Title: How to keep faith when life gets hard
Speaker: Pastor Jeremy Archer
Date: 12th April 2026
Location: Bristol, UK
Summary:
Waiting on the Lord is not standing still. It is standing firm. That distinction sits at the heart of this episode, which takes one of the most quoted verses in scripture and roots it back in the ground it came from.
Isaiah 40:31 is familiar to most people who have spent time in the Bible. But familiarity can strip a verse of its weight. The people who first heard those words were Jewish exiles in Babylon, thirty-five years into what would become a seventy-year captivity. They had lost their king, their temple, their language, their culture, and their homeland. They were exhausted, displaced, and mocked. When Isaiah wrote that those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength, he was not writing an inspirational caption. He was writing to people in the middle of a crisis with no visible end.
The Hebrew word translated “wait” in this passage is qava, and it carries none of the passivity the English word suggests. The picture behind it is a rope pulled taut in a tug of war, an archer drawing a bowstring, a runner braced on starting blocks. The episode also looks at how Jesus opened his public ministry in Luke 4 by reading from Isaiah, applying the same captivity scriptures to a new generation living under Roman rule. That connection shows how these words keep speaking across centuries to people in remarkably similar circumstances.
Key Points:
- Reading scripture without knowing its context risks turning the Bible into a collection of slogans or proof texts
- The Hebrew word qava, translated “wait” in Isaiah 40:31, means active, tensed readiness, not passive inactivity
- Isaiah 40 was written to Jewish exiles thirty-five years into a seventy-year Babylonian captivity, a people stripped of everything familiar
- That exile forced Jewish people to develop a portable, personal faith, one no longer grounded in the temple but carried individually
- Jesus opened his public ministry by reading from Isaiah 61 to Jews under Roman rule, showing how captivity scriptures keep speaking to new generations in similar circumstances
- Waiting on the Lord means standing firm under pressure and serving faithfully while trusting God to complete what he has already started
Reference Scriptures:
- Isaiah 40:27-31
- Psalm 130:5
- Isaiah 61:1-3
- Luke 4:14-20
- Haggai 2
- Ezra 3
- Micah 6:8
- Habakkuk 3:17-18
- Matthew 23:37
- Hebrews 10:10