Wait on God

Sometimes we need God to act. We can’t do it ourselves, and no other person can help us. We need God to come through.

Isaiah 64:1-4 says 
Oh, that You would rend the heavens!
That You would come down!
That the mountains might shake at Your presence—
As fire burns brushwood,
As fire causes water to boil—
To make Your name known to Your adversaries,
That the nations may tremble at Your presence!
When You did awesome things for which we did not look,
You came down,
The mountains shook at Your presence.
For since the beginning of the world
Men have not heard nor perceived by the ear,
Nor has the eye seen any God besides You,
Who acts for the one who waits for Him.

Isaiah is praying desperately to God. He wants God to come down and act. Our God is a God who does miracles. Miracles are normal for God. Everything God does is supernatural, because God is supernatural.

According to Isaiah, God does things that we aren’t looking for. We weren’t planning for these things. God has his own time-table and he does things whenever he wants to. The Israelites didn’t know Moses would deliver them from Egypt. They didn’t know Jesus would be born in a manger. But suddenly the power of God came to save them. We don’t know the times and seasons in which God is going to do something (Acts 1:7). God does not act according to our will, but he acts whenever he wants to act. When he acts, miracles happen.
Isaiah says that God “acts for the one who waits for him.” If we want to see God act, then we need to wait. Waiting precedes miracles.

There is no other God like this. Other gods act when people want them to act. Mammon is a god of money. Mammon will do whatever people want it to do whenever they want it to do it. But mammon is an evil god. Our God is holy. He acts whenever he wants to act. He is not controlled by us. In order for us to see God act in our lives, we need to wait for him.

God rewards those who wait for him. When we wait for God we show that we trust him. We have faith. We are not taking things into our own hands, trying to do it ourselves.

When we do things in our own strength according to our own wisdom, the results will be very paltry. They won’t be miraculous. In order to get supernatural results, we need God to work. And for God to work in our lives, we need to wait for him.

Once Abraham and Sarah didn’t wait for God. They had a son through Hagar, called Ishmael. Ishmael created a lot of problems for God’s people. When we become impatient and panic, we stop waiting. Then we go into the flesh and produce the works of the flesh. This creates trouble for ourselves.

God has an appointed time when he will act. This is a time that is set in the wisdom of God. We don’t know when this time is. We need to wait for this time to come.

As we wait for God, Satan will attack us. He will put doubts in our minds. He will try to make us think that God’s word will fail or that God will not come through. We defeat the lies of Satan through the word of God.

We need to wait in the word of God (Psalm 130:5). The word of God is the ground of successful waiting. God works according to his word, and we are waiting for God’s word to be fulfilled.

We need to wait with perseverance (Romans 8:25). We must persist through the challenges of waiting. Waiting is not passive, but waiting is active, trusting in God for his word to be fulfilled.

When we wait we change our strength. “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not grow weary, they shall walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31). The word renew is change in Hebrew. When we wait on God, we change our strength from our own strength to God’s strength. Supernatural power and energy from the Holy Spirit comes into whose who wait for God. This power will enable us to inherit God’s promises. It will strengthen us until the word of God comes to pass in our lives.

Sometimes while we wait evil people prosper. Evil people can cause us to worry and stress out (Psalm 37:7). They can do evil things to us. We should not be discouraged. God will defend us from evildoers. Vengeance belongs to God. As we wait for God, he will defend us and ultimately we will inherit the earth. The wicked will be cut off, either in this life or in the next age.

Waiting can be hard. David had to wait for God to come through, and it was hard for him to wait. He cried a lot. He suffered (Psalm 69:3). But he never stopped calling out to God. In the midst of the pain and turmoil of his heart, he cried out to the Lord. Finally God came through. David’s enemies were destroyed, and David was exalted to be king.

God calls us to wait for him. If we want to see God do anything in our lives, we need to wait. God does not work on our time table. He is our sovereign king. As we wait for him, we trust him, we believe his word, we call out to him. He will come through.