Many Scriptures in the Psalms and in Isaiah deal with waiting on the Lord and the specific purposes and functions of waiting on the Lord under certain circumstances.
Waiting on the Lord was one of the first revelations to come to us in our walk with the lord. When this walk in the spirit was beginning to come forth, God began to speak and lay down guidelines for us. The first great truth was the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and it still remains so; He is to be the absolute Lord over our lives. The other was that we would wait upon the Lord, and spiritual perception would be enhanced, we would be strengthened, God would teach us, and He would lead us.
The entire ministry of revelation has been sharper in this Walk than in any movement that exists today or has existed for many hundreds of years. We are the beginning of a directed, Spirit-led, prophetic company that God is raising up. Everyone of us has come into direct guidance and the leading of the Lord to some extent. But to a great extent the word of the Lord comes through this Walk. The prophets speak two or three. We are a guided people, very much so. Even in the messages, God is bringing revelation in order; from one revelation to another He has built them consecutively. You cannot point to anything as wonderful as the way God has progressively unfolded the truth to us and led us, church by church, group by group. It is because of this leading of the Lord that we are growing so rapidly, not because of organization or promotion. We have no organization, no promotion; we have no great superstructure built over the house of God which is termed denominationalism. We have none of that. We are not taking what spiritual life we can find and housing it in something that is intensely personal and individual in its scope and in its ambitions and objectives. We have something far greater; we are being led by God. We are being brought forth into a mighty company worshiping the Lord.
It all begins with the fact that you must know His voice. Sooner or later in this Walk you will face that one necessary requirement. You will either be a person led by the Spirit of the Lord or you will sit while phenomenal events are taking place and say, “I hope this is so; at least the prophets are telling us—the brethren are saying it is so, but I don’t know because I never get any revelation.” That is not enough. If you are in that position, are confused and disturbed over it, you should well be confused and disturbed. It is your responsibility to wait on God until your spiritual perception opens.
When people come into this Walk, and it seems very real to them, we must lay hands upon them and open up their spirits to revelation. For how can they walk unless they have eyes to see and ears to hear? This is the whole function and purpose. Minister to them. Get their spiritual faculties working for them almost immediately. Then teach them to wait upon the Lord until they learn the mystical perception that is so illusive of knowing the voice of the Lord and the leading of the Holy Spirit. Nothing has remained a problem to the modern Christian of this day as much as guidance—to know the guidance of: “What am I to do? Where am I to go? What am I anyway? What gifts are mine to have? What can I claim? I read the Scriptures and everything is so general. How do I nail it down to what it is to be in my life, and how I am to apply it?”
You get into this wonderful way of waiting on the Lord because in the midst of tests and trials that have no answer, which God is always throwing in, He doesn’t want you to lean on your own understanding. So He creates situations a little beyond that which you can understand—always outsmarting you, making you walk by faith, making you claim answers from the Lord beyond your understanding—to believe for things that are beyond your abilities, challenging you to do something bigger than you’ve ever done before in your life, demanding that you get out of your human limitations into the divine fullness. And the only way that you can go is to trust the Lord with all your heart and wait on Him until you get the answers. A few passages from the following Psalms give the idea, in the prayers that come forth, of the situation of the man who found his answer was in waiting upon the Lord.
The Twenty-fifth Psalm is a classic Psalm which you can pray over and over again. To Thee, O Lord, I lift up my soul. O my God, in Thee I trust, do not let me be ashamed; do not let my enemies exult over me. Indeed, none of those who wait for Thee will be ashamed (notice the term “wait”); those who deal treacherously without cause will be ashamed. Make me know Thy ways, O Lord; teach me Thy paths. Lead me in Thy truth and teach me, for Thou art the God of my salvation; for Thee I wait all the day. Remember, O Lord, Thy compassion and Thy lovingkindnesses, for they have been from of old. Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to Thy lovingkindness, remember Thou me, for Thy goodness’ sake, O Lord.
