Restful Anticipation Devotional: Find Contentment in Seasons of Waiting

Scripture: John 11:1-44

A prolonged waiting season will test our faith in unimaginable ways. Do we believe that God is good? Where is God when one of the deepest desires of our heart appears lifeless? How can we trust a God who allows heartbreaking delays? 

In John 11, Mary and Martha sent word to Jesus that their brother Lazarus was sick, they said, “Lord, the one you love is sick.” By the time Jesus arrives (after deliberately prolonging the journey), Lazarus was dead, gone, stinky, and in the tomb for four days. 

When Mary later sees Jesus, she speaks the same words as Martha, “Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 

If I had a quarter for all my “If onlys.” 

If only God intervened. 

If only God opened that one door. 

If only God moved a little faster. 

If only God answered the prayer sooner. 

If only.

The days drudged on for the sisters waiting for Jesus to save their brother. With every shift in the fading sun, Mary and Martha must wonder, what could be more important than this? Jesus sees Mary’s tears and responds to her if only. What does He have to say for Himself? What explanation does He provide for His unacceptable tardiness? What could Jesus possibly offer at this point? 

In verse 35, John records one of the most profound moments in scripture: 

Jesus wept.

Jesus sees the sisters’ tears, and He feels their pain. He is greatly troubled and deeply moved in His spirit. But Jesus didn’t rush to the solution; He didn’t skip over or dismiss the emotion. Jesus validates the pain and the disappointment, and (spoiler alert) even though He knows He will raise Lazarus from the dead, what does He do? He weeps. 

Why didn’t Jesus get there sooner? Why did Jesus cause the delay? And if Jesus knows He’s going to raise Lazarus from the dead, why allow the pain and sadness beforehand? I don’t know. But we see sides of Jesus in this story that show us His character. We see Him drawing near to the broken-hearted, weeping with them in their pain. We see Jesus praying to the Father. We see Jesus as a miracle worker, bringing death to life, and turning around an impossible situation. I don’t know the purpose of the postponement, but I am thankful that John took the time to record the story, especially those two little words. 

When our heart feels broken, and our hope is deferred, remember, God is near. He isn’t far off, in the clouds, elusive, or playing hide-and-seek. He’s right there. He is so very close. And when we feel like our heart is dead, even death isn’t final in God’s kingdom. As we remember Jesus’ divinity, we can’t forget His humanity. Jesus wept.He’s not here to harm; He’s here to help.

Prayer:

Father, thank you for your presence. Thank you that you are near to the broken-hearted. Thank you that you have a plan in my delay and in my season of waiting. Thank you that you are always with me every step of the way. Thank you that I can take comfort in your nearness and compassion. Help me experience the fullness of joy that comes in your presence and the peace that surpasses understanding. Amen.

Scriptures: Genesis 18:1-15, Psalms 46:10

After years of praying and coming up empty-handed in our journey to adopt a child, I sat on my patio with my head in my hands. I prayed out loud, “Lord, this feels like you’re taking me to the very edges of my trust in you. This is it, God. This is all I have to give. You have every ounce of my trust; there isn’t a drop left.” 

That day on the patio stands out in my mind because at the end of my prayer I let out a little laugh in surrender. And I wondered if that’s how Abraham’s wife, Sarah felt when she heard she would have a baby at ninety years old. The three prophetic visitors in Genesis said Abraham’s wife would have a baby in a year. Sarah, listening from inside the tent, laughed to herself. “After I am worn out and my lord is old, will I now have this pleasure?” (Genesis 18:12) 

I can relate to facing what seemed like an impossible situation. But I came to the end of all my efforts and natural solutions and striving, and it felt good to put it in God’s hands completely. Elisabeth Elliot writes, “God is God. If He is God, He is worthy of my worship and my service. I will find rest nowhere but in His will, and that will is infinitely, immeasurably, unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what He is up to.” 

We often think of surrender like waving a white flag in battle. But my day of surrendering to God felt more like standing in the kitchen with a burnt cake in my hands, laughing because I messed the whole thing up. Then suddenly, I remember that God is an expert in turning messes into miracles, and I let out a little laugh. 

Sarah laughed because she knew she couldn’t make it happen herself. The promise from God was too big, too far-fetched for a woman who was 90 years old. 

And yet, despite the obstacles, God fulfilled His promise, and Sarah gave birth to Isaac. 

