When God Makes You Wait

Trusting his goodness when he has the power to act

Learning to wait is one of life’s most difficult disciplines. Waiting forces us to live between what we believe about God and what we can currently see him doing. We know what God could do, we have prayed for what we want him to do, and yet we wake up another morning with the situation unchanged.

For a follower of Jesus, two truths begin pressing against the soul during these seasons. We believe God is good, and we believe God is sovereign. Those convictions are easy to affirm when life is moving in a direction we understand. Waiting forces us to decide whether we still believe them when God does not move according to our timetable.

Good and Sovereign

God’s goodness and sovereignty belong together. If God were sovereign without being good, his power would be terrifying. He could control everything, but we would have no reason to trust what he intended to do with that control.

If God were good without being sovereign, he might be comforting, but his goodness could accomplish very little. He could sympathize with our pain and desire something better for us, yet lack the power to bring that good about. His goodness would become little more than a comforting sentiment in a world he could not govern.

But God is both good and sovereign. He has the power to accomplish whatever he desires, whenever he desires, in whatever way he desires. At the same time, everything he desires flows from who he is. His sovereignty never operates independently of his character.

Scripture tells us that God is love. I have long appreciated Dallas Willard’s simple way of describing love as willing or seeking the good of another. If God is love, then his actions toward us flow from his desire for our good. His power means he is capable of accomplishing that good, even when we cannot understand what he is doing.

That sounds comforting until God makes us wait.

When Faith Becomes Necessary

There are seasons when trusting God seems almost natural. Something we prayed for happens. An opportunity opens. Provision comes at the right moment. We can trace the blessing and say, “Look what God has done.”

Waiting removes much of that visible evidence. God could change the situation today, yet today passes. He could answer the prayer, open the door, provide the opportunity, restore what was lost, or reveal what comes next. We believe he has the power, which means his delay raises questions that powerlessness would never raise.

Eventually, two questions begin circling around our souls: Is God good? And am I good?

We can move back and forth between them for a long time.

At first, we may pray like the psalmists. We examine our lives and come before God with confidence. “My hands are clean. My heart is sincere. I am seeking you. I trust you. Now act according to your goodness.”

Then another week passes. Another month passes. Sometimes another year passes.

If we remain convinced that God is good, we may begin wondering whether the problem must be us. Perhaps there is something wrong that we have not discovered. Maybe there is some hidden sin, misplaced desire, wrong decision, or character defect preventing God from doing what we have asked him to do.

Self-examination has a healthy place in the Christian life. David himself prayed, “Search me, God, and know my heart.” The Spirit convicts, corrects, disciplines, and leads us toward maturity. A season of waiting can expose things within us that prosperity allowed us to ignore.

But self-examination can become something very different. We can start digging through our souls looking for the one defective piece that explains the delay. We become convinced there must be a combination we have not entered correctly into the lock. If we could finally pray correctly, believe strongly enough, surrender completely enough, or repair whatever God dislikes, perhaps he would finally give us what we have been waiting for.

Without realizing it, we begin believing a lie about God. We imagine him holding the blessing just beyond our reach, waiting for us to become worthy enough to receive it. God becomes someone dangling a carrot in front of his children, always willing to bless them tomorrow if they can finally get themselves right today.

That is a miserable way to wait.

Who Gets to Define Good?

The other question cuts even deeper: Is God actually good?

Answering that question requires us to confront what we mean by good. We naturally define good through what we desire. The job would be good. The relationship would be good. Healing would be good. Financial provision would be good. The opportunity would be good. An answer today would certainly seem better than an answer five years from now.

Then God delays.

Waiting forces us to consider whether we will allow God to define good. Perhaps what we desire really is good, yet God knows that its goodness requires timing we cannot understand. Perhaps the thing itself needs preparation. Perhaps we need preparation. Perhaps circumstances completely outside our awareness must develop before what is good can arrive in a way that produces the good God intends.

And perhaps what we are asking for is not ultimately good at all.

We usually cannot know which explanation is true while we are waiting. That is precisely why waiting requires faith. If God explained every delay, faith would become unnecessary. We could simply evaluate his reasoning, decide whether we agreed with it, and wait because his explanation made sense.

Faith says something harder: I trust the character of God before I understand the activity of God.

That is where the real wrestling begins.

The Danger of Sitting Still

So how do we wait well?

