Has God Forgotten Me? How to Keep Faith While You Wait

You know what’s worse than God being silent?

Some of the deepest pain you will ever feel in your life is not the pain of not hearing the voice of God. The Holy Spirit wants to speak to you, and hearing His voice isn't actually the hard part. The absolute deepest pain is hearing from God clearly, getting a prophetic promise, and then having to wait on what He told you.

You get the word, you see the vision, you feel the confirmation in your spirit, and then… crickets. Nothing happens when you want it to, or how you want it to. You start to wonder if you heard Him at all. You start Googling your symptoms, trying to biohack your life, and plotting out your own strategies to force the promise to come to pass.

God will give you a promise, but time will test it, demons will resist it, and circumstances will contradict it.

If you feel like you are standing in the gap between a word from God and its fulfillment, I want to teach you how to survive the waiting room.

Why You Can’t Force God’s Hand

If you grew up in the charismatic church, you were probably taught a very specific version of the Acts chapter 2 Pentecost story. We preach that the 120 disciples went to the upper room, they got totally unified, they prayed harder than ever, and their intense unity provoked the Holy Spirit to fall.

But that is not what the text actually says.

The Bible says, "When the day of Pentecost arrived...". The Jewish people were celebrating Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks, a time when any work requiring creation was strictly prohibited. They were commanded to rest from their own creative works, rest from their strategizing, and rest from planning their own future. They didn't pray the Holy Spirit down by earning it. It was quite simply a date already marked on God's calendar.

You don’t have to provoke a promise that God has already scheduled.

God had a day on the calendar where He said He was releasing the fullness of His Spirit. The unity in the upper room wasn't to prepare God; it was to prepare them so that when they received the promise, they had the character to keep it. "It was on God's calendar when Pentecost was going to happen and it didn't matter how hard you prayed... it was going to happen when he planned it".

Process is Directly Connected to Fullness

God brings us through a grueling process so that we can step into fullness.

I traveled the world telling the story of my mother, a single mom from Hammond, Indiana, who I prophesied would be used by God as a preacher. Shortly after, she developed a debilitating disease in her esophagus that worsened every single year for 25 years. Decades went by. I knew what God told me, but the reality looked like a deteriorating esophagus.

Then, one day, her doctor said the disease was completely gone. She was supernaturally healed. But why did it take 25 years? Because at the exact moment she was healed, a massive global movement was forming in the church where major leaders were crying out, "Let the Esters arise!" to mobilize female voices in ministry. If God had healed my mother in year five or year fifteen, it would not have fulfilled the full, global weight of the prophecy.

Nobody celebrates the process, but the process is exactly what prepares you for the fullness.

People call you crazy when you stay faithful in the process. When my mom lived in Hammond, she found a $100 bill in a thrift store purse and chose to sow it as a seed to Pastor Jentezen Franklin's ministry. Twenty-five years later, Jentezen Franklin preached at my stadium conference just 30 miles from where we lived. If you buy the whole bar a round of drinks, culture calls you generous; but if you sow money into a local church, they call you crazy and say you are in a cult. I don't care what the world thinks—I am an investor in the kingdom of God, and spiritual seeds appreciate in value over time just like buying Apple stock in the 70s.

Your Prison Must Be Temporary

We assume the Christian life is about avoiding suffering, but real discipleship is learning how to worship and give when you are the one in the most need.

I’ll be really vulnerable with you: my natural, baseline personality is not the faith-filled guy screaming on a microphone. My family has multiple generations of depressed people. I am emo, and depression is a very comfortable state for me. God had to teach me how to break the spirit of suicide and mental fog off my own mind before I could travel the world breaking it off others.

When you get hit with depression, confusion, and spiritual attacks while you wait, look at Paul and Silas. They were locked in a physical jail, but they started singing in the midnight hour. Why? Because suffering turns to joy when you remind yourself of the promise.

If you have unfulfilled promises inside of you, your current prison is only temporary.

If God told you that you were going to write a book, start a business, or see your kid get sober, and it hasn't happened yet—guess what? You must not be dying anytime soon. Your life is not over because there is still a promise demanding fulfillment. As Pastor Mike Signorelli says, "Suffering turns into joy when you remind yourself of the promise.".

Do Not Leave Jerusalem Too Soon

In Luke 24:49, Jesus gave a final command: stay in the city of Jerusalem until you are clothed with power from on high.

The biggest mistake you can make is leaving Jerusalem too soon. You want to leave your local church because there’s a problem, but God was going to fix it if you just waited. You want to walk away from a broken marriage, but if you stay in Jerusalem, God can turn a broken marriage into a marriage ministry.

To get to the old temple in Jerusalem, you had to walk up staggered stairs that were intentionally built long, short, long, short. The architecture literally broke your stride to force you to walk slower. God will deliberately slow you down. He will put you in a holding pattern to save you from yourself.

When we were planting our church in Indiana, we started in a venue in Hobart that smelled like beer. But because we stayed planted, God allowed me to step in and purchase a multi-million-dollar building in cash, with no capital campaign, to heal the orphan spirit of people who had been robbed by a previous pastor. God is a promise keeper.

Stop asserting your own control. Stop trying to make it happen in your own strength.

Here is my challenge to you today: release your timeline and wait for His date. The only qualification to receive the promise is not your deep understanding, it is your blind obedience. Are you going to be in the room when the calendar date arrives? Stand your ground. Rebuke the tormenting spirits of depression and confusion trying to force you to quit. Your weeping may endure for the night, but joy is coming in the morning.

If this resonated, watch the full series at https://youtu.be/8uCXYNAbN8g

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