It would be great if Sarah paved a road for us all to follow, a road of faith and optimism and kindness and trust. Wouldn’t it be great if she gave us the formula to follow for our waiting season? I can see it in the headlines: “Faith-Filled Woman Gives Birth in Her Nineties.” We’d all lean in for that kind of faith. Give us the formula—only there isn’t one. 

The truth is, Sarah wasn’t all that full of faith. She didn’t play all her cards right. It seems to me, the action she took only made things messier than they needed to be (I’m guilty of the same thing). Yet, God still fulfilled what He promised. 

If everyone got exactly what they wanted through trust and surrender, we’d rejoice because we finally nailed the formula. Surrender isn’t because God needs something from us but because He wants something for us—the peace that comes from trusting in Him alone. Surrender and trust enable us to accept the outcome, even if it looks different than we thought it would. A posture of surrender—even laughable surrender—recognizes that we’ve come to the end of our striving and natural solutions and we put our trust in Him no matter what. We don’t need to know what God is up to or how He’s going to work it out, we only need to know that He is a good God with our best interest in mind. And, as it turns out, impossible situations are His specialty.

Prayer:

Father, forgive me for lacking trust in you. Forgive me for trusting too much in myself, my capabilities, my circumstances, or others. Help my full trust to reside in you. I surrender my doubt, my fear, and my confusion. I don’t know where this path leads, but I want to trust you every step of the way. Thank you for a new level of trust in you. Amen.

Scriptures: 1 Timothy 6:6, Philippians 4:11-13

It’s tempting to imagine the Apostle Paul penning his words about contentment from a mountaintop, but we must remember he wrote about learning the secret of contentment from prison. Paul writes this letter as he’s locked away from the church he loves and from the work that he’s most passionate about. He writes while he’s under the daily threat of execution. Paul writes with the intent of encouraging others to be content in all circumstances. He found the one thing no one could ever take from him, execution or not. 

Our waiting seasons may look different, but we are on the same journey in many ways, trying to find the balancing act between contentment while contending for more. We can be content while contending for more; they are not mutually exclusive. It doesn’t have to be one extreme or the other. Contentment isn’t complacency, and contending isn’t striving. God invites us to both; He invites us to be content in all circumstances, and He also invites us to knock and keep on knocking. 

Contentment isn’t where we live or how much money we have. It’s not near the ocean or in the desert (although I have a preference). We can find contentment, like Paul said, in every circumstance. And if we have both godliness and contentment, we can go ahead and consider ourselves filthy rich. 

Many people tell themselves when they reach a certain destination, they’ll be content. Once they have a baby, they’ll be content, once they get married, land their dream job, have a certain amount of money in the bank, or retire. But once they meet the benchmark, they immediately create another. They receive one answer to prayer and quickly move on to the next. In a frenzy, their minds search for what’s missing. They resemble Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, focused on the one thing they don’t have rather than all the gifts they do have. 

Charles Spurgeon once said, “You say ‘If I had a little more, I shall be very well satisfied,’ You make a mistake. If you are not content with what you have, you would not be satisfied if it were doubled.”

Let’s take time to recognize the answers to prayer we are already living in. Let’s enter into prayer asking God to help us to be content while we contend for the desires of our hearts. He invites us to keep praying, keep believing, and keep asking—and to be content while we wait for the answers.

Prayer:

Father, help me not to focus so much on what I don’t have that I miss out on all of your blessings. Help me to stay grateful and remain in awe of you. Let the contentment I choose daily become contagious to others. In my waiting season, help me to find the balance of remaining content while I contend for more. Amen.

Scripture: Genesis 32:22-31

I once took my kids to try out a jiu-jitsu class. I didn’t know much about jiu-jitsu—I assumed we’d learn how to kick and punch like Hollywood actors. This will be fun. We all dressed up in white kimonos and waited for our instructor on the dojo. The instructor assigned us partners and demonstrated the lesson. Before you know it, we were all on the ground with our partners twisted up like pretzels. I locked eyes with my kids, their faces flush and speckled like watermelons. They all got in the car, a little battle-worn and shell-shocked, and said, “Mom, can we please never go back?” (The irony is that some of them are in jiu-jitsu now.) 

