Psalm 27:14 Meaning: Be of Good Courage While You Wait

The draft has been sitting in your outbox since Sunday.

The subject line reads Following up again. It’s the fourth one. You’ve rewritten the first sentence three times so it won’t sound the way the last one sounded. Your finger hovers over the trackpad. You move the cursor to Send, then off it, then back.

Everyone you know says the same thing. You have to make it happen. Doors don’t open by themselves. And every time you don’t send it, a voice asks if you’ve just gone soft.

There’s a verse that answers that voice. It’s one line long, and it borrows its middle from a man who stood on the edge of a promise for most of his life.

The short answer: Psalm 27:14, “Wait on the LORD; Be of good courage, And He shall strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the LORD!” means that waiting on God isn’t the opposite of courage. It’s where courage is needed most. The words for “be of good courage” are ḥāzaq, be strong, and ʾāmaṣ, be courageous, the same pair spoken to Joshua at the border of the promised land. David sets them between two commands to wait.

How the Psalm Ends

Psalm 27 is “A Psalm of David,” and near its close David says out loud how close he came to quitting: “I would have lost heart, unless I had believed That I would see the goodness of the LORD In the land of the living.” (Psalm 27:13)

Not in heaven someday. In the land of the living. While he was still alive to see it.

Then he turns from himself to whoever is listening: “Wait on the LORD; Be of good courage, And He shall strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the LORD!” (Psalm 27:14)

Look at the shape of it. Wait at the start. Wait at the end. And in the middle, the courage.

Joshua’s Words

The middle of that verse isn’t new language. David is echoing a commission.

The phrase is two Hebrew verbs: ḥāzaq, be strong, and ʾāmaṣ, be courageous or firm. That pair is what Moses said to Joshua, in the sight of all Israel, when he handed over the leadership of the nation: “Be strong and of good courage” (Deuteronomy 31:7). And it’s what the Lord said to Joshua after Moses died: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:9)

Now think about who Joshua was when he heard those words. He had been one of the twelve spies. He’d walked the promised land with his own feet and come back, with Caleb, urging the people to go in (Numbers 14:6–9). Then the nation turned back, and he waited. Moses counts the years plainly: “And the time we took to come from Kadesh Barnea until we crossed over the Valley of the Zered was thirty-eight years” (Deuteronomy 2:14).

The courage words went to a man who had been waiting for almost four decades.

And David reaches for that same pair, ḥāzaq, be strong, and ʾāmaṣ, be courageous, and hangs it on the word wait. There’s one change. In Joshua, both words are commands to the man. In Psalm 27:14 the second word changes form, and the NKJV hears the Lord as the One doing it: “He shall strengthen your heart.”

What You Can Stop Doing

Here is what is actually true. In Scripture, the words for courage were given to a waiting man, and David put them inside the command to wait. Waiting on the Lord is not the absence of courage. It is where courage is commanded.

Which means you can stop forcing a door to prove you haven’t gone soft. Pushing isn’t automatically the brave thing. Sometimes staying where He has you, doing today’s work, and not running ahead is the harder obedience.

But read what the verse promises, and what it doesn’t. It doesn’t promise the transfer, the call back, or the date. David’s confidence was that he would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living, and the verse says the Lord will strengthen your heart while you wait. What happens to your strength in the waiting has its own study in what Isaiah 40:31 means by renewed strength.

The Break Room at 6:52

If I don’t push, nothing will happen. You’ve built your whole working life on that sentence, and it has mostly been true. So you open the draft again. She’s forty-six, an emergency-room nurse, and for the third year running she’s applied for the day-shift opening on the cardiac floor.

It’s 6:52 a.m., eight minutes before shift change. She’s sitting at the break-room table with a paper cup of coffee going cold and her badge clipped upside down.

The email is open on her phone. Fourth follow-up. She’s changed “Just checking in” to “I wanted to reach out” and back again.

Someone opens the door and calls her name. She locks the screen, and the draft stays where it is.

Delete the Fourth Email

You may be the one with that draft open. Here’s the one thing to do.

Delete it. Not because following up is wrong, but because this one isn’t asking anything new. It’s trying to prove you haven’t given up.

Then, before you go back to work, say Psalm 27:14 out loud, all of it, both waits: Wait on the LORD; Be of good courage, And He shall strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the LORD!

Then go. That’s the whole of it.

I’m not asking you to sit on your hands. I’m asking you to stand where I’ve put you and not run ahead. That takes more nerve than pushing. I’ll strengthen your heart. Wait with Me.

Waiting on the Lord is not the absence of courage. It is the place where He commands it.