Oikeo Call #44 — The Waiting Room

Nobody likes waiting.

We do not like waiting for the job. We do not like waiting for the diagnosis to change, the relationship to heal, the financial situation to turn around, the opportunity to arrive, or the prayer we have prayed a hundred times to finally receive an answer. We especially do not like waiting when it appears that everybody around us is moving while we remain in the same place.

Yet Scripture repeatedly shows us that some of God’s most important work happens while His people are waiting.

During the 44th Oikeo Prayer Call, Reverend Denise Brown offered a perspective that challenges the way many of us understand those uncomfortable seasons: “Waiting does not change who you are, but it reveals who you are.”

Waiting has a way of exposing us. When life is moving according to plan, it is easy to believe we are patient, trusting, humble, and completely dependent upon God. Then something stops. The answer does not come. The door does not open. The timeline stretches from days into months, or months into years, and suddenly we begin discovering things about ourselves that busyness allowed us to avoid.

That does not mean God has abandoned us in the waiting room. It may mean He has begun His work there.

The Wilderness Reveals the Heart

When God delivered Israel from Egypt, He could have taken them directly from bondage into the Promised Land. Instead, there was a wilderness between deliverance and destination.

Deuteronomy explains part of the reason.

Deuteronomy 8:2 (NIV) says, “Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.”

The wilderness revealed what Egypt had left inside them. Israel had physically escaped slavery, but fear, mistrust, impatience, and old ways of thinking still had to be confronted. When food became scarce, those issues surfaced. When the journey became difficult, they surfaced. When Moses stayed on the mountain longer than expected, they surfaced.

Waiting brought hidden things into the light.

God was not revealing those things because He wanted to condemn His people. He was preparing them for where they were going. Deliverance had gotten them out of Egypt, but preparation was necessary to get Egypt out of them.

Sometimes God does the same with us.

A delay can reveal how much of our peace depends upon getting our way. An unanswered prayer can expose our need for control. Someone else’s success can uncover comparison or competition we did not realize had taken root. Uncertainty can reveal whether our trust is actually in God or in our ability to predict what happens next.

What surfaces during the wait is not necessarily evidence that we are failing. Sometimes it is simply God showing us where healing still needs to happen.

Waiting Clears the Noise

Our lives are extraordinarily noisy. We work, care for families, manage responsibilities, answer messages, scroll through other people’s lives, solve problems, make plans, and move quickly from one obligation to another. Busyness can make us feel productive while also allowing us to avoid what is happening inside us.

Waiting disrupts that rhythm.

When God allows life to slow down, the silence can initially feel uncomfortable because we can finally hear what all that activity was drowning out. We hear our fears. We notice our impatience. We recognize the disappointment we have been pretending does not hurt. We discover that the thing we called ambition may have been comparison, or that what we called preparation may actually have been anxiety.

But we may also discover gratitude that we had been too busy to notice. We may find a deeper hunger for God. We may begin praying differently because we are no longer simply asking Him to change our circumstances; we are allowing Him to change us within them.

Psalm 27:14 (NIV) says, “Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.”

Biblical waiting is not doing nothing. It is learning how to remain faithful when there is nothing we can do to accelerate God’s timing.

God Is More Concerned With Your Heart Than Your Hurry

One of the great temptations of waiting is believing that faster automatically means better. We want the promotion, platform, relationship, breakthrough, or next season now because we can see what we want, but we cannot always see what will be required to sustain it.

God can.

Joseph received a dream long before he was prepared for the position that dream represented. Between the dream and the palace came betrayal, slavery, false accusation, prison, responsibility, disappointment, and more waiting. None of those experiences looked like promotion at the time, but God was developing something in Joseph that the dream alone could never produce.

By the time Joseph stood before Pharaoh, he was not simply a man with a gift. He had become a man capable of carrying responsibility.

That distinction matters.

A blessing received before we have developed the character to sustain it can become a burden. Promotion without humility can become pride. Influence without wisdom can become destruction. Opportunity without discipline can collapse under its own weight.

Sometimes God’s delay is not denial. Sometimes it is development.

Waiting Can Be Protection

We often pray for God to open doors, but we should probably thank Him more often for the ones He keeps closed.

There are opportunities we would have accepted because they looked good but were not good for us. There are relationships we would have forced because loneliness made us impatient. There are decisions we might have made because fear convinced us that doing something was better than waiting.

Scripture reminds us that God’s perspective extends beyond the moment we can see.

Isaiah 40:31 (NIV) says, “But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”

Waiting on God is therefore not punishment. Sometimes it is protection. Sometimes He is preparing circumstances we cannot see. Sometimes He is preparing other people. And sometimes the circumstances are ready, but God is still preparing us.

The difficulty is that preparation rarely announces itself while it is happening. It often just feels like waiting.

What Is the Wait Revealing?

The more useful question may not be, “God, when will this be over?” It may be, “God, what are You showing me while I am here?”

Waiting can reveal impatience, but it can also produce patience. It can expose pride while teaching humility. It can uncover fear while creating deeper dependence upon God. It can show us where obedience has been conditional—easy when God moves quickly, much harder when following Him requires trusting a timetable we cannot control.

James 1:3–4 (NIV) tells us, “Because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

That last sentence is important: Let perseverance finish its work.

We spend so much time asking God to get us out that we can miss what He is trying to build while we are in.

There are things that only time with God can develop. There is patience that cannot be learned instantly, humility that cannot be downloaded, and trust that cannot mature without opportunities to practice it. God is not wasting the season simply because we cannot yet see its purpose.

The Charge

If you are in a season of waiting, resist the temptation to measure God’s faithfulness by the speed of His answer.

Instead, pay attention to what the waiting is revealing.

If impatience surfaces, bring it to God. If comparison surfaces, bring it to God. If fear, pride, anger, disappointment, or the need for control begins rising, bring those things to Him too. God does not expose the condition of our hearts so He can shame us. He reveals what is there because He loves us enough to heal what cannot travel with us into the next season.

And while you wait, keep living. Keep praying. Keep serving. Keep preparing. Keep celebrating what God is doing for other people without assuming their blessing means He has forgotten yours.

The waiting room is not evidence that God has lost your name.

He may be doing precise work that cannot be rushed.

Call to Action

This week, instead of asking God only to shorten your wait, ask Him to show you its purpose. Spend some quiet time with Deuteronomy 8:2 and ask one simple question: “Lord, what is this season revealing in me?”

Listen carefully to the answer.

Because waiting does not change who you are.

It reveals who you are.

And what God reveals, He can heal, strengthen, mature, and prepare for whatever comes next.