I learned a lot about wrestling that day. Wrestling is intimate. It’s hard, strategic, tiring, and uncomfortable. It’s not for the faint of heart or the easily embarrassed. But I also learned something I’ll never forget. When the instructor walked around, examining our form, he said: 

“95% of altercations end up on the ground. This is why we focus our efforts here. It’s in these situations that you need to know what to do.” 

Do you know what to do when you end up on the ground in life? You wrestle with God. 

If anyone from the Bible knows how to wrestle, it’s Jacob. The scrappy fella came out of the womb grappling with his twin brother, Esau. Jacob, known for his striving and deceitful tendencies, also possesses a good trait: tenacity. Jacob fell in love, and he fell hard. Rachel, Laban’s daughter, became the apple of Jacob’s eye. Jacob loved Rachel so much he agreed to serve Laban for seven years in exchange for her hand in marriage. Genesis 30:20 tells us, “So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her.”

It seemed that Jacob’s season of waiting went by in a flash; love made all those years of physical labor seem like a few days. But the night of the arrangement, Jacob wasn’t presented with Rachel; Laban gives Jacob the oldest sister, Leah. Laban tricks Jacob and tells him that he’ll have to serve him another seven years to receive Rachel. How would you feel if you got to the end of your season of waiting only to realize it doubled? Jacob spent fourteen years of his life toiling for the one he loved. 

Jacob spent his life striving, but in Genesis 32, we see Jacob in a wrestling match with God that changed Him forever. For generations to come, the people of Israel don’t eat the thigh’s sinew on the hip socket because of Jacob’s encounter. Jacob’s wrestling match not only changed his name and his identity, but it changed history. 

Of course, by now, I hope you know I’m not talking about physical wrestling. I’m talking about wrestling in prayer. This kind of wrestling doesn’t look like a rehearsed prayer or your Sunday best. This kind of wrestling in prayer happens when we get alone and honest with God, we ask Him tough questions, and we allow our season of waiting and confusion to move us into a more intimate relationship with Him. 

It’s okay to grapple with God in prayer, to come to Him with every question, every doubt, every fear, and every pain. After all, our deepest relationships are the ones that have allowed us to move far beyond pretense. They see us in our unrefined and unresolved moments. Most often, we wrestle with God because His presence and His promises feel far away. But what if it’s the opposite? There is no such thing as long-distance wrestling.

Prayer: 

Father, thank you that you make yourself known deeply through these seasons of wrestling and waiting. Please help me to press into you during this time. Change me, Lord. Let my hope reside in you. Help the truths I know move from my head to my heart as I wrestle with you in prayer. Amen.

Scriptures: Matthew 11:28-30, Matthew 22:34-40

On September 19, 2016, our friend Scott went to the doctor for a headache. Scott’s doctor took his blood pressure and immediately sent him over to the medical center across the street. The medical team wasted no time. They performed a full craniotomy, scooping a massive amount of fluid from Scott’s brain. After Scott came to consciousness, Scott’s surgeon gave him the worst news he’d ever received. 

The surgeon said, “Scott, you’ve come through the surgery amazingly. There’s a chance you’ll be okay, but here’s what it’s going to require. For the next eight weeks, you need to do everything in your power to let your brain settle down. This brain bleed and subsequent surgery caused three concussions. So you have to understand that makes three major traumatic events for your brain. You will not read, write, communicate, or use your phone for the next eight weeks. You will not talk or have a conversation. You cannot watch T.V. or listen to music with lyrics. Your brain has to go flat … and if you don’t, you will have permanent brain damage.” 

Scott cried himself to sleep, scared that even that might be too much for his brain. 

How do I stare at the air for eight weeks? Lord, help me. Please give me a plan. Please, Lord, Give me a plan. Give me your plan. Scott prayed. 

As Scott lay there, feeling helpless, God answered his prayer and gave him a plan for the eight weeks. That plan involved resting, waiting, listening, and renewal. On the outside looking in, those eight weeks must have looked unproductive. Scott couldn’t speak, couldn’t write, couldn’t read—no television, no conversations, no browsing on the phone or computer. Absolute stillness for eight weeks. 

Scott carried out God’s plan each day, over and over again. 

Rest. Wait. Listen. Renew. 

Rest. Wait. Listen. Renew. 

Day after day, Scott filled his mind only with God’s plan to get him through the eight weeks. Rest. Wait. Listen. Renew. A deeper meaning formed around each word, a real understanding of what it meant to rest in God, to wait for Him, to listen to Him, and to be renewed by Him. Scott’s body grew stronger and stronger each day. His brain slowly healed. He’s a walking miracle. 

