One of my favorite verses is Isaiah 40:31.
“Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount of with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary and walk and not faint.”
Sounds great, right? But what does it mean to ‘wait on the Lord?’
Well, it’s not really about time.
When you hear the word wait, think about a waiter or waitress.
What do these folks do? They serve.
In Biblical times, servants served their masters, and in turn, masters provided for their servants.
So, when the Psalmist wrote,
“Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God, until He is gracious to us,”
he was pointing to the dependent relationship that the servants have on their masters.
The servant not only waits on their masters by carrying out their directives, but they also depend on their masters for their personal needs.
Servants did not work an 8 hour shift in their masters house and then go work another job to put food on their table.
So, as we look at what Isaiah wrote, was he referring to waiting for the Lord to do something?
No, he was saying that those who serve the Lord and depend on Him for life will never run out of His strength no matter how long they run or how far they have to walk.
Beloved, this begs the question: who are we looking to for life?
For some, they are looking to parents, spouses, kids, colleagues.
For others, they are looking to the things of this world…stuff, achievements, accolades.
Others are trapped in addictions because substances seem to give them a reprieve from the pain of life.
The truth is that only Jesus can sustain us.
His strength never runs out; He promises to provide all of our needs according to His riches.
He promises that nothing and no one can ever separate us from Him.
So, how do we apply this?
Every day we need to set our minds in the morning on our total dependence on Jesus to do all things through us in His strength for His glory.
“Thank You, Jesus, for doing this through me.”
This includes the little mundane tasks of life to the big things too.
All that we do is sacred to Him.
All that we do in His strength will pass through the refiner’s fire and will be given to us as reward when we stand before His Judgment seat.
When we depend on Him, we will not get weary nor will we faint, instead He will renew our strength with His strength enabling us to rise above our circumstances and soar with eagle’s wings for His glory!
Blessings,
Robyn Henning