Stop Calling It Waiting on God: When Fear Delays Obedience

I keep asking for direction. Maybe I already have enough of it and just don’t like where it points

I have asked God to show me what to do more times than I can count.

For a long time I told myself that was faith. Praying it out. Waiting on Him. Being patient instead of rushing ahead of God’s timing. That sounds right. It even sounds spiritual. Say it in a small group and people nod. Nobody’s going to correct you for “waiting on the Lord.”

Here’s what I didn’t want to admit: some of that wasn’t waiting. It was stalling with better vocabulary.

I’ve prayed about a decision I already knew the answer to. Not because I needed more clarity — because I didn’t like the clarity I already had. Praying about it felt like doing something. It let me feel obedient while I stayed exactly where I was. I could tell myself “I’m still seeking God on this” for months, sometimes longer, when the truth was closer to “I already know, and I’m scared of what it costs me if I actually do it.” I’ve written before about stalling for a different reason — waiting for rock bottom instead of surrendering sooner; this is the fear-shaped version of that same standoff.

That’s a hard thing to admit about yourself in public. But if I don’t say it plainly, this is just another devotional about trusting God’s timing, and you’ve read fifty of those already. This one’s different because I’m not writing it from the other side, having figured it out. I’m writing it in the middle of catching myself do it — again — this year.

Waiting Is Not Always What It Looks Like

There’s a real kind of waiting on God. Scripture doesn’t treat it as a lesser thing. Israel stood at the edge of the Red Sea with Pharaoh’s army closing in behind them and open water in front of them, and Moses told them to stand still and watch God fight for them. That wasn’t stalling. That was a people with nowhere left to run, being told the deliverance wasn’t going to come from their own effort. Exodus 14:14 (NLT) says the Lord Himself would fight for them — they just needed to be still.

But notice what happens next in that story. God doesn’t leave them standing there. His very next words to Moses, in Exodus 14:15 (NLT), are almost sharp: “Why are you crying out to me? Tell the people to get moving!” The stillness had a purpose, and the purpose had an expiration date. Waiting on God was never meant to be the whole story. It was meant to be the part right before the moving.

That’s the piece I kept skipping. I’d get to the “be still” part and just stay there. Indefinitely. Because “be still” is a lot more comfortable than “start walking into water that hasn’t parted yet.”

Here’s how I’ve started telling the two apart in my own life, because they use the exact same language on the outside:

Real waiting feels like trust with an unknown outcome. You’ve already done what’s in front of you, and now you’re trusting God with the part that isn’t yours to control.

Fear dressed up as waiting feels like relief every time the deadline moves. If part of you is quietly glad you get to put it off another week, that’s not discernment. That’s avoidance wearing a prayer request.

Real waiting usually comes with peace, even when the outcome is uncertain. Fear dressed up as waiting usually comes with a low hum of guilt you’ve gotten good at ignoring.

Real waiting doesn’t mean you stop bringing the same question back to God. Genuine confusion is real, and He’s not offended by it. But if you keep asking the same question while quietly hoping He’ll give you a different answer, the problem may not be clarity anymore. It may be obedience.

God Rarely Hands You the Whole Road

Abraham didn’t get a map. God told him to leave his country, his people, his father’s household, and go to a land God would show him — not a land God had already named. Genesis 12:1 (NLT) doesn’t give him coordinates. It gives him a direction and a promise, and he had to move before he had the rest of the picture. He left Ur not knowing where he’d end up, how long it would take, or what he’d find when he got there.

I keep waiting for the whole road before I’ll take the first step. I want the destination confirmed, the risks eliminated, and some kind of guarantee that it’ll work out before I’ll move an inch. God rarely works that way. He gives you enough light for the step you’re on, not the whole path lit up in advance. Psalm 119:105 (NLT) calls His word a lamp for your feet — not a floodlight for the whole field. A lamp shows you where to step next. That’s it. That’s usually all you get, and it’s usually enough, if you’re willing to walk by what it shows you instead of demanding to see the whole field first.

