3 Ways to Empower Yourself When You’re Tired of Waiting on God

Inside: Are you tired of waiting on God and losing hope of ever getting an answer from Him? Discover 3 crucial ways to empower yourself so you can move forward.

Here’s my general rule of thumb when it comes to waiting on someone: I’ll hang around for 15 minutes. If they haven’t shown up by then, I’m out.

So you can imagine how frustrated I got waiting 20 whole years for God to give me the direction I was seeking. To say I was pretty sick and tired of waiting on God is no understatement.

During that season of waiting, I scoured my Bible for encouragement to keep my spirits lifted. Plus, my prayer journals were soaked with my tears and my desperation for an answer—for action—from God. But no matter how hard I prayed, He seemed silent.

Still, I didn’t know what else to do. So I just kept praying harder while getting ever more tired of waiting on God.

Bonus: As a bonus for joining my weekly newsletter, get this free printable download—The Hearing God Cheat Sheet. It gives you 6 guaranteed signs He’s speaking to you, so you can stop missing it.

4 Surprising Reasons Why You May Not Need to Be Waiting on God

Do you wanna know the kicker? All the time I was growing tired of waiting on God, all the time my faith in God’s love for me was slowly draining away, all the time I was wondering why God didn’t talk to me…

He’d already answered my prayers.

As it turned out, I was the one tormenting myself, waiting for an answer I already had. But I didn’t have eyes to see or ears to hear.

Crazy, right?

Here’s the thing though. You may very well be in the same boat and don’t even know it.

It could be that God isn’t making you wait on anything. You’re the one making yourself wait, while you search the Scriptures for help to keep your hope alive.

This can happen for 4 common reasons you probably don’t even realize.

1. God’s answer isn’t what you want to hear.

As human beings, we’re skilled at blocking out things we don’t want to know about. This includes God’s answer to some of your prayers.

You may do this when God’s answer is too big, too small, or too scary for you.

For example, as I was begging God for direction, His answer was to plant a new desire in my heart. But this desire looked silly to the world. Plus, I was deathly afraid of other people’s judgment.

So I pooh-poohed the answer He gave me and kept praying without ceasing. Eventually, I grew tired of waiting on God and went my own way.

Are you doing the same?

2. God’s answer doesn’t come the way you’re looking to get it.

You expect things to happen in a certain way, and this is normal. If you didn’t, you’d surely go crazy trying to anticipate every single eventuality.

But as a Christian, when it comes to God, you need to throw your assumptions and expectations about how God works right out the door.

You see, God is God, and He works in ways we’ll never understand.

“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”

Isaiah 55:8-9 (NLT)

Trying to put Him in the box of how you think He should work will only frustrate you and make you more tired of waiting on God.

For example, as I was asking God for direction, I expected Him to answer me outright, with a clear destination and a plan to get there. What I didn’t expect was for His answer to come in the form of a new desire in my heart.

This is another reason I so easily turned my back on it and kept waiting for an answer I didn’t realize I’d already gotten.

Are you doing the same?

3. You’re waiting for God to do it all.

You may have grown tired of waiting on God because you think waiting on Him is passive. You may think your job is to pray without ceasing, while God’s job is to do everything to make the wishes you’ve prayed for come true.

I sure did.

As I was asking God to tell me what to do, I kept waiting for Him to magic up the desires of my heart right before my very eyes. All without me having to lift a finger and do anything.

Are you doing the same?

4. You assume what you want is what God wants for you.

Oh, girl, this one’s a toughie.

Because when you’ve decided what’s best for you—to get married, have kids, get a promotion, or whatever other wish or dream you have—it’s hard to accept that it may not be what God wants for you.

But our mighty God, who loves you beyond measure, sees things in ways you don’t. And He has plans you know nothing about.

Many plans are in a man’s mind, but it is the Lord’s purpose for him that will stand.

Proverbs 19:21 (AMPC)

Back when I was begging God for direction, I already knew what I wanted to happen, and I’d convinced myself I couldn’t live without that specific outcome. But as it turned out, how I wanted things to unfold wasn’t part of God’s plan for me.

Are you doing the same?

What to Do When You’re Tired of Waiting on God

Waiting on God to answer your prayers doesn’t have to leave you feeling exhausted, and it doesn’t have to erode your faith.

This is because you don’t have to keep sitting around, getting ever more tired of waiting on God. Instead, you can empower yourself in 3 ways.

Bonus: As a bonus for joining my weekly newsletter, get this free printable download—The Hearing God Cheat Sheet. It gives you 6 guaranteed signs He’s speaking to you, so you can stop missing it.

1. Tired of Waiting on God: His Limitlessness

The first thing you need to do when you’re tired of waiting on God is to take the limits off Him.

Take the limits off:

• How you expect God to answer you
• What you expect God to say
• What you expect God to do

Because, you see:

Our Lord is great, with limitless strength; we’ll never comprehend what he knows and does.

Psalm 147:5 (MSG)

God may well have been giving you an answer all along. But you’ve missed what He’s saying because of the limits you’ve placed on Him.

Related: 6 Clear Signs God Is Speaking To You (And You’re Missing It)

On the other hand, when you let God be God—with no limits on how He should show up in your life—you empower yourself to hear and see what He wants to do in and through you.

Are you willing to let God be the limitless God of your life?

2. Tired of Waiting on God: Your Action or Inaction

When you’re tired of waiting on God, check to see if you expect God to do all the work while you do all the praying.

Yes, you need to wait on God. But this doesn’t mean you stay passive and do nothing. Instead, it means you do what you know to do while you wait for God to do what only He can do.

But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves.

James 1:22 (NLT)

All you need to do is take the one next step in front of you. Just one. Then God will show you the next one after that, and so on.

But you won’t get any further down the road if you stay where you are, expecting God to do all the work while you get more tired of waiting on Him.

Are you willing to be brave and act?

3. Tired of Waiting on God: Your True Desires

This may be the hardest one of all. But I’ve found it necessary sometimes to sacrifice the thing I’m getting tired of waiting on God for. To let it go, release it, and leave it on the altar as a sacrifice to God.

Because what you want may very well not be what God wants for you.

And even if it is, He may want you to show that you want what He wants for you—whatever it turns out to be—more than the desire you’re clinging to.

“Abba, Father,” he cried out, “everything is possible for you. Please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.”

Mark 14:36 (NLT)

Do you see the last part of Jesus’ prayer? It has to be one of the most difficult prayers to say. But it’s the one God most wants to hear from you, especially when you’re tired of waiting on Him.

Are you willing to sacrifice your desire to God?

Your Next Steps When You’re Tired of Waiting on God

For 20 unnecessary years, I waited for God’s answer to my plea for direction. In the process, I got frustrated and almost lost my faith. All because I wasn’t paying attention to the answer He’d given me, even before I asked.

I put God in a box of limitations based on my own expectations and assumptions about Him. Then I sat around waiting for Him to do everything necessary to give me what I wanted. Meanwhile, I prayed without ceasing for Him to come through for me.

Looking back, I can see this wasn’t a great plan.

But I know better now. And so do you!

You may be tired of waiting on God but you don’t have to stay that way. Instead, you can:

• Take the limits off Him and let God be God
• Do what you know to do while you wait on Him to do what only He can do
• Release your death grip on the thing you desire and sacrifice it in favor of whatever God’s will may be for you

None of this is easy, but all of it is worth the courage, confidence, faith, and spiritual growth you’ll gain as a result.

And you for sure will no longer be tired of waiting on God.

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