To this day, Scott starts his morning the same way he filled his time during those eight weeks in the hospital. Rest. Wait. Listen. Renew. Every morning. Scott says, “I didn’t know at the time that what God was teaching me would change me for the rest of my life. To this day, those four-morning practices are the key to any effective day running my business.” 

If anyone had an excuse to feel weary, question God, or flat out go crazy during a season of waiting, it’s our friend, Scott. But he leaned into God’s direction to rest, and it changed his life forever. 

John Ortberg says, “Biblically, waiting is not just something we have to do until we get what we want. Waiting is part of the process of becoming what God wants us to be.”

Prayer: 

Father, you are gentle and humble in heart, and you invite me to come to you when I’m weary and burdened. You lead me to a better way. Make me more like you. Open up my eyes to the beauty in this journey of waiting, help me to draw closer to you, and to become more patient. Help me to learn how to rest, wait, listen, and renew. Amen.

Scriptures: Philippians 1:6, Ecclesiastes 7:8, Isaiah 40:31

Do good things come to those who wait? That might be true, but bare minimum, I believe that good things are formed in those who wait. Ecclesiastes 7:8 says, “The patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.” Patience is the companion of humility and the antithesis of pride. When we choose patience, we choose Christ-likeness. 

Sometimes, all we need is a little staying power in our journey. Staying power is the heel-digging determination to let God finish the good work He started in us. Philippians 1:6 speaks of God finishing the work He started in us, but it also goes on to say that He will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. So, basically, God is going to keep working on our character until Jesus comes back. That’s hardly a recipe for a speedy arrival point, but it is an invitation to continue to let Jesus make us more like Him. 

Many times in our season of waiting, well-intended people want to rescue us out of it. They feel confident in an alternative solution. They have it all mapped out in their minds. It may come at a time when you’re already experiencing a pang of regret or doubt or discomfort. What the well-meaning people in our life need to know is that we are committed to God’s path even when it’s uncomfortable. 

Staying power means we fully believe God planted a seed in our heart, and we aren’t going to give up until we see what it grows into. In his book Draw the Circle, Mark Batterson says, “Too often we pray ASAP prayers — as soon as possible. We need to start praying ALAT prayers — as long as it takes.” 

Stories about instantly answered prayer can discourage those who unceasingly pray for years and still come up empty-handed. Mark’s encouragement to pray ALAT prayers flips the script in our culture obsessed with instant gratification. It provides an empowering stance as we take an active and prayerful posture in our waiting journey. 

Isaiah 40:31 describes it like this: 

“Those who wait on the Lord

Shall renew their strength.

They shall mount up with wings like eagles,

They shall run and not be weary,

They shall walk and not faint.”

The Hebrew word that Isaiah uses for “wait” is Qavah. It means “to wait, look for, hope, or expect.” This doesn’t sound like an idle position. It is waiting on the Lord that brings renewed strength. This Qavah means we wait for Him, look for Him, hope in Him, and expect His goodness. 

Establishing our focus and fulfillment in Him, rather than an outcome or a timeline, is what mounts us up with wings like eagles. When we fix the eyes of our soul on our Creator, we run without growing weary, walk without growing faint. This is training ground for our soul. When we make this shift, waiting no longer becomes necessary drudgery; it becomes a lifestyle of confident expectation in Him.

Prayer:

Lord, give me staying power. When I feel like I want to run back to what’s comfortable and familiar, give me the strength I need so that I can remain in your plan. Help me to look for and expect your goodness and my transformation as I seek you. Amen

Scriptures: Proverbs 4:23, Psalms 39:7, Mark 8:22-26

If you’ve walked through a long season of waiting, you are probably familiar with “almosts.” You almost found “The one.” Your child almost had a breakthrough. You almost went into remission. 

Here’s the thing about almosts: They feel good. After all, we’ve waited to feel something (besides discouragement) for so long. So we hold on to the buzzing feeling of possibility, the hope that right around the corner, our “almost” could turn into a sure thing. We allow our minds to dream and our hearts to grow attached. Almosts carry our heart sky-high when we hold tight to a specific outcome. If that outcome doesn’t pan out, our heart drops from that sky-high place. After enough “almosts,” we learn to protect our heart from skydiving because it wasn’t made for that. 