Peter Was Out of the Boat Before He Understood Anything

Peter didn’t ask Jesus to explain the physics of walking on water before he climbed over the side of the boat. He asked for one word — “come” — and he went. Matthew 14:28-31 (NLT) tells it plainly: Peter got out of the boat and started walking on the water toward Jesus. He began to sink when he took his attention off Jesus, saw the strong wind and waves around him, and became terrified.

Peter had enough direction to take the step. Fear showed up after he started walking.

That’s usually the order with me too, and I think it’s usually the order for most of us. We want to understand first and obey second. God tends to reverse that. The clarity, the peace, the sense that “okay, this makes sense now” — that tends to show up somewhere around step three, not before step one. If you wait for the understanding before you move, you may be waiting for something that was only ever going to arrive after you started walking.

Faith For Real Life Started With a Step, Not a Plan

I thought about writing about my faith for years before I ever did anything about it. The hard part wasn’t the writing. The hard part was deciding to write about the real stuff — the struggles, the failures, the seasons I didn’t have answers for — and put my name on it.

That decision came loaded with questions I couldn’t answer in advance. Is anyone going to read this? Is anyone going to care? What happens when people I know see me being that honest in public?

Here’s what pushed me past the fear: when you’re in the middle of something hard, it feels like you’re the only one. Like nobody else has ever felt this stuck, this far from God, this ashamed to say it out loud. That feeling isn’t true, but it doesn’t feel untrue when you’re in it. I wanted Faith For Real Life to be the thing that tells people: you’re not the only one. Everybody goes through seasons. And you can hold onto your faith in the middle of one — even though that’s a lot easier said than actually lived out.

I didn’t get a guarantee any of it would work before I started. I got a long stretch of thinking and praying about it, and then a decision to move anyway. Brian and I launched not knowing if it would grow, go anywhere, or just be two guys writing into the void.

What I’ve gotten back, writing this for months now, is more than I expected going in. I understand my own faith better because I’ve had to sit with it long enough to put it into words. I relate to people differently than I used to. I’ve grown in ways that sitting quietly with my faith never would have pushed me to. And I still have a long way to go — this isn’t a testimony from the finish line, it’s one from somewhere in the middle of the road.

I don’t know exactly where Faith For Real Life is headed. But I’ve got a feeling it’s going somewhere good, and I’d rather find that out by moving than by waiting until I’m sure. The world has enough noise and enough garbage in it already. If writing something honest can add one true thing to that pile instead, that’s worth the fear of hitting publish.

The Next Step Is Usually Smaller Than You Think

We tend to picture obedience as some massive leap — quit the job, move the family, confront the relationship that’s been broken for years. Sometimes it is that big. Most of the time it isn’t. Most of the time it’s the phone call you’ve been avoiding for six months. The conversation you keep rehearsing in the shower instead of actually having. The apology that’s been sitting in your chest so long you’ve almost convinced yourself it doesn’t need to be said out loud.

Faith that never changes what you do is worth examining. James 1:22 (NLT) warns that hearing God’s word without doing what it says can become another way of deceiving yourself.

What Has God Already Told You to Do?

Here’s the question I’ve had to sit with, and it’s the one I’d ask you: what’s the next thing God has already made clear, that you’re still praying about instead of doing?

Not the ten-year plan. Not the thing you’re waiting for a sign about. The next thing. The one you already know, if you’re honest. The one that’s been sitting in the back of your mind long enough that you’ve stopped even calling it a decision — you just call it “something I’m still praying through.”

I can’t answer that for you. I can only tell you that I sat on mine for longer than I want to admit here, and calling it “waiting on God” let me feel obedient while I stayed exactly where I was.

If you’re in that same standoff with yourself right now, “When You Don’t Know How to Pray, Pray Anyway” might be a good place to keep going after this one.

A Closing Prayer

God, I’ve called it waiting when it was really fear. Forgive me for using prayer as a place to hide instead of a place to obey. Show me the next step — not the whole road, just the next step — and give me the courage to take it before I understand everything about where it leads. Amen.

If this hit somewhere uncomfortable, don’t just close the page and move on. Take five quiet minutes and ask God one question: “What have You already made clear that I’m still avoiding?” Sit with that question. Pray over it. Open Scripture. And if you already know the answer, stop asking God for the whole road. Take the next faithful step.