Suffering & Hardship
I have been waiting on God for something for a long time and my patience has run out. How do I keep waiting without turning bitter?
“The LORD is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD.”
Jeremiah wrote Lamentations sitting in view of the ruins of Jerusalem, so his lines about waiting quietly are not the calm of a man with nothing at stake. He had watched everything he loved burn. When he says it is good to wait, it is a conclusion reached from the very bottom, and you can feel what it costs him to write it down.
“Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain. Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.”
James writes to scattered Jewish Christians under real hardship and reaches for the image of a farmer waiting on rain. A farmer's patience is not passive: he works the ground constantly and cannot make a single drop fall. That is the shape of waiting on God, active where you can act and powerless where you cannot, which is precisely the combination that wears people down.
A path forward
Name what you are actually waiting for in one clear sentence, and pray that sentence word for word each morning this week. Vague waiting is far more corrosive than a specific request.
Work out which part of this you can act on and which part you genuinely cannot, then spend your effort only on the first. Most of the exhaustion comes from straining at the second.
Tell someone you trust how long this has now gone on. Waiting quietly and waiting secretly are different things, and only one of them is good for you.
Closing verse
“And therefore will the LORD wait, that he may be gracious unto you, and therefore will he be exalted, that he may have mercy upon you: for the LORD is a God of judgment: blessed are all they that wait for him.”
- Isaiah 30:18
Coming Soon
Want to ask your own question?
Revealed is building a feature that lets you ask anything and receive a Bible-rooted response drawn from both Testaments. Join the waitlist to be first to know when it launches.