Scripture: Proverbs 13:12

Song: While I’m Waiting by John Waller

There is a damage delay does that people do not see quickly since it does not always make them walk away from God. Sometimes it does something more quietly; it touches the way you believe His word. What once made you come alive now meets resistance inside you. You still remember the promises in the Bible, but you no longer hold them with the same force. The sharpness, the boldness, is gone. Although you are yet to deny Him, but something in you has started sitting down.

This is what prolonged waiting does. It can make the heart sick; not sick in the sense that you stop praying, but sick in the sense that hope loses its strength in you. You begin to guard yourself against expectation. You stop leaning your full weight on what God said because it feels safer not to. You would rather be numb than be disappointed again. So, without announcing it, you begin to live at a lower level than the word God gave you.

As a result, many people are wounded, not by the absence of prophecy, but by the burden of carrying one for too long. The delay has lasted long enough for the heart to start asking questions it is afraid to say openly. Was I too sure? Did I carry it too far? Did I make too much of what God said? From there, something dangerous begins to grow. You start trying to survive the wait by reducing your expectation.

Although that is not harmless, it is where the enemy begins to tamper with your heart, because once hope is injured, everything changes. The way you listen to God, the way you pray, and the way you believe the future changes. Even obedience starts losing fire, because a sick heart does not move with the same force as a persuaded heart. That is why Scripture does not joke with deferred hope. It knows that when waiting is mishandled, it can make a person begin to shrink inwardly while still looking fine outwardly.

So, do not let delay train your heart to become cold toward what God said. Do not let the length of the journey make you timid where you should be standing firmly. Do not call it maturity when it is actually a wounded hope trying not to be hurt again.

Bring your heart before God as it is. Tell Him where the wait has weakened you. Tell Him where expectancy is bleeding and where you have gone quiet inside, because the greatest danger is not that the promise has not happened yet but that the wait may succeed in changing you before the promise arrives.

Prayer:
Lord, I will not pretend before You; this wait has made my heart sick. Let hope rise again; I refuse to let waiting drain the life out of my trust in You. Strengthen my heart until I can carry Your word again with conviction. Amen.