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Prayers for waiting and uncertainty

For the space between asking and knowing. These prayers do not promise the wait is nearly over, because nobody can promise you that.

The waiting has its own texture. The phone face up on the table. The refresh. The way you work out how many working days are left and then work it out again an hour later. Nobody warns you how much room it takes up.

Some waits have a date on them. The scan is on the fourteenth, the interview said two weeks and it has been five. Others have no date at all, and those are harder, because there is nothing to count down to.

The prayers below are short on purpose. You can say one in the car park before you go in, or at four in the morning when you have run out of your own words.

17 prayers on this page, and 9 Bible passages with notes on what they mean.

The day the waiting starts

For the first few hours after the call, the letter, the form going in. You are not settled into this yet, and there is nothing much to do but begin.

For the first hour
I have just been told. I do not know what to do with my hands. Stay near.
When the news has not landed
Lord, I heard the words and I have not caught up with them yet. Part of me is still in yesterday. Go slowly with me. Let me get through today without having to decide what any of this means. You know already. I do not.
Handing over the date
God, there is a date now, and I am already living on the other side of it. Bring me back to this evening, this room, this cup of tea. Whatever that day holds, you will be there before I get there.

Bible verses about waiting on God

What each passage meant where it was written, and what it does and does not offer you now.

I wait for the LORD. My soul waits. I hope in his word. My soul longs for the Lord more than watchmen long for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.

Psalm 130:1–6

The writer is not being poetic. A night watchman wants the sun up because he is cold, bored and frightened, and morning is the only thing that ends his shift. That is the picture chosen for waiting on God. It is not serene. Notice too that he says it twice, because saying it once was not enough.

For the vision is yet for the appointed time, and it hurries towards the end, and won’t prove false. Though it takes time, wait for it, because it will surely come. It won’t delay.

Habakkuk 2:1–4

Habakkuk had just accused God of doing nothing about the violence around him. What he got back was not an explanation but an instruction to write it down and keep watching. Hold both halves together: it takes time, and it will not be late. That is a tension the prophet lived in, not a promise about your particular date, though it is often quoted as if it were.

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

This is a man talking to himself, not somebody telling you to be patient, and the difference matters. The word still in verse 13 is carrying a lot. He repeats the instruction to wait because saying it once did not take. Handed to someone else as an instruction, it becomes something the psalm never was.

He gives power to the weak. He increases the strength of him who has no might. Even the youths faint and get weary, and the young men utterly fall; but those who wait for the LORD will renew their strength.

Isaiah 40:28–31

Spoken to people in exile with no return date. It gets read as a promise of energy on demand, which sets you up to feel like a failure by four in the afternoon. Read what it actually says: the young and the fit fall over. Strength here is given to people who have none left, not summoned by people who try harder.

For the Lord will not cast off forever. For though he causes grief, yet he will have compassion according to the multitude of his loving kindnesses. For he does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men.

Lamentations 3:25–33

Written by somebody who watched Jerusalem destroyed and did not tidy it up afterwards. He says God causes grief and does not afflict willingly almost in the same breath, and leaves the contradiction standing. One warning: the lines just above, about giving your cheek to the one who strikes you, have been used to keep people in violent homes. They are not counsel to stay.

Won’t God avenge his chosen ones who are crying out to him day and night, and yet he exercises patience with them?

Luke 18:1–8

The widow in this parable is neither patient nor polite. She turns up again and again until the judge gives in simply to be rid of her, and Jesus tells the story approvingly. She is also pursuing a case, not sitting still. If anyone has made you feel that repeating a prayer shows weak faith, this story was told against that idea.

But if we hope for that which we don’t see, we wait for it with patience. In the same way, the Spirit also helps our weaknesses, for we don’t know how to pray as we ought. But the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which can’t be uttered.

Romans 8:24–28

The last line of this passage, about all things working together for good, is one of the most misused sentences in the Bible on this subject. Paul does not say the bad thing is good, and he has just been describing creation groaning. The more useful part for a wait is the middle: the Spirit prays for you when you have no idea how, in sounds that are not words.

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you fall into various temptations, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.

James 1:2–4

This lands badly when somebody else says it to you, and it should. Count it is a decision about how to read a thing, not a feeling you are required to produce, and James is writing to congregations already under real pressure. Nobody else gets to apply this verse to your situation on your behalf.

Therefore the LORD will wait, that he may be gracious to you; and therefore he will be exalted, that he may have mercy on you, for the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all those who wait for him.

Isaiah 30:15–18

Worth noticing because it turns the usual direction round. The passage has just described people who refused to rest and bolted instead, and then it says God waits, so that he may be gracious. Whatever else is happening, that puts God on the same side of the waiting as you, rather than at the far end of it.

Quoted from the World English Bible, British Edition, which is in the public domain. Every reference on this page was checked against the text.

Questions people ask

How long should I keep praying for the same thing?

As long as it matters to you. Jesus told a story about a widow who kept going back to a judge until he gave in, and he told it approvingly. There is no point at which repeating a prayer turns into nagging. Some people say the same sentence every day for years. Some stop for months and start again. Neither of those is a failure of faith, and nobody is keeping a tally.

Does it mean God is saying no?

Be wary of anyone who tells you for certain that God has said no to you. Christians differ about how clearly God speaks now, and some would have you weigh a question like this with a wise person or a praying church rather than alone. None of that gives anybody the standing to announce your answer for you. Silence is not the same as refusal, and it is not the same as agreement either. Scripture keeps both open and mostly declines to resolve it. What it does not say anywhere is that delay proves you prayed badly or that you have been forgotten. Sometimes the answer, when it comes, is not the one that was asked for, and people who loved God have said so bluntly in the Psalms.

I cannot pray at all. Is that a problem?

No. Romans 8 says the Spirit makes intercession with groanings that cannot be put into words, which is written for exactly this. Lying on the floor counts. One word counts. Reading somebody else's prayer because you have none of your own counts. If it helps, choose the shortest prayer on this page and say only that, for as many nights as you need.

Am I supposed to feel peaceful while I wait?

No, and the Bible does not model it. Psalm 69 is a man telling God the water has come up to his neck and his eyes are failing from looking for him. Psalm 130 compares waiting to a night watchman wanting morning, which is not restful. Peace, when it comes, tends to arrive in patches and then go again. Its absence is not evidence that you are doing this wrong.

Should I just wait, or should I do something?

Usually both. Waiting on God has never meant sitting still while a phone call would help. Chase the appointment, send the follow up, ask for the second opinion, take the advice of the professional in front of you. Tell somebody close to you where things actually stand, rather than waiting it out on your own. The people in these passages were doing things while they waited. Habakkuk stood at his post and watched. The widow in the parable kept turning up at the court.

Prayers for waiting and uncertainty

The day the waiting starts

For the first hour

When the news has not landed

Handing over the date

For the calls I have to make

In the middle of the night

At three in the morning

When the worst version repeats

Nothing left to say

When I need to sleep tonight

When you are angry about it

How long, and nothing else

When someone else got their answer

The anger I cannot say aloud

Carrying on as normal

Before the working day begins

When someone asks how you are

In the very ordinary hour

For someone else who is waiting

For someone waiting alone tonight

When I do not know what to say

For the one who stopped praying

Bible verses about waiting on God

Where these verses get misused

Questions people ask