40 DAYS OF PRAYER AND FASTING: DAY 5 (They That Wait Upon The Lord)

This is the time of forging and preparation, and God wants to do it by calling you to wait on him.

This is Day 5 of our Prayer and Fasting season. The Lord has called us to himself this season, an invitation to the wilderness I would call it, to come and stay with him, wait on him for him to prepare us for the next season.

God wants to forge something within you, within me that would stand the test of time, that would outlive us. This is the time of forging and preparation, and God wants to do it by calling us to wait on him. Maybe you’re familiar with the concept of waiting; you’ve prayed a few times, fasted a few times before, but today I want to remind you what it really means, especially for your heart.

Psalms 123:1-2

New King James Version

1 Unto You I lift up my eyes, O You who dwell in the heavens.

2 Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their masters, As the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, So our eyes look to the Lord our God, Until He has mercy on us.

This is a posture of readiness, waiting on every word, every move, every instruction. When you observe waiters at a restaurant, they are waiting for you to say what you want to eat; just a wave of your hand, they are standing beside you with a napkin or waiting to tend to you. It’s an active waiting. The Hebrew word translated “wait” is qāvâ. It means more than simply passing time. It speaks of waiting with confident expectation, looking to God with hope, and depending on Him until the things He has said unfold come to pass.

Biblical waiting has way more to do with active trust and never inactivity. For your heart to be so alert and in tune that you miss nothing. That means in this season, you will guard your heart at all costs. You can’t afford distractions. It’s the season to lock in; we still have a couple of weeks; you must decide to fix your gaze on God. Discern distractions that appear in any form and say no. That verse says until he has mercy upon us! There is an expected end of waiting; let me stay here for a bit. You don’t wait on God without an outcome. We wait till we see something, we are not waiting to no end. There is an end; there is something we are waiting for.

And now to address what you may be waiting for: you may have your personal needs, but it is small. The Lord will address cases in this season as we wait, but there is a bigger picture! David was writing in the midst of a desert, and he said in:

Psalms 63:1-3

New King James Version

1 O God, You are my God; Early will I seek You; My soul thirsts for You; My flesh longs for You In a dry and thirsty land Where there is no water.

2 So I have looked for You in the sanctuary, To see Your power and Your glory.

3 Because Your lovingkindness is better than life, My lips shall praise You.

There’s a longing here. There’s a thirsting, and it’s not for water. It’s for the Lord! Are you seeking after the Lord for more than what you will eat or drink today? Are you just seeking the Lord for his name's sake? The verse says your loving kindness is better than life! It means that yes, your natural needs are important, but there is one who can satisfy the soul.

And that is why Scripture says, those who wait on the LORD shall renew their strength in Isaiah 40:31 (NKJV). Unfortunately, most people assume that the order is: get strong first, then you'll be able to wait well. But that's not what it says. It says the waiting is where the strength actually comes from. Not the reward for waiting well, but the source of it. That's why it makes sense that it’s in the season of waiting that God chooses to do his deepest work. Sometimes it would be painful, it would correct you, expose the things that are inconsistent with the man God has said you are and call you to come up hither. You will have to part way with the thing that cannot follow you.

Throughout Scripture, those who were greatly used by God were first taught how to wait. Even the disciples, after witnessing the resurrection of Jesus, were instructed not to rush into ministry.

Acts 1:4-5

New King James Version

4 And being assembled together with them, He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father, "which," He said, "you have heard from Me;

5 for John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now."

The same men who had walked with Jesus for three years still needed to wait. Why? Because God’s work cannot be accomplished by human enthusiasm alone, as good as enthusiasm for the things of God is. They still needed this power that Jesus spoke of.

Waiting has always been God’s way. That is where pride dies, it is where self-sufficiency is exposed, is where our confidence gradually shifts from our own abilities to the faithfulness of God. Many believers still mistake the phase of waiting as a phase for God being absent. But in Scripture we see consistently that it teaches the opposite. God is often doing His deepest work when He appears to be doing the least.

Maybe this is why David could confidently declare:

Psalm 27:14

New King James Version

14 Wait on the LORD; Be of good courage, And He shall strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the LORD!

Notice again where the strength comes. The Lord is strengthening your heart in this season as you wait, pressing you as you wait.

With Love,

The Catalyst,

Pastor Michael Ipaye.