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“Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” – Ps. 27:14 (ESV)

I confess that passages like this grieved my soul for more than a decade. What good does the psalmist expect to come out of speaking to the afflicted, “keep waiting” and “take courage”? Many well-meaning companions will look on you in your grief and say such meaningless, hurtful things as this. 

The great “prince of preachers,” Charles Spurgeon, endured severe depression. He once wrote of such counselors, “[S]trong minded people are very apt to be hard upon nervous folk,” and “to speak harshly to people who are very depressed in spirit,” with words that amount to, “‘really, you ought to rouse yourself out of that state.’”* The result is “one of the most cruel things that can be said to the sufferer” and “only inflicts additional pain.” That is, they unintentionally communicate, “Stuff and nonsense! Try to exert yourself!”**

It was only recently, however, that I learned that while this sort of shame-based, pick-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps, hollow advice is certainly prevalent from one person to another, it is not at all what the Bible means when it instructs believers to “wait on the Lord” and “take courage.” 

Waiting, as it is used in the Bible, first of all, is not passive. The directive to “wait” is a command to look and hope with confident expectation that the day of salvation will come. Rather than, “stop being weak in heart,” the intended message is something more like, “in this time while your Deliverer feels far-off and silent, do not break relationship with Him to pursue your own interests, but rather lean in closer to Him, weep to Him about all the things you feel, and wholeheartedly depend on Him to give an answer.” “Wait” means “draw near.”

Secondly, to “wait on the Lord” means to continue keeping watch over your soul, and over all that has been entrusted to your care. 

It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his servants in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to stay awake. Therefore stay awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or in the morning—lest he come suddenly and find you asleep.
– Mk. 13:34-36

The Lord answered, “Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom the master puts in charge of his servants to give them their food allowance at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whom the master finds doing so when he returns. Truly I tell you, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. But suppose the servant says to himself, ‘My master is taking a long time in coming,’ and he then begins to beat the other servants, both men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers.
– Luke 12:42-46

The enemy would have us grow despondent and apathetic in the waiting. He knows that once we give up waiting, it will not be long before we forget our Deliverer and, like the Israelites that grew impatient with Moses on the mountain, begin constructing idols to appeal to our own fleshly desires. “Wait” means “remember from where your help comes and live.”

Lastly, Scripture tells us that our strength will come by continuing in the way of integrity and righteousness until we see deliverance. 

“May integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I wait for you.”  – Ps. 25:21

King David, like Jesus, was well acquainted with sorrow when he wrote, “wait on the Lord” and “take courage.” He intends these words, not as heaping boulders of shame on the afflicted in spirit, but as a command to his own soul to remain faithful, to walk in integrity, to watch with eager hope, and to cling to the rock of his salvation in the midst of his affliction. 

Let us, likewise, command our souls to sing:

“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?

The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?

I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living! Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” – Ps. 27:1, 13-14

“Wait” means to “draw near,” “remember from where your help comes,” and “sing courageously to your accuser and affliction: my hope is in God.”