One option is to sit and stare at the unanswered question. We replay possibilities, analyze conversations, imagine outcomes, and continually inspect our circumstances for some clue that the waiting is almost finished. We sit, stew, ponder, and wonder.

Eventually, unanswered questions begin producing more unanswered questions. Our minds attempt to solve something God has not given us enough information to solve. Anxiety grows because we keep demanding certainty from a situation in which certainty has not been offered.

Many of those questions may never receive answers. Some do not even need answers.

There is another way to wait. Instead of spending all our energy trying to discover what God has not revealed, we can give ourselves to what God has already made clear.

We can ask, What do I know about God? What has he already asked of me? What obedience is available to me today?

Then we do that.

Do the Good You Know

In a season of waiting, do the good you know while trusting God with the good you cannot yet see.

Love your family. Serve your neighbor. Work faithfully. Give generously. Forgive people. Keep your commitments. Encourage someone. Make disciples. Practice hospitality. Tell the truth. Pray. Worship. Rest. Repent when repentance is needed. Be thankful for what God has already placed in your hands.

You do not need to know what God will do next in order to obey what God has already said.

There is tremendous freedom in that. You stop trying to manipulate the future through perfect behavior. You simply become faithful with today.

Then pray.

Bring the unanswered desire before God without pretending you no longer desire it. Ask boldly. Jesus taught his disciples to ask, seek, and knock, so waiting should never become passive resignation. Tell God what you want while surrendering your definition of good to his wisdom.

Then watch for mercy and grace. Look for places where God produces more than your own actions could reasonably produce. Pay attention to unexpected provision, relationships, opportunities, growth, correction, and fruit. Waiting for one particular answer can make us blind to a hundred other things God is doing around us.

Do what you know is good, pray for what you desire, watch for grace, and trust God’s hand with the outcome.

When Waiting Turns Into Anxiety

Waiting becomes dangerous when our desire for an answer becomes a demand for relief. Anxiety makes us desperate to fill the empty space. We want something we can control, consume, accomplish, or possess because waiting has made us painfully aware that the thing we really want remains outside our control.

That is when unhealthy desires become especially attractive. We fill our schedules, homes, stomachs, accounts, screens, and imaginations because immediate satisfaction offers temporary relief from unresolved longing. Yet satisfying the wrong desire never resolves the deeper one. The momentary relief passes, and our dissatisfaction grows.

The answer is not to stop desiring. Desire belongs to being human. The discipline is learning to bring our desires under the goodness of God rather than demanding that God submit his goodness to our desires.

Waiting teaches us to say, “Father, this is what I want. You know that I want it. I believe you are capable of giving it. I will continue asking you for it. But I trust you enough to let you decide what good looks like and when that good should come.”

That is faith exercised under pressure.

Trust His Hand

God’s delay does not prove his absence. It does not prove his displeasure. It does not mean you have failed to discover the secret spiritual formula that would finally convince him to act.

It means you are waiting.

And while you wait, there is still a life to live faithfully.

Go to the Lord. Seek him. Ask him for what you desire. Examine your heart when the Spirit brings conviction, but refuse the endless hunt for some hidden defect that might explain everything. Receive the good already in front of you and practice the obedience already available to you.

Then leave room for God to be sovereign.

If he brings about what you have asked for, receive it as good from his hand. If he delays, trust that the timing remains in the hands of someone who is good. If he eventually leads you somewhere you never intended to go, trust that his understanding of good reaches farther than yours.

The deepest work of waiting may be learning to say two things at the same time: God can do this, and I trust him even though he has not done it yet.

So do the good you know while you wait for the good you cannot see. Pray. Obey. Watch for grace. Refuse to feed anxiety with desires that cannot satisfy you.

And let God define the good.

---

Psalm 100

1 Out of the depths I call to you, Lord!

2 Lord, listen to my voice;

let your ears be attentive

to my cry for help.

3 Lord, if you kept an account of iniquities,

Lord, who could stand?

4 But with you there is forgiveness,

so that you may be revered.

5 I wait for the Lord; I wait

and put my hope in his word.

6 I wait for the Lord

more than watchmen for the morning —

more than watchmen for the morning.

7 Israel, put your hope in the Lord.

For there is faithful love with the Lord,

and with him is redemption in abundance.

8 And he will redeem Israel

from all its iniquities.