Psalm 27:14 - Waiting for the Lord is Courage

14 Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord! Psalm 27:14 ESV

Waiting for the Lord is hard, and waiting on the Lord takes courage. Waiting on the Lord is an active thing, it is an act of trust in God, an act of faith. We can all relate to the discomfort, and oftentimes the pain in waiting, in trusting, in the unknown. Waiting on the Lord and trusting in him is COURAGE.

It takes courage to wait on the Lord, and David made it clear in this psalm. Waiting on the Lord is the primary message of this entire Psalm, and on first glance is written to exhort others to trust in the Lord. But David isn't just writing these words as words of wisdom, but also to himself. David, in his stronger moments, exhorts himself in his weakness to wait for God rather than despair.

But even more important than the repeated call to wait for the Lord is the words let your heart take courage. Without courage, how can we endure the waiting? In The Treasury of David, Charles Spurgeon writes “Let the heart be strengthened, and the whole machine of humanity is filled with power; a strong heart makes a strong arm.” God’s people aren’t promised instant relief, but we are promised sustaining grace. Scripture is overflowing with examples of God’s sustaining grace, from Abraham and Sarah, David waiting for this anointing to be fulfilled, and the disciples in the upper room after Jesus’ crucifixion. Our own lives are examples of God’s sustaining grace: the way he breathes life into us, and the way he holds our very atoms together. If we take a moment to look around, we find that the Lord is holding our very lives in his hand, and with it these issues we wait on. So how do we wait on the Lord? How do we, in a world where convenience has become the idol most fervently served, take courage in waiting? Waiting on the Lord is never wasted. It takes courage and trust to wait—courage to believe that His timing is better than ours, and trust to believe that His silence does not mean His absence. Waiting for the Lord produces strength, not stagnation. In the waiting, our hearts are being strengthened, our faith refined. Courage in waiting doesn’t come from our own resolve, but from confidence that the Lord we wait for is faithful. As Isaiah reminds us: But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.

Isaiah 40:31

When we wait with courage and trust, we do not stand still—we are being renewed. God uses the waiting to deepen our dependence on Him, to anchor us in His promises, and to remind us that strength is found not in striving, but in resting in His faithfulness.