By all accounts, we should be better at waiting.
We’ve had enough practice—waiting for college acceptance letters, for jobs that don’t ghost us, for paychecks to hit our bank accounts before rent is due. We wait for relationships to turn serious, for anxiety to lift, for God to “make it clear.” Some of us are still waiting for the plot twist where life finally feels like it makes sense.
But despite how familiar waiting is, most of us are still pretty terrible at it.
That’s not just a personality quirk. It’s the result of an entire culture wired to optimize impatience. When nearly everything is available instantly—groceries, entertainment, dating, even spiritual advice—it’s easy to start thinking that any delay is a problem to solve or a failure to fix. If it’s not happening now, we assume it’s not happening at all.
And that impatience isn’t just about stuff. It seeps into our theology too. We start to associate God’s silence with his absence. We mistake “not yet” for “no.” And when the timeline stretches longer than we anticipated, we start wondering if we missed it entirely—like maybe we misheard, misstepped or misunderstood the call.
But Scripture, frustratingly, doesn’t seem to share our sense of urgency. In fact, the Bible seems unbothered by delay. Some of the most significant moves God makes—major promises, pivotal rescues, foundational revelations—are surrounded by long, excruciating periods of waiting.
Abraham waited 25 years for the child God promised. David waited 15 years to become king after being anointed. Joseph was sold into slavery as a teen and didn’t reach the palace until his 30s. Even Jesus waited 30 years before beginning his ministry.
The through line? God’s timeline is rarely convenient, but it’s always intentional.
“The modern world teaches us that waiting is a waste of time,” said Laura Wifler, co-founder of Risen Motherhood. “But biblically, it’s often where the most important formation happens. It’s where faith grows roots.”
That formation doesn’t always look impressive. It looks like endurance. Resilience. Silence. Stillness. Which can be maddening when everything around us is pushing for momentum, movement and measurable results.
Our default mode is hustle. Make something happen. Figure it out. If the door doesn’t open, kick it. We admire people who move fast and disrupt the system—not people who sit quietly in uncertainty. And yet, the fruit of the Spirit isn’t efficiency. It’s patience.
In Isaiah 40:31, we’re told that “those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength.” But that word “wait” (qavah in Hebrew) isn’t about passivity. It literally means to bind together by twisting—like ropes being woven into a single strand. It implies tension. Connection. A quiet kind of strength. Waiting, in this sense, isn’t just about holding out for a result. It’s about clinging to God while the outcome remains unseen.
But this is where things get complicated—because our anxiety doesn’t like ambiguity. Especially when it comes wrapped in spiritual language. “Trust God’s timing” can feel like a platitude unless it’s paired with something concrete. When the job doesn’t come through, when the relationship stalls, when prayers feel like they’re hitting a ceiling, trust starts to erode. We begin to wonder if we’re being punished or if we’re just not praying hard enough.
The irony is that most of us are far more comfortable with overworking than we are with waiting. We’ll strategize, analyze and optimize every corner of our lives, trying to get God to move. We’ll pray and plan and fast and journal, and if nothing happens? We start spiraling. Maybe we’re doing something wrong. Maybe God forgot. Or worse—maybe he doesn’t care.
“Waiting exposes what we really believe about God,” said therapist and author Aundi Kolber. “Do we believe he’s good when we don’t see the results we want? Do we trust him when we don’t have control?”
It’s not a rhetorical question. For many of us, the answer is no—not really. Or at least, not consistently.
And yet, throughout Scripture, we’re invited not to escape the wait but to embrace it. Psalm 27:14 says, “Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” That’s a repeated command. Not a suggestion. Because apparently, whatever God is doing in the wait is just as important as the thing we’re waiting for.
That doesn’t mean waiting is fun. Or easy. Or Instagrammable. In fact, it usually looks a lot like failure from the outside. It’s quiet, unglamorous, often unnoticed. But it’s also where faith becomes more than theory. It’s where our trust either deepens or collapses.
We don’t talk about this enough, especially in church. We love testimonies with tidy endings, stories that wrap in 30 minutes or less. But not every season has a resolution on cue. Some of us are still waiting for the healing, the calling, the clarity. And that’s not a sign of spiritual immaturity—it might actually be proof of spiritual growth.
Because the opposite of faith isn’t doubt. It’s control. And waiting—especially the kind that feels indefinite—forces us to surrender what we thought we could manage.
Here’s the inconvenient truth: You can’t hack spiritual maturity. There’s no shortcut to trust. You can’t fast-track peace or brute-force your way to clarity. Some things only come on the other side of the wait.
And maybe that’s the point.
Because if God is as wise and loving as we claim he is, then maybe the wait isn’t him withholding something good. Maybe it is the good thing.
The time to become steady.
The space to untangle your identity from your timeline.
The quiet to hear him more clearly than you would in the noise of constant striving.
It’s OK to not enjoy the wait. It’s OK to be frustrated, confused, even discouraged. But what if we stopped seeing waiting as the thing in the way—and started seeing it as the way?
Not wasted time. Not divine punishment. But a sacred invitation to stay rooted. To become someone who can carry the promise when it finally comes.
Because it will come. Maybe not on your timeline. But on the only one that actually matters.
And when it does, you’ll realize—you weren’t stuck. You were being shaped.
