Waiting seasons can be really frustrating. Days turn to weeks, weeks turn to months, and sometimes months turn into years. You wonder why God is making you wait so long? I want to help answer that question for you. This won’t change the fact that you’re waiting but it can give you hope in this season and help you to see that it’s not in vain.
Why God is Making You Wait So Long
God allows us to wait for many different reasons. We see this a lot in scripture. God gives his people a promise and it takes years to happen. Although it doesn’t make sense in our eyes, God always has a reason for allowing time to pass before fulfilling his word. Here are a few of them.
He’s preparing you for what he promised
God may be preparing you for what he promised. Take King David, for example. We know that he was one of the most prolific kings of Israel but do we know how he became king? He was just a young shepherd boy who God gave a promise. Through Samuel, the prophet, God told David that he would become the next king. But, it took many years. Why? God had to prepare David so that when he became king, he knew how to actually be a king.
This could be the same reason why you are waiting. God wants to prepare you for what he promised before he allows you to step into it. He’s not going to take you into a new season until he knows you’re ready. He’s a good Father who doesn’t set his children up for failure. He wants to give us good things but not until we’re ready.
Now, here’s the thing. It’s your responsibility to submit to him and let him prepare you. If you resist what God is doing in this season, you set yourself up for failure in the next. Stay where God has placed you until he says you’re ready to move forward.
Related: How to Wait Well When Everyone But You Is Getting Blessed
He’s teaching you how to be patient
Next, God could be teaching you how to be patient. We often pray for patience and forget that the only way to become patient is by being patient. Patience is hard, I know that. But good things require patience. Unfortunately, we can’t have everything at microwave speed. God’s kingdom doesn’t work like that. Interestingly enough, the Bible says that the Kingdom of Heaven is like a seed. Seeds take time to grow into trees. Likewise, God’s plan for your life will require patience.
Perhaps you’re waiting because God wants to show you how the Kingdom works. Good gifts from God take time. Like seeds, they need care and attention. The gift God wants to give you is too good to be made in a microwave.
God wants us to press into his presence and wait patiently before his throne. He’s calling us to come before him with thanksgiving even if we’re still waiting on a promise.
The world has so many things they want to offer us on an instantaneous silver platter. But good God-sent blessings take time.
Related: 5 Practical Things To Do While While Waiting on God
He’s strengthening your faith
Perhaps God may be strengthening your faith. Our entire Christian belief system rests on it. We know it’s impossible to please God without faith. Yes, Impossible. So, sometimes God allows us to walk through waiting seasons to help our faith grow stronger.
However, the faith he’s developing in this season is not shallow faith in things, it is deeply rooted faith in him. Besides, faith in anything other than God is no faith at all. Can you believe that God is who he says he is even when you don’t get what you want? Can you trust him when you get the 37th rejection letter? When you’ve prayed and cried and nothing seems to be happening?
God wants us to move away from having faith for things and begin having faith in him. Let’s look at job as an example. In the middle of intense trials, Job was able to say, “You give and take away but blessed be the name of the Lord.” Can you glorify God even if you never get what you’re asking for?
At the end of the day, everything of this world will fade away. Only God’s kingdom will remain. He wants to strengthen your faith for that Kingdom promise, not just the things you desire here on earth.
Related: 5 Things to Do When You Are Discouraged
He wants you to fix your eyes on him instead of the promise
Ask yourself this: do you want the promise more than you want God? He knows our hearts. He knows if we’ll forget about him if he gives us what we want right away. So, sometimes he just let’s us wait. During the waiting, we learn to love God more than we love the things we desire.
Abraham loved and trusted God so much that when God asked him to give up his only son, Isaac, he willingly complied, no questions asked. God spared Isaac because he didn’t actually want to take his life, he wanted to reveal Abraham’s true heart.
You know you’re in a good place when you’re willing to say, “Lord, I desire these things but they’re not worth having if I don’t have you.” Let me be honest, there are so many things I desire. But none of them are worth trading my relationship with God. I might not have everything I want but if I have God, I have everything I need.
