“Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!”

— Psalm 27:14

The Hardest Word God Says

Of all the things God asks us to do, I think “wait” might be the one we hate the most.

We can handle “go.” Go is exciting. Go has movement, direction, a story you can tell. We can even handle “no” — it stings, but at least it’s an answer and you can move on. But “wait”? Wait just sits there. It doesn’t close the door, but it won’t open it either. It leaves you standing in the hallway, staring at a handle that won’t turn yet, wondering if you heard God right in the first place.

And notice what David does not say in this verse. He doesn’t say “wait for the Lord, and it’ll be quick and painless.” He says wait — and then immediately, in the same breath — be strong, and let your heart take courage. Why would waiting require strength and courage? You’d think it’d be the easy part. You’re not doing anything. You’re just… waiting.

Because anybody who’s been in a real waiting season knows the truth: waiting is one of the hardest, most faith-stretching things God ever asks of you. It takes more courage to wait well than it does to charge ahead.

Waiting Is Not Wasting

Here’s the lie that makes waiting seasons so miserable. We believe that if nothing’s visibly happening, then nothing’s happening. That the waiting room is dead time. Wasted time. Time we’ve got to just white-knuckle through until the real stuff starts.

But that’s not how God works, and it never has been. Look at anybody He used greatly and you’ll find a waiting season baked right into the story. Joseph waited years in a prison for a dream that looked long dead. Moses spent forty years on the backside of a desert before the burning bush. David got anointed king as a kid and then went right back to the sheep field — waited years, dodging spears, before he ever sat on the throne. Even Jesus waited thirty years before three years of ministry.

None of that was wasted. Every bit of it was forming something. The waiting wasn’t the delay before the story — the waiting was the story. It was the workshop where God built the character strong enough to carry what He was about to hand them. He wasn’t stalling. He was preparing. There’s a massive difference, and most of us can’t tell them apart while we’re standing in it.

What God’s Building While You Wait

So what is He actually doing in the wait? He’s building the stuff you can’t build in a hurry.

Trust, for one. You don’t learn to trust God when everything’s moving on your schedule — you learn it when it’s not, when you’ve done everything you know to do and now all that’s left is to depend on Him. Waiting burns the self-sufficiency right out of you. It teaches your heart, at a level words can’t reach, that you are not in control and He is, and that He can actually be trusted with the timeline.

Patience, too — real patience, the kind you can only get by living through the thing you’d rather skip. And dependence. That’s the big one. Because in the waiting, when you can’t force it, can’t rush it, can’t manufacture the outcome, you finally stop striving and start leaning. And a leaning heart is exactly what God’s after. He’s less interested in getting you to the destination fast than He is in making sure the person who arrives is someone who learned to depend on Him to get there.

The waiting isn’t happening to you. It’s happening for you. God’s not withholding the answer to frustrate you — He’s using the delay to build the version of you that can actually handle the answer when it comes.

Strength to Wait Well

But let’s be honest — knowing all that doesn’t make the wait easy. That’s exactly why David tacks on “be strong and take courage.” He’s not telling you to wait passively, arms crossed, tapping your foot, resenting God for the holdup. He’s telling you to wait strong. To wait with your heart still soft, still hopeful, still trusting, even when every day looks the same as the last.

Because there’s a right way and a wrong way to wait. You can wait bitter, or you can wait believing. You can spend the season white-knuckled and anxious, checking the door handle every ten minutes, or you can settle into trusting the God who told you to wait in the first place. Same amount of time either way — but one of them forms you and one of them just wears you out.

So if you’re in it right now — that in-between, that unanswered prayer, that door that won’t open on your timeline — hear this. You’re not stuck. You’re not forgotten. You’re not behind. You’re being formed. The God who told you to wait hasn’t gone quiet on you; He’s at work in the very silence you’re straining to hear through. Wait for the Lord. Be strong. Take courage. And wait again — because He is never, ever late, and He is doing more in the delay than you can see.