Strength and Courage in the Waiting

 February 12, 2024

Monday

Psalm 31:24 (NASB 2020) 24 Be strong and let your heart take courage, All you who wait for the Lord.

I never liked to fish. You bait the hook, throw it in the water and wait for a fish to bite. I never liked waiting on something to happen that I couldn’t cause to happen. I liked the idea of cutting sticks of dynamite in half, lighting them and tossing them into the water. You caused the fish to float to the top and you just scooped them up. (I never actually did this but I heard that it could be done.) Now, that’s fishing!

Waiting for the Lord is more than doing nothing until He does something. Waiting for the Lord is making sure that I am not trying to do the work that He must do. I must not try to change people. That’s His job. I must not try to plan Him out of the work that He does.

Each time I have led a mission trip, something has not gone as planned. It seems that no matter how careful I was to plan, the plans were soon scrapped to do something else. Nothing of the Lord’s work would have been accomplished if I had insisted that we follow my plan. I had to give it up and let Him have control. Great things happen that way.

Strength does not come from me. I am strong when I am weak. So, to be strong I accept my weakness and act in my weakness. I take courage in acting in this weakness because I have seen the Lord use my weakness to do amazing things.

God does not share His glory. He cannot stand those who in their pride say, “I did this.” So, He allows people to act in their own strength and get their own results. They may say, “I did this,” but what they have accomplished will be only what a human can do.

Today, I will wait upon the Lord. I will respond to His every command with His strength. I will have courage because He has never failed to do what He has decreed. I take comfort in this.