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September 9, 2026 | Noah Sidhom explores the theme of waiting on the Lord using Psalm 130, emphasizing the importance of focusing on God and placing confidence in His unchanging Word during seasons of waiting. He highlights biblical examples to encourage trust and patience, and the renewing strength God provides to those who wait.
Worship service on Wednesday nights in the Chapel
Well, thank you for being here. We are continuing in our series on praying God's Word. And each week, we're just taking a verse or two from Scripture, talking about what the verse means, and then showing how we can use this as a guide for our prayer. And you'll probably see tonight how this theme of waiting on the Lord out of Psalm 130 is very connected to the verse we did the very first week in Psalm chapter 5, verse 3, where it says, oh, Lord, in the morning, you hear my voice. In the morning, I prepare a sacrifice for you, and I watch with expectation. And so as I pray that verse in the morning, tonight's verse out of Psalm 130 is one I often pair with that. And that's something I really enjoy doing. I enjoy taking one verse, and as I'm praying through it, pulling in other scriptures from all over the Bible and claiming all of God's words together for one big promise. Tonight, we're going to talk about everybody's favorite thing to do, to wait. Now, waiting is such an important part of our lives. It's such an important part of our walk with the Lord, but it's so difficult for us to do. It's hard for us to take our hand off the steering wheel and to trust the Lord's timing. I'm sure we all have stories of times where we've rushed things, and we went before the Lord told us to go, or we tried to make something happen outside of God's timing, and we made a much bigger mess than was needed. But over and over again in Scripture, we see that we are commanded to wait on the Lord. The Bible says in Psalm 46, verse 10, that we are to be still, to cease striving, and to know that I am God. And he goes on to say, I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted on the earth. God's saying there, hey, you just need to calm down. Everything's going to be OK. I will be exalted. Nothing is going to overthrow the Lord. He will not be taken off of his throne. All we have to do is just wait and be still. But we also see in Scripture that it's not just a command for us to wait. It's an invitation. And it's a comforting promise that God gives to his people. When God was rescuing his people out of Egypt, he led them through Moses out of Egypt, and they came to the Red Sea. And you know the story well. And they looked, and there was no way forward because they would die if they tried to swim and forge across the Red Sea. And then they turn around and look, and Egypt's army has changed their mind, and they are coming after them in order not just to capture them, but to kill them. And in this moment, they literally had nowhere to go, nothing to do. They had no weapons. They had no training. They had no escape. But then God gave Moses a word for the people. And the Bible says, Moses said, fear not. Stand firm and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you. You only have to be silent. God is saying to his people, I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to take care of everything that you need. All you need to do is just let go and trust me, and I will take care of you. And even though over and over again in scripture we see that God is so faithful to do exactly what he says he's going to do every single time, throughout their history, Israel struggled over and over again in order to actually trust the Lord. Even Moses, at times, would struggle to trust the Lord. And nobody had a relationship with the Lord and knew the Lord the way Moses did. God said of other prophets, I speak to them through dreams and through visions, but not so with Moses. With Moses, I speak face to face as with a friend. And even with that relationship, there was a time when God told Moses to speak to the rock, and in anger and frustration, what did he do? He hit the rock instead and tried to go his own way. So we see that over and over again, God tells his people, just wait, just trust me, I'm going to take care of you. But they struggle to follow. I don't know about you, but I'm grateful that my story is not written out the same way that their story is written out for everybody to read in this way. Because if you were to read my story and you would see the times that God was so faithful and God took care of me over and over again, and then tomorrow you're going to see me start to worry about something and act as if I've never walked through anything with the Lord before. And so it's a difficult thing for us to do, but it's a great reminder that we all need to trust the Lord and we need to wait on the Lord. I don't know where you are today, but I can almost