Waiting is hard.  It taxes our patience. It can leave us frustrated, it can lead to unholy thoughts, and cause us to feel irritated, uncomfortable, annoyed, and more. You know what I’m talking about. Maybe it’s waiting in traffic because of the seemingly endless construction. Or choosing the “wrong” check out line with what seems like the slowest cashier on the busiest shopping day of the week. Perhaps it’s waiting on hold for a real person to speak to after pushing every button a gazillion times by automated prompts.  Why is waiting so hard?

I think some of us (me!) are ‘naturally’ impatient. But our society and culture have contributed to it. We live in a fast-paced world where we do expect instant answers and instant service.  The internet and google have made things even easier. Not to mention Amazon! I recently ordered a bible study book and it came within 18 hours.  Waiting can even be seen as a ‘bad’ thing. Kids today don’t know how to be bored. And how often do you find yourself, in a line up somewhere, pulling out your phone to scroll or play a game? I’m guilty of that.

However, as Mark Vroegop, President of the Gospel Coalition and author of “Waiting isn’t a Waste” says, waiting is designed by God to send us important messages. Waiting teaches us many things. Waiting leads to growth and maturity. Especially in the big things of life that are painful and challenging.

The Bible commands AND commends waiting on the Lord. And there are many examples throughout all of Scripture that show the lives of men and women of the faith in long seasons of waiting. Abraham and Sarah. Moses. Joseph. David.  Zechariah and Elizabeth. The prophetess Anna. John the Baptist.  According to the website “Discover the Word”, the word ‘wait’ shows up approx. 116 times in the Bible.

In the Bible, the word used for ‘wait’ and ‘hope’ is the same. (qava / tiqva – from the same root word).  Waiting is looking forward to something in expectation – which we would describe as hope, as well.  But in today’s world, waiting and hoping don’t go together often. Mark’s definition of waiting is: “Waiting on God is learning to live in what I know to be true about God while looking to him when I don’t know what is true about my life.”  He calls these periods of waiting “gaps”.  And these gap moments are opportunities to wait on the Lord, knowing what is true.

Part of why waiting can be so hard for us is because we all have expectations of our lives – of people, of events, of our futures, etc.  When we sit down and name them – we start to see the level of control they have in our lives.  Yes, control. For example: my expectations of marriage and having a family, of a career and other activities, included a healthy spouse,  with both of us thriving in our careers, as marriage partners, and as parents.  Having children and expecting them to all grow up in love with our Heavenly God, marrying godly men/women and giving me lots of grandbabies, of living in a home we bought – a place for our kids to call home, traveling to Europe or across Canada…… Pretty normal expectations and dreams that most of you can resonate with.

Yet, what my reality – and perhaps yours as well –is so, so different. My husband and I have been in long seasons of waiting and remain in these gaps with multiple different situations.  My husband has multiple health conditions that have robbed him of a pain-free life, a career he loved as a teacher, and the ability to be in crowds. He can’t drive (long distances and definitely not at night), can’t go to extended family functions, can’t go to church or to the movies or to any other public event. He needs heavy pain medications around the clock and still suffers. We’ve been waiting for 24 years for healing – any healing – yet God continues to ask us to wait.  I went through a prolonged depression that eventually took me away from the nursing career I had just restarted. And now we wait for 2 prodigal children to repent and return to God and to us. We suffer rejection and slander, false accusations and hatred. We wait.

Our expectations are linked to what we dream of, and how we see the direction of our lives going.  And often, these expectations – these visions we have of what we desire collide with what is real – and control is smack dab in the middle of it all.  We get frustrated, uncomfortable, sad, anxious, depressed, even angry when God doesn’t do what we expected and hoped for. God exposes our expectations – our idols – by having us learn to wait on him.

So, we have two choices. When we face a gap moment of waiting, how will we respond?

1. Anger, anxiety, apathy and the like

                OR

2. Seeing it as God’s divine plan to remind us of who he is, of how he is in control, of his sovereignty, justice, trustworthiness and love. That his plans are good.

Our natural tendency when faced with unexpected pathways and times of waiting is to question God. We can wonder how? why? what? Did I say, why?  We’re stumped. We don’t get it. We become over-fixated on what we don’t know! We say to ourselves, “I know God is sovereign – but is he good? Because it sure doesn’t feel like it.” We read Romans 8: 28, “We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”  Deep down we’re not sure we believe it in our reality.  So, what can we do?

Mark tells us that we can shift our view.  We can reorient ourselves by focusing on what we know is true about God.  He says we can transform these gap moments into opportunities to welcome God in those spaces – and wait on the Lord.

