Bible verses for waiting, when nothing is happening yet
Seventeen verses for an open-ended wait, for an answer that is late, and for what waiting is actually for. With a short prayer to write for each.
Waiting is the part of prayer nobody volunteers for. You have asked, clearly and more than once, and the answer has not come, and there is no date on which it will. The test result, the adoption, the offer, the apology, the person changing their mind. Meanwhile ordinary life carries on around the gap and you are expected to carry on with it.
The verses below are quoted word for word from the World English Bible and grouped by three different waits rather than by book. Read what they actually promise. Almost none of them say the wait will be short. Several of them say it will not feel short, and one of them is a straight complaint about how long it has been, which is worth knowing is in there.
If the waiting has turned into something heavier than waiting, months of not sleeping or not wanting to be here, that is worth saying to a doctor or a crisis line and not only to God. Read the group that matches where you are and leave the other two for another week.
When you do not know how long it will be
The hardest wait is the one without a length. A wait of six weeks can be endured on willpower; a wait that might be six weeks or six years cannot, because you cannot pace yourself against a number you do not have. This is where most people are when they go looking for verses about waiting, and it is the place scripture addresses most directly.
The first verse here is not comfort. It is a question with an accusation inside it, and it is in the book of prayers rather than in a chapter about what not to say.
How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?
Psalm 13:1 · WEB
How long and forever in the same breath, which is how an open-ended wait distorts time. David asks it twice and nobody edited it out, so you are allowed to ask it in those words too.
I wait for the LORD. My soul waits. I hope in his word.
Psalm 130:5 · WEB
Three short clauses with no timeline in any of them. The third is the only ground given: his word is what the waiting is leaning on, not an expected date.
My soul, wait in silence for God alone, for my expectation is from him.
Psalm 62:5 · WEB
In silence, and for God alone. Both halves are hard. An open wait fills up with your own commentary and with other people's advice, and this verse quietly clears out both.
The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that a man should hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD.
Lamentations 3:25-26 · WEB
Written over the ruins of a burned city, which is the least likely place for the word good to appear twice. Note that it is the waiting that is called good, not the outcome, and that no outcome has yet arrived in the chapter.
I waited patiently for the LORD. He turned to me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay. He set my feet on a rock, and gave me a firm place to stand.
Psalm 40:1-2 · WEB
This is a report written afterwards. The pit and the clay come first and the firm place comes second, and the gap between them is covered by the word patiently, which is doing a great deal of unglamorous work.
A prayer to write
I do not know how long this is. I have asked and I am still asking and nothing has moved. I am not going to pretend I am patient about it. Hold me to your word while I wait, because at the moment that is all I have to stand on.
When it is taking longer than it should
A different and more bitter wait: the one where you have started keeping score. Other people got the thing quickly, or got it without asking, or got it while behaving worse than you. The delay has stopped feeling neutral and started feeling like a verdict on you.
These verses deal with lateness head on, and two of them say something strange and useful: that the delay is not drift but an appointment, and that what looks like slowness from here is being described from somewhere with a longer view.
Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for him. Don’t fret because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who makes wicked plots happen.
Psalm 37:7 · WEB
Rest and wait, then a specific instruction not to watch the person who is doing well by worse means. The psalm names comparison as the thing that makes waiting unbearable, which is accurate.
For the vision is yet for the appointed time, and it hurries toward the end, and won’t prove false. Though it takes time, wait for it, because it will surely come. It won’t delay.
Habakkuk 2:3 · WEB
Takes time and won't delay sit side by side in one verse without apology. Appointed time is the key phrase: the claim is that there is a time, not that it is soon.
The Lord is not slow concerning his promise, as some count slowness; but he is patient with us, not wishing that anyone should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
2 Peter 3:9 · WEB
As some count slowness concedes that it looks slow from where you are standing. The reason given for the delay is somebody else's room to turn around, which is not the answer anyone wants and is the one offered.
Let’s not be weary in doing good, for we will reap in due season if we don’t give up.
Galatians 6:9 · WEB
In due season, if we don't give up. The condition is attached to the giving up rather than to the season. Worth reading on the day you decide it has gone on long enough to stop.
For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven:
Ecclesiastes 3:1 · WEB
The opening line of the famous list, and it is less soothing than it sounds: a season for everything means a season you are not currently in. The sentence ends with a colon because the examples that follow include dying and losing.
A prayer to write
I have been counting. I know what other people have that I asked for first, and I am tired of being gracious about it. Keep me from fretting at it. If there is an appointed time for this, I will take your word for that, because I cannot see it from here.
What the waiting is actually for
The last group is about conduct rather than comfort. Waiting in these verses is not passive and it is not empty; it is a posture held towards someone, with your eyes up and your work continuing. That is the difference between waiting and merely delaying.
Read the last two slowly. One of them makes the unwelcome point that hope only exists where you cannot see the thing yet, and the other is a man talking to his own heart because nobody else was going to.
But as for me, I will look to the LORD. I will wait for the God of my salvation. My God will hear me.
Micah 7:7 · WEB
Written when Micah had just finished saying there was no one trustworthy left around him. Three verbs in order: look, wait, be heard. The waiting is aimed at a person, not at a date.
But if we hope for that which we don’t see, we wait for it with patience.
Romans 8:25 · WEB
Paul defines the terms rather than encouraging you. Hope requires not seeing; once you can see it, it is no longer hope. That makes the invisibility of your answer a condition of hoping rather than evidence against it.
but those who wait for the LORD will renew their strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles. They will run, and not be weary. They will walk, and not faint.
Isaiah 40:31 · WEB
Renew assumes depletion, and waiting is named as the thing that renews. The list runs down from mounting up to walking, and walking without fainting is what most waits actually need.
I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. Wait for the LORD. Be strong, and let your heart take courage. Yes, wait for the LORD.
Psalm 27:13-14 · WEB
In the land of the living means here, not afterwards. Then he turns and tells his own heart to take courage and repeats the instruction, which is what you do when there is nobody else in the room to say it.
A prayer to write
I would rather have the answer than the waiting, and you know that. While it is this way, keep my eyes up and my hands busy. Let me see your goodness in the land of the living, and until then, make my heart take courage, because it will not do that by itself.
Write down what you are waiting for, and date it
Waiting is the thing memory handles worst. The months pass without leaving anything behind, so a two-year wait and a two-month wait feel identical from inside, and when something does finally shift you will have lost the shape of what you were asking for in the first place. People regularly get the answer and forget they ever prayed for it.
Prayed keeps the record for you. Write the prayer in your own words, and the app matches verses like the ones on this page to what you wrote, so you are not searching for a reference on an evening when nothing has changed again. Each prayer comes back to you at three days, a week, a month and a year, which is useful in exactly this situation: the year mark hands you the sentence you wrote when the wait began, with the date on it, and you get to see what happened in between. Nothing you write leaves your phone, and writing is free.
Start tonight, with one sentence and the date: what you are waiting for, and what you are asking for while it is not here. If it arrives, you will have the record of how long it took. If it has not arrived by next year, you will at least have proof that you kept asking, which is the one part of waiting that is yours to do.
Write the prayer. Prayed finds the verses.
Prayed is a private prayer journal for iPhone. Write what you're praying for and it matches three verses from the same Bible quoted above, on your phone, then brings the prayer back to you at three days, a week, a month and a year so you see what came of it. No account, no server. Writing is free forever.
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