guarantee that there's something in your life, whether it be at work or at home or with a child or a spouse or something else in your life, where you're waiting on God to move. Where something is outside of your control, you've tried to fix it to the best of your ability and it's just not going to budge. And it requires you to trust the Lord and wait on him. I don't know what that is for you, I know what that is for me in my life. There are several things for Rose and I that we're asking the Lord to move and work on our behalf right now. And one particular thing that we're asking for him to do, but we have very clearly heard him tell us not to open any doors, not to try to make anything happen on our own in this situation. And so while we heard him say that very clearly, it's amazing how often we find ourselves wanting to just jiggle the doorknob to remind him that we're waiting or to start taking the hinges off so that the door falls and I didn't open it. It's so easy for us to try to get creative, but we are called to wait. And that's what we see in Psalm 130, where we'll look tonight. We see, we don't know the author of tonight's Psalm in chapter 130, it's an anonymous Psalm, but we know that whoever this is, they needed God to help them. We see in the beginning verses, Psalm 30, verses one and two, the author says, out of the depths, I cry to you, O Lord. O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy. In the midst of their cry for help, and have you noticed how many of the Psalms start that way? God, I need you to answer. I need you to pay attention. I need help right now. I love the realness that we find in the Psalms and just the true wrestling that people do with the Lord. And I love that we get to watch how they wrestle with the Lord and we can learn from them. And we see here in Psalm 130, in the midst of their cry for help, they make a commitment that they are going to wait on the Lord. They're asking him for help, but they are going to wait for the Lord. And they show us two things that help us to explain why they were able to wait so well. And they show us in their focus of their waiting, what they were focusing on and in the confidence that they had while they waited. We see that in verses five and six, where the author says, I wait for the Lord. My soul waits and in his word, I hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchman for the morning, more than watchman for the morning. So this evening, I want us to simply look at how we can wait well. As we wait for the Lord to do things on our behalf and in our lives, what is it that we can do? What is it that we should be doing? And how can we wait well in the seasons of waiting? And unfortunately, though we don't like it, there's always going to be another season of waiting for the Lord. Maybe we're just waiting to the day that he returns. Maybe we're waiting to the day that we go be with him. Maybe we're waiting for a child to return. Maybe we're waiting for an opportunity, whatever it is, whatever we're waiting on, these are two aspects of waiting that we can accomplish that we see out of Psalm chapter 130. And the first is this, how to wait well. Pay attention to your focus and make sure that your focus is on the Lord. Make sure your focus is on the Lord. When you focus your eyes and where you focus your eyes, it will determine where you end up. This is when you were learning to drive. If you remember back when you first learned to drive, I don't know who taught you, but I can almost guarantee you at some point, they said to you, keep your eyes on the road. And I know I heard that many times. I still hear that from my wife and from my kids. But keep your eyes on the road. And the reality is we know that whatever direction you look in, you tend to drift in that direction when you're driving and the truest same in life. So if you're driving and you're always looking to the left, you're going to find yourself drifting to the left. If you're driving and you're constantly looking to the right you're going to end up drifting to the right. If you're driving and you keep your eyes on your phone, there's no telling where you'll end up. Yeah, you might meet the Lord a little early. But when you keep your eyes locked ahead of you, you can maintain control and you can move in the right direction. And that's exactly what the psalmist is saying here in Psalm 130, that while they wait on the Lord, they're going to keep their eyes locked on him. He says, I wait for the Lord, my soul waits. And in his word, I hope my soul waits for the Lord more than watchman for the morning, more than watchman for the morning. You see, this psalmist was not staring at his problem. He was staring at the Lord. And that's a difficult thing for us to do, but an important thing for us to learn from him tonight. His soul, all that he had was waiting for the Lord. Now, if you remember, he said, out of the depths I cry, I need.
