We live in a culture obsessed with the arrival. We celebrate the new job and promotion, a relationship that leads to a wedding, the clean bill of health, and the answered prayer. Trust me, I am still working on this myself after years of practicing the opposite. In middle school, I was always looking forward to high school. In high school, I was looking toward university. In university, I was looking out at the world—and now, I find myself in a standstill, navigating all the mini-moments of expectation.
But what about the messy, quiet space right before? What about the waiting room?
Too often, we treat waiting like a spiritual penalty box. We assume that because we haven’t arrived at our destination, we are empty-handed. But there is a profound, hidden wealth to be found when we learn the art of waiting well.
The prophet Isaiah captures the heartbeat of this posture beautifully in Isaiah 8:17: “I will wait for the Lord… and I will trust in him.”
Waiting well means refusing to let our current circumstances consume us. Instead, it’s an invitation to take Isaiah’s stance—to actively place our trust in God and let Him encompass every single ounce of our being.
1. Waiting Well in the Dark: It Is Well
To truly understand what it looks like to wait well in the dark, we have to look back to 1873 at a man named Horatio Spafford.
Spafford was a successful Chicago lawyer who had just lost most of his wealth in the Great Chicago Fire. Seeking a reprieve for his family, he planned a European trip. At the last minute, an urgent business matter delayed him, so he sent his wife, Anna, and their four daughters ahead.
Tragedy struck mid-Atlantic. Their ship collided with an iron sailing vessel and sank in just 12 minutes. Anna was pulled from the water alive, but all four of their daughters perished. When she reached land, she sent Horatio a devastating two-word telegram: “Saved alone.”
Horatio immediately boarded a ship to join his grieving wife. During the voyage, the captain called him to the bridge and pointed out the exact coordinates where his daughters had drowned. Faced with an ocean of unfathomable grief, Horatio didn’t let the despair consume him. Instead, he went back to his cabin and penned words that would anchor believers for generations:
When peace like a river attendeth my way, When sorrows like sea billows roll; Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, It is well, it is well with my soul.
Spafford understood a radical truth about waiting well: God gives us blessings to enhance our lives, but those blessings are not our life. God alone holds that place. When everything else was stripped away, Horatio’s soul was still anchored because his life was encompassed by the Creator, not his circumstances.
2. Waiting Well in the Valley: David’s 15-Year Preparation
This kind of confident trust isn’t built overnight; it’s forged in the valleys.
Think about the famous words of King David in Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” When David wrote about having everything he needed in God, he wasn’t sitting safely on a golden throne. He was in preparation mode. Scholars estimate David waited roughly 15 years from the time he was anointed by Samuel to the time he actually became king.
During those 15 years, David was running for his life, hiding in caves, and waiting on a promise. Yet, in the middle of the wait, he looked at God and said, I don’t need anything more but you.
Waiting well requires us to consciously hand over the steering wheel. It is an intentional, daily surrender. If you find yourself struggling to find that alignment today, let this prayer be your anchor:
“Lord, take captive my thoughts. Control what my eyes see so that I am always in alignment with what You want me to do. Let my hands and feet be an extension of You, so I can do Your will for the exact purpose You have set before me.”
3. Finding Purpose in Your Wait
If you are in a season of waiting right now, don’t waste it by just wishing it away. There is a deep, intentional purpose designed for you right here.
When we stop focusing on what we lack and start focusing on Who we have, the waiting room stops feeling like a delay and starts acting as a sanctuary. This season isn’t empty space—it is development space. Like Isaiah, we can make the firm declaration: I will wait on the Lord, and I will trust Him.
You don’t need the final answer, the perfect circumstances, or the end of the storm to have peace. You just need Him. Let’s choose to wait well today, knowing that our purpose is being forged in the quiet.