Waiting is rarely our favorite place to be. Yet Psalm 40:1 shows a man who chose to wait, not in bitterness or resignation, but in patient trust. He cried out to the LORD and kept crying out, and in God’s time, heaven bent low and the Lord listened. This single verse invites us into the mystery of God’s timing, God’s tenderness, and the kind of faith that stays on its knees until God moves.

The Holy Stretch of Waiting

Waiting is God’s classroom. It stretches our faith beyond what we can see or control. David says, “I waited patiently for the LORD; He inclined to me and heard my cry” (Psalm 40:1). That phrase “waited patiently” is literally “waiting, I waited.” It’s a long obedience in the same direction—a refusal to quit praying, to quit trusting, to quit believing the promises when nothing appears to be changing. “The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul that seeks Him. It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD” (Lamentations 3:25–26). Quiet waiting before God is not passivity; it is active trust.

In a culture that values instant results, God’s command to wait can feel almost cruel. But He is never wasting your wait; He is using it. “But those who wait upon the LORD will renew their strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31). Notice the pattern: waiting, then renewing, then running. The race comes after the wait. When God delays, He is not ignoring you; He is preparing you—deepening your roots so your faith can stand when the winds rise.

When God Stoops to Listen

Psalm 40:1 says the LORD “inclined” to David. The picture is of a great King stooping low to hear the weak voice of a desperate servant. This is not a God who keeps His distance. This is the God who leans in. “Wait patiently for the LORD; be strong and courageous. Wait patiently for the LORD!” (Psalm 27:14). Strength and courage do not come from shouting louder at our circumstances, but from knowing the One who stoops down to listen to us.

In Christ, we see that stooping love in its fullest form. The eternal Son took on flesh, walked our dust, and carried our sins to the cross. Now, because of His sacrifice, our cries do not rise into an empty sky. They go straight to the throne of grace. “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (Philippians 4:6). The God who inclined His ear to David inclines His ear to all who come to Him through His Son. Your whispered prayer in the dark is heard by the Lord of glory.

Learning to Love the Long Silence

The hardest part of Psalm 40:1 is the time between the cry and the answer. Silence can feel like abandonment. But Scripture insists otherwise. “And we know that God works all things together for the good of those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). If God is working all things together, then He is working in the silence, too. His apparent delays are often His deepest work—exposing our idols, purifying our motives, and anchoring us more firmly in Christ rather than in outcomes.

So what do we do while we wait? We don’t fold our arms; we open our Bibles. We don’t stew in frustration; we sow in faith. “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, so that in due time He may exalt you. Cast all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you” (1 Peter 5:6–7). Humbling ourselves under His hand means we submit to His timing and His wisdom. Casting our anxieties on Him means we keep bringing them back—again and again—until our hearts learn to rest. Over time, the long silence becomes the place where we discover that God Himself is better than the thing we were waiting for.

Lord, thank You for bending low to hear my cries. Today, help me to wait patiently, trust Your timing, and obey You while I wait.

I have often wished that there were some way to bring modern Christians into a deeper spiritual life painlessly by short easy lessons; but such wishes are vain. No shortcut exists! God has not bowed to our nervous haste nor embraced the methods of our machine age. It is well that we accept the hard truth now: the man who would know God must give time to Him! He must count no time wasted which is spent in the cultivation of His acquaintance. He must give himself to meditation and prayer hours on end. So did the saints of old, the glorious company of the apostles, the goodly fellowship of the prophets and the believing members of the holy Church in all generations. And so must we if we would follow in their train! May not the inadequacy of much of our spiritual experience be traced back to our habit of skipping through the corridors of the kingdom like little children through the marketplace, chattering about everything but pausing to learn the true value of nothing?

And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said unto David, The Lord also hath put away thy sin. - 2 Samuel 12:13

In 2 Corinthians 8:10 the Apostle Paul takes it for granted that a recognition of my own evil and a consequent penitent-regretfulness lies at the foundation of all true Christianity Now, I do not want to insist upon any uniformity of experience in people, any more than I should insist that all their bodies should be of one shape or of one proportion. Human lives are infinitely different, human dispositions are subtly varied; and because both one and the other are never reproduced exactly in any two people, therefore the religious experience of no two souls can ever be precisely alike.

We have no right to ask - and much harm has been done by asking - for an impossible uniformity of religious experience. You can print off as many copies as you like, for instance, of a drawing of a flower, on a printing press, and they shall all be alike, petal for petal, leaf for leaf, shade for shade; but no two hand-drawn copies will be so precisely alike, still less will any two of the real buds that blow on the bush there. Life produces resemblance with differences; it is machinery that makes facsimiles.

So we insist on no pedantic or unreal uniformity; and yet, whilst leaving the widest scope for divergences of individual character and experience, and not asking that a man all diseased and blotched with the leprosy of sin for half a lifetime, and a little child that has grown up at its mother’s knee, " in the nurture and admonition of the Lord," and "so has been saved innocent of much transgression," shall have the same experience, - yet Scripture, as it seems to me, and the nature of the case do unite in asserting that there are certain elements which, in varying proportions indeed, will be found in all true Christian experience, and of these an indispensable one - and in a very large number, if not in the majority of cases, a fundamental one - is this which Paul calls "godly sorrow."

Surely a reasonable consideration of the facts of our conduct and character point to that as the attitude that becomes you and me! Does it not? I do not charge you with crimes, as the law interprets them. I do not suppose that many who read these lines are living in flagrant disregard of the elementary principles of common every-day morality. There are some, no doubt. There are, no doubt, unclean men; there are some who eat and drink more than is good for them habitually; there are, no doubt, men and women that are living in avarice and worldliness, and things that the ordinary consciences of the populace point to as faults and blemishes. But I appeal to the so-called respectable people, that can say: "I am not as other men are, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican." I come to you, and I have this one question to put to you: Looking at your character all round, in the light of the purity and righteousness and love of God, how say ye - "guilty or not guilty," sinful or not sinful?

Be honest with yourself, and the answer will not be far to seek.