to pay attention. Listen to my plea for mercy." He needed something very real in his life. There was a real problem that he was facing. But instead of focusing in on that problem, his choice was to focus and to direct his entire being, his very soul, at the Lord. I think we see a great example of this in David and Goliath. You remember when Goliath first comes onto the scene in 1 Samuel, and he's taunting the armies of Israel, and not one person out of Israel's army was willing to confront Goliath because they were terrified. This guy was huge, and he was not afraid. And he was taunting them, and he was calling them out to battle, and not one of them was willing to face him. But then little shepherd boy David comes onto the scene, and he looks at the Philistine at Goliath, and these are the words that he says, David was confident. He had no fear in this moment. You see, everybody else in the Israelite army, they looked at the sword and the spear, the javelin that the enemy had, and they were terrified. David says, you're coming to me with that. I'm just going to come with these little rocks because I have no need for a weapon because the Lord is going to fight this battle on my behalf. David's eyes were on the Lord. Israel's eyes were on their problem. And because of that, they stayed in their problem, and David marched to victory. I don't know what you're waiting on, but I promise you that God is bigger and God is better. And if you spend all your time staring at the problem that you're facing in your life, you're staring at your need, or maybe it's not even a problem or need, maybe it's an opportunity. Maybe it's a good thing that you're waiting for the Lord to give you an opportunity that you believe is around the corner. If you keep staring at whatever it is more than you look at the Lord, your perspective is going to be messed up, and you will be in fear of that opportunity, that situation, that need. In order to wait well, we must learn to keep our eyes on Him. And one thing the Lord's been teaching me in the last couple weeks is that not only do I, in the waiting, need to keep my eyes on the Lord, but I need to discipline myself to the point that when the Lord does answer my prayer, when the Lord does open the door that we're asking Him to open, that it doesn't shift my gaze. See, I need to continue to keep my eyes locked on the Lord whether He answers me or not. And when He does answer me, I don't need to take my eyes off the Lord in that moment and look at the opportunity or the answer that He has placed before me. I need to keep my eyes locked on the Lord the entire time, before the trial, before the opportunity, during the waiting, and during the answer. And that's really easy for us to do when we keep a proper perspective on who the Lord is. Like I said, when we stare at our problems, sometimes it starts to get bigger and bigger in our lives. When we're waiting and we're staring at whatever it is that we're waiting for, it becomes overwhelming at times. But when you understand truly who the Lord is, you'll have no problem trusting Him. You'll have no problem waiting and knowing that He's going to take care of you. This is what the Lord said to the prophet Isaiah about himself and about those who wait for Him. Have you not heard? Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord, He is the everlasting God. He's the creator of the ends of the earth. He doesn't faint. He doesn't grow weary. His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint. And to him who has no might, He increases their strength. Even youth shall faint and be weary. Even young men shall fall exhausted. But they who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. Not might. They 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. Notice what it says about those who wait for the Lord. This is the description the Bible gives of those who wait on the Lord. Their strength is renewed. They are mounted up on wings like eagles. They will run and not be weary. They will walk and they will not faint. That's somebody who's waiting. That's not how we often describe our lives in the midst of waiting. And when that's true, when our life, in our waiting, if we don't look like we have strength and victory, then I can almost guarantee you because your focus is wrong and you are not focusing on the Lord. Because the Lord is everlasting. He is the everlasting God. And when we focus on Him, we're not just focusing in on somebody who might have an ability to help us. He is the creator of the ends of the earth. He doesn't grow weary. He doesn't faint. He never gets tired. He will give power to the weak. He will increase the strength of the weary. But so often our gaze drifts away from the Lord and turns to our need. I'm telling you, when that happens, you are looking in the wrong direction. Just look to those who have gone before you. That's what the Bible tells us to do, to look to those who have walked this faith walk journey before us and look how they live. The Bible says in Psalm 22, 4 and 5, in you, O God, our ancestors, our fathers trusted. You are the one who they look to, God. They trusted and you delivered them. To you they cried and they were rescued. To you and you they trusted and they were not put to shame. They were not