https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/gods-invitation-rest/ Accept God’s Invitation to Rest August 24, 2025 | Scott W. Kay © iStock.com/nullplus Share Post Email Advertise on TGC “It feels so nice to finally stop and catch my breath.” Can you remember the last time you had a moment like that? For some of us, it’s been a while. In our hard-working, highly productive culture, we can sometimes feel like exhausted swimmers swept downstream in a fast-moving river, fighting to keep our heads above water, gasping for air. We get up early and stay up late. We never waste a minute. Our schedule is full, running here, running there, running late, running to catch up, running on empty, until we collapse in utter exhaustion. Underneath the satisfaction of being hard-working, hard-playing people is a weariness that’s desperate for the pace to relent so we can rest and recharge. Deep down, we’re dying to slow down and take a break. We keep telling ours...
Waiting
[Psalms 130]
One of the
shortcomings that I realized when I looked at myself is
"impatience." And because of
my impatience, I think I sometimes hurt others with quick words and/or actions. Moreover, I got things wrong because I was
impatient. In the midst of that, the
word God gave me to meditate on was 2 Timothy 3:4 – “treacherous, rash,
conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God--.” The Bible says when there will be terrible
times in the last days (v. 1), people will be “rash” (v. 4). Why do we get rash? Why do we get impatient? It seems that we become impatient when we
fall into the thought that we can't wait any longer and almost at the same time
we give up patience. Then we do what we
want. This impatience leads to the
inability to wait for God's will, creating wrong plans and methods, and
eventually with terrible results.
Impatience leads us to adopt a worldly and carnal plan and course of
action. For example, we take Abraham and
Sarah. Despite receiving the word of
promise from God, she gave up patience in faith and became preoccupied with
impatience. In the end, Sarah encouraged
her husband, Abram, to sleep with her maidservant Hagar, the Egyptian (Gen.
16:1-2). Abram accepted her counsel and
slept with Hagar, and eventually they had a son named Ishmael. But, as we know, Ishmael wasn’t the seed of
promise. Isaac was the seed of
promise. The terrible consequence of
impatience is giving up faith and patience (Internet). So I guess there is a saying that waiting is
a virtue. Waiting is an essential
element in our life of faith.
This is what Psalms
62:1, 5 says: “My soul waits in silence for God only; From Him is my
salvation. … My soul, wait in silence for God only, For my
hope is from Him.” Through these words,
we have been taught that we must trust exclusively in God, who is our
salvation, our hope, the rock and the fortress.
The reason is because it is our strength to trust in God quietly and
completely (Isa.30:15). We must wait in
silence for God only because our hope in from Him (Ps. 65:5). Surely the God of salvation will deliver us.
In Psalms 130:6,
the psalmist compared his waiting as follow: “My soul waits for the Lord More
than the watchmen for the morning; Indeed, more than the watchmen for the
morning.” The psalmist spoke of his
waiting compared to the watchmen waiting for the morning. By comparison he was confessing that his soul
waited for the Lord more than the watchmen waited for the morning. Who were “the watchmen”? The watchmen were people who stand on the
wall all night to protect their own people on the wall, in case the enemy might
invade. In other words, the watchmen
were the ones who guarded the wall to see if the enemy had invaded without
sleeping. What did these watchmen wait
for the most? It was “the morning”. They looked forward to the brightness of the
night (Park). With this earnest
anticipation, the psalmist was waiting for the Lord. The psalmist was waiting eagerly for the Lord
with more earnest wait than the watchmen waited for the morning. In such an earnest wait, the psalmist was
going up to the temple as he was singing Psalms 130.
What was the
psalmist so eagerly waiting for the Lord?
It was the word of God. Look at
Psalms 130:5 – “I wait for the LORD, my soul does wait, And in His word do I
hope.” The word of God that the psalmist
was waiting for was God's forgiveness and salvation according to the revealed
word (Park). Here we can guess that the
psalmist sinned against God and was in a painful situation due to God's
discipline. What was that painful
situation? Look at verse 1: “Out of the
depths I have cried to You, O LORD.” The
depths that the psalmist was laid in because of his sin means an intense
tribulation that made him appear drowned in water and suffocates (Park). Although like Jonah who disobeyed God (Jon.
1:2-3) and went into the depth, trapped in a big fish (v. 17) that was the deep
waters under the sea and cried out to God (ch. 2), the psalmist earnestly cry
out to Him. Look at Psalms 130:1-2: “Out
of the depths I have cried to You, O LORD.
Lord, hear my voice! Let Your ears be attentive To the voice of my supplications.” In the midst of such earnest prayer, the
psalmist knew that if the Lord didn’t condone all of his sins from the past to
the present, but condemned (Park), then there would be no one standing before
the Lord. So he said, “If You, LORD,
should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?” (v. 3) If God doesn’t forgive our sins and records
all our past, present, and future sins, there is no one in this world who dares
to stand before the holy Lord. He
couldn’t dare to stand before the Holy Lord as a sinner. Nevertheless, the psalmist believed in God's
pardon and humbly and in fear of God (v. 4) prayed to Him for forgiveness of
his sin. Then he was waiting for God's
words of forgiveness. How long could he
wait for this? After committing a sin,
when we look to God in a deep depression due to God's discipline and pray earnestly
for His forgiveness, we will eagerly wait for God to say this after that
prayer: ‘I have wiped out all of your sins and erased them. I don’t even remember your sins
anymore.’ If we could hear that voice of
God, how could we not dance and praise and worship God in freedom and
liberation?
After praying
earnestly for God to forgive him, the psalmist waited silently in faith before
God because he longed to hear the words of God's forgiveness. In the midst of that, the psalmist prayed
earnestly and waited for God to deliver him as evidence that God had forgiven
his sins from the depths of the painful situation that came to him due to his
sin. In other words, he prayed, looked
forward to, and waited for God's saving grace.
How was the psalmist able to wait and pray for the saving grace of God? I found the answer in verses 7-8: “O Israel,
hope in the LORD; For with the LORD there is lovingkindness, And with Him is
abundant redemption. And He will redeem
Israel From all his iniquities.” Because
the psalmist believed in God's lovingkindness and abundant redemption, he was
able to pray, expect, and wait for the grace of salvation and forgiveness of
sin. Do you really believe in God's
lovingkindness and abundant redemption?
Do you believe that God is the redeemer of all your sins?
Are any of you
lying deep like the psalmist? Are we not
in the midst of extreme trouble, as if we are drowning and sinking deeper and
deeper? Maybe the reason is because of
our sins. Then, like the psalmist, let's
look and hope in God's lovingkindness and abundant redemption with faith,
praying earnestly, expecting, and waiting with longing for the forgiveness of
sins and the grace of God's salvation.
Let's wait for the Lord more than the watchman waits for the
morning. Surely God will forgive us for
all our sins and deliver us even in the midst of the extreme trouble we face.
Longing for freedom and the joy of salvation
from sin,
James Kim
(Relying on the abundant lovingkindness of God
who waits more earnestly for those who eagerly wait for the word of God)
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