Ari: Waiting on the Lord

-By Ari

In December of 2024, my husband Chad and I received an unexpected and miraculous call from God to move to Hamburg, Germany (that’s a whole story of its own, ask us about it if you haven’t heard it yet!). The only other thing we were able to discern was that this was not meant to be an Abraham calling (get out of your father’s house and go to a land I’ll show you), but a Noah calling (build the boat, I’ll bring the rain). We started building the boat as best we knew how by spiritually, socially, and physically preparing to move internationally.

In the meantime, God was moving around us. Soon after the call, He upended my company’s leadership to promote me to director of software, about five years ahead of schedule - exactly the promotion I needed to qualify for an EU visa type that would allow me to bring my spouse with me to Germany. This, combined with the fact that both Chad’s and my last jobs were provided to us supernaturally, led us to suspect God was going to provide the opportunity to move by giving me a job offer from a company in Hamburg.

Near the end of 2025, we felt like it was time for me to quit my job. When we hit the new year, we got a sense that the rain was coming: that we should start actively looking for the movement of the Lord. I prepared my resume, advertised that I was looking for work in Hamburg, and waited. I tried some practice interviews with American companies, but got convicted that I shouldn’t, so I stopped taking the interviews and just waited for God to provide the opportunity. It has been six months of joblessness since we started that wait.

This is what I really want to talk about: our experience of waiting on the Lord.

In a lot of stories through the Bible, people are called to wait on the Lord. Sometimes this is a general exhortation to trust in Him (”Wait on the Lord; be of good courage and He will strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the Lord!” - Psalm 27:14), but often waiting comes after being given a specific promise from God. Abraham waits 14 years after being promised a son before Sarah bears Isaac; Joseph waits 27 years after seeing a vision of his brothers bowing down before they bow down to him in Egypt; the Israelites wait over 40 years after God promises them a land flowing with milk and honey before they set foot in it.

Those are long periods of waiting. And none of them had paths that looked very much like forward progress: on the contrary, each person given a promise hit a period so dark, so long, so hopeless, that they begged God to just let them compromise. “’Oh that Ishmael might live before You!’”, Abraham cried in Genesis 17:18, after God renewed His promise of a son from his 90-year-old wife. “’Would it not be better for us to return to Egypt?’” Israel asks in Numbers 14:3 when they hear of the giants on the other side of the border in the land they were promised. “’If only we had been willing to live beyond the Jordan!’” Joshua moans after Israel is defeated by an easy foe in Joshua 7:7, right after the great victory over Jericho.

When God gives us a promise, we may expect Him to deliver, initially, but as the period of radio silence lengthens and the odds get longer, the certainty fades and the questions set in: yes, God said He would do this, but wouldn’t He expect me to participate in making that happen? What if I lose the reward because I was unwilling to work for it? Yes, God said He would give Abraham a son, but if Sarah’s barren, doesn’t that mean that God has closed that door and Abraham needs to try something else?

When God’s promise doesn’t seem to be anywhere on the horizon, the temptation always seems to be to take matters into our own hands. “God helps those who help themselves” is nowhere in the Bible, yet I’ve heard it quoted in the church more than most bible verses. That was my instinct when I wanted to interview with American companies: yes, I believe God can get me a job, but wouldn’t it help if I had some interview practice under my belt before He sends one my way?

But hustling to complete God’s promises for Him is not His way: in fact, isn’t taking matters into our own hands out of fear and impatience a perfect definition of sin? Instead, God wants us to go all in on His power and not our own. He spells this out explicitly for Gideon in Judges 7:2 when He asks him to send the bulk of his army home: “’The people who are with you are too many for Me to hand Midian over to them, otherwise Israel would become boastful, saying, “My own power has saved me.”’” God conquers Midian, not the army; God makes Abraham and Sarah parents, not a legal loophole from having concubines; God takes us to Germany, not my interview skills.

Waiting on the Lord is very much like getting on a train and taking a seat. Yes, you are sitting and doing nothing, but nobody could say that you aren’t getting anywhere - it’s just that the progress comes not from the passenger, but from the conductor. The worst thing we can do is get off the train God has prepared for us and start walking out of a need to do it ourselves. The very best thing, and indeed, the only thing we can do, is to sit still and wait until God carries us to where we need to go.

And in the same way that holding a plank is technically staying still and doing nothing, we have found waiting on God’s promises to be a very active spiritual exercise. Maintaining hope requires a discipline of prayer; maintaining faith requires a discipline of action. As James says, “faith is working with [our] works, and as a result of the works, faith was perfected” (James 2:22). This has proved very true in our experience: when we sell our possessions in preparation for an as-of-yet unscheduled international move, when we share our incomplete testimony with our believing and unbelieving friends alike, when we put our money where our mouth is and risk foolishness and folly for Christ, our faith is strengthened and perfected.

Doing physical, tangible actions of obedience reminds our hearts of the reality of God’s promise. They act as an earthly commitment to following His path for us, a daily investment of our time and resources. And God has also used every ounce of our obedience and every moment of my unemployed time to train us and hone us for what’s to come. In the same way that Joseph needed those 27 years to build the right skills and the right heart posture to lead Egypt, God has been equipping us in this season of waiting by strengthening our prayer life, pruning away our fear of failure, healing our families, and deepening our friendships. He is building us a firm foundation - what He’ll build on top of it, we don’t yet know.

Two weeks ago, after six months of no visible movement, I received a cold call from an HR representative working for a company in Hamburg. She asked me if I would be interested in a full-time, in-person job at her company - no other details given. I said, yes, I would! Now I’m waiting to hear back, as we double down on selling our stuff in preparation to move. Maybe this is the call we’ve been waiting for, or maybe this is the cloud on the horizon to warn us to start loading up the boat - either way, we know that God has us in the palm of His hand. Whatever it is He has for us, we know it’s better than anything we’d come up with ourselves.

x