Psalm 27 - The Art of Waiting

“Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord! Psalm 27:14

Life is full of waiting. You wait in traffic, you wait at the airport, you wait at the doctor’s office. Most businesses even have nifty little rooms set up so you can wait even more comfortably. There is no doubt that life is full of waiting, but have you ever thought about the act of waiting as an art? Have you ever thought about painting that seemingly useless act into one laced with strokes of grace, patience, and prayer?

We live in a global culture today that does not do well with waiting. People hate to wait, even for mere minutes. You see daily outbursts of people in online videos that just can’t handle the pain of waiting one more minute and they crumble under its pressure, succumbing to road rage or horrible adult temper tantrums. The pain of waiting is indeed somehow capable of pushing us to a place that we somehow just can’t process. Yet there it is, everyday, waiting for us at every really long red light…what do you truly do with the process of being forced to wait.

In Psalm 27 David pens yet another beautiful Holy Spirit inspired poetic offering. It is real, it is transparent, and it is extremely applicable to our world some 3,000 years later. David uses the words fear, afraid, enemies, trouble, evildoers, crying, and violence. All things that are woefully abundant in our world today and all things that we can easily become way too focused on. David had all of these threats in his life and we also have all of them in our lives today. But in a beautiful two-part strategy, we see what David did with these items and therefore, what we as well can do with the threats, fear, troubles, and enemies of this life.

Fear, anxiety, and worry will drive you to destinations you don’t want to visit. Why do you think the phrases "do not fear", "do not be afraid" and "be not anxious" are the most often repeated commands and exhortations in all of God’s Word? Why do you think Jesus personally commands "do not be afraid" between 32 and 40 times depending on your Bible translation? You see, fear and worry will harken you to hastily remove them from your life, just as the desire to quickly pull that nasty splinter from your finger. Worry and fear will call for you to displace them in your own power and in your own immediate timeframe. But folks, it cannot be done.

Within this desire to quickly remove your thorn of fear and anxiety, lies the erroneous thought pattern that you can somehow banish fear and anxiety on your own. But only the Lord can do so. And guess what? As we look to the Lord to work out our fear and anxiety in His perfect timing, that bad ‘w’ word surfaces again…waiting. And it is here that we see David’s experience-driven logic take beautiful form as words on white. David knew that to banish his fear, anxiety, and worry in life, he had to cry out to the Lord to remove them, for David knew he was powerless to do it himself. And after he gave those unwanted and unneeded emotions to the Lord for extraction, he waited for the Lord to do His beautiful work. He recognized that the Lord’s perfect timing is not the timing of man. And as a result, David committed to waiting on the Lord. But a huge key here is not simply waiting, but how he waited…with great patience. God mentions patience in over 70 verses, it is obvious how important it is to God in what fashion we wait for His perfect plan to unfold. And that is with abundant patience and intense focus on Him, trusting in great faith that His perfect plan will be revealed in HIis time, and on His day.

Today, as you hand over your fear, anxiety and worry to the Lord, He will graciously take them. But as you wait on the Lord to construe your jumbled palette into yet another masterpiece, you must wait on Him with great and faithful patience. In great faith, and with great patience, wait on the Lord today.

Blessings ~ Dan

“But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.” Romans 8:25

“Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him…” Psalm 37:7a

hermosa flor (beautiful bloom), Puebla, Mexico