The Bible does not have an exact definition for what it is to wait on God; what we do have are principles from which we derive the teaching that we have to wait on God. On the one hand, in the book of Ecclesiastes, the Word of God teaches us that there is a time for everything under the sun. In the same book, we also learn that God makes everything beautiful in his time. When we put those two ideas together, what do they imply?
There will be times that will not work to do those things that perhaps you want, simply because it is not God’s time. Those things that are not done in the Lord’s time will not work out. What will happen, then, when one is not in God’s time? Well, it can result in failure and various consequences; it can result in many headaches and many disagreements within our relationships. So “wait” means making decisions when God understands that we must.
On the other hand, the Bible also guides us that we must be responsible, doing the earthly things that touch us. So, when one does what one has to do, and what we are looking for does not happen, there is nothing else to do apart from waiting on God. This includes not worrying, burdening ourselves, or losing sleep, but trusting that, having fulfilled our responsibilities, the rest depends on God’s providence.
We can give several examples of how this looks practically:
- Let’s think of a cancer patient who is undergoing a treatment process. At the end of the treatment, after fulfilling his responsibilities to take it, what he must do is simply wait on God.
- We can also apply this to someone who is looking for a job. This person has the responsibility of sending his CV to various companies and interviewing, and then from there, waiting on the Lord. What does that mean? That one is confident that he has already done what was humanly my turn; the rest depends on God.
- Like, I can see it when looking for a wife or a husband; someone single may be meeting several people within a circle of healthy, mature, Christian people; but first of all he must wait on the Lord. This means that he is waiting for God to orchestrate the circumstances in such a way that, when the time comes, God will couple it with the choice that he has made.
Waiting on the Lord is a way of saying, “I am trusting in God, waiting for Him to providentially orchestrate the circumstances for any particular thing to come to pass.” However, I have to be careful not to use this phrase as a “cliché” and to be careless, irresponsible, and lazy. Someone who is not assuming his human responsibility is not truly waiting on the Lord.
Certainly there are many things that we have to do, but we do not comply simply out of laziness or irresponsibility. Waiting on the Lord goes beyond sounding spiritual without assuming responsibility; it involves trusting in the Lord after having done my part.
Taken from the podcast “It’s Not As Simple As It Seems”, episode “What does the Bible mean when it mentions the phrase “wait on God”?”