Wait...

This morning, I read a passage in the book of Psalms that spoke of waiting on the Lord: "Indeed, let no one who waits on You be ashamed... (Psalm 25:3a)."  After that verse, there was a short commentary of what the word wait in the Bible actually means.

By nature, people do not like to wait.  Sitting around and doing nothing seems counter-productive, especially since we have so much to do.  Who has time for waiting.  But the Bible is constantly calling followers of God to wait:

• "Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart; wait, I say, on the Lord!" Psalm 27:14
• "I waited patiently for the Lord to help me, and he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the pit of despair, out of the mud and the mire. He set my feet on solid ground and steadied me as I walked along. He has given me a new song to sing, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see what he has done and be amazed. They will put their trust in the Lord." Psalm 40:1-3
• "But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint." Isaiah 40:31

After reading those scriptures, one would think that followers of God are just supposed to sit around and wait for God to do... something. Waiting on the Lord (in a Biblical sense) is far from passive.  The Hebrew word that has been translated into the English word 'wait' is qavah.  Qavah is actually a primitive root word in the Hebrew language that means to bind together (perhaps by twisting).  In fact, 'qavah' is actually the root of the Hebrew word for a cord (as in a 3-stranded cord is not easily broken).  So qavah is actually the process of the three individual strands becoming one cord. That should bring a whole new perspective to the word wait.  Waiting is not sitting around passively.  Waiting is becoming intertwined with the God of the universe to the point where His desires become our desires, His strength becomes our strength, His peace becomes our peace... basically the process of becoming transformed into the image of God.  If we try to take off half-cocked without first being transformed, then we are going to fall on our collective faces.  But if we allow God to transform us into His image, and then begin doing things with God, a whole new level of effectiveness and possibilities are open to us.

During the 1950s and 60s, there was a coach from New Zealand by the name of Arthur Lydiard that has since become recognized as the best running coach of all time.  During the time that he was actively coaching (and even in current times) his coaching philosophy (no matter how effective it was) was and still is considered controversial.  Because of that, he was rarely recongnized by the other running coaches of his day.  Lydiard believed in order to fully optimize a runners performance, the runner needed to train as if he was preparing for a marathon.  Lydiard's training plan called for 3 months of doing nothing but long, slow and steady runs at a really low effort level. He referred to this 3 month period as building a runner's aerobic base. This seemed to fly in the face of common sense: how can you become fast if all you do for three months is run long and slow.  Contemporary exercise physiology has recently proven why Lydiard's plan was so effective.  During the aerobic base building period, a runner's body goes through a physiological transformation: the body builds more blood capillaries to increase blood flow, the heart becomes much stronger and more efficient in the way it pumps blood around the body - which basically translates into greater endurance.  Runners that included the 3-month long base building phase in their training had the endurance to sustain higher levels of speed over any given distance than runners who did not include the base training.  Put simply, the runners that allowed themselves to go through that aerobic transformation process were able to run and not grow weary.

So how do we run the race with endurance? We wait upon the Lord.  Which is why Jesus said: "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls (Matthew 11:28-29)." And later said: "Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing (John 4-5)."  He was teaching His disciples that they needed to become intertwined with Him... they needed to become one with Him... they needed to wait on Him, for without allowing themselves to be transformed into His image, they could do nothing of eternal significance. The same is true of His disciples today.

There is no neutral.  There is only forward progress or negative regress.  Sitting around doing nothing is actually moving backward.  So let's stop waiting around for the Lord (in the passive sense) and start waiting on the Lord (in the Biblical sense) and run the race with new-found endurance.