disappointed. When we look at the past and we see the saints in the Old Testament and the New Testament and people in our life that we have known, who have walked with the Lord, who have gone before us, you have never known anybody who has walked intimately with the Lord and regretted it. You have never known somebody that has walked intimately with the Lord and you felt bad for them for how they were walking. Because when you walk with the Lord, He gives strength. When you're waiting on Him and your gaze is fixed on Him, He will strengthen you. I love in verse 6 of Psalm 130, the author gives us a picture of what this should look like for us. The Bible says in verse 6, my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning. More than watchmen for the morning. Do you know what the purpose of a watchman was in Old Testament times? They're the ones who would stand at the gate and on the fence and they would keep their eyes on the horizon, and especially in the nighttime. They would take their position because during the night they would be vulnerable. Not only would the people be asleep, but it was dark and it was hard to see what was happening. It was the perfect time for an enemy to attack. So this watchman would get up and they would stay up all night keeping their eyes glued to the horizon so they could let out a warning cry in case disaster was coming. But notice here the Bible doesn't say that more than a watchman is looking for the enemy. More than the watchman is looking for trouble. What does it say? More than a watchman looks for the morning. For the morning. You see, the morning was their salvation. As the sun would come up, they would be rescued from the perils and the dangers of the night. And the watchman was not ultimately looking for the enemy. They were looking for morning to come. And that's how we're supposed to wait. When we trust in the Lord, we're supposed to look to the Lord the way a watchman looks for the morning. In the same way, that should be our focus for the Lord. So first we see if we want to wait well, we need to make sure our focus is on the Lord. And the second thing we need to consider is our confidence. And it needs to be in God's Word. One of the main reasons that we take our eyes off the Lord and struggle to wait is because we lose confidence. Maybe we think it's taking too long. Maybe we think God doesn't care and he's not paying attention. Maybe we think that God should have moved by now and maybe he just needs a little nudge. Surely something is wrong. Surely he would have answered by now if he understood how pressing this issue was. So we start to take things into our own hands. We've all had times where we've had to wait and we have had low confidence in the outcome. And that's not fun and it is difficult to wait in that situation. I remember, I guess a year or so ago, my wife and I went to the DMV to get our real IDs. You know that thing that the government told us for like 15 years, you need to get this, it's coming. And they kept pushing the deadline back and back. And then finally that drop dead deadline, we decided to go with everybody else in Memphis to go get our real IDs. And it is intimidating to go there with all the paperwork and trying to figure out, do I have the right stuff? As we walked in that space, I had absolutely zero confidence that I was walking out with an ID. And even after they told me it was good, until I had that in my hand, I...
I did not have confidence because I thought, maybe this person just isn't going to like me, and they're just going to tell me no and turn me away. When we don't have confidence in the waiting, the waiting is difficult. But when you have confidence, and you're in a situation where you know it's going to be OK, where you know that the Lord is going to take care of you, it makes it a whole lot easier to wait. And that's why the psalmist did this, and that's why it's so important for us to place our confidence not in ourselves, not in our scenario, not in the possibility of the future, but our confidence must be in God's word. When the Lord has us in a season of waiting, it is His word that gives us the confidence to continue to wait faithfully. Bible says in Psalm 130, verses 5 and 6, I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His word, I hope. You see, it's almost impossible to wait if you do not have hope. I remember one time we were heading out of town, and we decided to go through Wendy's in order to get a good meal for some fuel to get us down the road. And I went inside because I did not have confidence in the drive-through, and sometimes they take a little longer. So I was like, if they feel me waiting and see my presence, maybe they'll move a little quicker. So I went inside Wendy's, and my first hint should have been the five or six people already waiting for their food, but I didn't pay attention to that. So I ordered my food, and I stand in line. No joke, about 30 minutes later, I'm still waiting there. An employee who's been sitting very close to me this entire time walks up to me and goes, do you not have your food yet? I was like, no, not yet. And she goes, that is ridiculous, and goes and sits back down. And I did not have very high confidence that I was going to get my food in that moment. And it's