How to Trust During the Waiting Season
Waiting has a way of making us restless—and honest.
We don’t mind trusting God when movement is visible, when progress feels measurable. But when life slows down and answers stall, trust is tested in quieter, more uncomfortable ways. Waiting exposes how deeply we rely on timing, either ours or God’s.
When Waiting Felt Like Standing Still
There was a season when my mornings started the same way every day. Hot drink in hand, laptop open, inbox refreshed. Some days, I clicked over to that inbox three times before noon. I was waiting on an answer I believed would change the direction of my work and free up a long-standing tension. After praying over it for months, I’d asked others to pray too. I had done everything I knew to do.
And still nothing.
At first, I told myself I was being patient. But as days turned into weeks, patience gave way to frustration. I caught myself mentally rehearsing conversations that hadn’t happened yet and planning next steps based on an answer I didn’t have. Life felt paused, as if I couldn’t fully move forward until this one thing resolved.
One morning, while reading Proverbs, verse six stopped me short: “In all your ways acknowledge Him.” Not after the waiting ended. Not once clarity arrived. In all your ways.
It hit me that I had been waiting on God, but not acknowledging Him in the waiting. I was relying on the outcome to give me peace instead of relying on God’s timing.
That realization didn’t speed things up, but it changed how I waited.
What Trust Looks Like When Timing Is Out of Our Hands
Proverbs 3:5–6 calls us to trust the Lord with all our heart and lean not on our own understanding. Waiting confronts our understanding head-on. We want to know when. God asks us to trust who.
Totally relying upon the Savior’s timing means believing that delay is not neglect. It means acknowledging that God sees the full picture when we only see what’s missing. Waiting strips away our illusion of control and forces us to decide whether we trust God’s wisdom more than our own schedules.
Scripture never portrays waiting as wasted time. Over and over, God uses waiting to prepare His people for what they are not yet ready to carry. Direction, according to Proverbs, comes *after* trust, not before it.
In my waiting season, the external situation didn’t change immediately. But something internal did. I stopped checking my inbox obsessively. I reengaged with the work in front of me instead of living in the “what if.” Waiting became less about endurance and more about dependence.
When the answer finally came, I could see God’s timing had protected me. Had things moved sooner, I wouldn’t have been ready.
How to Rely on God’s Timing While You Wait
Applying this kind of trust requires a shift in posture. Instead of asking, How long will this take? we begin asking, How can I acknowledge God here?
Totally relying upon the Savior’s timing means remaining faithful when nothing seems to be changing. Waiting almost never feels productive. But trust means continuing to pray, serve, and obey because God is trustworthy.
Waiting without wasting the season means refusing to disengage spiritually. It means trusting that God is working even when progress feels invisible.
Waiting is not the absence of God’s movement. Often, it’s the evidence of it.
