I’ve learned that one part of true faith-filled “waiting” is quietness. “In quietness and trust shall be your strength” (Isaiah 30:15). Quietness is the opposite of striving and panic. It speaks of peaceful rest, a calm while at the storm’s center. As the psalmist put it, when mountains tremble, waters roar, nations rage and kingdoms totter, the trusting weary remain “still,” knowing that God is God (Psalm 46:1–11). 

Dear Journal,
I’ve mentioned before that life is a waiting room. I’ve lost count how many big needs my wife Gayline and I have been praying for—and waiting for—for years! A headache healing. Cancer healing. Children that need the Lord. Unconverted family and friends that still don’t believe. Racial healing in our church local and the Church. Fruitfulness in certain gospel endeavors. Spiritual revival in the Church. We’re still sitting in the waiting room for these and so many others.
And I’m sure we’re not alone. All God’s children have needs and grieve losses. We all believe. We all pray. We all weep. We all wait.
If I had one more sermon to preach, it’d be on this text: “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” (Isa. 40:30–31).
I’ve preached the whole chapter of Isaiah 40 many times, and my most frequent sermon summary of it is this: “God over all, because of Christ, gives strength to the trusting weary, in his time, according to their need, to do the remarkable for his glory.” That’s all in the Isaiah 40 text. And as I say—for a lot of reasons—if God ever gives me strength to preach one more time, that would be the text and summary that I herald.
One point in Isaiah 40 that I notice this morning is the word “wait.” It implies a period of delay in the meeting of our needs or wants, which is why I say: “God gives strength . . . in his time.” There is almost always a time-gap between when we become aware of a need and when God meets it. We have to wait because his clock moves slower than ours, and he’s never in our kind of hurry. So we sit in the waiting room of life.
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Written by R.C. Sproul |
Saturday, May 14, 2022
Jesus says that their hearts will not simply be touched by sorrow or grief or disappointment, but there will be a fullness of sorrow that saturates the chambers of their hearts. They will be overcome with grief. Their mourning will reach the limits of its human capacity. But Jesus says the condition that they will experience will be temporary, that the sense of abandonment they may feel for a moment will give way to unspeakable joy.

These men had spent three years in a state of unspeakable joy. They had witnessed what no human beings before them had ever seen in the entire course of history. Their eyes peered openly at things angels themselves longed to look into but were unable. Their ears heard what ancient saints had a fierce desire to hear with their own ears. These men were the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth. They were His students. They were His companions. Where He went, they went. What He said, they heard. What He did, they saw with their own eyes. These were the original eyewitnesses of the earthly ministry of the Son of God.
But one day, these men heard from the lips of their teacher the worst of all possible news. Jesus told them that He was leaving them. He told them that the days of their intimate companionship in this world were coming to a hasty end. Imagine the shock and profound panic that filled the hearts of these disciples when Jesus said that it was just about over.
In John 16 we read what Jesus said:
A little while, and you will see me no longer; and again a little while, and you will see me. So some of his disciples said to one another, “What is this that he says to us, ‘A little while, and you will not see me, and again a little while, and you will see me’; and, ‘because I am going to the Father’?” So they were saying, “What does he mean by ‘a little while’? We do not know what he is talking about.”
“Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him, so he said to them, ‘Is this what you are asking yourselves, what I meant by saying, “A little while and you will not see me, and again a little while and you will see me”? Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you’ ” (John 16:16–22).
Just shortly before this enigmatic statement, Jesus had said to His disciples:
But now I am going to him who sent me, and none of you asks me, “Where are you going?” But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. (John 16:5–7)
In the first instance, Jesus says that their hearts will not simply be touched by sorrow or grief or disappointment, but there will be a fullness of sorrow that saturates the chambers of their hearts.
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Written by Ian J. Vaillancourt |
Tuesday, February 28, 2023
As we grow in understanding the Pentateuch as the essential first act in the Bible’s grand story, our experience of Christ will never be the same. Let’s work to be whole-Bible Christians who together grow in our vision of the gospel in resplendent color.

A Vision of the Gospel in Resplendent Color (from the Pentateuch!)
The theater lights are dim and everyone’s attention is fixed on the screen. Those watching are comfortable in their seats and so wrapped up in the story that popcorn sits uneaten on every lap. This is why no one really notices when, fifteen minutes into the action, we tiptoe in. We find a few seats in the back corner and begin to piece the story together. Twenty minutes pass, then thirty, then a full hour, and by the time the theater lights come back on, we have a nagging feeling that we are missing something. Sure, we sort of figured out the story’s high points, but without its essential first part, we could not enjoy the movie the same way as everyone else.
The Pentateuch is a cluster of five books that make up the essential first act in the Bible’s grand story. This means that if we are Christians who want to understand the gospel better, the Pentateuch is a great place to start. Although this might sound counterintuitive, it’s true. As we go deeper in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, a black-and-white grasp of the Bible’s message will increasingly give way to a vision of the gospel in resplendent color. These foundational books are the entry point into the biblical story that continues through the Old and New Testaments and gloriously concludes in the book of Revelation. Without the Pentateuch, there would be no first act in the grand drama.
The First Christians
For the first Christians, these claims would not have been counterintuitive. The apostle Paul—who began his ministry career as Saul of Tarsus, the Pharisee—was steeped in the Old Testament (and especially the Pentateuch). After Paul encountered the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus, he spent his first years as a Christian rethinking the entire (Old Testament) Scriptures that he already knew so well, in light of Jesus as their fulfillment. This was also true for the first Jewish Christians, who were raised on the (Old Testament) Scriptures. And although the first non-Jewish Christians had not been raised with a biblical worldview, their first encounter with the gospel, and then their learning at church gatherings, would have been focused on the (Old Testament) Scriptures.
Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck put it well:
The Gospel is the fulfillment of the promises of the Old Testament. Without it, the Gospel hangs suspended in the air. The Old Testament is the pedestal on which the Gospel rests, and the root out of which it came forth.1
If these things are true for the first three quarters of the Christian Bible—the entire Old Testament—how much more so for the Pentateuch. The Pentateuch is the first act in the Old Testament story, and it is the foundation on which everything in the Old Testament rests. As we better understand the first act, we will discover a new depth in our understanding of themes as they develop through the rest of the Old Testament, and then as they are revealed with Christ as their fulfillment in the New Testament.
A Wonderful Description of Jesus
Although entire libraries of books have been written on this topic, let’s catch more of the vision by turning to a wonderful passage in Hebrews:

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