Your Season of Waiting Has a Purpose | Kingdom LeadHERship

Host Stacy Jo welcomes listeners to Kingdom LeadHERship, a podcast for women pursuing kingdom purpose with faith and intention, and addresses the woman who has already said yes to her calling but feels stuck because the fruit isn’t visible and progress seems slow. 

She explains that waiting is not punishment, abandonment, or wasted time, citing Habakkuk 2:3 and Psalm 27:14, and shares that God uses waiting seasons to deepen roots, refine and remove impurities, align circumstances and relationships, and build trust in Him rather than outcomes. 

She offers practical guidance to lead well while waiting: keep showing up to today’s assignment, protect time with God, refuse comparison, and speak the vision regularly. 

This week's Kingdom Challenge: Write the vision God gave you — not a business plan, not a strategy document, just the vision in your own words. Read it out loud as a declaration. Date it. Keep it somewhere you'll see it. The vision is worth protecting, and you are worth reminding.

Reflection Questions:

1. What narrative have you been telling yourself about what your waiting season means — and what does God say about it?
2. Looking back at previous seasons of waiting, what did God build in you that you can see now?
3. What is one specific way you can lead more faithfully within the season you are in right now, even before the breakthrough comes?

00:00 Introduction

00:47 Episode Begins

05:28 What Waiting Is Not

08:10 4 Things God Does in the Waiting

12:03 How to Lead Well While Waiting

15:36 A Word for the Faithful

16:55 Reflection Questions & Kingdom Challenge

18:22 Closing Prayer

20:19 Outro

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Transcript

Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Kingdom Leadership, the podcast for women pursuing kingdom purpose with faith and intention. This is a space for clarity, encouragement, and conviction. It's a place to pause, refocus, and realign your leadership with what God is asking of you. Whether you're leading in business, ministry, your home, or your community, this podcast is here to remind you that your calling is intentional. Your obedience matters, and your leadership is meant to be aligned with God, not carried in your own strength. I'm your host, Stacey Joe, and together we are leaning into leadership that is whole, obedient, and rooted in purpose. Let's get started.

Episode Begins

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Welcome back to the Kingdom Lead Horship Podcast. I am really glad that you're here for this one. And as always, thank you so much for tuning in. Going back to last week, we talked about the woman who is waiting until she feels ready before she steps into her kingdom assignment. And I hope that that episode gave her the push that she needed to take the next obedience step. But today I want to speak to a different woman. She's not waiting because she is afraid. She's not holding back because she does not feel ready. She has said yes. She's stepped out, she's doing the work, she's showing up faithfully, and nothing seems to be moving. The vision is clear, that calling has been confirmed, and the obedience that she has stepped into is real. But the fruit is not yet visible. The doors don't seem to be opening the way she thought they would. The growth is slower than she expected. The breakthrough that she had been believing for feels further away today than it did six months ago. And she's in a season of waiting. And it is one of the hardest places a kingdom leader can find herself. If that's you today, this episode is for you. And I want you to know that before we go any further, the waiting is not evidence that God has forgotten you. It's not evidence that you missed it or that the calling was wrong. In the kingdom, waiting is not wasted. I'm going to repeat that because I think it's so important to remember that the waiting is not wasted in the kingdom. Waiting is formative. And I believe God has something specific to say to you in this season. I have been through seasons like this in my own journey where I was doing everything I knew to do, and the growth just was not matching the effort. He would say, write this and I would write it. Or he would say, do this and I would do it. But things didn't happen as quickly as I expected them to. I was showing up faithfully, but that breakthrough just felt delayed. I had a clear vision of what God had called me to do, but the gap between where I was and where I believed that he was taking me felt 10,000 miles wide. And those seasons are hard to describe to someone who's not been in them. Because from the outside, you're you're leading, you're building, you're showing up. But on the inside, there's this quiet question that you try not to say too loudly. And it's Lord, did I hear you right? Is this really where you called me? Because if it is, why does it feel like nothing is happening? And what I've learned, sometimes slowly and sometimes only in hindsight, is that those seasons of apparent stillness were not empty. They were full. They were full of things that God was building in me that could not be built any other way. That character, that patience, that dependency on Him rather than on my own effort. A rootedness that would be able to hold the weight of what was coming. The fruit that came after those seasons was different from the fruit that came before them. It was deeper. It was more sustainable, more clearly from him and less from me. More clearly from abiding than from striving. And I would not trade the waiting for anything now that I can see what it produced. Although I will be honest with you, I could not have told you that in the middle of it. It's a hard place to be.

