You’ve Prayed About It… But Are You Doing This While You Wait?

TODAY'S TEACHING

No unbelief or distrust made him waver (doubtingly question) concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong and was empowered by faith as he gave praise and glory to God.
 —Roman s 4:20

There’s a point in waiting where the prayer starts to feel old.

You still mean it. You still care. But you’ve prayed about the same thing so many times that sometimes you sit down to pray and think, God, You already know what I’m going to say.

Abraham waited a long time for something God had promised him.

God told him he and Sarah would have a son, which would have been wonderful news twenty or thirty years earlier. By the time we get to Genesis 17, Abraham is nearly one hundred years old and Sarah is about ninety.

You can understand why Sarah laughed. I probably would have too.

Genesis says Abraham fell on his face when God told him Sarah would have a child. I’ve read that story plenty of times, but lately I’ve been thinking more about how odd those years must have felt from Abraham’s side of things.

We read several chapters in a few minutes. He lived them one morning at a time.

There were meals to eat, animals to tend, people working around him, problems that had nothing whatsoever to do with Isaac. Then every so often the promise was still there, hanging around in the background.

No baby. Another year. Still no baby.

We know where the story ends, which almost makes it unfair when we read it. Abraham didn’t have Genesis printed out beside his bed with the ending already included.

Romans 4 says that “against hope” he believed in hope. That’s such a strange phrase when you sit with it for a while because there really wasn’t much natural hope left.

His body was old. Sarah had passed the years of bearing children. Nobody needed to explain the biology to them.

I think sometimes we turn faith into pretending we don’t see what we see. Abraham’s story doesn’t really allow for that because Romans 4:19 specifically mentions his age and “the deadness of Sarah’s womb.”

He knew. 

Maybe you know too.

You know the bank balance.

You know what the doctor said.

You know how long it has been since that person called.

You know how many applications you’ve sent, how many conversations you’ve had, how many mornings you’ve looked at the same situation and thought, still?

Knowing the facts doesn’t disqualify faith. What Abraham did while he waited is what interests me.

Romans 4:20 says he was “strong in faith, giving glory to God.”

That verse has made me uncomfortable a few times. I’m good at giving glory to God once I can tell the story. You know what I mean.

Once the answer has come, we can look backward and say, “God was faithful through all of it.” We can tell somebody about the door that opened, the money that arrived, the relationship that was restored, the diagnosis that turned out better than expected.

Before that, the story is harder to tell. It’s mostly waiting.

A few years ago, a man my wife and I know was going through a rough stretch with his adult son. They weren’t completely estranged, but things had become awkward enough that every conversation felt like it had to be handled carefully.

He hated that. They used to talk about almost anything. Now he would see his son’s name on his phone and spend the first few seconds deciding what mood the call might be in before answering.

He prayed about the relationship constantly. Probably too constantly in one sense, because he told me there came a point where he could hardly pray about anything else without circling back to it.

One evening he had typed out a message to his son and was sitting there reading it again. It wasn’t angry exactly, just too long, and the longer he looked at it the more he knew he was trying to solve six months of strain in one text.

He deleted most of it. Then he deleted the rest.

That night he prayed, and he didn’t have much new to say. He told God he was tired of worrying about it. Then, somewhere in there, he started thanking God for his son.

He remembered taking him fishing when he was little and how the boy hated touching worms but had no problem grabbing the fish once somebody else baited the hook. He remembered a hospital waiting room years later, and a stupid joke his son had made when everybody was nervous.

Those things had nothing to do with fixing the current problem. That was probably part of why they helped.

The situation with his son didn’t suddenly change because of that prayer. In fact, I remember asking him about it weeks later and he shrugged and said, “About the same.”

That stayed with me.

We like testimonies where the prayer happens on Monday and the breakthrough arrives by Friday.

The thing is, Friday comes, and then it goes. Then Saturday. Then another month of waiting gets added to the record.

Abraham gave glory to God somewhere in those long stretches. I don’t know what every one of those days looked like, and Scripture doesn’t tell us. I doubt they all looked spiritually impressive.

He was human. Sarah was human too, and if you keep reading Genesis you see plenty of complicated choices, frustration, attempts to help the promise along, consequences from those decisions. Their waiting was not a clean little faith exercise.

That makes me trust the story more. They believed God and still made a mess in places. That sounds more like people I know. More like me too.

There have been prayers where I’ve started strong and then, somewhere around month three or month nine or whatever it was, I began doing little mental inspections every day.

Has anything changed?

What about now?

Maybe this means something.

Maybe that conversation was a sign.

You can wear yourself out doing that. And you can still call it faith because technically you’re thinking about the thing God spoke to you about. Sometimes I think we simply need to get up from the inspection table.

Abraham had sheep, servants, family issues, meals, travel, arguments, hot days, ordinary days. His whole life didn’t stop because Isaac hadn’t arrived yet. Neither should ours.

Praise really helps with that, although I hesitate to make praise sound like a technique because we Christians can turn almost anything into one.

