Sometimes, God answers our prayers right away. But I have found that most often, His answer to me is to wait. I am not very good at waiting. I want to act, to help out like Sarah tried to do when she told Abraham to go ahead and take Hagar and have children with her. I want to help God…that sounds funny, doesn’t it? God certainly does not need my help or my advice about how He can best answer my prayers. He just says to wait.

I think it’s interesting that the Spanish word for to wait is “esperar.” That’s because this word has another meaning…HOPE! We wait and we hope with faith and trust in God. Those two words that seem to be different are a pair that go together. It is by hoping that we know we can trust God. And it is in the waiting that we learn to trust Him more.

Every day we wait for something. Sometimes it’s a phone call, other times it’s a personal visit. We wait for packages to arrive and for a special day to come. But do you know who else is waiting? God is waiting for each of us to turn to Him as we wait and to communicate with Him about our fears and frustrations, to be honest about the problem we are having waiting. I cannot imagine how hard it would have been to send my son to die, knowing that it was inevitably going to happen, but having to wait for that hard part, the time of separation from my only son. That’s what God did. He didn’t hurry things along, come up with a Plan B or change His mind about the sacrifice of His Son. No, He waited for the perfect time for Jesus to be born and the perfect time for Him to die for each of us. God wants us to wait because in the waiting, we can experience a closeness to Him because He also waited. He didn’t have to learn any lessons in His waiting since He already knew everything. But God, in His great love and wisdom, knows that we need to be in the waiting room sometimes just to hear His voice and to wait for Him expectantly. Not demanding our way, not trying to work out our own solution, but just to wait, to hope that the answer is coming. God, who did not hold back the sacrifice of His Son, is not holding back good things from us when we wait. He is working His perfect plan for us, helping us to be more like Jesus and less like Adam. God’s schoolroom is the best place for us to learn about His character and how to wait patiently while also being brave and facing whatever it is that is a problem for us. We have to learn to wait well, not to wait while we tap our feet, constantly look at our watch or the calendar, with an attitude of “well, God? What’s up with this? I’m still waiting!” You know what? He knows we wait, He wants us to wait and learn from the experience. Waiting builds faith if we will let it.

Waiting Well

Waiting can be hard. 

Most of us would prefer quick, efficient, and, when possible, instant results and answers. 

But waiting is a part of life. 

We must wait for seeds to grow into food, for one season to fade into the next, for babies to mature into adults, and for trees to stand tall enough to finally offer shade.

Like it or not, waiting takes patience.

We can wait days, months, years, or even decades for a prayer to be answered, for an overdue apology, for the timing to be right, or for a dream to finally come to pass.

Waiting requires courage.

King David lived nearly 3,000 years ago, but he knew what it meant to wait for God’s timing, to wait to be king, to wait to be rescued from his enemies. He wrote:

“Wait patiently for the Lord. Be brave and courageous. Yes, wait patiently for the Lord.”
‭‭Psalms‬ ‭27:14‬ ‭NLT‬‬

If David thought waiting on God was important enough to write it twice in one verse, we should probably pay attention. 

But waiting patiently for the Lord isn’t an excuse to do nothing. 

We can proactively wait on God by staying in communication with Him, by looking for His fingerprints in ordinary moments, by reading about His story and His plans in His Word, by worshiping Him no matter what’s happening across the globe, by serving the people both inside and outside of our circles, and by thanking Him for the gifts He’s already given us.

Just because a specific door isn’t opening, or a particular opportunity isn’t available at this moment doesn’t mean that God isn’t moving.

Even when we are waiting—God is working. 

Noah spent decades building an ark as he waited for God to do what He’d said. Ruth journeyed with her mother-in-law and worked in the grain fields while trusting in God’s provision after her husband’s death. Joseph stayed faithful in prison for several years before his promotion to second-in-command of Egypt. John trusted God’s ultimate will for his life, and wrote several books of the New Testament while sentenced to exile on the island of Patmos. 

So, no matter what you’re facing, you can ask God for patience and trust that He is in control of your future. No matter what uncertainty lies before you, when you rely on the Lord, you can be someone who waits well.