3 Prayers to Pray While You're Waiting

I’ll be the first to admit — I’m awful at waiting.

Yet even though I’m really bad at waiting for everything, I write a lot about waiting both because I think it’s integral to Christian spirituality — i.e. how to follow Jesus in real life — and because I need help to do it well!

In my last devotional, I shared about how 90% of life is waiting and I offered some theological reflections on why God so often invites us into the in between spaces.

Today, I want to get more practical, and offer three prayers that you can pray if you find yourself waiting on God today.

1. “Thank You”

In seasons of waiting, I’ve found it’s helpful to not just thank God religiously (because I’m supposed to) — but rather to thank God generously. In other words, I try not to just thank God with just detached words, but to thank Him with joyful celebration!

The root of the word for eucharist, or communion, is actually thanksgiving. Eucharisteo is a Greek word meaning “to give thanks.”

Taking communion is meant to be a celebration of thanksgiving for Jesus’s death and resurrection — and today I want to highlight that it’s incredibly significant that this gratitude takes the form of something tangible: bread and wine.

It’s almost as if God, through instigating a practice of gratitude through good food and drink, desires to form us to be the types of people who celebrate the goodness of God in creation.

Sometimes, in the tension of a waiting season, it can be hard to celebrate and thank God through the sheer joyfulness of living. It’s easier to wait for fulfillment to celebrate!

But today, I want to encourage us with a posture of eucharisteo, of thanking God joyfully with “bread and wine.” I want to encourage us to thank God by eating good bread, drinking good drinks, going on a walk, listening to joyful music and just enjoying the richness of the created world!

2. “Lord, teach me to pray.”

Often, God will use waiting seasons to form new prayers in our hearts.

Waiting seasons are “in between” seasons — something old has died, but something new has not yet been born.

God uses the space in between — the waiting season — to create the spaciousness in us to receive the gift of something new. Often, this looks like learning how to pray in new ways.

God uses waiting seasons to help us to detach from the old season and to create the prayer rhythms and habits that we will need for a new season.

Often, ways of prayer that worked in previous seasons just don’t have the same grace anymore.

I want to be clear here. Sometimes, when a prayer practice feels dry, there is an invitation to double down on our practices and lean into rhythms and disciplines. Other times, a grace in prayer running out is an invitation from God to learn new ways of prayer and relating to Him. It’s important to discern the difference!

I find it’s helpful in waiting seasons to simply pray, “Lord, teach me to pray.” God, teach me what prayer looks like in this season. Is there an invitation for me to lean into the discipline of the same routine, or to try something new?

Perhaps you are coming out of a season where there was a grace on spoken intercession, and now you are feeling a deeper invitation to silence. Perhaps you used to engage with God through singing, but you are feeling drawn towards more meditation on Scripture. Or perhaps you’ve thrived with spontaneous prayers, but maybe God is inviting you towards more liturgy or crafted prayer.

How is Jesus teaching you to pray in this new season? And, how is that rhythm of prayer helping you to detach from the old and make space for the new?

3. “Let it be with me according to Your word.”

This is Mary’s prayer when the angel tells her that she is going to be pregnant with Jesus. Instead of fighting or resisting God’s will, she says “yes” and gives us a beautiful picture of what it looks like to surrender to God.

Ultimately, waiting seasons are meant to take us to a place of fresh surrender.

Waiting is an invitation to trust God, and to let go of our trust in everything else — control, our plans and ideals, or anything else that we might be trusting in other than God.

Just as Jesus said, “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it” (Matthew 16:25, NIV).

We spend so much time in waiting seasons because this is where God always wants to take us — to the cross.

Because of this, and because of my own resistance to dying and letting go of the “old” (or my tendency to try to rush to the new without adequately waiting on God’s timing), I find it’s helpful in waiting seasons to pray with Mary: “Let it be with me according to Your word.”

In other words, “God, get me to place where I am completely surrendered to Your will.”

True surrender is always a gift, and we’re invited to lean in during waiting seasons to receive that gift.

So, I’d love to invite us to pray today:

• Begin by taking some deep breaths in and out. Perhaps as you breathe in pray “Come,” and as you breathe out pray “Holy Spirit.”

• Once you feel settled, begin to identify which of these three prayers resonates with the invitation you feel from the Spirit in this season.

• Then, I’d invite you to turn the prayer into a breath prayer. As you breathe in, pray “Thank” and as you breathe out, pray “You.” Or, as you breathe in, pray “Let it be with me,” and as you breathe out, pray “according to your word.”

For anyone who finds themselves in a waiting season, I am praying with and for you! Feel free to hit “reply” and let me know if there is any way that I can support you in prayer.