As men, we can spend significant portions of our lives waiting. We wait for progress at work, financial stability, a business opportunity, resolution to a difficult situation, restoration in a relationship, an answered prayer, or simply for life to become a little easier. Because our attention naturally settles on the destination, we measure the season by what has not happened: When will this change? When will this door open? When will I finally get there? Yet Scripture repeatedly draws our attention not only to what eventually happens around a person, but to what happens within that person along the way. James tells us that testing can produce perseverance and that perseverance can mature us (James 1:2–4). So there is another question worth asking while we wait: What am I becoming?

David gives us a powerful picture of this. Samuel anointed him while he was still a young shepherd (1 Samuel 16:13), but the throne did not immediately follow the oil. Between anointing and kingship came ordinary service, danger, injustice, uncertainty and years in which David could not control the outcome. At one point Saul entered the very cave where David was hiding, and David’s men effectively told him, This is your opportunity (1 Samuel 24:4). David could have removed the man standing between him and the throne, yet he refused to force by his own hand what he believed God would determine. Waiting was not simply empty space between promise and fulfilment; it revealed and shaped the man who would eventually carry the responsibility. We should be careful not to assume that every delay in our own lives has been deliberately sent by God to teach us something, but whatever the reason for the wait, it does not have to be spiritually wasted.

Waiting, however, does not automatically make us better. The same season that produces perseverance in one man can produce bitterness, envy or desperation in another. Abraham received God’s promise but, after years without its fulfilment, he and Sarah tried to produce an answer through Hagar (Genesis 16). Saul was instructed to wait for Samuel, but when the pressure increased and the people began scattering, he took matters into his own hands (1 Samuel 13:8–14). Waiting can tempt us to force doors, compromise principles, compare ourselves with men whose lives appear to be moving faster, or accept something we once knew was wrong simply because we have grown tired of waiting. James therefore does not merely say that trials happen; he says, “Let perseverance finish its work.” There is something we must allow God to develop in us. The important question is not simply how long have I been waiting? It is also what attitudes, habits and decisions is this wait producing in me?

And our waiting rarely affects only us. Financial uncertainty can influence how a man speaks to his wife; disappointment at work can follow him through the front door; an ambition that seems continually delayed can leave him physically present with his children but mentally somewhere in the future. We can quietly begin telling ourselves, When I get the promotion… when the business succeeds… when the finances improve… when we move… then I will relax; then I will have more time; then things will be better. But our families are living with us now. Our children may know nothing about the opportunity we are waiting for, but they experience the patience or impatience, peace or anxiety, presence or distraction that the waiting is producing in Dad. Our wives may share the same uncertainty while also experiencing how we carry it. We should therefore be careful not to postpone being the husbands and fathers God calls us to be until circumstances become easier. Our families should not have to wait for us to reach tomorrow before receiving the best of the man God is forming today.

The destination matters, but it must not be allowed to consume the present. Biblical waiting is not inactivity. While David waited, he still served, worshipped, fought, protected others, made decisions and learned to depend upon God. Likewise, we should continue working, providing, planning, applying, building, loving, parenting, serving and praying while we wait. Psalm 27:14 says, “Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.” There will naturally be times when our prayer is, “Lord, when will You change this?” But perhaps alongside that prayer we need another: “Lord, while this remains unchanged, what needs to change in me?” We may not control when an opportunity comes, when another person changes or when circumstances improve, but by God’s grace the waiting need not be wasted. We often ask what God is doing about the thing we are waiting for; perhaps we should also ask what He is doing in us while we wait.