Good and upright is the Lord; therefore He instructs sinners in the way. He leads the humble in justice, and He teaches the humble His way. All the paths of the Lord are lovingkindness and truth to those who keep His covenant and His testimonies. For Thy name’s sake, O Lord, pardon my iniquity, for it is great. Who is the man who fears the Lord? He will instruct him in the way he should choose. His soul will abide in prosperity, and his descendants will inherit the land. The secret of the Lord is for those who fear Him, and He will make them know His covenant. My eyes are continually toward the Lord, for He will pluck my feet out of the net. Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. The troubles of my heart are enlarged; bring me out of my distresses. Look upon my affliction and my trouble, and forgive all my sins. Look upon my enemies, for they are many; and they hate me with violent hatred. Guard my soul and deliver me; do not let me be ashamed, for I take refuge in Thee. Let integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I wait for Thee (notice, “I wait for Thee”). Redeem Israel, O God, out of all his troubles.
That is a Psalm you can mark and use much—a beautiful Psalm of waiting on the Lord. You could read and begin to meditate on it and you would be right into a beautiful flow. Let these Psalms minister to you.
Psalm 27:7–14: Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice, and be gracious to me and answer me. When Thou didst say, “Seek My face,” my heart said to Thee, “Thy face, O Lord, I shall seek.” Do not hide Thy face from me, do not turn Thy servant away in anger; Thou hast been my help; do not abandon me nor forsake me, O God of my salvation! For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me up. Teach me Thy way, O Lord, and lead me in a level path, because of my foes. Do not deliver me over to the desire of my adversaries; for false witnesses have risen against me, and such as breathe out violence. I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord (there it is: wait for the Lord); be strong, and let your heart take courage; yes, wait for the Lord. That is a good Psalm about waiting on the Lord. The Bible is filled with many beautiful passages about waiting on the Lord. All of these Psalms are speaking about a man when he is in trouble. In this last Psalm his enemies were coming against him. Take note of the times we all face of which these Psalms speak.
Now let’s read Psalm 33:13–22. The Lord looks from heaven; He sees all the sons of men; from His dwelling place He looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth, He who fashions the hearts of them all, He who understands all their works. The king is not saved by a mighty army; a warrior is not delivered by great strength. A horse is a false hope for victory; nor does it deliver anyone by its great strength. Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him, on those who hope for His lovingkindness; to deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine (we, also, will use this Psalm in the future to keep alive in famine). Our soul waits for the Lord; He is our help and our shield. For our heart rejoices in Him, because we trust in His holy name. Let Thy lovingkindness, O Lord, be upon us, according as we have hoped in Thee. That is a beautiful Psalm which you begin to feel. In reading these, don’t you find that your soul turns to the Lord?
The next Psalm tells of times when you look around and everyone seems to be making it great, but you have nothing but trials and tests and sacrifice. Psalm 37:1–7: Fret not yourself because of evildoers, be not envious toward wrongdoers. For they will wither quickly like the grass, and fade like the green herb. Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness (it says cultivate—it really means “feed securely on His faithfulness”). Delight yourself in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He will do it. And He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your judgment as the noonday. Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him … (this is for the one who frets—“wait patiently for Him”).
“Oh, I am. I am waiting patiently for Him!”
Are you?
Here is another good passage about waiting on the Lord. Psalm 62:1–8: My soul waits in silence for God only; from Him is my salvation. He only is my rock and my salvation, my stronghold; I shall not be greatly shaken (it doesn’t say “I won’t be shaken,” but “I won’t be greatly shaken”). How long will you assail a man, that you may murder him, all of you, like a leaning wall, like a tottering fence? They have counseled only to thrust him down from his high position; they delight in falsehood; they bless with their mouth, but inwardly they curse. My soul, wait in silence for God only, for my hope is from Him. He only is my rock and my salvation, my stronghold; I shall not be shaken (I shall not be shaken—not at all!). On God my salvation and my glory rest; the rock of my strength, my refuge is in God. Trust in Him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before Him; God is a refuge for us. That is a good Psalm when everything is breathing down your neck.
This is a good Psalm when you begin fretting. Psalm 131: O Lord, my heart is not proud, or my eyes haughty; nor do I involve myself in great matters, or in things too difficult for me. Surely I have composed and quieted my soul; like a weaned child rests against his mother… Have you ever seen children being weaned? They are the most frustrated creatures on God’s earth. They yell, they cry, they scream, and they pout. They get angry and won’t look at you; you can’t do anything with them. The last thing they want is to be weaned. I can say as a father, I have never seen anything like it in my life. I can remember how furious our baby was when she was weaned. Oh, how furious she was! How angry! But finally she just sobbed and broke. And that is what God says we do: like a weaned child rests against his mother, my soul is a weaned child within me. O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forever.
