Waiting His Table

This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture that reject fear and promote faith. Waiting on the Lord means looking forward expectantly and seeking His face. We are instructed to align our prayers with the Word and thank God for what He has already done. Abraham is an example of waiting and trusting in God's promises. Paul's journey as a prisoner shows the certainty of waiting on the Lord. The Lord gives us tools to succeed in waiting, such as the armor of God and meditating on His Word. Welcome to Fear No Fear. Grace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. May the Holy Spirit embrace you today. This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture. We reject fear in any and all forms. Fear is a spiritual force, the currency of darkness and ignorance. It's what we inherited when Adam gave up his faith and Satan uses it to keep people down. His only weapon is words. If he can get you believing or looking at words of fear, he's got you. Instead, we champion faith as an allegiance to God, as a belief and trust and loyalty to the Lord God Almighty. We accept the evidence of his word as unvarnished truth, as is, just as it's written. We get close to his perfect love through the word, and perfect love casts out fear. 1 John 4.18 All scripture is taken from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Visit eBible.org Psalm 27.14 Wait for Yahweh. Be strong and let your heart take courage. Yes, wait for Yahweh. There's a couple of different ways we can take this. After all, wait means more than one thing. It means staying in one place. It means to serve something to someone, usually food and drinks. It can mean looking forward expectantly. It can mean to hold back expectantly. It can mean being ready and available. Now, in the context of this psalm, it means looking forward expectantly. The psalmist is declaring that he knows the Lord will save him. Do great things, not hide his face, and always deliver the psalmist from his troubles. This is a great way to take it, but as with most scriptures, it has multiple layers. The Lord wants us to seek his face. Psalm 27.8 2 Chronicles 7.14 1 Chronicles 28.9 Psalm 105.4 Matthew 7.7 You shall call on me, and you shall go and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You shall seek me and find me, when you search for me with all your heart. Jeremiah 29.12-13 Seek Yahweh and his strength. Seek his face forevermore. 1 Chronicles 16.11 Do a search for seeking, and you'll see it throughout the word. We cannot be passive about the Lord. That isn't how we use faith. That isn't how we grow faith. Faith is the currency of the kingdom. Mark 11.22 says that we need to have the God kind of faith. God has faith. If you look at the Greek words that make up that very short verse, you find that that's exactly what it says. We need to have the God kind of faith. Now we have been given his faith. Ephesians 2.8-10 and Romans 12.3 So if we've been given it, and we need to have it, then we must have been given it for a reason. And the reason that we have it is so we can use it. Yahweh is not a God of useless things. He is a God of motion and a God of use. We can use our faith in God in all the same ways that we can wait on the Lord. When we are waiting on the Lord, we're not impatient. We're not desperate. We aren't tapping our toes, huffing our breath, or in any other way trying to push the Lord. That's not waiting. That's demanding. We have been given free will. We have been given dominion here on this earth. But in no way do we get to tell God what to do, when to do it, or how to do it. We can ask Him for things. We give Him permission to work with our free will and dominion. But then we stand back and obey. Our waiting is our obedient expectation of something that the Lord is doing. Now, later, it doesn't matter. We know that He will do it. Now, we often don't like waiting. So, we can be proactive about it. Remember, He only hears the prayers of the righteous, and He only does what He wants to do. So, our requests in Jesus align with the Word, so we're asking the Lord for the things that He wants to do. Not what we want to do. What He wants to do. That's how you align your prayers with the Word. So, what can we do? We can praise and thank Him for what He's already done about it, whenever it comes to mind. Now, that's not wishful thinking. That's thanking the Lord for what He has accomplished, and standing on the Word that you based your prayer on in the first place. Now, whether we see the manifestation of it or not doesn't matter. This is one of the reasons we are instructed to call things as accomplished, whether we can see them or not. Romans 4.17. We are thanking Him for His work. We are thanking Him for the thing that He said He was going to do, regardless of whether or not we see it. Because it's His time, His way. Abraham is the best example of this kind of waiting. He was promised a son, from his own