Prayer and Waiting

10 minute read

Waiting is counter-intuitive in our culture of instant everything. We are impatient if an Internet page takes more than a few seconds to load! It is not surprising therefore that the concept of waiting in prayer is foreign to us. And yet there is such power in waiting! It opens the door for God to work in our lives and for him to manifest himself to us. He is what we need.

Let’s take a look together at waiting in prayer from a biblical perspective. Waiting comes up a lot in the Bible. The Psalmists especially often speak of waiting. I am also going to draw on Andrew Murray’s classic devotional, Waiting on God,((Waiting on God, Andrew Murray. Rickfords Hill Publishing Ltd., Buckingham, 1895/2015)): it’s an inspirational read, and I hope you will be encouraged to read it for yourself.

In this article I’m going to look at various aspects of what it means both to wait for God and to wait on God. These concepts have the power to touch us in profound and transformative ways, simply because they are ways of letting God into our lives.

Waiting for or waiting on?

Is there a difference between waiting for God and waiting on God? Is it simply a question of updating the now antiquated language of the KJV by changing “waiting upon God” to “waiting for God”? Or is there a significant nuance in meaning that has something helpful to teach us as we seek to grow in prayer? I want to suggest that the latter is true but also that both aspects are important for our growth both generally in our discipleship and specifically in our prayer lives.

What does it mean to wait for God?

Let’s look at some Scriptures to explore some different aspects of what the Bible means by “waiting for God”.

1.     An attitude of mind that recognises our entire dependence upon God—Ps 25

Biblical waiting for God and hoping in God are two sides of the same coin. Often, where the ESV has the idea of waiting for God, the NIV has instead hoping in God. This is the case, for example, in Psalm 25, verses 3, 5 and 21. David begins the psalm with an expression of trust in God (vv1-2). Despite his sins (vv7, 8 and 11), despite the fierce hatred of his enemies (vv2, 19) and despite his loneliness and anguish of soul (vv16-18), he is determined to keep trusting, to keep looking to God. He will not look to any other solution for his problems, instead he will wait in confident hope for God to come through, so that waiting and hoping merge in expectant looking forward. He is looking forward for God and for nothing and for no one else.

2.     An expression of trust in God and not in ourselves—Ps 37:7-8

Biblical waiting for God also means that we don’t jump in and try to sort out the situation in our own strength. This is surely the idea in psalm 37 vv7-8, where David follows up his exhortation to wait patiently for the Lord (v7) by telling us to refrain from anger (v8). He is saying that when evil seems to triumph, we should wait for God’s timing to bring justice rather than presumptuously taking matters into our own hands. Of course, it is often right for us to take action. The point here is that we should not react in anger and in our own strength but wait for God’s timing and God’s enabling. Murray puts it like this:

…the very starting point and groundwork of this waiting is utter and absolute impotence… Your failure has been owing to only one thing. You sought to conquer and obey in your own strength.((Murray, op.cit., Twelfth Day, p37.))

Examples of people who got tired of waiting

There are examples in Scripture of what happens when people get tired of waiting. Abraham caused huge problems when he had a son by Hagar instead of waiting for God’s promise to be fulfilled through Sarah. Saul failed miserably when he offered the sacrifice himself instead of waiting for Samuel (1 Samuel 13:8-15).

Examples of the right kind of waiting

The right kind of waiting is demonstrated by David, who refused to take the opportunities presented to him to kill Saul, even though Saul was trying to have him killed. Instead he waited for God to deal with Saul.

The right kind of waiting is also wonderfully exemplified in the life of George Müller. Müller raised the finances both to build and to run his orphanages through prayer. His principle was to ask only God:

…the first and primary object of the work was that God might be magnified by the fact that the orphans under my care are provided with all they need, only by prayer and faith, without anyone being asked by me or my fellow-labourers, whereby it may be seen that God is faithful still and hears prayer still.((Steer, Roger. George Müller: Delighted in God (p. 53). Christian Focus Publications. Kindle Edition.))

George Müller

This principle was tested many times, when the cupboard was bare and there was nothing left for the next meal for the orphans. Müller never compromised his principle, and God never failed to provide. He quite literally waited—and kept on waiting, until God provided.

3.     An attitude of mind that expects God to work

Biblical waiting for God is not a vague hope that God will act, but a confident expectation that he will. Our waiting is an expression of trust that our God is faithful. We say with the psalmist,

none who wait for you shall be put to shame

Ps 25:3 ESV

When we rush in to do things ourselves, we do not express this confidence. In fact our frenetic activity speaks volumes about our lack of trust. We don’t really expect God to do anything significant, so we feel we have to get on and do it ourselves.