What Waiting Is Not

SPEAKER_00 7:02

It is time invested in the foundation that will hold everything God is about to build on it. Remember, he is the cornerstone. And if the foundation isn't built with that cornerstone, nothing is going to work right. Habakkuk 2, 3 says, For the revelation awaits an appointed time. It speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it. It will certainly come and will not delay. The vision has an appointed time. It will not prove false. Though it lingers, it will certainly come. That is not vague spiritual comfort. That is a promise. And it is one you can hold on to in the middle of a season that does not yet look like what God showed you.

4 Things God Does in the Waiting

SPEAKER_00 8:10

So what is God actually doing in the season of waiting? I want to give you four things I've observed both in my life and in the lives of other women that I walk closely with. You know, a tree does not grow upward in a storm, it grows downward. The roots grow deeper, the anchor gets stronger, the foundation becomes more secure. And then when the storm passes, the tree can hold the growth that comes. Seasons of waiting are often seasons where God is driving your roots deeper into Him, into His Word, into the unshakable foundation of your identity as His daughter. So that when the growth comes, and it will come, take my word for it, ladies, it will come. But when it does, you will be able to hold it without being destabilized by it. The second thing he does is he's stripping away what would contaminate the harvest. Sometimes what feels like delay is actually God lovingly removing from our lives and our leadership the things that would corrupt what he's about to give us. The striving, the need for approval, the self-reliance, the patterns maybe that worked in the old season but would undermine the new one. The waiting is not empty. It is a refining process. And refinement, refinement is never comfortable, but it is always purposeful. If you think about gold, gold is refined. It goes through a lot of heat. They put it in these pots and then they bring it to a boiling point and they scoop the impurities out of it to leave the pure gold. It has a purpose. But it has to go through a lot of heat to get there. God's not only working in you during a season of waiting, he's working around you. He's moving people, he's moving resources, connections, and circumstances into position. Sometimes he's removing people who can't go into the next season with you. The doors that have not opened yet may simply not be ready for you yet. Or maybe you're not fully ready for them. Either way, God is orchestrating something that requires more than one piece to be in place. Your job is to stay faithful while he does the work that you cannot see. He is building your trust in him rather than in outcomes. The deepest work of a waiting season is almost always this: God moving you from a posture of trusting your vision to a posture of trusting the one who gave you the vision. There is a difference between holding a calling tightly and holding the caller tightly, right? Seasons of waiting have a way of loosening our grip on the outcome and tightening our grip on God. And that shift changes everything about how we lead when the season turns. I love Psalms 27:14 that says, wait for the Lord, be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. I don't think it's by accident that it says that twice. Wait for the Lord. Be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.

How to Lead Well While Waiting

SPEAKER_00 12:03

So you may be asking, how do I lead well when I'm in this season of waiting? How do I stay faithful? How do I stay rooted and connected to the vision when progress is not yet visible? So here's four things that I would offer you. One, keep showing up to the assignment that God has given you today. The temptation in a season of waiting is to pull back, to do less because the effort does not seem to be producing the visible results. But faithfulness in the small and the slow is what qualifies you for the large and the fast. Whatever God has asked you to steward right now, steward it in full attention and full effort. The waiting season is not a break from your assignment, it is part of your assignment. Two, I would say protect your time with God fiercely. Waiting seasons have a way of either driving you deeper into God or pulling you away from him into distraction, comparison, discouragement. I have been in those places. But we have to be intentional. We have to guard our time with him, not as a formula for making the waiting end faster, but because he is the source of everything that we need to lead through it well. The women who come through waiting seasons with their faith and their vision intact are almost always the women who stay connected to God through them. Three can be a tough one for us, ladies, because we are famous for doing this. We have to refuse comparison. Nothing will derail us in a waiting season faster than looking at what God is doing in someone else's assignment and measuring our progress against theirs. Your timeline is not their timeline. Your assignment is not their assignment. God is not running behind on your calling. He's right on time with the plan that was written specifically for you. Ladies, I want to tell you something. Comparison is a thief. And in a waiting season, you cannot afford what it costs. So it's important to refuse comparison. And then the fourth is to speak the vision out loud, regularly and on purpose. Write it down, say it in prayer, share it with your kingdom community, keep the vision in front of you. Not because speaking it will make it happen faster, but because the enemy will work very hard in a waiting season to make you forget it, doubt it, or abandon it. And the vision was given to you by God. It is worth protecting with your words and your attention. Speak it out, ladies. Make it known. Make it heard and make it clear. Isaiah 40, 31 says, But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. Go read that. See how it speaks to you. So