You’re waiting on something God never promised you
Finally, you may be waiting on something God never promised you in the first place. The truth is, many of us are waiting on a promise that God never gave us. You may feel like you’re waiting forever because you’re actually waiting on something that God said no to. Search God’s word and examine your heart to see if this applies to you. You might encounter some painful truth but there’s nothing worse than spending all of your time waiting for something God never promised.
I hope this list has helped to clear things up for you. If you feel God is making you wait, hang in there. It won’t last forever. God will strengthen you in the middle of this if you let him. This season is just as significant as the next. Make the most of today so that when you do walk into the promise, you’ll be prepared.
Also these points are great. Plus the fact we can really get to know God. Which is priceless!
Thank you for reading Ava! I agree, the beauty of knowing God is so priceless!
I like fixing your eyes on Him instead of the promise. I do believe His promises are yes and amen. Many times we just don’t amen them. He won’t withhold good things but sometimes we do have to wait. It may be the phrase if we ask according to His will, that people don’t get. The Holy spirit is there to guide you in His will. Great post.
That’s so true – it’s so important to wait on God’s promises. It’s about his will over anything else! Thank you for reading and sharing your thoughts!
Such a great truth—waiting is a part of God’s timing, His plan, His kingdom. His ways aren’t our ways. Waiting builds endurance and strength in our dependence on Father.
I struggle in the waiting seasons, and this was such a good word for me. <3
God bless! Thank you for reading. I’m glad it was helpful!
Waiting doesn’t always strengthen your faith nor does it always teach you to be more patient. Sometimes it simply destroys you, breaks you down into fragments. And all the while God stands by, silently allowing it to happen.
Thank you for an insightful article.
Hi Thomas – I’m very sorry that you’ve had that experience. You’re right, sometimes waiting feels like it’s destroying you. I can definitely attest to that. But in the struggle, the best person to hold on to is God. There are times I feel like God is teasing me in some sense with the promises that he’s having me wait on. But when I feel this way, I cling to what I know to be true about God. I trust that he is good and even when this waiting does not feel that way, I choose to hang on to this truth. I hope that this can encourage you in your waiting & I also pray that God grants you the desires of your heart according to his will
Everything God does is good. So if waiting does break you down that means you were holding your own self up and together and not He. Sometimes He does allow this like the article said, to reveal our hearts. If there is pride standing in the way and it’s blinding us, He knows what it takes to get our attention so He can pick us up and carry us and us stop trying to do it ourselves. 💙
Thomas, it can be dicey and, as you know, not unique to you. An article like this one doesn’t, necessarily, speak to individual circumstances which, in my opinion, can have multiple ” moving parts”. How are you now?
This blessed me a lot✨God bless you, Praise God
Hello,
I have lost most of my faith in God. I do believe in God and Jesus. I gave myself to God through Jesus 42+ years ago. I can’t get past God’s complete silence and complete absence. God has never answered any of my prayers. God’s presence is none existent. I am struggling with God never being interactive in my life.
God’s silence and absence are stumbling blocks that I can’t move past. Only God can remove those blocks, but He isn’t. I have brought all my concerns, troubles, hopes, dreams, etc to God only to be ignored. This one continuous season (42+ years) of this nothingness from God has broken my faith.
I have only three desires in this life.
#1 – For God to be interactive in my life, to
know first hand that God is actually here
for and with me. So far no encounter
with God.
#2 – For God to give me the resources and
abilities needed to get homeless people
off the street.
#3 – For God to make a physical change to
to something I hate about myself.
The Bible says that God will fulfill all our hearts desires. Well so far God has not done that. I have concluded, after all this time, that this is just another broken promise from God. That God will never be here for me.
Thanks and God bless you, by the Holy Spirit, in Jesus holy name, Amen.
Hi Kenneth,
I’m so sorry about what you are currently going through. I can imagine how difficult it must be to pray and feel like God isn’t hearing or answering you.
I will pray with you that God fulfills those desires: I pray that he would show you his interactivity in your life. That he would remind you that he is here with you right now.
