Psalm 69:3 I am weary of my crying: my throat is dried: mine eyes fail while I wait for my God.
Prayer is Waiting on God
Psalm 69 reminds me how much I hate to wait. I hate waiting in lines; I hate waiting in traffic; I hate waiting for people. I hate to wait. The fact is that when I pray, I am seeking an answer now. If I wanted an answer to a prayer tomorrow, then I would pray tomorrow. If you think this makes me sound impatient and very much a sinful, flawed person, then you are correct. And I am in good company.
When you read Psalms 69 and 70, you find a plea from the psalmist for God to hurry. Psalm 70:1 says, “Make haste, O God, to deliver me; make haste to help me, O LORD.” In verse 5 he repeats that, “Make haste unto me, O God…make no tarrying.”
You might call Psalm 69 a lifeguard’s psalm. The psalmist says, “Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul.” He is drowning. He talks about the floods that overflow him. He talks about the deep water in verse 14 and the “waterflood” in verse 15. He is overwhelmed by life.
Furthermore he says, “I am weary of my crying.” He had been praying, and he was weary. He says, “I am in trouble: hear me speedily.” What is the essence of all this? The essence is that prayer is waiting on God. If I am not waiting on God, then I am not really praying.
The other day my son, Weston, had a dog biscuit on the floor, and our tiny dog, Bromley, was looking very intently at him from the other side of the dog biscuit. Weston was saying, “Wait for it…wait for it…wait for it….Get it!” And Bromley struck that dog biscuit like a shark striking chum in the water. It was lighting fast, but the entire time she was being told to wait, she wasn’t looking at the dog biscuit, she was looking at my son.
A later psalm tells us that as the eyes of the servant look to the hand of their master, so our eyes should wait upon our God. God is not making you wait because He is indifferent or indecisive. God would have us wait, in part, because that is what prayer is by very definition.
We wait on God in order to get something we want, but our waiting is what God wants. The gift we seek is never greater than the One who gives it, and sometimes we forget that. Yet when we wait on God we are not just trusting God, we are patiently trusting God when we don’t know how God will provide. It is a matter of our focus on God.
At the end of the day, our greatest need is God Himself and not merely what He can give. So if you are waiting today, maybe like the psalmist you can say, “Let not them that wait on thee, O Lord God of hosts, be ashamed for my sake.” David waited for God. That is the point. “For the LORD heareth the poor, and despiseth not his prisoners.” God does not belittle or ignore you. God knows the urgency of your need and He is completely sufficient.