How to Wait for God

“But you! Return to your God
        with faithful love and justice,
        and wait continually for your God.” – Hosea 12:6 CEB

Hosea is probably my favorite of the minor prophets in the Old Testament, and when I reread it recently, this verse caught my attention. What does it mean to “return to your God with faithful love and justice, and wait continually for your God”?

Some other translations, like the NIV or the NASB, make the first half of that sentence a little clearer: return to your God, “maintain” love and justice, they tell us. This is a call for God’s people to observe and hold fast to love and justice in their communal life. To me, that is sort of the “love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31) dimension of this call to “return to your God.”

Then comes the “love the Lord your God” (Mark 12:30) dimension: “wait continually for your God.”

But what exactly does that look like? How are you supposed to go about ‘waiting for God’?

This is why the verse jumped out at me. When I hear “wait for God,” I’m immediately reminded of something that John Wesley said in his classic sermon, “The Means of Grace.” A means of grace, according to Wesley, is some action ordained by God to be a regular, consistent means of receiving God’s grace in your life. Prayer, for instance, is a means of grace: when we pray, we can be confident that God has made this activity a reliable way of receiving his grace. If you’re searching for the work of the Holy Spirit in your life, go to prayer and you will find it.

What does this have to do with waiting? Wesley says, “all who desire the grace of God are to wait for it in the means which he hath ordained.” If you desire grace, God’s unearned, loving action in your life, then you wait for it by using the means of grace. If you wait for God by praying, by studying scripture, by fasting, by worshipping, by engaging in holy conversations, then your wait is going to pay off. God has ordained these practices as dependable sources of his life-changing grace, so if you actively wait by using them, eventually they will yield the grace you’re after.

When Hosea calls the people to “wait for your God continually,” I don’t think that means sit around and kill time until God shows up. I think ‘wait continually’ is a challenge to wait actively, not just anticipating God’s arrival, but inviting God’s arrival. And that is what the means of grace do. ‘Here I am, God. You said that when we receive communion, you are here. So, meet me here’. By steadily using these spiritual practices, you invite God into your life, ringing the doorbell to heaven that the Lord’s given us. And when you knock, the door will be opened to you. (Matt 7:7)

Today, let’s listen to Hosea (and Wesley): Return to your God. Observe faithful love and justice. Wait continually for your God in the means which he hath ordained.

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