The Weight of The Wait
There is a version of Christianity I unknowingly created in my head for years.
It went something like this:
If I obey God, things should get better.
If I forgive, I should immediately feel free.
If I pray, I should quickly receive an answer.
If I trust Him, I should see movement.
If I plant the seed, I should reap the harvest.
The problem is that God never promised any of those timelines.
And that realization has frustrated me more times than I care to admit.
I am a planner by nature. I like structure. I like timelines. I like knowing where I am going and how long it will take to get there. Give me a checklist and I am happy. Give me a waiting season with no expiration date and suddenly I have questions.
A lot of questions.
Questions I have not always been shy about bringing to God.
There have been seasons where I have blatantly called God out.
Not out of rebellion.
Out of frustration.
“Lord, I’ve done what You asked.”
“Lord, I’ve been obedient.”
“Lord, I’ve forgiven.”
“Lord, I’ve prayed.”
“Lord, what are You waiting for?”
The older I get, the more I realize my frustration is often rooted in one thing: unaligned expectations.
The gap between the way I think God works and the way He actually works.
Hebrews 10:35-36 became incredibly personal to me recently.
“So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what He has promised.”
At first glance, those verses seem straightforward.
Until you realize there is a gap built right into them.
You have confidence.
You do the will of God.
You persevere.
Then you receive what was promised.
There is a gap between obedience and outcome.
A gap between planting and harvesting.
A gap between faithfulness and fulfillment.
And most of our spiritual growth happens there.
The word “confidence” in verse 35 is the Greek word parrēsia.
It means boldness, fearless trust, freedom of speech, and confident access.
Not confidence in ourselves.
Not confidence in our circumstances.
Confidence in God’s character.
Confidence that He is still good when life is confusing.
Confidence that He is still faithful when the timeline makes no sense.
Confidence that He is still working when we cannot see evidence of it.
Then verse 36 introduces another Greek word that may be even more important.
The word is hypomonē.
It means to remain under.
To stay beneath a weight.
To endure.
To bear up under pressure.
To stay when every part of you wants to leave.
Most of us define patience as waiting.
Scripture defines it differently.
Patience is not passive waiting.
Patience is remaining faithful while you wait.
Patience is staying under what God has placed on you without abandoning Him in the process.
That definition challenged me deeply.
Because I have discovered that my greatest spiritual battles are often not about what I am carrying.
They are about how long I have to carry it.
One of the clearest examples in my own life has been forgiveness.
For years, I carried wounds from the abuse I experienced growing up.
Eventually, God brought me to a place where I forgave my aunt and uncle.
Not because they apologized.
Not because everything was reconciled.
Not because justice suddenly appeared.
I forgave because Christ forgave me.
I genuinely made the decision to release them.
Yet something unexpected happened.
I still felt angry.
I still felt resentment.
Certain memories could still trigger me.
Certain conversations could still stir emotions I thought should have disappeared.
And honestly?
That made me frustrated with God.
I thought forgiveness was the finish line.
I thought obedience should immediately produce freedom.
I thought if I did what God asked, then the emotions would instantly fall into line.
Instead, there was a gap.
The gap between forgiveness and healing.
The gap between obedience and outcome.
The gap between making the right decision and experiencing the full fruit of that decision.
God showed me something humbling.
Just because I forgave them did not mean I was instantly healed from everything they did.
The anger did not mean I failed.
The resentment did not mean forgiveness was fake.
It meant there were still places inside me that needed the healing touch of Jesus.
And healing has a way of taking longer than we would prefer.
That is where hypomonē became real.
God was asking me to stay under the process.
To keep trusting.
To keep healing.
To keep surrendering.
To keep bringing my pain to Him.
Not for a day.
Not for a week.
For however long it took.
Because God’s goal was not simply that I forgive.
His goal was that I become free.
The truth is that frustration often becomes fertilizer for temptation.
When we get tired of waiting, we start looking for shortcuts.
We see this all throughout Scripture.
Esau became impatient and traded his birthright for a bowl of soup.
Abraham and Sarah became impatient and created a situation with Hagar that produced tension for generations.
The Israelites became impatient and wanted to return to Egypt.
Again and again, impatience produces unnecessary loss.
It is expensive.
The dangerous thing about impatience is that it convinces us that God’s process is the problem.
When in reality, God’s process is often the protection.
We celebrate promises while undermining the process required to sustain them.
We all do it.
We want the blessing.
We resist the development.
We want the promise.
We dislike the preparation.
We want the harvest.
We dislike the waiting season.
One of the phrases God has repeatedly used to challenge me is this:
Anything that is more of one thing is less of another.
More control is less trust.
More resentment is less peace.
More self-reliance is less dependence.
More impatience is less contentment.
Everything comes with an exchange.
Marriage taught me this in ways I never expected.
For years I prayed for my husband.
I wanted companionship.
I wanted partnership.
I wanted my Boaz.
Most of us want Boaz.
What we don’t always think about is everything that comes with Boaz.
Marriage comes with vulnerability.
Marriage comes with sacrifice.
Marriage comes with difficult conversations.
Marriage comes with opportunities to confront parts of yourself you didn’t know existed.
Love is the foundation.
But a foundation alone does not make a house.
A house also needs walls.
Trust.
Communication.
Humility.
Patience.
Grace.
The promise is wonderful.
The process can be painful.
Yet both are necessary.
I think this is true in every area of life.
We celebrate what God gives.
We underestimate what it takes to steward it.
Which brings me back to Hebrews.
“Do not throw away your confidence.”
Do not throw away your parrēsia.
Do not abandon your trust in God’s character because you are frustrated with His timing.
And then:
“You need perseverance.”
You need hypomonē.
The ability to remain under.
The ability to carry the weight.
The ability to trust God in the gap.
Because the gap is not where God abandons us.
The gap is where God forms us.
Galatians 6:9 says:
“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”
Notice what Scripture promises.
A harvest.
Notice what it does not promise.
A schedule.
That part belongs to God.
How many times have I been frustrated because I felt behind schedule when I did not even know the schedule?
How many times have I measured God’s faithfulness against timelines He never gave me?
How many times have I mistaken development for denial?
The Holy Spirit has been gently teaching me that the delay is often not denial.
It is development.
It is preparation.
It is formation.
It is God building in me the capacity to carry what I have been asking Him for.
Because if there is one thing I know now, it is this:
God is far less concerned with my comfort than He is with my transformation.
And perhaps the greatest reward waiting on the other side of obedience is not the promise itself.
Perhaps it is becoming the person God was shaping in the waiting all along.
So today, I am learning to stop fighting the gap.
I am learning to stop demanding timelines.
I am learning to stop throwing away my confidence every time life takes longer than expected.
I am learning to remain under.
To trust.
To wait.
To heal.
To endure.
Because sometimes the miracle is not what God is doing for us.
Sometimes the miracle is what He is doing in us while we wait.