Illustration: Themistocles, who led the Greeks in the famous naval battle of Salamis, for some reason unknown to his troops, delayed the engagement. It was expected that he would avail himself of the early morning hours; and when what seemed the golden opportunity had gone in inactivity, there were many who suspected him of being a traitor to his country. But he was waiting for the land breeze, which he knew would begin to blow at nine o’clock in the morning. He proposed to harness the very winds to his war-galleys, and make them waft his boats to sea; and so save the strength of his men for the fighting. Thus, those who would have been only rowers became warriors. Happy is the servant of God who, waiting for power from on high, thus uses in the work of the Lord energies that would otherwise be wasted....
Introduction: By waiting (Hebrew qawah) the prophet means a longing for the fulfillment of the promise by faith, but it is a longing or looking for that is characterized by confident expectation. Waiting requires patience; but it is never indifferent. There is always a restlessness, an eagerness, a looking for something, an inner vigil. To hope for something is active; it is never out of mind. English Bibles alternate between translating with “hope” or “wait.” The two ideas are in the word. Here we would say the term describes the essence of confident, expectant faith. In the immediate context it describes the attitude and actions of those Israelites who believed the promises of the LORD and were ready to step out when God began to move. They believed the release was coming; they waited for it. They knew it would happen; they just did not know exactly when.
And when the release would come, they would escape with energy and quickness like eagles mounting up. But the road back to the land of promise would be long, and so it would be as if they would start quickly, slow to a run, and then to a walk. These expressions describe both the facts of embarking on a prolonged journey and the growing confidence that continued success would bring. They would never grow tired on their journey back; and they would not look back in fear. Rather, their confidence would grow as they went because their way back to Judah would be the fulfillment of the promised hope.
Likewise, believers living now at the end of the age in the expectation of the coming of the Lord have the same kind of confidence. To hope for the coming of the LORD does not imply that there is a chance it might not happen; rather, it implies an active faith in the truth of His coming. It will happen; they are expecting it soon. Those who wait for the LORD will not be entangled by this life, but will be focused on the spiritual preparation for His appearance. And as they live out their faith in the light of that hope, they will find their strength renewed for life’s difficulties along the way.
Our minds more than our bodies cause us to lose heart and give up. The young are not immune, because "even the youths shall faint and be weary" (v.30). God gives power to young and old who place their hope in Him. He stirs our spirits to run, walk, and soar for Him.
How to wait ON God?
The Scriptures speak much about waiting on the Lord. Few things are as hard to do as waiting on the Lord. It requires a lot of patience, faith, and submission. But waiting on the Lord has much wonderful compensation. Our verse speaks of four great compensations from waiting on the Lord. They include waiting ON God with ~
1. Energy: [“They shall renew their strength.”]
You must wait at the gas pump for the gas to fill your car’s gas tank, or you will not go far before your car runs out of energy. Likewise we need to wait spiritually if we want spiritual energy. We need to wait in His Word. Do not be in a hurry to get through your daily Bible reading. The same is true regarding prayer. The hymn says, “Take time to be holy,” and it takes time.
The Hebrew word commonly means to change, to alter; and then to revive, to renew, to cause to flourish again, as, e. g., a tree that has decayed and fallen down. Here it is evidently used in the sense of renewing, or causing to revive; to increase, and to restore that which is decayed. It means that the people of God who trust in him shall become strong in faith; able to contend with their spiritual foes, to gain the victory over their sins, and to discharge aright the duties, and to meet aright the trials of life. God gives them strength, if they seek him in the way of his appointment - a promise which has been verified in the experience of his people in every age.
2. Elevation: [“They shall mount up with wings as eagles.”]
Eagles rise above the world with their wings. Spiritually we need to rise about the world’s standards and interests. Waiting on the Lord will give us the wings to do this. It will help us live a higher, nobler, godlier life. Apparently in Hebrew it can also be translated as ~ ‘They shall put forth fresh feathers like the molting eagle;’ and in his note on the passage remarks, that ‘it has been a common and popular opinion that the eagle lives and retains his vigor to a great age; and that, beyond the common lot of other birds, he molts in his old age, and renews his feathers, and with them his youth.’
Power to soar, to lift our heavy selves from earth, and to reach the heavenly places where we shall commune with God that is the greatest of all gifts to strengthened spirits. And it is the foundation of all the others, for it is only they who know how to soar that can creep, and it is only they who have renewed their strength hour by hour, by communion with the Source of all energy and might, who when they ‘drop with quivering wings, composed and still,’ down to the low earth, there live unwearied and un-fainting.
Illustration: Ever watch an eagle learn to fly? The mother pushes the baby eaglet out of the nest, and the baby bird falls, desperately flapping its wings. Before the baby hits the ground, however, the mother eagle swoops under her baby and lifts it back to safety. She’ll continue the lesson over and over again until her eaglet learns to fly. She doesn’t push the baby out of the nest to abuse it; she pushes the baby out of the nest because she cares for it. She wants it to learn to fly. If the mother eagle never pushed the baby out of the nest, the eaglet would never leave the nest!
Learning to trust in God is similar to an eaglet trusting its mother when learning to fly. The similarities for us are obvious. God sometimes pushes us out of our comfortable lives to teach us to trust him. We may fall a little, but he doesn’t let us hit the ground. If we were never uncomfortable, we’d never learn to trust him.
3. Enthusiasm: [“They shall run and not be weary.”]
Running pictures enthusiasm. And not being weary in running speaks of lasting enthusiasm. We need more of this at church. Some get enthused, but it does not last. Others do not get enthused about the Lord’s work at all. But if these folk would take time and wait in the Word and prayer they would see their spiritual enthusiasm become greatly increased.