Sometimes this helps you when things aren’t going right and God is making you grow up. He is making you mature. Things anger, frustrate, and provoke you, and God just cuts off the line of supply and says, “Come on, stand up and quit yourself like men. It’s time to walk with God.” This is a good Psalm for learning to wait on the Lord. You may not think you need it, but mark it down, you will need it.
Now, Psalm 130: Out of the depth I have cried to Thee, O Lord, hear my voice (this has another tone to it)! Let Thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. (Listen to me, Lord! I’m talking to You, pay attention!) If Thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared. I wait for the Lord, my soul does wait, and in His word do I hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than the watchmen for the morning; indeed, more than the watchmen for the morning. O Israel, hope in the Lord; for with the Lord there is lovingkindness, and with Him is abundant redemption. And He will redeem Israel from all his iniquities. That is also a good Psalm for waiting on the Lord.
Isaiah 8:17: And I will wait for the Lord who is hiding His face from the house of Jacob. I will even look eagerly for Him. Whenever you think God is playing hide-and-seek with you, this is the Psalm to read. Have you ever felt, “The Lord is hiding from me; He’s elusive; I can’t get hold of Him”? Read this Psalm and stand on it.
Isaiah 25:1–9 is another passage that can be such a blessing to you. O Lord, Thou art my God; I will exalt Thee, I will give thanks to Thy name; for Thou hast worked wonders, plans formed long ago, with perfect faithfulness (it is beautiful how the Lord has worked all of these things that He planned from a long time ago). For Thou hast made the city into a heap, a fortified city into a ruin; a palace of strangers is a city no more, it will never be rebuilt. Therefore a strong people will glorify Thee; cities of ruthless nations will revere Thee. For Thou has been a defense for the helpless, a defense for the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shade from the heat, for the breath of the ruthless is like a rain storm against a wall. Like heat in drought, Thou dost subdue the uproar of aliens; like heat by the shadow of a cloud, the song of the ruthless is silenced. And the Lord of hosts will prepare a lavish banquet for all peoples on this mountain; a banquet of aged wine, choice pieces of marrow, and refined, aged wine. And on this mountain He will swallow up the covering which is over all peoples, even the veil which is stretched over all nations. He will swallow up death for all time, and the Lord God will wipe tears away from all faces, and He will remove the reproach of His people from all the earth; for the Lord has spoken. And it will be said in that day, “Behold, this is our God for whom we have waited that He might save us. This is prophetic of the times just ahead of us. Mark it because this is going to be a real experience to God’s people: “We have waited that He might save us.”
Isaiah 26:8–9: Indeed, while following the way of Thy judgments, O Lord, we have waited for Thee eagerly; thy name, even Thy memory, is the desire of our souls. At night my soul longs for Thee, indeed, my spirit within me seeks Thee diligently; for when the earth experiences Thy judgments the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness. This also is prophetic of the time coming. The earth will learn righteousness when the judgments of God are in the earth. What shall we do? We shall just wait on the Lord and trust Him because we are going to have to live through it. God brings the judgments, and in the midst of it nations begin to learn righteousness again. We could surely use that in our country—in the government, among the people, in the business world—we need to learn righteousness. It is coming.
Isaiah 26:20, 21 is about times of judgment. Come, my people, enter into your rooms, and close your doors behind you; hide for a little while until indignation runs its course. For behold, the Lord is about to come out from His place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity; and the earth will reveal her bloodshed, and will no longer cover her slain. All of chapter 26 is good, but these are the key verses of what we are to do in the times of judgment and trouble. Read them again: Come, my people, enter into your rooms, and close your doors behind you; hide for a little while, until indignation runs its course. For behold, the Lord is about to come out from His place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity; and the earth will reveal her bloodshed, and will not longer cover her slain.
Isaiah 40:25–31 is like a beautiful and classic passage of waiting on the Lord. “To whom then will you liken Me that I should be his equal?” says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and see who has created these stars, the One who leads forth their host by number He calls them all by name; because of the greatness of His might and the strength of His power not one of them is missing. Think of it: in all these billions and trillions of years the Lord hasn’t lost one star. It is thrilling to know He hasn’t lost a star and He can hang onto the sons He is bringing forth.
