What does it mean to wait on God?

What does waiting on God mean to you?

I remember when I was younger I couldn’t wait for Christmas. Christmas in Canada was one of my favourite times of the year. I loved it because I would get to eat a lot of food and spend time with my family. The celebrations normally lasted 3-4 days. On top of that it was usually snowing so it made the holiday that much better.

What I really enjoyed about Christmas growing up was the excitement to open the gifts. I was always excited to find out what I was going to get. A month before Christmas my mom would start to wrap the gifts, and by the week of Christmas, the tree had gifts underneath it.

I couldn’t wait to open the gifts. I would always count down the days to when I could finally open them. Sometimes it felt like forever just waiting and waiting, but finally after all that waiting, Christmas Day came and I got to open the presents.

Now I know that is a silly example, but that gives us a picture of what intercessory prayer is. In simple terms, intercessory prayer is the act of praying on the behalf of others. It is stepping into a gap that you see and praying into that gap.

I think a lot of us associate that kind of waiting and assume that is how we wait on God. This is how we think we are meant to wait on him and press into prayer, but that is not the kind of waiting we are meant to live in.

Isaiah 40:31 says Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up on wings like eagles and soar. They will run and not grow wear, they will walk and not faint.

This is the kind of waiting that God invites us into. The word wait that is used here means to bind to one another. God is saying when we wait on Him, when we trust in Him, He binds us to Himself. That is where we get our strength from. We don’t wait and hope aimlessly, but we can wait because we are connected to God. His very presence gives us strength to keep running.

But what are we running towards? We are running towards the call that He has for us and for our city and even nation. We are called to be His watchmen. We are called to stand in the gap. That is what we are running the race for. We don’t run just for our lives, but we run for His purpose. We run to intercede, to pray for those who God is putting on our hearts. And guess what, God gives us the strength to do this. We don’t have to and we couldn’t even if we tried, to run this in our own strength. God gives us the strength. What’s the catch? We have to learn to wait on Him, learn to trust in Him. As we trust, He binds us to His strength. Whatever He has, we then have access to ourselves.

I want to finish with this. Do you know why God used the eagle to show how we can soar in Isaiah 40:31? The eagle is the only bird that can bind it’s wings together and use the wind that it faces to soar. The eagle uses what could try and take it down, as the very launching pad to fly. How does the eagle do that, it binds it’s wings together.

As we wait and bind our lives to Christ, He gives us the strength to soar and to press into that place of prayer. He gives us strength to keep praying until we see what He wants accomplished on this earth come to pass.

As we take up our role as a watchmen, let’s make sure to wait on God. He is our strength and source, and through Him, we can do all things.