loins, naturally, with his wife. Now, they were well past the age of childbearing. Sarah had never had a child, and there was no evidence that she ever would. And, in fact, it was around 25 years before the promise manifested. Now, that's a long time to wait for something. It's even longer waiting for something to happen, while not doubting that it was as good as done, without any evidence that things were changing. Now, it's true that Abraham and Sarah didn't always have the right idea. They missed it, just as we can and do. But, in the end, they spent more time believing than they did missing it. Which is why Abraham is such a good example of faith. He wasn't perfect, but he spent most of his time thinking on the promise, dwelling on it, thinking about God and the nature of God, without scriptures to read either, remember? He just had the words of the Lord. That's all he had. And he trusted in those words and thought about those words and believed in those words so hard and so much that there was nothing that could dissuade him from their truth. He was not only promised a son, but an uncountable number of descendants coming from that son. So, when God acted like the deities that Abraham had grown up with and asked him to sacrifice his son, Abraham was willing. Not because he wanted to kill his son. Not because he thought God was like those deities. But because he was so sure that the promise of his son having kids was so strong, he knew that if Isaac died, he would be raised from the dead. Hebrews 11.19 Now, that is trust in the word of the Lord. That is faith. That is waiting. It's the kind of waiting that lets us look forward to what God is going to do. It's the kind of waiting that lets us hold back without needing to do things ourselves, because we know God is doing it. It can also mean, remember, ready to act, ready to obey, or ready to go through some things because you know that the Lord will do what he says he will do. There's a certainty to this type of waiting. Paul went through that on his journey as a prisoner to stand trial in Rome. When they had been long without food, Paul stood up in the middle of them and said, Sirs, you should have listened to me and not have set sail from Crete and have gotten this injury and loss. Now I exhort you to cheer up, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship. For there stood by me this night an angel, belonging to the God whose I am and whom I serve, saying, Don't be afraid, Paul. You must stand before Caesar. Behold, God has granted you all those who sail with you. Therefore, sirs, cheer up, for I believe, God, that it will be just as it has been spoken to me. Acts 27, 21-25 Now it seems pretty easy to do. Don't worry, because everything's going to be okay. Leave that fear behind. Thing is, though, it wasn't as easy as that. Now they had this rock of a promise to stand on, but in the very next verse, verse 26, Paul tells them about what they're going to have to go through, how hard this storm is going to hit them, even more than it already has. But we must run aground on a certain island. So yeah, you're going to live, but you're going to crash. Loss of ship. That's bad. Now Paul spends his time exhorting them again and again to hold to that promise. It was, with the violent storm that had been tormenting them for 14 days, a hard kind of waiting. The Lord doesn't ever leave us in the Lord's thumb, whether it is expectant waiting or hard waiting. He gives us the tools to succeed. He gave Abraham and Sarah a promise. He gave Paul a future to hold to, as well as a promise of deliverance for all those around him. He gave Joseph dreams of a successful and prosperous future. Genesis 37, 5-11 When we need to wait, He gives us tools. Now for the believer in the Word as truth, we have been given all the tools we need in Ephesians 8, 10-18, which is the armor of God, and a roadmap for how to do it in the first psalm. Blessed is the man who doesn't walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand on the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in Yahweh's law. On His law he meditates day and night. He will be like a tree planted by the streams of water that produces its fruit in its season, whose leaf also does not wither. Whatever he does shall prosper. Therefore the wicked are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous, but the way of the wicked shall perish. Our delight is to be the Word of Yahweh. We are to think about it and dwell on it all the time. You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. These words which I command you today shall be on your heart, and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up. Deuteronomy 6, 5-7 Joshua was warned about it and encouraged in it. Only be strong and very courageous. Be careful to observe to do according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded you. Don't turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall have good success. Joshua 1, 7-8 Not