Do you ever have one of those “aha” moments, where something suddenly becomes very clear to you, and you wonder why you were ever confused before? This happened to me as I was reading the Psalms one morning a couple of months ago. I grew up reading the Psalms, walking through the chapters, verse by verse on repeat, month after month, year after year. I used to be fairly condemning of David: he sure seemed to whine a lot! Doesn’t God expect us to buck it up and be stronger minded than that? These days, I am much more compassionate towards David, and realize that just maybe one of the reasons he was called a man after God’s own heart was because he was willing to be so completely open and honest with God about what he was thinking and feeling. Anyway, I’ll get off the bunny trail and get back to the “aha” moment.

Psalm 27:14 is a well-known verse to many of us, “Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.” I read this verse back in February and was going to keep moving on, when I paused and reread it, thinking about how my mind has interpreted it all these years. In my mind, the verse read more like this: “Wait on the Lord: show Him you are really strong in faith, and He’ll reward you with what you are waiting for.” Not exactly what the passage actually says, right? Where that narrative came from, I really don’t know, besides it was a lie from the enemy seeking to exploit my faith and cause me to believe God doesn’t keep His Word.

The truth is that sometimes we wait on God, we cry out to Him, our faith increases, and He answers our prayers in a way that matches our expectations. We see that in several instances of Scripture. Hannah is a good example. She was barren and ashamed because of the culture of the time and the taunts of her competitor: her husband’s other wife. She prayed and cried out to God, and He granted her request. However, we see other examples in Scripture where that didn’t happen. Paul, the great Apostle, and champion of the Gospel cried out to God to have his “thorn in the flesh” removed. Here was a man doing great exploits for God; full of faith and zeal for the kingdom of God, if anyone deserved to have their request granted, it was him. But, no, we are told that he was left with his thorn, and that God’s strength would be made perfect in his weakness. Why are there two, vastly different scenarios here? Obviously, I am not God, so I do not know His purposes and plans, and I don’t think we’ll have a full answer to that question on this side of eternity, but one thing I think it does show clearly is that my version of Psalm 27:14 is not the accurate one. It isn’t the version that God uses to orchestrate the events of the world. Big surprise, right?

I took a second look at what the verse said, and the reality of its truth resonated deeply into my heart: as I wait on the Lord, praying, crying out to Him for the things on my heart, He uses the circumstances of life to strengthen my heart, to build up my trust in Him, to solidify my dependence on Him and my relationship with Him, and as I result, I become more like Jesus, which is, after all, His goal for my life.

2019 was hard. Really hard. Hard on a lot of fronts, so many difficult, heartbreaking, intense situations have affronted myself and my family in the past months (long before COVID and all the new sets of trials our nation finds itself in), that it sends my head spinning if I stop and think about it. But I realized something that morning as I meditated on Psalm 27:14: in spite of the crazy hardness of this past year, I was not devastated, blown out of the water, or emotionally shipwrecked by it. Yes, I absolutely cried. Buckets. Some of the things we went through are too hard for words, tears had to take the place of words. But although I had my moments of weeping, I consistently found peace, joy, and rest in my Savior. I was not despondent. I grew spiritually. I grew emotionally. I look back and see how God sustained me throughout all the trials. And do you know what made that possible? Infertility. The journey of infertility we have been on since 2015 has caused me to wait on the Lord, over and over again. In God’s perfect kindness, He has taken the shattered shards of my infertility grief to draw me closer to Him than I ever have been before. As a result, my heart was strengthened. When 2019 came along with its deluge of heartbreaking trials, I wept, yes, but my soul was anchored. My heart was ready for that moment. God did not cause the infertility, but He graciously worked through those circumstances to strengthen my heart. I am so grateful.

What trials are you in, my friend? Wait on the Lord. Cry out to Him, pour out your heart to Him, let Him know your sorrows. I don’t know what the end of the story for you will be, just like I don’t know the end of my infertility story, but I do know that He will strengthen your heart. He will anchor your soul and draw you tenderly closer so that He can be your tower of strength when the adverse winds of life blow.

I love the lyrics of this song by City Alight:

Mine are tears in times of sorrow

Darkness not yet understood

Through the valley I must travel

Where I see no earthly good

But mine is peace that flows from heaven

And the strength in times of need

I know my pain will not be wasted

Christ completes his work in me

There are a couple of other verses, but I love the call at the end, it reminds me that my feelings follow the choices of my will:

Come rejoice now, O my soul

For his love is my reward

Fear is gone and hope is sure

Christ is mine forevermore!

Come rejoice now, O my soul

For his love is my reward

Fear is gone and hope is sure

Christ is mine forevermore!

Through the trials of 2019 I was sustained by our Savior, and countless times would sing this part of the song through my tears, calling my soul to re-center on Him and the knowledge that my pain would not be wasted, He was strengthening my heart.