We do not wait well. At least, I know I don’t. Far too often, my prayer, when it comes to patience, sounds like, “Lord, please make me patient … now!”
Once when I was 13 years old, my curiosity got the better of me in spectacular style. Alone in my home while the rest of my family was out running errands, I could no longer stand not knowing what was on the other side of the red and gold wrapping paper that covered the array of shapes under our Christmas tree. It almost seemed as if those brightly colored patterns were taunting me, defying me, even. And on this day, curiosity conquered self-control. Just a week away from Christmas, I unwrapped the presents under the tree with my name on them. Followed by the presents with everyone else’s name on them.
Every. Single. One.
Obviously, I was not going to be caught like a family pet who has made a mess of things and then has to wait out the remainder of the day until they inevitably face the music when their owner arrives home. Having received from my Creator the gift of opposable thumbs, I carefully re-wrapped each present to avoid rousing the suspicion, and subsequent punishment, from my parents.
And … it worked. I spent the entirety of that Christmas morning gasping with open mouth and feigned surprise as each gift was opened by myself and others. All just to be free from that haunting specter of uncertainty we call waiting.
~ God of the In-Between Times
What makes waiting so insufferable is the in-between-ness of it all. The present stillness mingled with future possibility. Like a surfer looking out to the horizon, hoping to catch a glimpse of a swell that will rise to form the next wave to ride, so, too, are we who live on this side of prayers yet unanswered and dreams yet unrealized. And so, we wait. And we wait. And we wait.
How do we not waste our waiting, since waiting makes up so much of living? How do we wait well? We remember that God stands sovereign not only over our appointed times, but also over our in-between times.
Just take an honest look at the Scriptures. Those who knew God deeply and loved God greatly, through whom God was pleased to do His mightiest works, didn’t experience the spectacular on a daily basis. Much of their lives looked just like yours and mine, as they, too, learned what it meant to be faithfully present on those long plateaus of human normalcy.
Think of Joseph, whom God gave a specific promise in a dream, and who then waited 14 years for the fulfillment of that promise — navigating a series of betrayals and disappointments (along with extended time in an Egyptian prison) to prepare him for that day.
Or Moses, who led millions of God’s people out of slavery into freedom. But before he did, God hid him away for 40 years in the desert, shaping him and preparing him for the appointed time.
Or David, the one who God told the prophet Samuel to anoint as king, who then spent the next 15 years of his life tending faithfully to his flocks in the silence of obscurity; faithfully serving the present king, Saul; or hiding in caves when Saul kept changing his mind about whether he wanted David around or wanted David dead. And David patiently waited to ascend to the throne he was anointed for — he refused to hurry God’s timing by taking the life of the king who was seeking to take his.
And then there is Paul: he who humbly lamented himself as “the least of the apostles” (1 Cor. 15:8–9), whose ministry unquestionably had the greatest impact on the church out of all the apostles. Paul’s conversion from persecutor to believer was dramatic and instant, and he immediately went public as a bold witness for Jesus, to the point that his former comrades were plotting his assassination (see Acts 9). But we often forget that he was then sent away into the deserts of Caesarea (Acts 9:30), where he spent the next three years re-learning what he knew about God in light of his encounter with the risen Christ. And it wouldn’t be for another nine to 10 years later — time spent quietly but faithfully serving Jesus in unrecorded ways back in his hometown of Tarsus — that he would be invited by Barnabas to minister with him in Antioch (Acts 11:25–26).
Would you consider that for a moment? The most influential voice in Christianity outside of Jesus — the multilingual genius who authored roughly two-thirds of the New Testament — was hidden away in Arabian anonymity, being prepared for the appointed time of great fruitfulness in his public ministry. There may not have been a lot happening around Paul during these hidden years of waiting. But without a doubt, there was much happening in Paul, preparing him for the time ahead of him.
