Failure May Not Be the Cause When You Feel “Stuck”

There’s a lie I’ve been believing about God lately. It’s a sneaky one for sure — and perhaps you’ve even believed it yourself. When I find myself stuck¹, and I think of the reasons why that might be, it often sounds like this: I must not have learned my lesson yet.

In other words, I think of those seasons of the in-between — or the aimless limbo between one life stage and the next — as a level to pass or as a graduation. And the longer I’m stuck, the more I assume that something has gone wrong. Or, sometimes, that I have done something wrong.

And so I make excuses for myself: I must not have learned my lesson yet…I’ll get married when I figure out how to be content with who I am… Once I prove myself at work, I’ll get the recognition I deserve…I’ve been going to counseling for six months, but my anxiety is not getting better…Why hasn’t my family come to know Jesus yet? What am I missing?

There’s a lot of weight in those questions. But I think that’s where this sneaky lie has taken root. Let’s cut to the heart of it: we think we are missing something because we believe we’re in control.² Fortunately, this is simply not true.

It’s the same lie that has warped those all-too-familiar passages you see on coffee mugs or cross-stitch pillows in a Hobby Lobby. The most famous of all is “Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” (Psalm 37:4, ESV)

It has the hallmarks of those conditional statements we love to see in Scripture. But it’s a very transactional way to look at God: If I delight in the Lord, then I will get what I want. And let’s be honest, I feel entitled to the desires of my heart. Don’t you? And when I’m not delighting properly, it must mean that either I did something to bar me from getting it, or worse, God is holding out on me.

It’s a very transactional way to look at God: If I delight in the Lord, then I will get what I want.

But that’s how we can recognize it for the lie that it is. Because that doesn’t sound like the God I know. We know from Scripture that we are God’s beloved children and that He has good gifts for His children.³ What’s more, God actually delights in us!⁴ 

I want to challenge us to debunk the idea that during a waiting period, you’re stuck there because you haven’t learned your lesson yet. I think that not only cheapens the season that you’re in — good or bad — but it also distorts the reality of God’s goodness.

God isn’t withholding anything from you. He could be protecting you, sustaining you, waiting with you, or a million other things. If we believe that God’s best for us is truly best, then trying to figure out the “why” behind our waiting won’t bring us closer to God. But delighting in His presence will. Because when our hearts are aligned with our Father, there’s nothing that could be more satisfying. 

Waiting isn’t a punishment. It’s not a test to pass or a level to beat. And your current season isn’t proof that you’re failing or that God’s holding out on you. That idea, that we have to “learn our lesson” before we’re allowed to move forward, is sneakier than we think.

It sounds like spiritual maturity, and it can even masquerade as humility. But if we’re not careful, it can mask something much darker: the belief that we’re disqualified from God’s goodness. That His love is conditional. That our story is on hold until we earn our next chapter. But Scripture tells a different story.

God’s presence is not reserved for those who “graduate” from hard seasons—it’s available to us in the middle of them. Right here. Right now. And when we stop striving to write the ending ourselves, we’re free to lean into the story He’s already writing.

So instead of asking, “What lesson do I need to learn?” what if we simply said, “Here I am”?

Not “Here’s my plan.”

Not “Here’s how I’m fixing it.”

Just “Here I am.”

Because even in the waiting, He is working. And even here, He is with us.

^[1] In “Christianese,” a waiting season.

^[2] A related idea: “And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?” Matthew 6:26, ESV. Anxiety, I think, is the first cousin of control. At its heart, a lack of control is what causes us to worry in the first place. But that may need to be explored in a different article!

^[3] See Matthew 7:9–11 and James 1:17 on God giving good gifts.

^[4] Psalm 139 anyone? Not to mention taking it back to the very beginning in Genesis 2 when God proclaimed His creation of humanity as very good.