Psalm 27: Wait

I’ve never been good at waiting. I don’t like to wait in lines, wait to be seated, wait for the results or wait until we meet to find out what you need to talk to me about. I’ve even gotten to the point in which I wait until just before the date of a big occasion before buying a gift for my wife because I don’t like waiting, I want to give it to her as soon as I buy it. There are many excuses and explanations I can give for my lack of waiting, but in the end, the call to wait is not about learning patience as much as it is about exercising hope. Psalm 27 is famous for its second section, “One thing I have desired of the LORD, that will I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to inquire in His temple.” This powerful statement of the king is surrounded by an acknowledgement of fear and an encouragement to wait.

David began the psalm by declaring that the LORD was his light and his salvation. Both these words, light and salvation, indicate deliverance, protection and advocacy. David was writing still surrounded by enemies, still facing trouble, still unsure of his future. The questions he was asking were for himself, not for others. David was not writing from a place of having it all together and trying to lead others into his confidence, he was writing in faith while living in doubt, writing in courage while living in fear. David was speaking truth he knew while battling doubt he needed to overcome. His enemies were not just possibilities, they were real, tangible, even present. But David had discovered that the presence of enemies was not the absence of God, that it was possible, even necessary, to battle fear while standing in faith, to choose trust and wait, even hope for peace.

David’s beautiful declaration of seeking God’s presence above all else was birthed in his experience that peace is not that absence of problems but rather being sure of God’s character no matter what problems arise. This is the same man that wrote that he could walk through the valley of the shadow of death without fear, only because he was confident that God was with him. The same king that rather than seeing God remove his enemies had experienced God protect and provide for him in the presence of his enemies. Psalm 27 is a song of maturity, a song that isn’t demanding of God but is confident in Him, a song that speaks to the heart rather than following the feelings of the heart, a song that calls for security in insecure times and listens to love when the loudest voices are those of fear.

At the end of the psalm, the very last lines, David talked to himself, “Wait on the LORD; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart; wait, I say, on the LORD!” David’s desire to live in God’s presence had created a call to trust in God’s character. The Hebrew word that we translate as “wait” carries with it in both sense and definition the idea of “hope”. It’s not waiting for the enemies to leave, the situations to change or the feelings to pass, it’s waiting in trust that God is good. It’s a waiting that believes in the person of God even when it doesn’t understand the plans, purposes or ways of God. It’s trusting until peace comes rather than needing to feel peace so that we can choose trust. David was reminding himself that God is trustworthy and so it was his job to choose trust, that God is good and so it was his job to believe his goodness, that God’s promise was that He would not forsake him and so when everyone else, even his mother and father had forsaken him, it was his job to remember that he was not and would not be forsaken.

I believe that Jesus was teaching this same maturity in the Sermon on the Mount when He commanded us not to worry and then asked, “What man is there among you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?” Jesus’ conclusion was, “If you then being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” His point was not simply that we need to be sure to ask of God, it was that we need to believe in God. Not simply to believe in His ability to provide but to believe in His character to love. The call to wait is not about getting what we want, it’s about remembering who we belong to, who we are calling on and in whose hands we are held.

If I were to be very honest my issue with waiting is a fear of not getting what I want or think I’ll need. What if I wait and then get turned away, wait and then it wasn’t worth it, what if I wait and miss out on something that would have been even better? Our fear of waiting on God is just that, it’s a fear, which means that it is founded in lies about God’s character and doubts about His goodness. David’s final thought about his situation, about the enemies that surrounded him, the plots against him, the wars that threatened to destroy him was simply this, “wait on the LORD”. We are probably not worried about enemies, plots or wars today, but the final thought must be the same. Maybe it’s a marriage in trouble, bills that seem impossible, illness that is unrelenting or situations that are completely outside of your ability to change, the command David gave to himself is the command we must take as our own, “Wait on the LORD”. Trust God’s character, believe God’s Word, hope in His goodness and wait for His love to overcome your fear.