WAITING as a MISSIONAL POSTURE: A 5-Day Journey Exploring the Role of Waiting in Missional Livingنموونە

Waiting as the Path to Truth

Waiting is a deeply counter-cultural activity. It means dwelling instead of doing; it involves sustained hope instead of grasping immediate results. Psalm 25 illustrates the Bible’s portrait of this dwelling as the path to truth. In this psalm, the truth that comes through sustained waiting on God has two levels: direction in the face of a perplexing situation and perspective that allows us to interpret the current situation with its present and future implications.

In the first section of the psalm (vv. 1–3), two verbs are set in parallel: trust and wait. We might call this expectant confidence or trustful waiting. It is the posture that sits quietly and confidently in anticipation of God’s vindication. Whatever the situation's pressures, the righteous' final outcome will not be shame, disgrace, or disappointment.

In the second section (vv. 4–5), we discover that only in the waiting will we find truth (the “ways” and “paths” of the Lord). The psalmist describes this as sustained waiting: “all day long.” In verse 15, he calls it having “eyes always on the Lord.” Keeping our gaze fixed on the Lord will shape a proper perspective toward our circumstances. This is emphasized in the third section (vv. 6–10), where the poet underlines the focus of our waiting: the Lord’s compassion and unfailing love, goodness, righteousness, and truth.

Before reminding himself of God’s compassionate, loving, good, righteous, and true promises and using them as the basis for crying out for rescue (vv. 12–22), the psalmist pauses to consider the state of his own soul. In verse 11, he prays, “For your name’s sake, O Lord, pardon my guilt, for it is great” (NRSV). Trustful waiting is not just confident expectance that God will undertake to vindicate us in the face of enemies (the external hostility that we are facing), but also that he will deal with the sin lurking in our hearts. As he anticipates God’s actions on his behalf—guard, deliver, and redeem—the writer acknowledges how much he needs God’s work in his own life during the waiting: “May integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I wait for you” (v. 21).

My friend, wait on the Lord!