difficult to wait for a long time when you really don't trust that this is actually going to come. When you lose confidence, you're not going to wait very long. You're not going to last. And that's why we need to place our confidence not in our situation, not in our circumstances. We need something to put our confidence in that is more trustworthy than this world. We need something to put our confidence in that is more trustworthy than ourselves. The psalmist placed his trust in the very words of God. And why would he do that? Because God's word never fails. And nothing is impossible for the Lord. And the Bible says that not one word that he speaks will ever fall to the ground. I have several references here that talk about the faithfulness of God's word. I'll walk through them very quickly. In Isaiah 40, verse 8, the Bible says, the grass withers, especially in this heat. My grass is very withered in my front yard right now. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. See, this whole world is going to pass away. Everything that we have, everything we treasure, the beauty of this world, the things that we have will all fade to nothing. But God's word will still be there at the very end. Bible says in Psalm 119, verse 89, forever, O Lord, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens. You see, God's word is firmly planted on a foundation that is so much stronger than any foundation you have ever known on this world. And we, as people, know how to build some strong foundations. There are things that people have built that are still standing from thousands of years. And there's some pretty good foundations that have been built on this earth. But at the end of the day, they're all going to crumble. They're all going to go away. But the word of God is sitting on the foundation in heaven. And it will last forever. Bible says in Proverbs 35 and 6, every word of God proves true. He is a shield to those who take refuge in him. Do not add to his words, lest he rebuke you and you be found a liar. What the Bible is saying there in Proverbs is that if you ever find yourself going up against God's word, if you say something that is contrary to God's word, if you try to change God's word, you will be wrong every single time. And God will prove you. If you go against his word, he will prove you to be a liar, because his word is true and always will be true. I love this picture in Isaiah chapter 55 of a picture that we have even in nature of the faithfulness of God and his word. The Bible says, as the rain and as the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but to water the earth, making it to bring forth and to sprout and giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater. In other words, every time it rains, it waters the earth. It doesn't return to the Lord without first watering the earth. So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which I have sent it. You see, when God speaks something, it always happens. In the Bible, in Genesis chapter 1, where we hear God saying, let there be light, light had no choice but to come into existence in that moment. Every time God speaks, his word will happen. When Jesus was on the earth and he went to the grave of his friend Lazarus, and he said, Lazarus, come forth. Lazarus had absolutely no choice but to stand up out of that grave and walk out because the word of God decreed it. Brother Steve always said Jesus was very intentional to say the name Lazarus there when he said it, because had he not, every dead person would have had to have walked out of their grave in that moment. See, when God speaks, it always comes true. Numbers 23, 19, our last verse we'll look at here. The Bible says that God will never lie, and he is never wrong. The Bible says that God is not man, that he should lie. He's not a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it? Those are great questions. And the answer is, yes, he will do it, that which he has said. And he will fulfill his word. I remember last year when we walked through the Chronological Bible, we had so many great conversations about what we were reading in God's word. And when I talked to Derek and Michael and Tanya and Ben and others, we would talk about what we're learning. And it seemed like every single week, I felt like a broken record. I was always learning the same thing. I was just always saying, I'm so amazed at how faithful God is to his word, that every time God says something is going to happen, it happens. Every time God says that he will do something, he always comes through. But when our confidence is not in God's word, we're not going to make it very far. You see, when we anchor our hope in what God has said and who he is, we can make it to the end. We will be carried to the end. But when we put our confidence in anything shaky, anything of this world or in ourselves, we're not going to make it very far. A great illustration of somebody that had to wait for a long time was Joseph. Joseph, as a young boy, had a dream that he would be a ruler and that his very family would bow before him and that he would be exalted in that way. And he went and did what any younger brother does and went and told his brothers, hey, you're going to bow down to me one day, so you better be nice to