Lead me in Your truth and teach me,
For You are the God of my salvation;
On You I wait all the day.

  - Psalm 25.5

And it is there I choose to await His promise – in which, at least, He will never fail – as it is stated in the Gospel: “They will come from the east and from the west and will recline at table” with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob: so we believe that believers will come from the whole world.

  - Patrick, Confession, 5^th century

That’s a curious word, “wait.”

Who among us likes to have to wait for anything? Having to wait implies impatience, inactivity, perhaps even wasting time – as in waiting in line at the DMV, waiting for your turn at the doctor’s office, or waiting for your car to be inspected or repaired. We get impatient at restaurants waiting for the waiters to wait on us as promptly as we think they should. When they’re slow to greet us, hardly ever check to see if our drinks need refreshing, don’t come around to ask how we’re doing or if we need anything, we think such people aren’t earning their keep. They’re not waiting like we think waiters should – actively, attentively, efficiently, and with a view to our needs and pleasure, not their own – and they’re making us wait in all the ways we don’t want to! We expect our waiters actually, you know, to wait, on us.

We just don’t like to wait for anything.

But the Scriptures over and over urge us to wait on the Lord (cf. Ps. 27.14). Perhaps there is more to this discipline than we have thus far understood?

What does it mean to wait on the Lord? I hear Christians say this all the time, when asked about something related to their walk with or work for the Lord, “Well, we’re just waiting on the Lord.” You know what they mean: they’re laying low, hanging out, busying themselves with this and that, and keeping their eyes open in order to see if the Lord might show up and give them some direction, meet some need, open some door of opportunity, or whatever.

God has to do the blessing. Our job is just to, well, wait until He does.

When Patrick said he was going to wait in Ireland until the Lord brought in believers from all over the country, he didn’t mean he was just going to sit around and do nothing. God had promised to bring many people to Jesus Christ. Patrick understood that this promise would be realized as he waited on the Lord in Ireland. But he didn’t lapse into a season of impatience, distraction, or inactivity. For Patrick, waiting on the Lord was more like what we expect of waiters in a restaurant – attention to and active work in order to carry out our wishes and meet our expectations.

Patrick was an active waiter. He believed the promises of God, that these expressed His desires as well as His expectations for His people. So Patrick got busy waiting on the Lord, in order fulfill those desires and realize those expectations.

He prepared himself, prayed, evangelized, preached and taught, trained young men and women, and started churches. He perhaps understood the discipline of waiting like the apostles did, who, when they were commanded to go back to Jerusalem and wait for the promise of the Father, didn’t just sit around doing nothing, busying themselves with lesser matters, and looking out the window every now and then to see whether or not the Holy Spirit had arrived. They understood waiting to mean a kind of active seeking of the promise of the Lord, so they went back to Jerusalem and committed to ten days of continuous prayer and leadership preparation.

So waiting on the Lord is an active discipline. We are waiting on the Lord and His promises when we are working as though everything depended on us – focused on His Word and promises, seeking Him in prayer, doing our research and preparation, encouraging one another, reaching out to the lost, teaching and training, and all the rest.

God has to do the work that produces the fruit we seek – a full banquet of covenant promises. But we have to get in motion and busy ourselves with the tasks He has assigned us, so that, through the energy of our waiting, He may do the work He plans and intends to do.

Psalm 27.11-14 (Joanna: Immortal, Invisible God Only Wise)
Lord, teach us; Lord, lead us because of our foes!
Hear, Lord, when we plead for release from their woes.
Had we not believed all Your goodness to see,
Our hearts sorely grieved and in turmoil would be.

Wait, wait on the Lord; persevere in His grace.
Hold fast to His Word; seek His radiant face.
Be strong, set your heart to abide in His Word;
His grace He imparts; therefore, wait on the Lord.

Lord, help me to be a better waiter on You.

The disciplines of waiting
Four disciplines can help you to wait on the Lord: Preparation, Demonstration, Conversation, and Transformation. These are the disciplines involved in actively seeking the promises of God and serving Him in your Personal Mission Field. If you have not yet mapped out your Personal Mission Field and begun mastering and practicing the disciplines of waiting on the Lord, I urge you to watch this brief video, download the accompanying worksheet, and get busy right away. The goodness of the Lord can break out in your Personal Mission Field if you will wait on Him according to His Word.

Thank you for your prayers and support.
Thanks so much to all of you who share with us financially in this ministry. We rejoice in the Lord, that He has moved and enabled you to support The Fellowship of Ailbe. God supplies our needs as we look to Him day by day, and He may be pleased to do so, at least in part, through you. Please seek Him in prayer concerning this matter. You can use the Contribute button at the website to give with a credit card or through PayPal, or you can send your gift to The Fellowship of Ailbe, 19 Tyler Drive, Essex Junction VT 05452.           

T. M. Moore
Principal
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All psalms for singing from The Ailbe Psalter. Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.