Isaiah 40:28-31 · Strength, Renewal, Waiting, God's Power
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"Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength.
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."
— Isaiah 40:28-31 (ESV)
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These verses arrive at the end of one of the most magnificent passages in all of Scripture. Isaiah 40 opens with comfort for a people in exile — "Comfort, comfort my people, says your God" — and builds over thirty verses into a towering portrait of God's greatness: the nations are like a drop in a bucket, the inhabitants of the earth are like grasshoppers, he stretches out the heavens like a curtain, he calls the stars by name.
And then, in verse 27, there is a crack in the portrait. The people of Israel say: "My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God."
The theological grandeur of the earlier verses hasn't touched their real pain. They know the doctrine. They've heard the sermons about God's greatness. But when you're in exile, when you're exhausted and forgotten and the years are grinding you down, the greatness of God can feel like the most distant thing in the world.
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
God's response to their complaint is not rebuke but reminder. Not "how dare you doubt me" but "let me tell you again what is true." He is the everlasting God. He is the Creator of the ends of the earth. And crucially: he does not faint or grow weary. His understanding is unsearchable.
This matters because the complaint underneath Israel's despair was a belief, whether conscious or not, that God had run out of energy for them. That he had grown tired of their situation. That he had moved on. Isaiah addresses that belief head-on: the God who holds the universe in his hands does not get tired.
But here's what makes this passage so remarkable: God doesn't just describe his own unlimited power. He offers to share it. "He gives power to the faint."
This is an astonishing gift. The everlasting God who does not grow weary gives his strength to those who have nothing left. Not as a loan, not as an exchange, but as a gift to the faint. To those who have no might, he increases strength.
And then comes the contrast that every exhausted person needs to hear.
"Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted."
Youth and strength are not guarantees. The athlete, the soldier, the young person at the peak of physical capacity — they, too, can hit the wall. Human strength, however impressive, has a ceiling. Eventually, the body gives out. Eventually, the willpower runs dry. Eventually, even the strongest person falls exhausted.
But those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength.
The Hebrew word for "wait" (qavah) is rich. It doesn't mean passive resignation — sitting and enduring until something changes. It means hopeful expectation, a confident trust in the one who is coming. It has the sense of looking toward, stretching toward, as a plant turns toward the light. It is an active posture of the soul.
And the renewal that comes is not a slight recovery — a nap that helps you push through a bit longer. It is transformation. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. Eagles catch thermal updrafts and soar without effort — not by flapping harder but by riding a current greater than themselves. This is the picture of the life that waits on God: not grinding effort, but the capacity to rise on a power that is not your own.
They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint.
Notice that the order is reversed from what we'd expect. Eagles soaring, then running, then walking — it goes from the spectacular to the ordinary. And perhaps the hardest of the three is the last. Soaring is dramatic. Running is intense. But walking — the long, ordinary, day-after-day faithfulness of a life that keeps going — that is perhaps where most of us live, and that is where we most often run out of strength.
God promises to sustain the walk. Not just the mountaintop experiences, not just the seasons of spiritual intensity. The ordinary Wednesday. The grief that doesn't lift on a schedule. The caregiving that has no end in sight. The job you go to every day that wears you thin.
Wait for the LORD. Not as a strategy, but as a posture. Turn toward him. Trust that he is working even when you cannot see it. Bring your exhaustion to the one who never grows weary, and let him give you what you don't have.
He does not faint. He does not grow weary. And he gives his strength to those who have none left.
Wait on him. You will not be disappointed.
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Tags: Isaiah, Strength, Renewal, Waiting on God, Exhaustion, Hope