This passage, also, is but another mode of expressing the same idea - that they who trust in God would be vigorous, elevated, unwearied; that he would sustain and uphold them; and that in his service they would never faint. This was at first designed to be applied to the Jews in captivity in Babylon to induce them to put their trust in God. But it is as true now as it was at that time. It has been found in the experience of thousands and tens of thousands, that by waiting on the Lord the heart has been invigorated; the faith has been confirmed; and the affections have been raised above the world. Strength has been given to bear trial without complaining, to engage in arduous duty without fainting, to pursue the perilous and toilsome journey of life without exhaustion, and to rise above the world in hope and peace on the bed of death.
Crises come - moments when circumstances demand from us more than ordinary energy and swifter rate of progress. We have often, in the course of our years, to make short spurts of unusual effort. The bulk of our lives is a slow jog-trot, and it is harder to keep elasticity, buoyancy, freshness of spirit, in the eventless mill - horse round of our trivial lives than it is in the rarer bursts. Excitement helps us in the one; nothing but dogged principle, and close communion with God, ‘mounting on wings as eagles,’ will help us in the other. But we may have Him with us in all the arid and featureless levels, across which we have to plod, as well as in the height to which we sometimes have to struggle upwards, or in the depths into which we have sometimes to plunge. If we have the life of Christ within us, then neither the one nor the other will exhaust our energy or darken our spirits.
4. Endurance: [“They shall walk and not faint.”]
Walking speaks of the normal round of life. It is what we do most. And frankly, it is harder to live for God in the normal routine of life than in any other area. Many folk only get with it spiritually on special days at church. They have not learned to live their faith in the ordinary round of life. But when we wait on the Lord in His Word and prayer, we will gain the endurance to live our faith in the common routine of life without fainting. Our faith will endure the struggles of ordinary living.
Strength to walk may be yours - that is to say, patient power for persistent pursuit of weary, monotonous duty. That is the hardest, and so it is named last. Many a man finds it easy, under the pressure of strong excitement, and for a moment or two, to keep up a swift pace, who finds it very difficult to keep steadily at unexciting work. And yet there is nothing to be done except by doggedly plodding along the dusty road of trivial duties, un-helped by excitement and unwearied by monotony. Only one thing will conquer the disgust at the wearisome round of mill-horse tasks which, sooner or later, seizes all godless men, and that is to bring the great principles of the gospel to bear on them, and to do them in the might and for the sake of the dear Lord. ‘They shall run and not be weary, they shall walk’ along life’s common way in cheerful godliness, ‘and they shall not faint.’
Illustration: Question: When is a bird bigger than a mountain?
Answer: When the bird is closer than the mountain.
In reality, the bird is not bigger than the mountain, but it sure looks that way when the feathery fellow is perched on my window ledge and the mountain is far away in the distance. Sometimes we perceive God this way in relationship to our problems. The troubles facing us seem huge because they are so close - like a big black bird with beady eyes and a sharp beak waiting for a smaller animal’s weariness to turn into helplessness so it can devour it. At such times, God seems as far away as a distant mountain, and we perceive Him as being small and unreachable. The prophet Isaiah changes our perspective by asking these rhetorical questions: “Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, measured heaven with a span and calculated the dust of the earth in a measure? Weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance?” (40: 12). The Lord “gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might He increases strength” (v.29). Just as a bird is never bigger than a mountain, no problem is ever bigger than God. It’s all a matter of changing our perspective.
Application: ‘They that wait upon the Lord’ - that is the whole secret. What does waiting on the Lord include? Let me put it in three brief exhortations. Keep near Him; keep still; expect. If I stray away from Him, I cannot expect His power to come to me. If I fling myself about, in vain impatience, struggling, resisting providences, shirking duties, perturbing my soul, I cannot expect that the peace which brings strength, or the strength which brings peace, will come to me. It must be a windless sea that mirrors the sunshine and the blue, and the troubled heart has not God’s strength in it. If I do not expect to get anything from Him, He will not give me anything; not because He will not, but because He cannot. Take the old Psalmist’s words, ‘I have quieted myself as a weaned child,’ and nestle on the great bosom, and its warmth, its fragrance, its serenity will be granted to you. Keep hold of God’s hand in expectation, in submission, in close union, and the contact will communicate something of His own power. ‘In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.’ The bitter contrasts may all be harmonized, and the miraculous assimilation of humanity to divinity may, in growing measure according to our faith, be realized in us. And though we must still bear the limitations of our present corporeal condition, and though life’s tasks must still oftentimes be felt by us as toils, and life’s burdens as too burdensome for our feeble shoulders, yet we shall be held up. ‘As thy day so shall thy strength be,’ and at last, when we mount up further than eagle’s wings have ever soared, and look down upon the stars that are ‘rolled together as a scroll,’ we shall through eternal ages ‘run and not be weary’ and ‘walk and not faint.’
Mere natural and physical powers will not avail in the hour when one is called upon to face great mental and spiritual emergencies. But they who have learned to refer everything to GOD and to wait quietly upon Him will be given all needed strength to rise above depressing circumstances, thus enabling them to mount heavenward as eagles facing the sun, to run their race with patience, and to walk with GOD with renewed confidence and courage, knowing that they are ever the objects of His love and care.
It is one thing to wait ON the Lord. It is quite another to wait FOR Him. As we wait on Him we are changed into His likeness. As we wait for Him in patience we are delivered from worry and fretfulness, knowing that GOD is never late, but that in His own time He will give the help we need.
