One of the hardest parts of the faith walk is the waiting season. The hibernation period, where we are asked to be still and trust God’s timing. We can try to force movement, but it doesn’t work. Our plans will not prosper. Nothing sticks. The season can feel like an eternity, with no end in sight. As creatures of action, we are not accustomed to stillness. And yet, that is exactly where God wants to meet us sometimes. In the quiet solitude where we have intentionally carved out space for Him to enter. But what if we create all that space and keep waiting, and waiting, and waiting some more, and God is still silent?
I am finding myself in such a season right now. Well, it’s actually more a secondhand waiting through my husband, who is waiting expectantly for God to open a particular door. It has been a few years and we are growing restless. We have felt God’s presence and pruning but not His mountain-moving power. Sometimes our prayers seem to go unheard. No doors have opened, no circumstances have shifted. Day in and day out, we are met with an undeniable lull, a lack of movement forward.
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.
~Ecclesiastes 3:1
It’s easy to become discouraged when we don’t hear from God, isn’t it? Before we know it, discouragement leads to resentment and anger, which can easily entrap us in judgment of His ways and a distrust of His promises and plans for our life. As if we know better what our souls need at the deepest level. As if we can predict the particulars of our future.
The length of the waiting season must be directly proportional to the depth of the lessons God wants us to learn.
I can’t imagine God is not intentional when He chooses to make us wait. And in that intention must be a desire for us to learn something. Whether it’s to trust and lean on Him, to be pruned, to put Him first, or to get rid of all the distractions, the waiting is purposeful. Aggravating? Yes. Painful? Yes. Uncomfortable? Absolutely. But also deliberate, and designed with our best interest in mind. At least that’s what I tell myself when it has stretched my patience thin.
In the midst of the waiting, we must choose, each day, to recommit ourselves to being still and knowing He is God.
Sometimes, the recommitment happens on an hour-by-hour basis. It’s like driving in the fog and only seeing a foot in front of you. We often walk out our faith one foot at a time, trusting that God has gone before us and is extending His hand to help us carry on.
One way I have found helps me through a waiting season, when my prayers appear to go unanswered, is to set aside the big prayer for the big thing I am seeking and instead pray what I call the “breadcrumb prayer.” I ask God for tiny things that will inch me along and equip me to get through another day—to help with a work meeting, to give me strength to cook a meal, to heal my headache, to guide me in a conversation with a friend, to give me a good night’s rest. Essentially to let me know He is with me while I wait. I collect my breadcrumbs of faith until I have enough to sustain me in my dormant state.
When the mountain won’t move, we can ask God to shake some hills in the meantime.
I have also found that the longer the waiting lasts, the more I need to question what I’m praying for. Perhaps there is something else God wants me to seek from Him. Perhaps I have my priorities wrong. If I’ve learned one thing on this faith journey, it’s that God is always looking to meet our deeper needs, more so than the surface ones.
Most of the time, we are praying for God to change our circumstances, when what He is truly interested in changing is either our character or our heart. He is looking to unburden us from the unhealthy weights we carry around, sometimes knowingly but often unknowingly, and free us from the sins that have us trapped in chains.
Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.
~James 1:2-3
I’ll be honest, I don’t know if I’ll ever arrive at a place where I’ll consider the trials of this life “pure joy,” but at least I can rest in the knowledge that God knows what I need, and what my husband needs, way more than either of us do. Yes the waiting is difficult and disheartening, but it’s not wasted. It holds the seed for the perseverance that will get us through the next stretch of trials waiting around the bend.
If you find yourself in a waiting season right now, hang on and don’t lose hope. God is walking in it with you. He’s scattering breadcrumbs along your path to let you know He’s there and hears your cry. There will always be another mountain to move. Be still, and know that He is God. Be still, and know that He can make a way where there is no way. Because “those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength… they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint” Isaiah 40:31. Take your gaze off the mountain and keep shifting it back onto God. Hour-by-hour, one foot at a time.