The Part of Faith Nobody Volunteers For
If you asked most people what the hardest part of following God is, they would probably give you answers like suffering, or doubt, or forgiving someone who does not deserve it. Those are real and honest answers.
But for a large number of people, the answer is simpler and more unglamorous than any of those.
Waiting.
Waiting for a prayer that has not been answered yet. Waiting for a situation to change. Waiting for a relationship to heal, for a door to open, for something that was promised to finally arrive. The waiting itself is not dramatic. It is just long. And long, quiet waiting has a way of doing things to a person’s faith that more dramatic trials sometimes do not.
“Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.”
~ Psalm 27:14
Why Waiting Feels Like Nothing Is Happening
The difficulty with waiting on God is that it looks, from the outside, exactly like nothing is happening. The situation has not changed. The answer has not come. The thing you have been praying about is in the same state it was in six months ago.
But that is a surface-level reading of what is actually going on.
In Scripture, seasons of waiting are rarely described as passive. They are described as seasons of preparation, of character formation, of God doing interior work that will matter when the exterior circumstances finally shift. Joseph waited thirteen years between the dream and the fulfillment. Abraham waited twenty-five years for the son he was promised. The waiting was not wasted time. It was the time in which something was being built that could not have been built any other way.
That does not make waiting comfortable. But it does change what you do with it.
What Waiting Well Actually Requires
Psalm 27:14 gives a specific instruction. Be strong and take heart. Those are not passive words. They are words addressed to someone who is tempted to give up, to stop trusting, to draw their own conclusions about what God is doing based on what they can currently see.
Waiting well does not mean waiting without feelings. It means choosing not to let the feelings make the decisions. It means continuing to show up in prayer even when prayer feels like talking to a ceiling. It means being honest with God about your frustration rather than performing a peace you do not feel.
It also means staying active in the things you know to be right, even while the thing you are waiting for has not arrived. Faithfulness in the present is part of how God prepares you for what He has ahead.
Try This Before the Week Is Out
Write down what you are currently waiting for. Next to it, write how long you have been waiting. Then write down one thing you know God is asking you to be faithful in right now, regardless of whether the answer comes this week.
That last part matters. Waiting well is not passive. It is faithful action in the present, trusting that God is active even when you cannot see what He is doing.
One Last Thing Before You Go
God has never once been late. That is not a cliche. It is the consistent testimony of everyone in Scripture who waited on Him. What felt impossibly slow from their perspective looked entirely different from His. Your waiting is not evidence that He has forgotten you. It is evidence that He is doing something that takes longer than you would like. Stay with it. He is worth waiting for.
A Prayer for Today
“Lord, I will be honest with You. The waiting is hard. I have been patient for a long time and I do not always understand what You are doing. But I am choosing today to trust Your timing rather than my own. Help me to be faithful in what is right in front of me while I wait. Help me to be strong and take heart, not because the circumstances have changed, but because You have not. Amen.”
Thank you for spending part of your week with these Daily Devotions. Morning Whispers by Dr. Paul Lindblad is full of honest, Scripture-rooted reflections for every season of life, including the long ones. Get your copy and subscribe to the Daily Devotions newsletter so next week’s devotions come straight to your inbox.