Devotion for Monday, June 17, 2013 Patience: Waiting on God Read Psalm 40 May those who long for your saving help always say, “The Lord is great!” Psalm 40:16 Patience. In our life’s journey, we find ourselves in so many situations when we need a great deal of it! Patience, as a Greek word, literally means, “an abiding under.” It connotes a heavy weight that one is forced to bear on one’s shoulders or back. We grow spiritual patience in times of trial and testing, and as we learn to wait on God, we develop a greater capacity for trusting Him. Waiting on God is not the inactive season we might imagine it to be. Although we may not be making decisions as we wait, we’re not at a standstill. In fact, we can be active in prayer, and God can be doing a work of transformation in us, namely, growing in us patient faith. Spiritual patience is the capacity for sustained hope even when life doesn’t seem to be very hopeful. Notice how the psalmist waits actively on the Lord: he prays, he expects rescue, he hopes for solid ground, and he resists false gods. He also rehearses the beauty of God’s character: that God is faithful, merciful, loving, a help and a deliverer. And the psalmist remembers his own constitution, that he was poor and needy, dependent upon God’s rescue. Patience grants us a willing and humble submission to God’s providence. Perhaps one of the most comforting thoughts in the psalm is that the psalmist, who evidently wrote from a place of desperate trial, might have been the one to blame for having gotten into this mess in the first place. He admits that his troubles might be the result of his sins. But even though he might be the very source of his difficulties, he didn’t despair of God’s rescue and help. Patience brings us through the worst of times, and spiritual patience is always followed by praise. Apply the Word What do we do when we’ve waited on God, pleaded for His help, and finally enjoyed His rescue? We praise Him! We sing, we share our story of rescue with others, and we declare God’s righteousness and faithfulness. And even before we have had an answer from God, we can still say, along with the psalmist, “The Lord is great.”
Posted on: Mon, 17 Jun 2013 15:47:36 +0000
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