Trusting God When Waiting on His Promises Feels Impossible

Blog by the Unhurried Living Team

Trusting God while you wait for something you desperately want is one of the hardest postures a soul can hold. It is easy to trust when the answer arrives quickly; it is far harder when the wait stretches into years with no resolution in sight. This kind of trusting God does not mean pretending the ache away. It means learning to keep your hands open toward a God who has not forgotten you, even when the silence feels heavy.

This is the honest terrain Gem Fadling walks through on this episode of the Unhurried Living podcast. She returns to the story of Abraham and Isaac, a story she has carried personally since her own years of infertility. What she offers is not a tidy resolution but a real, lived account of what it costs to keep trusting when God's timing does not match your own. By the end, you will have language for your own waiting and a gentler way to hold your unmet longings before God.

What Does Surrendering to God Really Look Like?

Surrendering to God is not a single dramatic moment. It is often a slow, repeated opening of the hands toward something you never wanted to release. In Genesis 22, Abraham is asked to surrender the very promise he waited a lifetime to receive: his son Isaac. God had already fulfilled an impossible promise through Isaac's birth, and now Abraham was invited into a second, deeper act of surrendering to God with no explanation offered in advance.

Gem Fadling names how disorienting this kind of surrendering to God can feel. It rarely comes with clarity. It usually comes as an invitation into the unknown, asking you to trust a character you cannot fully see the plan of. Abraham's obedience did not erase the weight of the request; it simply proved what was already true in his heart before God ever asked.

Surrendering to God, in this sense, is less about performance and more about posture. It is choosing, again and again, to keep your hands open rather than clenched around what you cannot control. If there is one dream, one relationship, or one outcome you have been gripping tightly, consider naming it honestly before God this week, even without resolving it.

You do not have to figure this out alone, and you can explore it here to learn about deeper soul care training for the road ahead.

Why Is Waiting on God So Hard to Trust?

Waiting on God is rarely passive, even though it can feel like nothing is happening. In the sermon, Sarah grows tired of waiting on God's promise of a child and takes matters into her own hands, bringing Hagar into the story. The consequences ripple outward, a reminder that impatience in the waiting often complicates what God is already doing.

Gem Fadling's own story reflects this same tension. She describes years of trying to build a family, a miscarriage, and an evening at church when her frustration became too much to sit through quietly. Waiting on God, for her, was not calm or composed; it was raw, tearful, and honest, unfolding on an ordinary drive home while a worship song played through her car speakers.

That honesty matters. Waiting on God does not require you to fake peace you do not feel, and Gem Fadling is careful to affirm that anger and grief have a legitimate place in that waiting. The Psalms themselves are full of this same unfiltered emotion directed at God. This week, try naming your own waiting out loud, to God or to a trusted friend, instead of carrying it silently.

When you are ready to talk with someone, connect here with a spiritual director for real presence in your waiting.

How Can Faith and Trust Grow Through Unanswered Prayer?

Faith and trust rarely grow in the moments when everything is resolved. They grow in the space between the asking and the answer, which is exactly where Gem Fadling found herself that night in her car. As tears fell, she recognized that her inability to get pregnant had begun quietly reshaping her relationship with God, and she faced a question she could not avoid: was anything more important to her than God himself.

That question became the hinge point for her faith and trust. She did not resolve her sadness by force; she released her dream honestly, describing a felt sense of freedom even amid the unresolved ache. Faith and trust, in her account, are not the absence of longing but the willingness to keep loving God even when the longing remains unmet.

The episode does not rush toward a neat ending, though Gem Fadling later became a mother to three sons. She is careful to say not every story resolves this way, and that the trust asked of us does not depend on the outcome we hope for. Consider writing down one honest sentence about what you are still waiting for, and bring it to God exactly as it is.

What Does It Look Like to Surrender Your Deepest Desires to God?

Surrendering your deepest desires to God often runs against instincts that feel protective and reasonable. Culture tells us to hold tightly to what we want and fight for control over outcomes. Scripture, and this episode in particular, tells a different story about where lasting peace actually comes from.

Surrendering your deepest desires to God is not resignation. It is a redirection of hope toward the One who has proven faithful before, even when the current chapter feels unresolved.

You Are Not Alone in the Waiting

Whatever you are holding onto tonight, whether it is a ministry that feels stalled, a relationship that hasn't healed, or a dream that has quietly gone unspoken for years, this ache is not a sign that something is wrong with your faith. Leaders across 145 nations listen to this podcast each week, many of them carrying the exact same unresolved longing in the middle of their calling. You are part of a much wider company of tired, faithful people learning to open their hands one small step at a time.

There is a place for you at Unhurried Living, whether you are just beginning to name what you are waiting for or you have carried it for years. This community exists for leaders who are done pretending everything is fine and ready for something more honest.

God Will Provide, Even in the Waiting

Gem Fadling's story does not end with every question answered, and neither will most of ours. What she offers instead is a steady confidence that God will provide, not always on our timeline, but always in keeping with His character. Trusting God through the wait is less about getting the outcome we want and more about becoming the kind of person who can hold both grief and hope in the same open hands.

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Start with a gentler daily rhythm and get started here with the Unhurried Daily Email, a free 40-day devotional built for exactly this kind of waiting.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How do I trust God when waiting feels impossible? A: Trusting God in impossible waiting often begins with honesty rather than resolution. Gem Fadling's story shows that naming your frustration, even angrily, can be part of learning to trust rather than a betrayal of it. Trust tends to grow slowly, through repeated small acts of opening your hands instead of gripping the outcome.

Q: How far would I go in sacrificing what I love? A: Abraham's story raises this question without offering an easy formula. The episode suggests that the length we are willing to go often matches the depth of trust we have already built with God over time. It is less about a single dramatic sacrifice and more about ongoing willingness.

Q: Is anything more important to me than God? A: This question became the turning point in Gem Fadling's own story of infertility and grief. She did not answer it with certainty right away, but sitting with it honestly helped her recognize where her hope had quietly shifted. It remains a personal question meant for reflection, not judgment.

Q: Is it okay to feel angry with God? A: Yes, and the episode points directly to the Psalms as evidence that anger toward God has a long, honest tradition within faith. Gem Fadling is clear that expressing real emotion is part of healing rather than a sign of weak faith. What matters most is bringing that anger to God rather than burying it.

Q: What does it mean to surrender to God's timing? A: Surrendering to God's timing means releasing the expectation that your desired outcome must arrive on your schedule to be trusted as good. In the episode, this surrender does not erase grief but sits alongside it. It is an ongoing posture rather than a one-time decision.