~ Following an Unhurried Savior
Now press this idea even further: Have you ever thought about the fact that Jesus — with a world to save, people to heal, good news to preach, and atonement to make — spent 30 years in His stepfather’s trade, building Galilean furniture, covered in sawdust, learning the names of the trees? And then when it was finally time to begin His public ministry after his baptism by John, that it began with … more waiting?
In a wilderness.
Being tempted by Satan.
In fact, each time Satan attempted to derail the ministry of Jesus right there in the desert, he did so with something that had to do with hurrying ahead of God’s plan.
First was the hurry of immediate gratification: “Turn these stones into bread” (Matt. 4:3). Second came the temptation to prove Himself with a spectacular display: “If you’re really the Son of God, prove it. Throw yourself off the temple and have the angels catch you” (5–6). Finally, Satan baited his hook with global glory and power (8–9).
Each of these temptations — immediacy, legitimacy, and glory — had to do with timing. Eventually, Jesus’s fasting would come to an end, His identity as the Messiah would be vindicated, and the glory of the kingdoms of the earth would belong to Him. But not yet. And in the not-yet, Jesus patiently trusted the Father’s timing.
Not once in Jesus’s life do we find Him in a hurry. He is simultaneously the faithfulness of God we need to remember, and the patience of God we need to imitate.
And so it is with us. God uses the times between what we think should be “our time” to prepare us for His appointed times. He is at work in the waiting. He has purposed those times where it seems like months are contained within a day, and where lifetimes are lived within a month, to deepen in us two vital expressions of our creatureliness: our praying and our trusting.
~ Learning to Pray, Learning to Trust
After talking about hope and waiting in Romans 8:25, Paul goes on to say, “Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought …” (v. 26). Notice what Paul does not say. He doesn’t say that the Spirit helps us in our “weaknesses” (plural), but in our “weakness” (singular). In other words, weakness is not a negative condition that you and I sometimes lapse into when we’re not operating in the sweet spot of our strengths. Weakness is what we are. Paul is reminding us of our humanity: that we live within time as those who must wait and hope and depend and pray.
All human prayer is an acknowledgement of weakness. It is the vocalized Godward expression of those who hope. Prayer is the finite calling on the infinite, the limited leaning on the limitless, the insufficient drawing upon the all-sufficient Savior who said, “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Cor. 12:9). And in this way, prayer becomes to us a weapon through which we slay the soul-corrupting, Satan-producing pride of self-reliance.
I once heard my friend Ray Ortlund say that “prayer is not an option for the spiritually elite; prayer is oxygen for exhausted sinners and failures.” In other words, prayer is to the waiting person what air is to the drowning person. How can we think that our waiting is wasted, if in our waiting we are learning to pray?
The lulls of life teach us “to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1). And as we learn to pray, we also learn to trust. For we soon realize that prayer is not an enchanted lamp through which we magically get what we want whenever we want it — but is instead the divinely appointed means through which God will accomplish what He wants, both in our lives and in this world. And when there is a delay between our requests and God’s answers, when seasons of suffering run longer than what we think we can bear — in those times, God enlarges our capacity to trust.
So do not despise the slow times soaked with routine and ordinariness. The Lord Himself is in those times. And while it may not seem like a lot of great things are happening around you, there is a great thing happening in you. God is not behind schedule in your life, because your life is happening on His schedule. In the waiting, you are learning to be human. You are learning to embrace your humanity rather than always trying to rid yourself of it. You are learning to wait, but to wait with hope. To suffer, but to suffer well. To pray, but to pray with a persevering anticipation. But above all, you are learning to trust.
— This article was adapted from Faithfully Present: Embracing the Limits of Where and When God Has You by Adam Ramsey (The Good Book Company, 2023), available wherever books are sold. Adam Ramsey leads Liberti Church on the Gold Coast of Australia and serves as the network director for Acts 29 Australia/New Zealand. Adam and his wife, Kristina, have five kids.