From Member Meeting Devotion | April 6, 2025 
Hymn "I Need the Every Hour" 

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Waiting on traffic exhausts our patience.
A wife exhauise her devotion waiting on a POW to come home and remarry.  
Maybe finding a medical diagnosis becomes life-draining.  
Waiting to board a plane that has been delayed four times already will exhaust your concerns about your physical appearance.  

Waiting for the clock to hit 5:00 p.m. so you can go home can drain your motivation.  

Waiting is exhausting.  
Unless you are waiting on the Lord.  

Waiting on the Lord connects God's character, power, and wisdom.  
Is He coming for me? Yes — I can trust His word.  
Is He coming soon enough? Yes — I can trust His wisdod.
Can He do it when he arrives? He is more than able.  

In that way, waiting on the Lord does not deplete our strength. It replenishes us.

Isaiah 40 comes at a turning point in the book — a shift from warnings of judgment to words of hope. God’s people would soon walk through exile, carrying heavy hearts and weary souls. But even in their weakness, God speaks comfort: He has not changed, and He has not forgotten them. Isaiah invites them to look beyond their troubles to the everlasting God, whose strength never runs dry.

We, like Israel, are "in exile." We are not home. So let us not be frustrated by our lack of strength, this world's troubles, or the pace of our journey — but instead, let us lift our eyes to the God who renews the weary and anchors our hope beyond this present age.

Isaiah 40:28-31
"Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength.
Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted;
but they who wait for the LORD 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."

Sometimes, without even realizing it, we find ourselves running on empty — going through motions, feeling dry, lacking the strength or motivation we once had. It can be easy to think that if we were stronger or better, we wouldn't feel this way. But God is the strength of His people.

Isaiah reminds us that even the strongest among us will eventually grow tired. But God — the everlasting, never-tiring Creator — loves to meet His people in their weakness. He doesn’t shame us for being weary. Instead, He invites us to come to Him, to wait on Him, and in doing so, to find our strength renewed time and again.

What has cost you your strength?  
Where do you think you will find strength again?

Often when we feel weak or worn out, we long for our circumstances to change — a new season, a new situation, a new inward strength of our own. But Isaiah doesn’t point weary souls to a different set of circumstances. A tired soul needs a strong Savior. He points us to a different focus: the unchanging God Himself.

I don't know about you, but at the end of the day I love the moment I take my socks off. It’s a small act that signals I’m done — I’m finished striving, finished running, finished working. It's sign of my humanity. God never takes his socks off. He never hits that moment in the day where, "he's done.   "He does not faint or grow weary"

He never grows weary, never loses focus, never stops sustaining, never stops strengthening.

When we go to him in prayer and engge his word -- corporately and in our secret places -- his trustworthiness actually replenishes our strength. 

Wait on him and you will find your strength renewed.

Pastor Nathan