There are times in life when it can feel as though everyone else is moving forward while we are standing still.
We watch other people step into opportunities we have been praying for, celebrate milestones we are still hoping to reach, or receive answers to prayers that sound remarkably similar to the ones we have been carrying before God for months or even years. Meanwhile, we continue praying, trusting, hoping, and wondering when our own circumstances will finally begin to change.
Waiting can be one of the hardest parts of following Christ because, from where we are standing, it often appears as though nothing is happening.
Yet throughout Scripture, we repeatedly discover that some of God’s deepest work takes place in precisely these kinds of seasons. While we are looking for visible movement, God may be strengthening our faith, shaping our character, changing our perspective, or preparing us for something we are not yet ready to see.
Waiting may feel like an interruption to the life we hoped we would be living, but in God’s hands, it is never wasted time.
Waiting Has Always Been Part of the Journey of Faith
The Bible never pretends that waiting is easy.
Some of the people whose faith we admire most experienced long periods when God’s promises seemed distant and their circumstances appeared to contradict everything they believed He had said.
Abraham waited decades for the promised son.
Hannah returned year after year with the same longing in her heart.
Joseph carried dreams from God while his circumstances moved in what must have seemed like completely the wrong direction.
David cried out, “How long, Lord?”
Their stories are different, but they remind us of something important. Waiting is not evidence that we have somehow failed spiritually, nor does it mean God has forgotten us.
It is simply part of the journey of faith.
Perhaps this is particularly important to remember when comparison begins creeping into our hearts. Life does not stop while we wait, which means we may find ourselves watching other people receive the very things we have been asking God for ourselves. Someone else gets married while we remain single. A colleague receives the opportunity we hoped for. Another family celebrates the child we have been praying for. Someone shares their testimony of healing while we are still asking God to intervene.
Those moments can be difficult, and Scripture does not require us to pretend otherwise.
Yet the stories of those who waited before us remind us that although they experienced uncertainty, disappointment, and questions, they were never abandoned by God.
Waiting may be part of our story for a while, but it is never evidence that God has stopped writing it.
Waiting Deepens Our Trust in God
If everything happened according to our preferred timetable, it would be very easy to place our confidence in our plans rather than in God.
Waiting exposes the difference.
It asks whether we trust God only when we can see where He is taking us, or whether we are willing to continue trusting Him when the road ahead remains unclear.
Abraham’s story gives us a powerful example of this. God promised him that he would become the father of many nations, yet year after year passed without the promised son arriving. From a human perspective, the possibility became increasingly unlikely, but Romans 4 tells us something remarkable about Abraham’s response.
He “did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith.”
The waiting did not ultimately destroy Abraham’s faith. It became part of the process through which his faith was strengthened.
Sometimes we ask God to remove the waiting when He is using that very waiting to teach us a deeper kind of dependence upon Him.
There is a difference between trusting God because everything appears to be working out and trusting Him because we have come to know His character. The first kind of trust is easily shaken when circumstances change. The second becomes increasingly steady because it is rooted not in what God is currently doing, but in who we know Him to be.
Waiting Shapes the Person We Are Becoming
One of the patterns we repeatedly see throughout Scripture is that God often prepares the person before He fulfils the promise.
Joseph received dreams about his future while he was still a young man, but the journey between those dreams and their fulfilment looked nothing like he could have expected. He experienced betrayal, slavery, false accusations, and imprisonment before eventually finding himself in the position of leadership God had prepared for him.
Those years could easily have looked wasted.
They were anything but.
Long before Joseph entered the palace, God was shaping the man who would eventually need the wisdom, humility, perseverance, and character to carry the responsibility waiting for him there.
James 1:2–4 reminds us that the testing of our faith produces perseverance and that perseverance, when allowed to complete its work, helps us become mature and complete.
That does not mean we have to enjoy waiting or pretend that painful circumstances are somehow easy. It simply reminds us that God can use even the seasons we would never have chosen to form something valuable within us.
Sometimes we are so focused on asking God to change our circumstances that we do not notice how deeply He is changing us within them.
Perhaps the greatest miracle of a waiting season will eventually be the answer we have prayed for.
But sometimes the miracle is also the person we have become by the time the answer arrives.
Waiting Helps Us See God More Clearly
One of the most moving examples of waiting in Scripture is found in John 11.
When Lazarus became ill, his sisters Mary and Martha sent word to Jesus. They knew He loved their family, and they knew He had the power to heal, so it would have been entirely reasonable for them to expect Him to come immediately.
But Jesus delayed.
From Mary and Martha’s perspective, that delay must have been incredibly difficult to understand. By the time Jesus arrived, Lazarus had died, and both sisters expressed the same heartbreaking thought: if Jesus had been there, their brother would not have died.
Yet Jesus had not forgotten them.
He had not become indifferent to their pain.
They simply could not yet see the whole story.
What initially appeared to be an inexplicable delay became the setting in which they witnessed something far greater than the healing they had originally hoped for. They witnessed the resurrection power of Christ.
There will be times in our own lives when we can only see one small part of what God is doing.
