Maybe God Isn’t Withholding From You. He’s Preparing You.

There are seasons when you know God is doing something, but you can't quite tell what He's doing.

You've been stretched. You've had to make difficult decisions. Relationships have changed. Doors you expected to open didn't. You've been confronted with places in yourself that needed to grow, and perhaps you've found yourself revisiting lessons you thought you already learned.

Meanwhile, the thing you've been praying for still hasn't happened.

It's easy in seasons like these to wonder whether God is withholding something from you. But what if the delay isn't only about what you're waiting for?

What if God is preparing you to carry it?

We often pray for increase without considering the capacity increase requires. We pray for greater influence, better relationships, more resources, new opportunities, expanded businesses, answered prayers and open doors. Yet every answered prayer eventually becomes something we have to steward.

The opportunity requires discernment. The relationship requires maturity. The influence requires character. The resources require stewardship. The open door requires the capacity to walk through it without losing what God developed in us while we waited.

Sometimes God changes our circumstances. Sometimes He develops us so that when our circumstances change, we're ready.

Preparation Doesn't Always Look Like Progress

One of the most difficult things about preparation is that it doesn't always feel productive while you're living through it.

Some seasons produce visible fruit. Other seasons produce the person who will eventually be able to carry the fruit.

Think about how much of your life only made sense in retrospect. A relationship ended, and years later you understood what it taught you. A door closed, only for you to recognize later what it protected you from or redirected you toward. You developed a skill because circumstances required it, never realizing how essential that skill would become in another season.

You walked through something you never would have chosen, and eventually discovered that it gave you wisdom, compassion or language you couldn't have acquired from information alone.

What felt like a collection of unrelated experiences eventually began to look like formation.

I've seen this enough in my own life to trust that God knows how to take seemingly disconnected years and reveal the thread running through them.

There are things you simply cannot understand while you're still inside them.

That's why Hebrews 10:36 speaks about the need for perseverance after doing the will of God. Perseverance doesn't always mean pushing harder or making something happen. Sometimes perseverance looks like staying.

Staying faithful when you don't have all the answers. Staying surrendered when you would rather control the outcome. Staying attentive when you don't see evidence that anything is changing. Staying close to God instead of abandoning the process because you can't yet see where it's leading.

There is a perseverance that isn't striving.

It's staying.

Your Last Missed Opportunity Wasn't Your Last Opportunity

Preparation also changes the way we think about missed opportunities.

Sometimes we look backward and become convinced that that was the door.

If I had recognized it. If I had been ready. If I had made a different decision. If I hadn't been afraid. If circumstances had been different.

And now it's gone.

Ecclesiastes 9:11 reminds us that “time and chance happeneth to them all.” One missed opportunity does not mean you've missed your entire future.

Maybe you weren't ready then.

Maybe you didn't recognize what was in front of you.

Maybe circumstances outside your control closed the door.

Maybe you made a decision you wouldn't make today.

Or maybe you've simply developed wisdom you didn't have then.

God is not limited by the opportunity you missed.

Another opportunity may come through a conversation you didn't expect, a relationship you couldn't have orchestrated, a new invitation, a fresh idea or an entirely different door. Sometimes you'll even encounter an opportunity that resembles something from your past—but this time, you'll meet it as a different person.

You know more now.

You discern differently now.

You have greater capacity now.

The question isn't only whether another opportunity will come. It's whether you'll recognize and be prepared to steward the opportunities that are in front of you now.

If You're Asking God for More, Prepare for More

Faith doesn't have to manufacture outcomes, but faith does prepare.

If you're asking God for greater influence, allow Him to deepen your character.

If you're asking for better relationships, become someone capable of recognizing and participating in healthy ones.

If you're asking for greater resources, become a faithful steward of what is already in your hands.

If you're asking for opportunity, develop the discernment to recognize the right opportunity rather than simply saying yes to every open door.

If you're asking God to use your life, start paying attention to what He has already been developing through it.

This is where capacity becomes so important.

Can you carry greater responsibility without living overwhelmed?

Can you experience greater visibility without becoming controlled by people's approval or criticism?

Can you steward more resources without allowing those resources to possess you?

Can you walk through an extraordinary opportunity while maintaining the ordinary practices that keep you grounded?

Can you receive what you prayed for without losing the intimacy with God you developed while you were praying for it?

We can spend years asking God to increase what's around us while He's developing what's within us.

And perhaps that internal development isn't evidence that you're behind.

Perhaps it's evidence that you're being prepared.

Your Life Has Been Leaving Clues

There is another part of preparation that's easy to overlook: what God has already taught you through your own life.

There are things you know because you lived them.

There is wisdom you paid for with experience. There are problems you recognize because you've lived close enough to them to see what other people miss. There are things you've survived, built, studied, questioned, overcome and encountered God through that have given you language you didn't have ten years ago.

Pay attention to those things.

What keeps returning?

What do people consistently trust you to help them navigate?

What have you lived long enough to embody rather than merely understand intellectually?

What burden, problem, idea or message have you been unable to shake?

What has God been saying through your life?

Not everything you've experienced needs to become a platform, business, book or public message. But everything God has entrusted to you is worthy of stewardship.

Sometimes we keep asking God for direction while overlooking the clues He's been leaving throughout our lives.

A Better Question Than “When?”

If you're in a season of waiting right now, perhaps the question isn't only, God, when is it coming?

There may be another question worth asking:

Am I ready to carry it?

Ask God to show you what He's been developing in you. Ask Him what this season is preparing you for. Ask where your capacity needs to grow. Ask for the discernment to recognize the doors He opens and the courage to walk through them.

And then don't despise the unfinished places.

Philippians 1:6 reminds us that the One who began a good work in us will carry it through to completion. You don't have to see the entire picture to trust that God is still working. Silence doesn't necessarily mean inactivity. A closed door doesn't mean there will never be another one. A season without visible fruit isn't necessarily a season without growth.

You may discover that what you thought was God making you wait was also God making you ready.

And one day, something that once seemed completely disconnected may suddenly make sense.

You'll recognize why you needed that lesson. Why you developed that skill. Why you couldn't take everyone with you. Why that particular burden never left. Why you had to become stronger there, wiser here and more discerning somewhere else.

You'll look at what God has placed in your hands and realize:

He was preparing me for this.

God knows how to finish what He starts.