“Almosts” become a teacher, helping us discover the art of hoping, teaching us to guard our hearts and put our hope in the right source. We don’t want to build walls around our heart, but we do learn to guard it. Proverbs 4:23 tells us, “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.”

It’s not that we don’t get excited or don’t “get our hopes up,” but we learn to proceed without tying our soul’s worth to the outcome. We keep a restful anticipation, not an anxious anticipation. That’s the goal anyway. I’m getting better at this, but I don’t always get it right. Hope is essential in the journey, but where our hope resides is key. “Now, Lord, what do I hope for? My hope remains in you.” Psalm 39:7 

In Mark, chapter 8:22-26, Jesus travels to Bethsaida and meets a blind man. He takes the blind man by the hand and leads him out of the village, away from the crowd. After placing spit on the man’s eyes, Jesus asks the man if he sees anything. The man looks up and says, “I see men, but they look like trees, walking.” Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again, and his sight was restored. For the first time in his life, the man saw everything clearly. 

For a moment—we don’t know how long exactly—the man “almost” has his sight, but not fully. I wonder how he felt during his “almost.” Perhaps a mixture of excitement and fear, hope and possibility, a rush of emotions- and maybe a bit of disappointment, wondering if the full miracle would ever come. 

The blind man let Jesus touch him once more. Jesus didn’t want the man to settle for blurry vision when He intended to bring him full clarity. What makes me pause and scratch my head is that the miracle didn’t happen instantly; it didn’t come without an “almost.” Stories like this show us the heart of our Heavenly Father, who demonstrates that some breakthroughs don’t come instantly, they may come little by little, yard by yard. 

What if we saw our “almost” as an opportunity for us to let Jesus touch us one more time? What if instead of pushing away our desires and Jesus because of fear of disappointment, we let Jesus come closer, trusting his timing and his process? Sure, our journey hasn’t been a straight line—that’s not such a bad thing. Maybe God knows the straight line will make us flatline. The process of God pulling us away is an opportunity to experience a connection with Jesus that makes any straight-lined path pale in comparison.

Prayer:

Lord, I give you my feelings of discouragement. Even though I wish my path was a straight line, I trust that you use every winding and troubled road for your glory. Help me to trust you and to trust your timing and your plan. Help me to surrender the outcome to you and to allow you to change me from the inside out. Amen.

Scriptures: Exodus 11:4-9, Exodus 16:1-5, Exodus 33:14

Why did it take the Israelites 40 years to make a journey that should have lasted eleven days? Liberation from slavery in Egypt seemed like a step in the right direction, but after a while, they missed the familiarity and predictability of their old lives and began to complain. Maybe they got caught up in the “good old days” mentality and forgot the oppression of slavery. 

What does the promised land look like?

Is it just hearsay?

Is it really the land flowing with milk and honey?

Can we really trust God?

Ah, there it is. The question that it all boils down to. Can we really trust God? Can we trust there is a purpose in our wandering? 

I’ve heard it was the Israelites complaining and disobedience that delayed the journey. But maybe it runs deeper than that. Maybe God wanted to pull every last thread of slavery out of the hearts of His people. He wanted to secure their identity as sons and daughters. He wanted them fully prepared for their future. 

We all read the Israelites’ story with an eager expectation for them to arrive at their destination finally; it’s human nature. But intimacy can’t be rushed. God wanted to reveal Himself in a new way, right there in the journey. We often become anxious for the mountaintop moments in life, but as one of my mentors, Greg Gorman, says, “Vegetation doesn’t exist on the mountaintop. The valley is where you get fed.” 

The Israelites learned this the slow way, God providing manna for food, bringing water from rocks, parting the Red Sea, and leading them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Baby step by baby step, the Israelites learned sonship through daily trust in God’s provision. God carried them through the long journey, bringing them closer to a truth He wanted them to own: My Father will take care of me.

Holding places provide opportunities to be liberated from false mindsets around our identity. When we surrender to the process, we allow our Father to hold us and teach us to trust Him. Amid the wandering, He makes this promise in Exodus 33:14, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”

Prayer:

Dear Father, thank you for the process of removing the lies surrounding my identity. Thank you that I am your child and dearly loved by you. Thank you for your good gifts, even gifts in holding patterns. Help me to step into full freedom and to trust you. Help me to understand the goodness of your character and your intentions towards me. Help me to rest in you and not in the outcome of my circumstances. Amen.

