Still Asking When
One of the most unexpected and pleasant surprises of this season is the small, intentional community God has placed around me. A handful of women who make space on purpose. Scheduled calls. Dinner dates set in advance. Conversations that go for hours without either of us noticing. I did not see these friendships coming. I did not plan for them. But God knew I would need them, and I am grateful in a way that is hard to fully put into words.
Recently one of them came over. I cooked dinner, she brought snacks, and we talked into the wee hours of the night. One of the threads that kept coming back in our conversation was trusting God. Which, if we’re being honest, is a much easier topic at 11pm when you’re high on sugar and emotionally safe than it is at 7am with deadlines and bills due and the answer you’ve been praying for still hasn’t shown up.
We are both believers. And we are both believing for God to show up in our lives in specific ways. And we know that He will, because we know the Lord is faithful. Where we get stuck, we shared with one another, is the when.
How many of you can say the same? We believe God will provide, but we do not know when provision will come. We believe God will open doors, but we do not know when those doors will open. The gap between belief and tangible outcome is where most of our questions live.
During that conversation, I was reminded of something my dad said to me several weeks ago, something I wrote about in a previous devotional. He told me to try to enjoy the not knowing. That phrase has come back to me several times recently. Because waiting has a way of revealing how much we want clarity before we move forward. We want to know how things will unfold and when circumstances will change. We want reassurance that the season we are in will resolve soon.
And I have been sitting with a question underneath that for a few months now. Does wanting to know when mean I have not really let go? Is there still a part of me holding on, still calculating, still wanting some version of control even while I am genuinely saying, Lord, I’m good with whatever You want?
(Asking myself spiritual diagnostic questions at 2am is how I process things now. Highly recommend.)
Then this morning I read a devotional about the crossroads between pleasing God and trusting God. It stated that when pleasing God becomes the primary motivator, we start performing for God. And that over time that leads to feeling pressure to look spiritually strong rather than be honest about where we actually are.
The conclusion of the devotional was that what God wants from us is trust, and that pleasing Him flows from that. The scripture it leaned on was the one we all know: “without faith it is impossible to please Him” (Hebrews 11:6). It also referenced the passage in Romans 14:23 that says whatever is not of faith is sin. Faith, trust, and belief were all being folded into one idea. If you have it, pleasing God becomes the natural fruit of it.
I understood the heart of what it was saying. But I could not fully buy into it.
The devotional kept using faith and trust interchangeably. While I appreciated the call away from performance-based faith, replacing faith with trust misses something important.
First, Hebrews 11:6 does not say without trust it is impossible to please Him. It says faith. And that is not a small distinction.
Trust is relational. Trust is built over time. You cannot fully trust someone you do not yet know well. So if the standard becomes trust (instead of faith), what does that say to the woman who is new in her walk? Or the man who is in a season where trust is still being rebuilt after something painful? We have moved the pressure instead of removing it.
Hebrews 11 begins by defining faith clearly: “Now faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen” (Hebrews 11:1, CSB). The chapter then walks through the lives of people who acted on God’s word before they could see the outcome. By faith Abel offered a sacrifice. By faith Noah built the ark before rain had ever fallen. By faith Abraham left his homeland not knowing where he was going.
Each of these examples shows faith as a willingness to move on God’s word before the full picture is visible. But that willingness does not originate with us.
Faith is what God plants in us. It is the measure we have all been given. And as we walk with Him, as we hear His Word, and as we see Him come through, that faith grows.
Trust is different. Trust forms through history with God, through watching Him come through, through coming to know His character, His ways, and how He moves over time.
Faith is what God places in us. Trust is what grows as we actually walk with Him.
Which means it is entirely possible to have genuine faith in God while still being in the early stages of learning to trust Him in certain areas of life. You can believe He is faithful and still be discovering what that faithfulness actually feels like in your specific circumstances, your specific waiting, your specific when.
Those are not contradictions. That is simply what the journey looks like.
The Psalms contain repeated cries of faithful people asking God questions about His timing. David opens Psalm 13 with words that resonate deeply: “How long, Lord? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me?” (Psalm 13:1, CSB). And Habakkuk begins his book by asking, “How long, Lord, must I call for help and You do not listen?” (Habakkuk 1:2, CSB).
These words were preserved in Scripture as part of the faith story. Because questions about the when are not foreign to faith. And these are the words of people who were learning to trust God in the middle of not fully understanding Him.
So to answer the question I have been asking myself: wanting to know when does not mean that I have not let go and don’t trust God. It simply means I am human and in relationship with a God whose timeline is not always visible to me. Besides, letting go is not pretending I do not care about timing. Letting go is trusting that God’s timing is better than mine even when I cannot yet see why.
Waiting seasons often expose where trust is still forming. We may believe that God will act. Faith holds onto that. But when the timeline stretches longer than expected—and by “longer” I mean longer than the mental deadline we set without asking God if He agreed to it—we begin to see the places where trust is still being built.
The delay does not mean faith has disappeared. Often it means God is continuing to shape our relationship with Him through the very season we are trying to get out of.
God is not only working through the outcome we are praying for. He is also working through the process itself, forming our knowledge of His character in ways that cannot happen any other way. Trust that has only been tested in easy seasons is not the same as trust that has been shaped through difficulty, through waiting, or through unanswered questions.
And the when question only exists because you still believe that He will.
Reflect
Where in your life right now are you believing God will act but struggling with not knowing when?
Have you been treating faith and trust as the same thing? How does separating them change the pressure you have been putting on yourself?
What has this current waiting season revealed about where trust is still being formed in you?
Write
Be honest about your own “when, Lord?” question right now. Write it out without cleaning it up. Then write what you already know to be true about His character even in the middle of it.
Pray
God, You are faithful. I believe that. And I am still here, still waiting, still asking when. I trust You with what I cannot yet see. Yet help me to trust You even more. Thank You for not requiring me to pretend I have it all figured out. Please help me to stay honest with myself and honest with You. In Jesus ’name, Amen.
Return
Read Hebrews 11:1–12 slowly. Notice how many of the people listed acted before they could see the outcome of what God promised.
As you read, ask the Lord to help you identify one place in your own life where He may be inviting you to keep walking in faith, even while trust is still growing.
Sometimes what we may see as delay, God sees as destined. It’s His perfect timing. Learning how to trust in His timing, teaches us how to earnestly wait.