When I was in the thickest, deepest parts of my years-long battle with depression and anxiety I would journal my prayers to God within my journaling. If you were to look at them, you would read many pages of lamenting cries. Of begging God to change things.  Questioning him…but (almost) always ending with reminding myself of the truths revealed in Scripture about who God is and his promises to us.  (and occasionally, Psalm 88 would be my prayer which ends with “darkness is my closest friend.” – that Psalm is there for us!) I believe that by doing this I saw my faith develop, get stronger. I saw my trust in God grow despite agonizing pain and waiting. And I learned more about who God is.  Melissa Kruger says, “The gap moment is the moment for faith. My faith is not proven to the Lord, he proves my faith to me. He proves what is true of him in that moment.”

If you are not in a season of pain, or hurt, or grief, or worry, now is the time to prepare yourself for those seasons of waiting that are sure to come. How? Commit to memory – or, at least read every day – a list you compose of sentences starting with “God is…” and “Lord you are…”. Start in the book of Psalms. Write down the truths of God you find in Job 38 – 41.  Or go to Isaiah 40: 12 – 41: 4.  Then we can throw these statements at the current gap we find ourselves in and your attention will shift from what you don’t know to what you do know, which will lead to worship and glorifying the God of Creation.

Mark tells us to let those gap moments be an opportunity for God to do what he is doing and wants to do in our lives, and to stop being surprised at how often we are called to wait. Sure, we don’t like waiting – but it is our human experience. Everyone will experience it.

Waiting teaches us to believe that God has reasons for what he gives us – and his word tells us unequivocally that it IS for our good. Nothing makes sense if God isn’t sovereign – and if he isn’t sovereign, we can’t trust that he is good. In the waiting we can learn to be joyful, patient, peaceful, and thankful.  Waiting isn’t wrong or bad. I think that we have that tendency to view waiting that way. But if we believe God is God – the Sovereign, all-powerful, all-knowing, never-changing, infinite, eternal God of the entire cosmos – then we can believe that God builds these times of waiting into our lives for his good pleasure and will, and for our good. We need to stop wasting our waiting.

In the podcast, Melissa describes waiting by comparing it to her composting project. She talks about saving scraps of food, eggshells, etc. and putting it all in the compost bin over a period of 3 years. And then finally after all that waiting, getting good soil out of it to put in her garden. And that soil – which is basically waste product turned fertilizer – brings great results for her plants. Mark adds, “It’s useful and it stinks!” Yes, this is the ‘Waiting is hard, painful…it stinks.”

In the book of James, chapter 5: 7, 8, he uses the experience of the farmer planting and then waiting in hopefully expectation for the crops to be ripe enough to reap the harvest. Waiting is necessary. Yes, he wrote it in context of waiting for the Lord’s coming, but the analogy still applies. In the gaps, be patient. Wait on the Lord. The apostles went through an emotional, sad, anxious, nail-biting period of waiting and wondering between Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday. Waiting teaches, trains, transforms us. God could have tightened up the entire passion week, and in particular the time between the cross and the resurrection. Yet God had a purpose in their waiting.

What about when we get what we’ve been waiting for?

Think back to the sisterly competition between Rachel and Leah and giving their husband, Jacob, sons. Rachel is in a prolonged season of waiting. And she’s experiencing all the feels – disappointment every time she bleeds, bitterness, anger, resentment, jealousy. And when she does finally receive a son, she names him Joseph.  What does the name Joseph mean?  “May he add”. She isn’t satisfied. She wants another! And she does receive another, but it costs her her life.  Getting what we’re waiting for in and of itself is not going to satisfy us. Maybe you’ve heard this before. “I’ll be content when I….” And then you get x, y, or z, and you’ll say, “I’ll be satisfied when I get….” And too often we forget to thank God for what he has given us! Augustine of Hippo said, “Our hearts are restless until we find our rest in Thee.” How do we get there?  By focusing on God. He is the only One who can satisfy us fully.

In the story of Rachel and Leah, we can see what the enemy of waiting is. Enemies, actually. Disappointment in our waiting leads to discontent (and bitterness) which leads to disobedience. And disobedience takes shape with anger, anxiety and/or apathy. The disappointment and discontent can be heightened in seasons of waiting and we can easily justify parking ourselves in that spot and idling there. We stew, we ruminate, we grumble, we vent…and show that we are not trusting in our Abba Father.