A Word for the Faithful

SPEAKER_00 15:36

I want to close this section with a word that I believe is for someone specific listening today. You've been faithful in this waiting season for longer than you thought you could be. You've shown up when you didn't feel like it. You've held the vision when it felt foolish to keep holding it. You've said yes to God in silence when everything around you was telling you it was time to let it go. I want to say to you today, do not let go. Do not give up. Do not scale back the vision to make the waiting more comfortable. Because what God put in you is real. The assignment is real and the appointed time is real. And your waiting is not evidence that God has forgotten you. It is evidence that what he is building in you is significant enough to take this long to prepare. The season's turning. So keep your eyes on him and your feet on the path. I can tell you that the breakthrough is closer than it looks from where you're standing right now. It's all about perception.

Reflection Questions & Kingdom Challenge

SPEAKER_00 16:55

So here are your reflection questions for this week. Bring these to God with an open, honest heart and grab your journal. And our first question for this week is what narrative have you been telling yourself about what your waiting season means? Is it punishment, abandonment, wasted time? Ask God what He says about it instead. Question two is looking back at your previous seasons of waiting in your life, what did God build in you during those seasons that you can see now? And how does this history encourage you today? Three, what is one specific way you can lead more faithfully and intentionally within the season you're in right now, even before the breakthrough comes? So this week, my kingdom challenge for you is to write that vision down. Not a business plan, not a strategy document, just the vision God gave you for your assignment in your own words, as clearly as you can articulate it. Then read it out loud over yourself as a declaration. Date it and keep it somewhere where you will see it regularly throughout the season because the vision is worth protecting and you are worth reminding.

Closing Prayer

SPEAKER_00 18:22

Let's pray. Lord, I come before you on behalf of every woman who is in a waiting season right now. You know exactly where she is, you know how long she's been faithful, you know what she's carried, and you know what she's laid down. And I thank you that not one moment of her waiting has been wasted in your economy. I pray that you would meet her in the silence today with a fresh word from you, that you would remind her that your timing is not delay, that the vision you gave her has an appointed time, that what you have begun in her, you are faithful to complete. Strengthen her, Lord. Give her the grace to keep showing up faithfully in this season. Protect her from comparison, from discouragement, and from temptation to scale back the vision. You gave her this vision, Lord. Renew her hope today. Not in the outcome, but renew her hope in you. The season is turning. Let her feel that in her spirit today. In Jesus' name. Amen. Ladies, thank you so much for being here. Once again, if this episode spoke something into you today, please share it with a woman in your life who needs to hear it. Subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if the Kingdom Lead Horship podcast has been a blessing to you, please consider supporting the show with using the link in the show notes. Every bit of support helps us reach more women with this message. Until next time, lead whole, lead obedient, and lead with joy. God bless you.

Outro

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Thank you for spending time with me on Kingdom Leadership. If today's conversation encouraged you or brought clarity, take a moment to reflect on what God highlighted for you. Trust him even when the path isn't clear, because he is faithful to direct every step. New episodes of Kingdom Leadership are released every Monday, and I invite you to join me again as we continue pursuing Kingdom purpose with faith and intention. Until next time, lead with wisdom, walk in obedience, and trust God with where He's leading you.