4.     An attitude of heart and mind that grasps the awesome power of God

Biblical waiting is waiting with an expectant heart that grasps something of the awesome power that God is able and willing to wield on our behalf.

Seeing with the heart

In the New Testament, Paul prays for the Ephesians that their eyes will be opened to grasp at heart level (“the eyes of our hearts” Eph 1:18) God’s “incomparably great power for us who believe”. The power available to us is the same power that raised Christ from the dead and placed him above every conceivable authority.

In the Old Testament, Isaiah 40:28-31 speaks of the Creator of the ends of the earth renewing the strength of the weak and weary, the faint and the exhausted by exchanging their weakness for his power. It is no accident that the passage begins, “Have you not known? Have you not heard?” (Is 40:28a): We have to see it! We have to see it, not just with a superficial intellectual understanding, but with a deep heart level grasp of the reality of it. That means understanding in a way that causes our heart feelings to respond with joy and confident expectation, which is so much more than a mere mental assent. (Andrew Murray has some strong things to say about the difference between “the religion of the mind and the religion of the heart”. People err because,

They know not how infinitely greater the heart is than the mind. It is in this that one of the chief causes must be sought of the feebleness of our Christian life, and it is only as this is understood that waiting on God will bring its full blessing.((Andrew Murray, op. cit., Ninth Day pp25-26.)))

Andrew Murray

5.     An attitude of disciplined integrity

In our waiting we may often be tempted to cut corners and do what we know is wrong, perhaps out of frustration because wickedness and injustice seem to thrive. The psalmists certainly experienced this: Psalm 37:7, Psalm 73:2-15. But we know that God is righteous and holy, and that therefore sin always has consequences, even if we later repent and are forgiven. So we wait. Instead of taking matters into our own hands in a wrong way, Biblical waiting means that we wait for God to act. We say with David,

May integrity and uprightness preserve me,

for I wait for you

Ps 25:21

Summary

Biblical waiting is waiting that recognises our entire dependence upon God. Our waiting is an expression of our trust in him and of our refusal to put our trust in ourselves or in anyone or anything else. He alone can save us. At the same time we wait confidently, expecting God to work and rejoicing in our assurance that our God’s power is awesome. We may be tested in our waiting to take matters into our own hands or to cut corners, but, by God’s grace, we stick to what is right and keep waiting.

What does it mean to wait on God?

Psalm 37:7 begins,

Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him;

The meaning of “Be still” is basically “be silent” (not, as in some versions, “Rest”).((Psalms 1-72, Derek Kidner, IVP, Leicester, 1973. P150.)) The same idea occurs in psalm 62: 1, repeated in v5, where David, even though under great pressure, opts to wait in silence for God alone. There is great blessing in waiting in silence in prayer. As we wait on God, all that we have said about waiting for God still applies. We wait in the framework of those lifestyle choices of dependence and trust and expectation and integrity and awareness of God’s majesty and power and love.

1.     Waiting takes time

Perhaps this is the most obvious thing to say about waiting on God. If our prayer time is always limited to ten minutes after ten minutes of Bible reading before we rush on into the demands of our day, then we are unlikely to feel much benefit from waiting. We must take time to wait. It is not that God is unwilling to reveal himself, but that we are not ready to receive him. Ten minutes is not long enough to allow the whir of our own thoughts to settle. Those thoughts have a momentum, carried along by anxieties and the adrenalin that is preparing us to deal with the tasks and the situations that we face. It takes time for us to mentally slow down and for those distracting thoughts to gradually subside. It takes time to focus spiritually and to begin to realise that God is with us. Of course, he never left us, it’s just that we generally need to slow down in order to perceive him. I think of Elijah when he fled to Horeb weary in soul and God spoke to him (1 Kings 19:9-18). God revealed his power in a mighty wind that broke rocks into pieces, in an earthquake and in fire. But he did not speak through any of those things. He spoke in a “still small voice” (KJV), or “a gentle whisper” (NIV). We have to be quiet enough to hear that whisper. It may not be that God will say anything at all, but we must wait above all to feel his presence.

2.     Waiting biblically

I mean by this that our waiting is always based on biblical truth. It should never be an emptying of our minds in the style of eastern mediation. That is a dangerous thing to try to do. I say “try” because I think it is an impossible thing to do. You can never stop yourself thinking, and to try to do so is to open yourself up to demonic influence: Nature may abhor a vacuum, but Satan sees it as an opportunity! Instead we focus on biblical truth as we wait, maybe using a verse of Scripture as a basis for meditation. We are quiet in the sense that we bring no requests. Within the framework of our biblical meditation, we take time to pause, to be silent and to wait for God. If we find ourselves distracted, then we bring our minds to order by refocusing on the verse or the biblical truth that we started with.

