trace His hand through it all. We may not understand, this side of heaven, why other situations are resolved as they are. But God knows.

Father, make me an eager student in the waiting. Amen.