Isaiah 40: those who wait upon the LORD renew their strength
A devotion on Isaiah 40:28–31 for the tired, on a God who never grows weary and the strange promise that waiting on Him is where strength comes from.
Isaiah 40:28–31Isaiah 40:1Isaiah 40:27Isaiah 40:28Isaiah 40:29
Isaiah 40:28–31 is a passage for tired people. Not the tired that a good night’s sleep fixes, but the deeper kind, when you have been holding on for a long time and are starting to wonder whether God has noticed. It was first spoken to a people in exile who had begun to say out loud that their way was hidden from the LORD. Isaiah’s answer is not a pep talk. It is a question, then a description of God, then a promise.
The promise is famous: they will mount up with wings like eagles. But the road to it runs through some plain and humbling truths. God does not get tired, and you do. He gives strength to the faint, not to the strong. Even the young collapse. And the strength comes to those who wait, which is the very thing the tired do not want to do. This devotion is about learning to wait in a way that renews rather than drains.
The passage
Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary; His understanding is beyond searching out. He gives power to the faint and increases the strength of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall. 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 40:28–31
The question comes before the promise
Isaiah opens with two questions. Do you not know? Have you not heard? They are not rhetorical in a cheap way. They are the questions you ask someone who has forgotten something they were taught as a child. Just before this passage the people had been complaining: “My way is hidden from the LORD, and my claim is ignored by my God” (Isaiah 40:27). Exhaustion had turned into suspicion. If God is not helping, maybe He is not looking.
The chapter as a whole began with tenderness. “Comfort, comfort My people” (Isaiah 40:1). So the questions in verse 28 are not scolding. They are a hand on the shoulder. You know this. You have heard this. Let me say it again.
Sometimes the most important thing in a weary season is not new information but old truth said slowly enough to land.
God does not get tired
The description of God that follows is built for the exhausted. He is everlasting, without beginning or end. He is the Creator of the ends of the earth, meaning nothing is beyond His reach. And then the line that matters most to a tired person: “He will not grow tired or weary” (Isaiah 40:28).
This is worth sitting with. God has never once been too tired to hear you. He has never needed a break from His people. He was awake through every night you were. And His understanding is beyond searching out, which means that when His timing makes no sense to you, the problem is not that He has lost the thread. The thread is simply longer than you can see.
You are not carrying God’s part of this. He is not running low. Whatever is running low is on your side, and that is exactly what the next verse addresses.
Power to the faint, not to the strong
“He gives power to the faint and increases the strength of the weak” (Isaiah 40:29). Read the qualifications. Faint. Weak. This is not strength given as a reward for being strong already. It is strength given precisely where there is none. If you are at the end of yourself, you are not disqualified from this promise. You are the person it was written for.
Then Isaiah says something that levels everyone. Even youths grow tired and weary. Even young men, the strongest people in an ancient community, stumble and fall. Human strength, no matter how much of it you have, runs out. The passage is not comparing weak people with strong people. It is comparing all people with God.
Waiting is the strength
Now the turn. But those who wait upon the LORD will renew their strength. The Hebrew word for wait carries a sense of tension, like a cord pulled taut. It is hope stretched toward something, not resignation. To wait upon the LORD is to keep your attention and your expectation fixed on Him while the thing you are waiting for has not yet come.
That is different from waiting for a circumstance. You can wait for a job, a healing, a reconciliation, and grow more exhausted every day. Isaiah is talking about waiting on a person, keeping company with God in the meantime, so that the meantime itself becomes the place where strength is renewed. Christians differ on how active this waiting should be, whether it is mostly stillness or mostly persistent prayer, but the passage does not separate the two. Both are ways of keeping your face turned toward Him.
Notice the order of the pictures at the end: wings like eagles, then running, then walking. Some readers find that a letdown, as though the promise shrinks. But walking without fainting is often the harder miracle. Most of life is not soaring. It is the next step, and then the next, on a day when you did not think you had a next step in you. The promise reaches all the way down to that.
Something to do today
Take the four verses and read them once in the morning, once at midday, and once before bed. That is what waiting looks like on an ordinary Tuesday: turning back toward God three times rather than once. Each time, tell Him plainly what you are tired of. Then read verse 28 back to yourself: He will not grow tired or weary.
If you can, take a slow walk sometime today, even a short one, and let verse 31 set the pace. You are not being asked to fly. You are being asked to walk with Him and not faint.
A question to sit with
Have you been waiting for something to change, or waiting on the LORD, and can you tell the difference in how tired you are?
A prayer
Everlasting God, I am tired in a way that sleep does not fix, and I have started to wonder whether You see. Forgive me for forgetting what I know. You do not grow weary. Your understanding is deeper than my confusion. I am faint, and You give power to the faint, so I am asking for it now. Teach me to wait on You instead of only waiting for things to change. Renew my strength. If I cannot fly today, let me walk and not faint, and let each step be with You. Amen.
Keep this passage close this week, read the whole of Isaiah 40 around it, and let the people of your local church walk alongside you. Waiting on the LORD was never meant to be done alone.