It is such a noble desire to want to help get homeless people off the street. I also pray that God would give you the resources and ability to begin doing that kind of work in your community. I pray that he would help you to also give yourself grace and remember that even when the work isn’t done perfectly that good work is still being done.
Finally, I pray that God would help you with the thing you hate about yourself. I know that sometimes God doesn’t take away those “thorns in the flesh.” We don’t often know why but he does give us the strength to live with them. If he doesn’t take yours away, I pray that he would give you grace to live and thrive even while they are still there.
I sincerely thank you for taking the time to read. I’m grateful that even though you struggle with your faith right now, you are still holding on to God. Please feel free to reach out if you ever have any questions or need resources to help.
All the best,
Shanté
Thank you
Hello Shanté! Thank you for sharing this helpful article. If you don’t mind me asking, when you say you had to wait for God’s promises another two years (a total of 3 years), were you talking about the promise of a job? I have been unemployed for over a year since college, just like you were, and quite frankly I cannot see how I can wait another day for a job, let alone another 2 years. I know God’s the only way out of this, but at this point it feels my faith is growing weaker not stronger, and that I’m growing more bitter instead of more Christ-like, and it seems as though He doesn’t care, because I pray for a change of heart and it doesn’t come
It was 1o years ago that I went through something similar. I know that it sounds corny but I received the email which lead to.my job, which I still have, minutes after I decide to ” relax”. I think that some levwls of worry, natural as they are, can stymie spiritual life.
I just can’t keep holding on to hope when God is so silent. I am in the midst of a chronic illness battle that has taken away my independence, social life, work life, future, hope of husband, hope of promotions, hope of driving, dreams of own home, the list goes on. The worst part is that I’m undiagnosed, and every doctor I see chalks it up to mental illness. I know my body, and I know it’s something that could be fixed if the right doctor would hear me. I’ve prayed for that person, and so have my family. Well, guess what… Doctor after doctor, I get one that makes me feel worse than the one before. Why doesn’t God answer this prayer? All I want is the right help to get my life back. Why can I not reap the benefits of all my hard work in college? Why do I have to live life as if I never tried?
Hi Anon, I am so sorry to hear about what you are going through. I will lift you in prayer that you may receive a diagnosis and a cure, and that you may find a doctor who will hear you and help. I also pray that God may give you peace and joy in him, even as you are walking through this hard time. I can only imagine how difficult it must be to feel that God has abandoned you. But, I pray that he would remind you that he has been with you the entire time.
Anon, have you heard of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome? I lost 23 years of my life to CFS. I was 21 years old when suddenly I was leveled by a flulike illness. It is often treated as psychosomatic when in fact it is a post-viral infection that is completely disabling. I finally found help at a Fibro and Fatigue clinic (There are about a dozen of these clinics in the U. S). I went through a year long treatment that began healing but took another 3 years of juicing and nurturing my body to find complete healing. I do believe in Divine healing, and like Shante, pursed academic studies in biblical studies, both undergrad and graduate during this lengthy illness (I mean it literally took me 20 years to complete my education). Don’t give up!!! Research your symptoms and learn all you can. I was treated horrible by the medical community- completely dismissed. Do not accept dismissal by doctors. You are hiring them- and you can fire them! Find one on line who legitimizes CFS because if they accept that as a diagnosis then they will likely try to help even if it isn’t CFS. Also, there are numerous documentaries about CFS if you want to learn more. Praying for you.
A fantastic blog, indeed! It gives me positive vibes; I always want to read inspirational content like this. Thanks for posting
This really blessed me. Waiting is hard, but I’m also developing a stronger love and reliance on Him. But that last point hit me- am I waiting for something that God never promised me? Wow! Now I need to pray on it even more. Thank you for this article 🙏🏾
Wonderfull article. God bless you.
My heart is full while reading this. Thanks a lot! It gives me more positivity in life.
How do we know for sure it was God who said something and not our own minds?
But…..how does anyone know that they have received a ” promise “? Samuel isn’t going to show up at the door to tell us!
I really appreciate those teaching about “How to wait for God’s promose”. It applies to me because I’m jobless and I’m still waiting for God to open a door for me. Many thanks