Sometimes Wait Means Wait

I get tired of how often people complicate what God makes simple. Take the idea of waiting. Scripture is full of it: “Wait on the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait on the Lord!” (Psalm 27:14). Yet when you hear Christians talk about waiting, so many rush to soften it. They’ll say, “Well, waiting doesn’t really mean sitting still… it means serving, like a waiter at a restaurant.”

No. Sometimes waiting really does mean exactly what it says. Sit. Stay. Don’t move until God moves.

That doesn’t sound productive. It rubs against everything in us that wants to prove, perform, and push things forward. We want waiting to look active because stillness feels like weakness. Yet isn’t that exactly the point? Waiting exposes our inability to fix it, and our discomfort with being powerless. It makes us face the fact that God is God and we are not.

Of course there are times to act in faith, to step out, to obey. Yet there are also times when God’s clearest instruction is don’t. Don’t force the door open. Don’t send the text. Don’t try to resolve what only heaven can resolve. Just wait.

Sometimes it takes more faith to stay in the boat than it does to step out of it.