This seems like a hopeless spiral.  Again, what to do? “I’m only human!” we cry! How do we actively resist these sins while waiting on the Lord?  The key word is “actively”. We can’t passively deal with sin. We have to engage our hearts, and work in these struggles. I think that, in the first place, we need to acknowledge that waiting in a gap period isn’t easy. These times of waiting do create tension and stress in our hearts, our minds, and our bodies.

Mark explains that the Hebrew word for wait is “qava”. (caw-vaw). It’s the idea of a cord that is twisted. In our waiting, we feel a twisted or tense hope – and uncomfortable hope to say the least. It helps to tell ourselves, “Just because I’m uncomfortable, or tense, or stressed, it doesn’t mean something is wrong or bad.” Furthermore, instead of trying to solve it (and most often, the issue isn’t solvable on our own because we are waiting for God to solve it) – sit in it.  Get comfortable in the waiting. Without stewing, ruminating, or grumbling. Wait on the Lord – in his word! By singing! In prayer. Lots of prayer.

It helps to ask ourselves what our tendencies are towards filling the gap moments. When we wait – in disappointment leading to discontent, do we overthink it and become anxious? Do we feel anger because we want control and can’t fix it? Or do we just give up and become apathetic? All three perhaps?  I know it was all three for me, but especially the first two.

Instead, embrace waiting on the Lord.  Psalm 27:14: “Wait for the Lord; be strong and let your heart be courageous. Wait for the Lord.” Borrow courage from the Lord! Rely on him. Ask him for his strength.  Remember, he is God and we are not. He is all-knowing and we cannot, by our mere humanity, know everything. And we certainly cannot control everything – while God is all-powerful. 

Courtney says, “The idea of waiting being part of what God uses to challenge our grasp at sovereignty, autonomy, control – in all the things we want” is eye opening.  All we need to look at is how we parent our children. We do not give them everything they want, when they want and how they want it! We know that would lead to selfish, entitled, disobedient brats. We know better than they do. We know when they need to wait – we teach them that it’s good and necessary. We guide and direct them the best we know how. And God ‘parents’ us the same way – only he is the Perfect Parent. Perfectly and righteously. How slow we are to take our own instruction and apply it to ourselves as adults! Again, it helps to remind ourselves that in our relationship with God – we are the children. Maturity is knowing that we can’t pick the best life for ourselves.

Finally, waiting can be a form of suffering. And lament plays a role in our lives. There are around 65 Psalms (nearly half!) that are Psalms of lament.  Other sources say that about one-third of the psalms are lament. That’s a lot of lament! Mark says, “Lament is the language you use when the gap has been created be grief.” God encourages us to bring our grief, our pain, our questions, and yes, even our doubts to God.  But we don’t want to stay there.   Here’s Lamentations 3: 19 – 26:

“Remember my affliction and my homelessness, the wormwood and the poison, I continually remember them and have become depressed. Yet I call this to mind, and therefore I have hope: Because of the LORD’S faithful love we do not perish, for his mercies never end. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness! I say, ‘The LORD is my portion, therefore I will put my hope in him.’ The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the person who seeks him. It is good to wait quietly for salvation from the LORD.” 

Jeremiah has been lamenting God’s judgement upon Israel. Judah has been taken into exile, the temple has been burned, Jerusalem sacked.  He is mourning. Big time.  Bitterness. But even as he is tempted to bitter thoughts, he chose instead to focus on his God.  Looking at Gods’ mercies, his love, his faithfulness. And he confesses that it is good to wait patiently.

A biblical view of waiting on the Lord is what you need to see in a gap world. We have many biblical examples, as mentioned earlier, of those who waited for promises to be fulfilled, or for God to redeem their pain.  As Hebrews 11:13 and 39 tells us: “These (OT saints) all died in faith, although they had not received the things that were promised. But they saw them from the distance, greeted them, and confessed that they were foreigners and temporary residents on earth…..All these were approved through their faith, but they did not receive what was promised…”  What we’re waiting for may never come to fruition.  But we can look at the examples God has given, and not only that, but we can also look back on our own lives to see God’s hand of faithfulness – we can trust him because he’s always proved himself faithful. Eventually there will come a time when God’s plan is clear and evident. When we will see and say, “Oh that’s why he made me wait there…and here….and that time, too.”

So, in our waiting, we can live by trusting him, waiting on him, rehearsing what we know to be true about God when we don’t know what’s true about our own lives!

(this blog is based on the podcast “Deep Dish”, with Melissa Kruger and Courtney Doctor. In the episode “Waitng for God in the Gaps”, from August 6, 2025, they talk with Mark Vroegop about waiting – based on his book “Waiting Isn’t a Waste”. )