Scripture: Mark 15:1-41

Sometimes our expectations can cloud our vision of what God wants to do in our lives. In a race against our own timeline and plans, we can miss the work of God right before our eyes. This happened in Jesus’ day. The religious leaders and some bystanders failed to recognize what was happening when Jesus died on the cross. They expected an earthly king, one to take over and change the political climate in favor of the Jews. When they saw Jesus dying on the cross, they missed the significance. They thought the hope for this political Messiah was over. But Jesus had much bigger plans than a local government takeover. His goal was to rescue mankind from sin, death, and darkness. There are times we too can become like the religious people, wrapped up in our expectations, missing the miracle God performs right before our eyes. 

I wonder how many people bore witness to Jesus’ death, who shrugged their shoulders and walked away. Perhaps some people thought, just another criminal, just another day. Or it’s just Jesus from Nazareth, the carpenter’s son. While others pondered, too bad, thought he would do something for the nation, but guess not. I wonder if those same people made the connection to the Divine after He breathed His last breath and darkness covered the sky. Did they finally put the pieces together after water and blood poured from his side? After the earthquake, maybe? Or when word spread of His resurrection? We tremble at these stories over 2000 years later. But some people saw Jesus with their own two eyes and still missed it. Their tightly held expectations of how God would save them, their familiarity with Jesus, and maybe even the fear of what others would think, all played a part in missing the most historically and spiritually significant moment of all time. What if our miracle comes in a different package than we expected? Will we miss it? 

Peter Scazzero says it this way, “Anytime we are clinging to or resisting something, we aren’t surrendered.” In our waiting season, it’s imperative that we surrender our tightly-held expectations and timetables. Today, take time to examine what you might be clinging to or resisting. Take time to ask God to help you fully surrender to His plan and His timeline. Releasing our expectations might be the first step in spotting the miracle right before our eyes.

Prayer:

Dear Lord, thank you that your ways are higher than my ways and your thoughts are higher than my thoughts. Thank you for your plan, even if it looks different than my expectations. Help me to let go of any unrealistic expectations or expectations that differ from your plan. Help me to surrender those to you fully, to trust your plan every step of the way. Help me to trust you fully. Amen.

Scriptures: Psalms 54:4, John 6:16-21, Psalms 27:14

It’s easy to fall prey to thinking others hold our future—our spouse, our kids, our boss, the economy, the government, our desires. But the truth is, God is the one who holds our future, and He is the one who holds our heart. He is the only one who can bring us grace and strength to meet all the unknowns that lay ahead. 

If fellow waiting-people are anything like me, we’ve come to the place where we no longer want what we’re waiting for to take center stage. It plays a part, but we don’t want it to have the leading role anymore. When Jesus is at the center, our soul finds rest. 

Often, we become so consumed with wishing our circumstances were different that we miss out on the opportunities to serve God right where we are. I want a heart that is willing to be faithful to God in all seasons, not just in the seasons I planned. 

Charles Spurgeon says, “If the Lord Jehovah makes us wait, let us do so with our whole hearts; for blessed are all they that wait for Him. He is worth waiting for. The waiting itself is beneficial to us: it tries faith, exercises patience, trains submission, and endears the blessing when it comes. The Lord’s people have always been a waiting people” 

The Lord’s people are waiting people, that’s me, and that’s you! He calls us His own and assigns purpose to our wait. I take comfort knowing there are more waiting people out there reading these words with their own unresolved endings. We may never meet face-to-face, but we share a determination to find beauty in our open-ended stories. King David’s words in Psalm 27:14 bring encouragement, “Wait for the Lord, be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” 

When we shift our focus, waiting no longer becomes necessary drudgery; it becomes a lifestyle of confident expectation in the Lord. No matter how many detours and delays you face, I pray you find your happy ending in Restful Anticipation.

Prayer: 

God, I thank you for all the lessons you’ve taught me in my waiting season. You’ve grown my character. I’m not the same person that I was when I started. And even though this unresolved ending isn’t what I anticipated, help me fix my eyes on you, the author and finisher of my faith. Don’t waste my wait. Help me to know you like I’ve never known you before. Help me to find the beauty in this story, not the one I wish I had. Help me to live every moment in restful anticipation. Amen.