3.     The importance of persevering when we feel nothing

There will be many times when we wait and feel nothing. We should not allow ourselves to be downcast by this. God is still working, whether we feel his presence or not. Murray exhorts us not depend on our feelings, but to wait confidently that “God will bring us untold and unexpected blessing.”((Murray, op. cit., p23))

4.     Wait for God, not his gifts

Murray is clear from the start of his little devotional book that it is God himself that we need. In his preface he begins by saying how he has been impressed by the thought that “we need more of God”.((ibid. p1.)) He goes on to say that “The great lack of our religion is, we do not know God.” (The italics are his.)((ibid. p2.)) In our seeking of God we can easily be side-tracked by his blessings. We can rejoice in his gifts and yet accept second best by not pressing on to know the Giver. These blessings can be many things, but often they can take the form of the men and women that God uses. We can be thrilled by a great preacher, or in awe of a great church leader, but stop short of truly knowing for ourselves the very God and the very truths that they teach. “We get too much of religion second hand, from the teaching of men” says Murray.((Ibid. p75.)) We can be taken up, too, in service, rushing around like Martha, doing so much for God, and fail to take time, like Mary, to wait on our Saviour. The important point of that story, I think, is not so much that Mary chose to learn from Jesus, but that she chose to be with him. If we fail to wait on God, then “the very service that we render the Master separates from him”.((Ibid. p75.))

5.     Waiting involves surrender

“A soul cannot seek close fellowship with God…without a very honest and entire surrender to all his will.”(Italics his)((Ibid. p20.)) If we are truly seeking to know God in our waiting on him, then we must approach him as God. If he is Lord of all, then he must be Lord of me too. As we learn of his love for us, and that he wishes only the very best for us, we learn to trust him and echo the psalmist (and the Lord Jesus), saying, “I delight to do thy will…”(Ps 40:8, KJV). This will at times challenge us to the core of who we are, and God will surely test us on occasion, just as he did Abraham. But God knows our weakness, and he will help us.

6.     Waiting for God’s manifest presence

God will not always manifest himself to us when we wait on him (see point 2 above). But sometimes he will. This is worth waiting for! In the glorious sweetness of his revealed presence we realise that this is what we were made for. We forget ourselves and just adore him. There is a paradox here that as we savour his presence, we are not satisfied but instead filled with longing to know more of him and to draw closer still. The longing in no way diminishes the sweetness; in fact it enhances it.((John Piper writes about the intermingling of what he calls “desire” and “delight” and how they work together in When I don’t Desire God, How to Fight for Joy, Crossway Books, Wheaton, 2003, chapter 2. He draws heavily on C S Lewis.))

7.     Waiting on God together

We have been talking about waiting on God in private prayer, but much of this applies too when we meet corporately for worship. In our church services, we must take time to wait on God. Are we making space to listen and to wait for the Holy Spirit to manifest his presence among us? So often it seems that our services are crammed with all sorts of good things, but do we pause long enough to be aware of the God that we say we are worshipping? It may be that our congregations will need teaching and guiding on this. They may need help to see that silence is not to be feared, and that it is not necessary to jump in and fill every silence with noise of some kind. Wait for God! Wait expectantly and you will experience God in fresh ways and there will be a new freshness and vibrance in your services. When God makes himself known it is never dull!

8.     Waiting as lifestyle

I have been focussing mainly here on waiting on God in prayer, but of course, knowing God and experiencing him goes far beyond the time we devote to private prayer. In fact, if our consciousness of God were confined only to those secret times then I think that would be sad indeed. Our aim surely, is for that God-consciousness to spill over into our every day. We want to be able to savour him moment by moment, to take his precious presence with us as we go about our daily affairs. This is our aim. I for one know that I have far to go on this journey! If God has stirred within us a desire to know him in this way, then let’s thank him for that and ask him to work in us more and more and show us how we can best cooperate with him as he moulds us and shapes us to walk in fellowship with him.

Conclusion

There is a difference between waiting for God and waiting on God. Waiting for God has more to do with the heart attitude that we bring in seeking to know God and to follow Jesus. Waiting on God is about taking time to wait in silence before God. The two kinds of waiting are interdependent. And they are foundational. Without waiting our lives will be shallow. We shall be full of activity but weak on identity; we may know much about God but we will know little of him; we may learn much of the experiences of others, but we will have little to tell of our own heart experience of God. I do hope you will be encouraged to read Andrew Murray’s devotional for yourself, but above all, it is my prayer that we will all learn to take time to wait on our great God.