Waiting on God: What to Do When Your Prayers Go Unanswered
By Michaelle Moran
“I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in His Word I hope.” Psalm 130:5 (ESV)
I consider myself a fairly patient person… until I’ve waited long enough.
I don’t mind waiting in line. I don’t mind waiting at the doctor’s office. I don’t even mind waiting at the post office or in traffic. I most definitely don’t mind waiting for my husband to admit I was right.
BUT, when my internal pop-up turkey timer pops, my patience is done—and dangerously close to overdone. And I can attest that neither an overdone turkey nor overdone patience is pretty.
Perhaps I’m only patient to a point because the things I’m waiting for don’t hold any lasting importance in my life. Except, of course, waiting for my husband to admit I was right. That’s always worth the wait—and deeply satisfying.
I mean, traffic will eventually clear, only to snag again another day. I may be called back quickly at my neurologist’s office, only to find myself waiting at the lab for that oh-so-fun blood draw.
However, there is one thing I’m learning that is always worth the wait—and matters greatly: waiting on God. Especially when the wait involves a prayer I desperately want Him to answer.
Have you ever experienced waiting on God?
Yes, that’s a rhetorical question!
The truth is, if we’ve spent any amount of time praying, we’ve probably also spent some time waiting. We pray. We wait. We pray some more. And sometimes, the answer still doesn’t come.
That’s when waiting can become especially hard—and our internal pop-up timers are ready to pop.
But here’s some good news for us we’ve-waited-long-enough ones: God doesn’t call us to wait passively or without hope.
In Psalm 130:5, the psalmist declares, “I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in His Word I hope.”
In just fourteen words, the psalmist speaks volumes about how we can wait on God.
Let’s look at them line by line.
“I wait for the LORD”: The psalmist isn’t simply waiting for an answer from God; he is waiting on God. The word LORD, written in all capital letters, represents Yahweh, God’s personal name revealed to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3:14–15). God Himself—not merely the answer the psalmist desires—is the focus of his waiting.
Hold on. I need to make a note to myself about that one.
Okay, I’m back.
“My soul waits”: This describes the totality of the psalmist’s waiting. He isn’t simply passing the time; with his whole being, he is actively trusting God as he waits.
“And in His Word I hope”: Because Scripture is God’s Word and reveals who He is, the psalmist is proclaiming that his hope—his confident expectation—is rooted in God’s promises and character.
Friend, I am praying some pretty big prayers for a couple of situations in my life right now. As a matter of fact, there is one prayer I’ve been praying for many years without any evidence of an answer.
One recent prayer has been born out of devastating heartbreak. And I have to be honest, I have been putting my hope in the answers, not in the One—the only One—who can answer my prayers, no matter the answer.
Although I’m not seeing any evidence of an answer to either of these prayers, today’s Scripture has reminded me that my hope isn’t found in answered prayer—it’s found in the One who answers prayer.
This is not to say that the answers we seek don’t matter. They do—greatly. But they also matter to God, and we matter to God. He knows what we cannot see, and perhaps that’s part of why He sometimes allows us to wait. And yes, I too wish God would give us a BTS (behind-the-scenes) look at what He’s doing while we wait. But then how would our faith grow?
So, what do we do when we’ve prayed, waited, prayed some more, and still don’t see evidence of an answer?
We do what the psalmist did. We turn our attention from the answer we’re waiting for to the God we’re waiting on. We trust Him with our whole being. We open His Word and remind ourselves of who He is and what He has promised.
And I suggest starting in Genesis. As Julie Andrews sang in The Sound of Music, “Let’s start at the very beginning”—and Genesis is a very good place to start.
Read how God promised Noah deliverance from the flood—and kept His promise, but still Noah had to wait.
Read how He promised Abraham and Sarah a son—and Isaac was born at the very time God said he would be, but still they had to wait.
Follow Israel from slavery in Egypt to the land God had promised them, but still Israel had to wait.
Then go to Joshua 21:45 and be encouraged: “Not one word of all the good promises that the LORD had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass.”
That’s all the evidence we need.