turning to the right or left means that we are to wait, staying in one place, His Word. If we use the Word, we can combat everything the enemy brings across our path. Every stray thought, every forceful thought, every imagining, every accidental click of the mouse while you're online, everything. That's how Jesus stood, that's how we're to stood. And a key component of that is praising the Lord. Seeking to be of service to Him with our words, prayers, songs, and celebrations. Not just in a service in a church or a gathering, but throughout our days and our nights. Thanking Him when something good happens. Thanking Him for guidance when you get a good idea. Thanking Him for providing when you get something you want or need. A deal at a store, a parking lot, a green light, food in your fridge, or maybe even just five minutes of peace and quiet so we can relax and thank Him for His goodness. He is a good God. He is a good Father. He deserves our thanks, our praise, and our worship. Psalm 92, 1 to 15. We need to wait on Him. Praising Him in our first moments of consciousness every day. Psalm 5, 3 and 59, 16. Praising Him when we wake up in the middle of the night. Psalm 119, 62. Praising Him all the time. If we're going to dwell without fear, we need to dwell in the trust we have in the Lord. We need to think about what the Lord wants and what the Lord has said to us. Sometimes He is asking for action. Sometimes He is asking for patience. Sometimes He is asking for movement. Sometimes He is asking for standing. He is always asking us to seek His face. He is always asking for obedience. Luckily, He is our shelter. He is our fortress. He is our safe place. In Jesus, we can abide and dwell and enjoy all that the Lord has for us. Abiding in Jesus, we have no fear because we have trust. We have faith, strengthened and deepened with His word, daily encountered with careful thought, no fear, His peace, and waiting on Him in service and in eager, faithful expectation. After all, He can and does do what He says that He can and will do. You can trust on that as you trust in Him. Have His kind of faith, faith invested and nurtured in His word. Our daily affirmation of God's love is Acts 20, verse 28. We are the church of God. We are the body of Christ. We are the bride of Jesus. But we are something else. We are a commodity. Not some profit-driven item to be traded away, but a prized possession. We are to watch ourselves as well as the others around us, our brothers and sisters in Christ. This means keeping ourselves pure and separated to Him. It isn't easy, but it is simple. When you find things that are taking you away from the word, away from praise, away from thinking on the Lord, cut them out. I'm not talking about removing the time we take to enjoy things. I'm not talking about removing TV, social media, books, films, or time with our friends. I'm talking about removing those things, whatever they are at the time that are taking time away from God. Those times that you feel in your spirit that you're supposed to be praying, or reading the word, or studying something. The times that you feel led by the Lord to do something with or for Him. Now those times are different, and you can feel the difference. It also means cutting out those things that the Lord doesn't approve of. The things you know go against His moral code for us. The things we find in the word that maybe we don't agree with, but we can choose to submit to with obedience and a smile on our face as we do, because He's a good God. He gives us good things, and nothing that He says is good is ever going to be worse. It's always going to be better. So you're not losing out on anything, you're gaining something. Now these are things that might get us on the wrong path, with the wrong things on our minds. We're to remove any and everything that might detract from Him. We belong to Him. He paid the dearest price that anyone can pay. It is only right that we let Him do what He wants, how He wants, and when He wants with the things that are His. Us. Paid for by the blood. Beloved, treasured children. His. As we close, remember that you have worth. You are precious and valuable. Declare this. Today, God loves that I, now you, fill in the blank. The deal you made, the smile you gave. Did you get out of bed? Read? Put on socks? There's no wrong answers here. There is no end to God's love, and no end to the things about you that He loves each and every day. Pick one. And remember, the Lord loves you just because you're you. 1 John 4 9-10 tells us, By this, God's love was revealed in us, that God has sent His only-born Son into the world, that we might live through Him. And this is love. Not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. His perfect love turned away God's wrath because of sin. And it casts out our fear too. See verses 18 and 19. We love because He first loved us. He just loves us. Can't get enough of us. And that is wonderful. See you next time.