There’s a particular kind of hard that doesn’t come from a crisis, it comes from nothing happening at all. The job application that’s gone quiet. The prayer you’ve prayed a hundred times with no visible answer. The relationship, the healing, the breakthrough you can see clearly in your mind but can’t seem to reach with your hands. If you’re in a waiting season right now, you already know: waiting isn’t passive. It’s one of the hardest kinds of faith there is.
Waiting Is Not Wasted Time
It’s tempting to believe that nothing is happening just because nothing looks like it’s happening. But Scripture tells a different story. Psalm 27:14 says, “Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD.” We should pay attention to the repetition, wait, I say, on the LORD. This isn’t a throwaway instruction. It’s emphasized because waiting well is genuinely difficult, and God knew we’d need the reminder twice.
Consider Abraham and Sarah, who were promised a son and then waited twenty-five years to hold him. Consider Joseph, sold into slavery and imprisoned unjustly, waiting over a decade before the dream he’d been given as a boy came true. Consider Israel, wandering the wilderness for forty years before reaching the promise. In every case, the waiting wasn’t punishment. It was preparation for them, for the people around them, and for a plan bigger than they could see from the middle of it.
What Waiting Is Actually For
Isaiah 40:31 gives us one of the most familiar promises about waiting: “But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” The strength doesn’t come after the waiting is over. It comes through the waiting itself a strength that isn’t available any other way.
That’s worth sitting with. If God simply wanted to give you the outcome, He could. The fact that there’s a season in between suggests the season itself is doing something building trust that couldn’t be built any faster, growing character that couldn’t be rushed, aligning timing you can’t see from where you’re standing.
Ecclesiastes 3:1 puts it simply: “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.” Your current season, as uncomfortable as it is, has a purpose even if that purpose is simply teaching you to trust God’s timing over your own.
Living Well in the In-Between
Waiting doesn’t have to mean sitting still and staring at the door, watching for it to open. Here’s what it can look like instead:
Keep showing up in the ordinary. Joseph didn’t stop working faithfully in Potiphar’s house or in prison just because his circumstances weren’t what he’d dreamed. Faithfulness in the waiting is rarely wasted, even when it doesn’t feel connected to the outcome you’re hoping for.
Bring your impatience honestly to God. You don’t have to pretend you’re at peace if you’re not. The Psalms are full of honest, even frustrated, prayers from people waiting on God and God never rebukes them for the honesty, only invites them to keep bringing it to Him.
Watch for what the waiting is building in you. Ask yourself: what is God growing in me right now that couldn’t grow any other way? Patience, trust, dependence, character these rarely form during the easy seasons.
Resist the urge to force an outcome. Sarah’s decision to “help” God’s promise along by giving Hagar to Abraham led to pain that echoed for generations. Sometimes the most faithful thing you can do in a waiting season is refuse to manufacture your own solution and trust God’s timing instead.
A Prayer for the Waiting Season
Lord, this waiting is hard. I don’t always understand why the answer hasn’t come yet, and some days my patience runs out before the day does. Help me trust that You’re not silent — You’re working, even when I can’t see it. Strengthen my heart the way only You can, and teach me to wait well instead of just waiting anxiously. Thank You that Your timing has never actually failed me, even when it didn’t match mine. Amen.
You’re Not Forgotten
If you’re in a season of waiting today, hear this: the silence is not the same as absence. The delay is not the same as denial. Whatever you’re waiting for: healing, provision, direction, restoration God has not forgotten you in the meantime.
Wait, as the Psalm says, I say, wait — not because waiting is easy, but because what’s being built in you during this season is worth the time it’s taking.
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