me. And his brothers did not like that very much. And so they eventually, you know the story, they sold him into slavery and faked his death. And for the next 13 years, Joseph would either be a slave in the house of Potiphar or for a couple of years would be in prison with absolutely no hope of ever being released. For 13 years, Joseph would be there. And over and over again, he had opportunities to doubt the word of the Lord. I'm sure there were many nights as he was falling asleep in that jail cell that he was thinking about that dream and thinking, did I make it up? Maybe God wanted to do that, but maybe I failed him in some way or maybe he's changed his mind. You can only imagine the type of questions that Joseph must have been asking about what God had told him and shown him all those years prior. But in Psalm 105, we get a glimpse of what God was doing. The Bible says in Psalm 105, speaking of the story of God's people and that God's people, God knew, would one day be in Egypt and they would need somebody to take care of them and to set them up. And so God would send Joseph ahead of them in this way. And the Bible says that Joseph's feet were hurt with fetters. His neck was put in a collar of iron. Now listen here. Until what God had said came to pass, the word of the Lord tested Joseph. You see, when God gave this word to Joseph and this dream to Joseph, Joseph wasn't ready for the answer. He thought he was, I'm sure. He thought he was ready to sit on the throne that very day. But God knew that if he had just thrown Joseph into that situation, Joseph would not be ready. And God needed to build character into Joseph. And God needed to build trust in Joseph. And Joseph needed to learn how to wait. And so day after day, I believe when those thoughts would come, I believe that Joseph did not put his hope in his circle.
or in his ability to figure things out, but I believe that Joseph continually went back to the word that God had said. He was tested by that word over and over again. And we see that eventually it would come to pass. While you are waiting, I encourage you meditate on the word of God. Fill your thoughts with God's word. And that's why we're walking through this series this semester on praying God's word. I want to give you some verses that you can use to meditate on and to pray. And I say it every week, the goal here is not for you to pray every single verse, every single day, but maybe some of these verses you're going to look at tonight or next week, and you may never look at again in this way, but I encourage you if you're, we're talking about a verse and the Lord grabs your heart with this verse and brings it alive in your heart, claim it before the Lord and take it before the Lord and remind him of his word. And be tested until the Lord brings about what he's going to do. Be tested by his word. Let's look again at Psalm 130, verse six, at this illustration of the watchman. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchman for the morning, more than watchman for the morning. As we said earlier, the watchman was not waiting for the enemy. They were waiting for the hope and the rescue of the morning. But the night is long. And I don't know if you've ever been out without city lights for long in the night, but especially if that moon is not out, it gets really, really dark very, very quickly. And for that watchman at midnight, as they're waiting for the morning, they've got a long way to wait. But do you know what the watchman's confidence was in that moment? That the sun came up yesterday and the day before that and the day before that. And that watchman, even though they knew the night might be long, that watchman had full confidence that the sun would rise again. They were not waiting on the wall thinking, is the sun ever gonna come up? Is the sun done? Are we done with the sun? They knew that the sun would rise. And that was the confidence, the hope that they had. Because as they had confidence and hope that the sun would rise, they would be able to make it through the night. The Bible says that God's word needs to be that confidence, that hope in our life. And it serves as that testing for us and the light that we need in the dark. Bible says in Psalm 119, 105, your word, O God, is a lamp to my feet. It is a light to my path. Do you want to wait well? I don't know what you're waiting for right now, but I encourage you, first of all, make sure that your focus is not on your problem, but that your focus is on the Lord. And then where are you putting your confidence? Where is your hope coming from? Is it coming from the situation, from yourself, from what other people are saying, or is that coming from God's word? Because God's word will never fail. It will never fade away. So let's, real quickly, right there in your seat, I want to give a quick prompt. We'll break this up into two prompts. I encourage you, let's just pray this back to the Lord right now. And whatever that situation is, I don't think it's gonna take you long to determine what it is that you might be waiting for from the Lord right now. Let's just pray about it right now and offer that back to the Lord and ask the Lord to help us in our waiting. I'll give you a prompt, two different prompts, and then we'll talk about a baby.