Isaiah 55 reminds us that His thoughts are higher than our thoughts and His ways higher than our ways. Waiting stretches us because it requires us to trust that God’s perspective reaches far beyond the small portion of the story we can currently see.
We may not understand what He is doing today.
But we can trust the One who already sees tomorrow.
Waiting Reminds Us That God’s Timing Is Purposeful
When we have been waiting longer than we expected, it can be easy to wonder whether we somehow missed God’s plan for our lives.
Perhaps we made the wrong decision.
Perhaps we started too late.
Perhaps the opportunity has passed.
Yet throughout Scripture, we see again and again that God is neither hurried nor late.
Ecclesiastes 3 reminds us that there is a time for everything, while Habakkuk 2:3 encourages us:
“Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay.”
God’s timing is purposeful even when it does not make sense from our perspective.
This does not mean every desire we have will eventually be fulfilled exactly as we imagine it, nor does waiting guarantee that God will give us everything we ask for. Rather, it means we can trust that our lives remain safely within His hands and that His purposes are not threatened by the passing of time.
Sometimes God may be preparing circumstances we cannot see.
Sometimes He may be working in the lives of other people.
And sometimes He may be preparing us.
Whatever He is doing, waiting does not mean He has stopped working.
Waiting Is Not Wasted in God’s Hands
One of the hardest things about a waiting season is that there may be very little visible evidence of progress.
We like to see movement. We find reassurance in measurable change because it helps us believe something is happening.
But some of the most important growth in life happens where no one can see it.
A seed can spend a long time beneath the soil before the first shoot appears above the ground. From the surface, the soil looks unchanged. There is no obvious evidence of life, and yet beneath it roots are forming, growth is taking place, and something is quietly being prepared to emerge.
I think our waiting seasons can sometimes look very similar.
Perhaps you cannot yet see the breakthrough you have been praying for.
Perhaps the door has not opened.
Perhaps the answer has not arrived.
Perhaps your circumstances look remarkably similar to how they looked six months ago.
But that does not mean nothing is happening.
God may be deepening your trust.
He may be strengthening your character.
He may be teaching you to recognise His presence in ways you never needed to before.
He may be growing roots that will sustain you in the next chapter of your life.
Just because you cannot see movement above the surface does not mean God is not working beneath it.
Watch the Full Video
If you are currently walking through a waiting season and wondering what God may be doing during this time, I recently shared a YouTube video exploring why God sometimes allows us to wait and how He can use those seasons to grow our faith.
Watch: Your Waiting Isn’t Wasted: How God Grows Your Faith Through Waiting Seasons
Together, we look at the stories of Abraham, Joseph, Hannah, Mary and Martha, and other believers in Scripture who discovered that God’s apparent delays were never evidence of His absence. We also explore how waiting can deepen our trust, shape our character, change our perspective, and teach us to rest more confidently in God’s timing.
A Soft Next Step
If waiting has been stretching your faith recently, one of the most important things you can do is continue creating space to meet with God through Scripture and prayer, even on the days when you do not feel particularly hopeful.
You may find The Gentle Reset Prayer Companion helpful if you need a simple structure for bringing your thoughts, prayers, and questions honestly before God, while The Gentle Reset 21-Day Devotional can help you establish a steady rhythm of spending time with Him when life feels spiritually unsettled.
You can also explore A Gentle Start: A Simple Guide to Reading the Bible for Beginners and Abide: A Year in God’s Word if you would like to become more deeply rooted in Scripture while you wait.
These resources are not designed to hurry you through the waiting or give you easy answers. They are simply there to help you remain close to God while He continues His work in your life.
Closing Reflection
Perhaps the hardest thing about waiting is that we rarely know how long it will last or what the story will look like when we eventually reach the other side.
We may not know when the answer will come, whether the door will open, or whether God’s response will look anything like the one we have imagined.
But we can know this.
Waiting is not a sign that God has forgotten you.
It is not proof that your prayers have been ignored.
And it does not mean that nothing is happening.
The same God who was faithful to Abraham while he waited, who remained with Joseph through years of uncertainty, who heard Hannah’s prayers, and who loved Mary and Martha even when His timing confused them is still faithful today.
So if your life feels as though it has been standing still, keep bringing your heart before Him. Keep allowing His Word to steady you. Keep trusting that there are things He can see that you cannot yet see.
The soil may look quiet, but roots may already be growing beneath the surface.
And one day, when you are able to look back on this chapter from a different vantage point, you may discover that the season you thought was simply delaying your life was also one of the places where God was quietly preparing you for what came next.
Because in God’s hands, waiting is never wasted.
Need some more encouragement?
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- The 21-Day Devotional Guide: Click Here
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- The Scripture Anchor Collection: Click Here
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Check Out My Quiet Time Shelf:
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📚 Enduring Word Bible Commentary – Get Here
📖 Proverbs Prayers by John Mason – Get Here
📖 Becoming the Woman God Wants Me to Be by Donna Partow – Get Here
📖 Draw the Circle by Mark Batterson – Get Here
🌿 Gentle Reset Ultimate Bundle by The 6Eleven Life – Get Here
📔 Conversations with My Father Prayer Journal – Get Here
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Biyai
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