“Praise while you wait” can become another assignment. Five minutes in the morning. Three worship songs. Say the right words. Expect the answer.

I don’t think that’s what Romans 4 is showing us. Abraham knew something about the One who had spoken to him. Verse 21 says he was persuaded that God was able to perform what He had promised.

There’s history in that kind of confidence. Abraham had already walked with God. He had already seen God provide, protect, correct him, lead him somewhere unfamiliar.

The promise about Isaac wasn’t floating in empty space. It came from Someone Abraham had been learning to know. That changes praise.

You’re not trying to talk yourself into feeling optimistic. You’re remembering God.

Sometimes that may happen with music.

Sometimes it may happen while you’re washing dishes and you suddenly remember something God brought you through ten years ago.

Sometimes you may be sitting in your vehicle before going inside somewhere difficult and say, “God, You’ve helped me before. I need You again. I lift You up because You're faithful.”

That’s praise too, as far as I’m concerned. Not polished. Maybe nobody else hears it. Still real.

There’s another part of this that I don’t want to skip because it gets people into trouble. Abraham had an actual promise from God. We can’t automatically take something we desperately want and call it the same thing.

I’ve heard people say, “God promised me this,” and maybe He did. I’m careful around that language because sometimes what started as a hope became a certainty mainly because it had been repeated for a long time. I’ve done my own version of that.

God’s Word contains promises we can stand on without hesitation.

His presence.

His mercy.

Wisdom when we ask.

Grace.

Forgiveness.

His faithfulness.

The life we have in Christ.

Then there are very specific outcomes we want, and sometimes we don’t know exactly what God will do with those (I talk about this in a past newsletter issue). That doesn’t make prayer pointless. It just means humility belongs in the room.

Maybe your prayer right now is for a child who has walked away from God. Maybe it’s your marriage. Maybe you’re waiting for a job, a home to sell, a medical answer, a financial problem to loosen its grip. Maybe you believe God has spoken something very specific to your heart.

Take it seriously. Take Scripture seriously too.

And while you wait, don’t spend all your energy digging up the seed to see whether anything is happening. I know that’s a metaphor, but anyone who has ever planted something and become impatient knows the temptation.

At some point you have to leave it alone. Water it. Walk back inside. Go live.

I think Abraham had to do some version of that. Years passed between promise and fulfillment. Years.

We tend to say that quickly because the ending is already in our hands.

If you are in year seven of something, seven years does not feel quick. It has birthdays in it. Christmases. Unexpected expenses. Arguments. Days when you feel spiritually strong and days when you would rather not talk to anybody.

Praise has to live in those days too or it becomes something we only do when life cooperates.

I’ve had mornings where praising God felt natural and others where I sat there and basically said, “God, I know You’re good. I’m having trouble feeling much beyond that today.” I don’t think He was disappointed. At least I don’t believe relationship with God requires us to perform emotional enthusiasm for Him.

He knows when we’re tired.

He knows when the wait hurts.

Maybe giving Him glory on those days is simply refusing to disappear from the relationship because we didn’t get the answer when we expected it.

You keep coming back.

You keep praying.

You keep opening Scripture.

You thank God for something that has nothing to do with the thing you’re waiting for because, frankly, your life contains more than that one unanswered prayer.

This morning happened. Someone made you laugh yesterday. There is food in the fridge. A person loves you. Maybe not all of those apply, but something does. Find it.

Abraham eventually held Isaac. We know that.

There are prayers in our lives where we may not know the ending for a long time, and there are some where the ending may look different than we expected. I don’t want to pretend otherwise.

There are unanswered questions I still carry. There are things I’ve prayed about where I thought the answer would look one way and it went another.

Some of those make more sense now. Some don’t. I still believe God is faithful. That sentence means more to me now than it did when I thought faithfulness always meant getting the outcome I had pictured.

So if you’ve prayed about something and you’re waiting, praise God somewhere in the middle of your normal day.

Not because it unlocks the answer immediately. Not because you have to work yourself into a better spiritual mood.

Just remember Him. Remember something He has already done. Thank Him for something you nearly missed because you’ve been so focused on what hasn’t happened.

Then make dinner, go to work, call your mother, mow the lawn, take the walk, answer the message you’ve been avoiding. Live the day God gave you.

Tomorrow you may wake up and the promise is still somewhere out there. If that happens, you’ll have another decision to make about where your attention goes.

Abraham had a lot of those mornings. So do we.

Give God praise while you wait.

If this resonates with you, here's a short prayer you can say today:

"Dear God, waiting gets inside my head sometimes and I start measuring everything by what has or hasn’t happened yet, and I know I can lose sight of You in the middle of all that. Help me remember what is still true, even when I’m disappointed, even when I thought the answer would have come by now, and teach me to thank You without secretly treating praise like a way to get something from You. I want faith that can stay with You in the unfinished places. God, I’m still here. Amen."

God bless you! 

Your brother in Christ,

Daniel
Daily Effective Prayer

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