Waiting is one of the hardest things a person of faith ever does. It can be lonely. It can make you wonder whether you heard God at all.
If you are asking what it means when God's promises are delayed, start here: you are not the first. Almost every great promise in the Bible had a gap between the day it was spoken and the day it came true. Sometimes the gap was a few days. Sometimes it was decades. The people who waited were not second class believers. They are the ones the Bible holds up as examples.
This page will not hand you a formula for making God move faster. It will show you real people who waited, what God said to them during the wait, and how it ended. We will also be honest about the hard part, because the Bible is.
A gentle word. Standing on God's promises goes hand in hand with good care. Keep seeing your doctor, take what you have been prescribed, and talk to someone you trust. If healing is slow, that is never proof that your faith was too small. The people of the Bible waited too.
How long they waited
Here are four people from Scripture, the promise each one held, and how long the Bible says they held it.
| Who | The promise | When it was spoken | When it came | The wait |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Abraham | A great nation from his own seed | Age 75, leaving Haran (Genesis 12:4) | Age 100, Isaac born (Genesis 21:5) | 25 years |
| Joseph | His family would bow before him | Age 17, his dreams (Genesis 37:2 to 9) | Age 30, before Pharaoh (Genesis 41:46), brothers bowed some years later | 13 years and more |
| David | He would be king | Anointed as the youngest son, keeping sheep (1 Samuel 16:11 to 13) | Age 30, king in Hebron (2 Samuel 5:4) | Years, much of it on the run |
| Simeon | He would see the Lord's Christ before he died | Not stated (Luke 2:26) | Held the baby Jesus in the temple (Luke 2:28) | Not stated |
Abraham: twenty five years for one son
Abram was seventy five when he left Haran because God told him to go. The word he carried was that his family would grow into a great nation. That is hard to picture without a child, and he and Sarai had none.
The years went by. God renewed the promise under the stars in Genesis 15 and again in Genesis 17, when Abram was ninety nine. In between, Abram and Sarai tried to help the promise along through Hagar, and it brought grief to everyone. The Bible does not hide that.
Then, at the set time, Isaac came.
And Abraham was an hundred years old, when his son Isaac was born unto him.
Genesis 21:5 (KJV)
Hebrews sums up Abraham's long road in one line: after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. Patient does not mean perfect. It means he did not let go.
Joseph: from the pit to the palace
Joseph was seventeen when he dreamed that his family would bow to him. His brothers hated him for it, sold him to traders, and he ended up a slave in Egypt. Then he was falsely accused and thrown into prison. He helped another prisoner and asked to be remembered, and the man forgot him for two full years.
A psalm describes that season with a striking line: Until the time that his word came: the word of the LORD tried him. The promise itself became a test. Joseph had to keep trusting a dream while everything around him said the opposite.
And Joseph was thirty years old when he stood before Pharaoh king of Egypt. And Joseph went out from the presence of Pharaoh, and went throughout all the land of Egypt.
Genesis 41:46 (KJV)
Thirty years old. Thirteen years after the dreams. And when his brothers finally stood before him, Joseph could say that what they meant for evil, God meant for good. The delay had not been wasted. It had put him exactly where thousands of hungry people needed him to be.
Though it tarry, wait for it
The prophet Habakkuk looked at the violence in his land and asked God how long. God told him to write the answer down plainly, and then said this.
For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.
Habakkuk 2:3 (KJV)
Look at the two sides of that verse. Though it tarry, it will not tarry. From where Habakkuk stood, it would feel slow. From where God stood, it was right on time, because it was set for an appointed time. Both are true at once. Your wait may feel long, and God may still be exactly on schedule.
David: anointed, then hunted
When Samuel came to Jesse's house to anoint the next king, David was not even in the room. He was the youngest, out keeping the sheep. Samuel poured the oil on his head anyway, and the Spirit of the LORD came on him from that day forward.
Then David went back to the sheep. Later he served King Saul, and later still Saul tried to kill him. For years David hid in caves and wilderness strongholds with a promise in his heart and a spear thrown at his back.
He was thirty when he began to reign, first over Judah in Hebron. He reigned there seven and a half years before all Israel came to him. Even after the crown, the full promise took time. Several psalms in Book Three's range carry headings tied to those years, such as Psalm 57, whose heading links it to the cave where David hid from Saul. They show a man who kept talking to God the whole way through.
Simeon: waiting in the temple
Luke tells us about a man in Jerusalem named Simeon. He was just and devout, and he was waiting for the consolation of Israel. The Holy Ghost had shown him he would not die before he saw the Christ. Luke does not say how many years he waited. He tells us what happened the day the waiting ended.
Then took he him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
Luke 2:28-30 (KJV)
Simeon did not get a palace or a crown. He got to hold a baby for a few minutes. It was enough. He had seen the promise with his own eyes, and he was ready to go in peace. Sometimes the fulfillment of a promise is quieter than we pictured, and better.
What the New Testament says to people who are waiting
God is not slow, He is patient
In Peter's day, scoffers were asking where the promise of Christ's coming was. Peter answered that a day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and then he gave the reason for the wait:
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
2 Peter 3:9 (KJV)
The delay was mercy. It was room for more people to come home.
Faith and patience go together
The letter to the Hebrews was written to believers who were tired and tempted to give up. Twice it tells them that patience is part of how promises are received.
That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
Hebrews 6:12 (KJV)
For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.
Hebrews 10:36 (KJV)
The honest part
Not every promise lands inside one lifetime. Hebrews 11 tells about Abraham, Sarah and their family, and then says something surprising:
These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
Hebrews 11:13 (KJV)
Abraham received Isaac, but he never owned the land God promised his children. Stephen pointed out that Abraham did not own so much as a place to set his foot. The land came centuries later. Abraham died in faith anyway, seeing it from far off and welcoming it.
That is not a sad ending. It means some of God's promises are bigger than one life can hold. If you are waiting for something that has not come, it does not mean God forgot you, and it does not mean you failed. It may mean the promise is larger than you knew.
While you wait
- Write down what God said. Habakkuk was told to write the vision plainly. Keep the verse where you can see it.
- Keep talking to Him. David's waiting years are full of honest prayers, some of them angry or afraid. God can handle yours.
- Do the faithful thing in front of you. Joseph ran a household and then a prison well, long before he ran Egypt.
- Do not force it. Abram and Sarai tried to rush the promise through Hagar, and it brought pain. Waiting is not the same as doing nothing, but it is not the same as grabbing either.
- Stay near God's people. Simeon was in the temple when the promise walked in.
- Pray this. Lord, I do not see it yet. I believe You see it. Help me wait well, and keep my heart soft while I do.
Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD.
Psalm 27:14 (KJV)
Read them one at a time
Abraham and Joseph both wait their way through Book One, which covers Genesis, Exodus and Leviticus. As you read the promises in order, you see the years between the word and the answer, and the same promise spoken again to Isaac and Jacob while they waited. Each promise has its own page with the King James verse, who heard it, and a prayer.