Why do you say, O Jacob, and assert, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord and the justice due me escapes the notice of my God?” Do you not know? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the creator of the ends of the earth does not become weary or tired. His understanding is inscrutable. He gives strength to the weary, and to him who lacks might He increases power. Though youths grow weary and tired, and vigorous young men stumble badly, yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary. Isn’t that a beautiful passage of waiting on the Lord?
We miss a great deal by not reading more Scriptures aloud. When I read, I feel the Scriptures and become excited. Sometime I would like to make a series of tapes, reading favorite passages about walking with God—not expounding them, only reading them. They could easily be listened to on a cassette. These Scriptures are so real to me that I think I could read the meaning and the revelation into them.
There is a story about an old minister who was invited to an exclusive party of which many were from the artist world. A famous actor there, known for his reading of lines and great ability to interpret parts, was asked to read the Twenty-third Psalm. It was beautiful. It was flawless. When he finished, everyone clapped and clapped. Then he turned to the minister, trying to put him down, and said, “Now you read the Twenty-third Psalm.”
“Oh, you’ve done such a beautiful job, I wouldn’t want to do that.”
He insisted, “Go ahead, read it.”
So the old fellow got up and quoted it. He didn’t have to read it; he knew it well. It was not at all like the actor: none of the eloquence and beautiful interpretation. But when he finished and sat down, no one clapped. And the actor said, “I know the Psalm, but you know the Shepherd.” I think the same is true of some professional Bible recordings—they knew it. But wouldn’t it be good if some of our own brethren who really know the Lord would begin to read His Word to the people? We need more of the reading of the Word, especially on subjects like waiting on the Lord. They become the prayers of the people. You can enter in and speak them as though they are also coming out of your own heart.
You become more aware of everything when you wait on the Lord. And when you fail to do it, you lose that sharpness.
Martin Luther was a man who was known for his great efforts in the Reformation, and we know how he moved all of Europe. He went against the establishment in religion and, in a sense, in the political world, although I think the political world used him somewhat. Martin Luther was basically a man of prayer. He injured his health by his much fasting—maybe we would say today, by the way he broke his fasts. During long periods of fasts, because he was a good scholar, he made an interpretation of the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into German. Martin Luther’s German translation still remains one of the classic works produced in the spiritual world. Martin Luther was reputed to have prayed six hours a day. With all that he did, the translation and everything else, six hours a day were spent on his face before God praying. It was a discipline. When they asked him why he spent so much time in the prayer, he made this statement, “If I did not pray one day, I would know it very deeply. If I did not pray for two days, my wife and family would know it” (after pulling away from Roman Catholicism, he married a nun and raised a family). “If I failed to pray for three days, all of Germany would know it.”
I think a lesson is in that. You seem to get by and slide along for a little while. But if you stop waiting on the Lord, you’ll know it immediately, and others will soon pick it up. There is no way of cheating. This is a walk with God. So get up and start walking. Don’t sit on the sidelines; walk with God. To walk with God, you must be in tune with Him and have an awareness of His presence.
How can you walk with someone unless you know that someone is there? By way of illustration, in some of those movies about a man who found the secret of being invisible, people would start to talk with him and discover he was behind them or in front of them, etc. Likewise, how many people walk along and talk with the Lord, and the Lord isn’t even there? He is somewhere else. He is trying to lead them, and they are going in the wrong direction.
First, if you are going to walk with someone, you must be aware of him. If you are going to live with someone, you must be aware of what he is and who he is. You must be able to communicate yourself to him and understand his feelings and ways of thinking. The worst thing that can happen is for two strangers to be married who do not understand each other. They are drawn together by something they think is love, and then they wake up and find they know nothing about each other. They see each other, but they don’t know each other at all.
You must know the Lord. You have to wait before Him, read His Word, think His thoughts after Him, chase after Him, love Him, adore Him, plead with Him, and give love to Him. Then, as you think His thoughts and feel His feelings, you say, “Lord, Your attitude is going to be my attitude. What You think about it, I’m going to think about it. What You want, that’s what I’m going to want, Lord.” You become aware of His presence. You practice it every day, and He becomes more real to you than a flesh and blood person next to you. The Spirit world becomes more real because the Lord dwells there with your spirit more than anything else around and it is so easy for you to hide everything else away.
Walk with God. This move of God is a walk with God. Learn to love Him. Hunger and thirst after the Lord. Come to simply dwell before Him, and love and adore Him above everything else in the world. Nothing means anything to you like the presence of the Lord. Amen.