Waiting Isn't a Waste: The Surprising Comfort of Trusting God in the Uncertainties of Life

by Mark Vroegop

Imagine yourself years in the future with a hard season behind you. What do you hope will be true of you?

But patient waiting embraces what could happen in us more than what’s happening to us.

1. Name Your Expectations

Naming our expectations empowers us to face and commit them to the Lord.

2. Embrace the Tension

Patience is created as we value what God is doing in our life through the tension.

Lamentations 3: The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. (vv. 25–27)

Lord, remind me that you are working while I’m waiting. Jesus, I’m trusting that this tension is creating long-lasting fruit in my life. Father, I’m releasing my right to know when this is going to end. God, I’m believing that in waiting there’s a promise of strength.

3. Practice Daily Waiting

I hope that what you’ve read so far is helping to shift your perspective from what you don’t know about your life to what you know to be true about God.

Bow quietly before God, just to remember and realize who He is, how near He is, how certainly He can and will help.

Prayerfully meditate on what is true about God and praise him for who he is.

Prayerfully review the day ahead, anticipating the ways I will need to wait on the Lord.

Conclude by expressing hopeful trust in God: “You are going to help me.”

Memorize a few verses or “God is . . . ” statements so that you have them available when fear or anxiety strikes.

I waited and waited and waited on the Lord. It’s often not what I expected, but it’s good.

The long season of uncertainty forced me to make the daily choice to wait on God.

Instead of seeing waiting on God as what we do when we’ve tried everything else, I’d like to see if we can make waiting intentional.

Our goal is to learn how to live on what we know to be true about God when we don’t know what’s true about our lives.

Waiting on God is a choice to face uncertainty differently. Since waiting means to look to something, this command involves the choice to look to God—who he is, what we know about him, his gracious history—to fill the spaces that tend to attract our fear, anxiety, or frustration.

instead of seeing waiting as something that happens to you, I’d like you to see waiting as something you choose to do.

Waiting is what Christians are supposed to do. Waiting for the Lord is a command that we obey.

“Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord” (v. 24).

Waiting for the Lord characterizes those who hope in the Lord.

Think of it as moving from “I have to wait” to “Waiting is what I’m supposed to do.” Or maybe taking it a step further: “Waiting on God is an expression of who I am.”

Willard helped me expand my view of grace to apply to any way in which I need God’s help and empowerment.

Waiting is not just what Christians do. It’s who we are—an essential identity marker of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

1. Responding

Waiting is normal and hard. I shouldn’t be surprised.

God is in control of the events and the timing of my life. I can rest.

This uncertainty pushes me to dependent prayer.

I can draw upon the Lord’s strength. He promises to help me when I wait.

I’m making the choice to respond and not react.

2. Preparing

“God, I’m waiting on you.”

3. Planning

waiting on God has created deeper levels of peace in me.

But there’s no question about the value and fruit. Looking back now, I can see the value of that season.

Christians wait on God together. There’s something collective about waiting.

One way we waste our waiting is by not realizing that God invites us to pursue it with other people, to integrate waiting into the normal life of the body of Christ.

We need to wait on God together.

their first orders from the resurrected Messiah were to wait and not flee the danger.

Seeking God in the middle of uncertainty is a familiar theme for those who embrace the call of God.

Revelation is written so that Christians will live with an understanding about “the things that must soon take place” (Rev. 1:1) and to inspire endurance through times of difficulty (14:12).

When Christians properly embrace a biblical view of waiting, it creates an invitation to more spiritual maturity and godliness.

“We have waited for Him; we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation.”3

Waiting isn’t just hard. It can make your heart feel ill.

A small but important step in caring for one another is the simple acknowledgment that waiting is hard—really hard.

Waiting isn’t doing nothing. It’s directing the heart toward who God is.

Lamentations 3:25 says, “The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.” While prayer isn’t specifically mentioned, it’s clear that it’s vital to this orientation.