When Waiting Feels Hard: Finding Spiritual Growth in Chandler

When Waiting Feels Hard

Waiting is one of the hardest things God asks of us — and Chandler doesn't slow down while you do it. Maybe you're waiting on a job. On a diagnosis to change. On a relationship to heal, or on some sense of what you're actually supposed to do with your life. Everyone else seems to be moving, and you're stuck in the in-between, praying prayers that feel like they're bouncing off the ceiling.

If that's you, you're in good company. Almost every person God used in Scripture spent time in a waiting season first — often a long one. Abraham waited decades. David was anointed king years before he wore a crown. Waiting isn't God forgetting about you. More often, it's where He's doing the quiet work you can't see yet.

The question is usually not “when will this be over?” but “what are You growing in me right now?”

The Bible doesn't treat waiting as doing nothing. "Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength" (Isaiah 40:31) describes something active — a leaning-in, not a checking-out. That shift is small, and it changes everything.

Roots grow deepest in dry ground

If you've spent a summer here, you know what dry looks like. The ground cracks, the air sits heavy, everything reaches for water. Hearts do the same thing. You pray and feel nothing. You show up to worship distracted. You read a chapter and close the Bible more confused than when you opened it.

But here's what the desert teaches: dry ground is where roots go deepest. Plants that survive here send roots down far, searching for water most things never reach. Your faith often does its most important growing in exactly the season it feels most barren — underground, out of sight, realer than it feels.

A few simple rhythms help you send those roots down:

• Give God the first ten minutes of your day before you touch your phone.
• Carry one verse through the week — on a card, on your lock screen — and come back to it on the drive, on your lunch break, in the waiting room.
• Trade one scroll session for worship, and let God into that space instead.

You may not feel much shift right away. Roots grow slow and hidden. That doesn't mean nothing's happening.

You weren't meant to wait alone

When waiting hurts, the instinct is to hide — skip church, leave the text unanswered, assume no one would get it. Scripture pulls the other direction. "Carry each other's burdens" (Galatians 6:2) isn't a suggestion; it's how healing usually arrives. Often God speaks the exact word you needed through a person in a living room or across a coffee table, at the moment you were ready to give up.

That's a lot of why Spirit Church exists — to be a well in the desert. A Sunday where one line of a message lands straight in your chest. A group where you don't have to pretend you're fine. Someone who checks in on the specific thing you're carrying.

One step this week

Pick one thing you're waiting on and bring it honestly to God — out loud, in your own words. Commit to one daily rhythm for the next seven days. And take one step toward people: a Sunday, a group, a conversation with someone after service. You don't have to carry this season by yourself, and you don't have to wait for it to end before God meets you in it.

New here or looking for a group to walk through this season with? Plan a visit or reach out — we'd love to pray with you.