The Difference Between Delay and Preparation
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There is a difference between being delayed and being prepared, and most women in a waiting season cannot tell which one they're in.
That perspective causes incorrect assumptions and behaviors.
From the inside, delay and preparation feel almost identical. Both involve waiting and uncertainty. Both can produce frustration, self-doubt, and the fear that maybe God forgot about you or moved on to someone more qualified.
But they are not the same thing. The woman who learns to tell the difference moves through her season completely different than the woman who confuses the two.
Delay is Passive, While Preparation is Active.
A delay is a pause with no purpose attached to it. It's a red light. You stop and wait, then you go when it changes. Nothing in you is required to grow during a delay. You just wait it out.
Preparation is different. Preparation is God doing something in you that has to happen before what He's doing through you can be sustained.
Think about that for a moment.
If God released the fullness of what He has for you right now, today, in this season, would you be a good steward of it? Perhaps you would receive it. Would you be able to protect it and build on it? Would you lead well and steward it properly?.
For most of us, if we're honest, the answer is not yet.
Then this creates an amazing opportunity for us.
What Preparation Actually Looks Like
Ladies, we can get confused because preparation may not look productive. It doesn't always look like forward movement. Sometimes preparation looks like stillness or loss. And other times it feels like a season that appears to be going backwards.
Joseph spent years in a pit and a prison before he stood in the palace. David was anointed king, then went back to tending sheep. Esther spent months in preparation before she ever stood before the king.
None of those seasons looked like progress from the outside. Yet, every single one of them was essential.
What was happening in those seasons was impossible to understand in the moment. But those periods of time were the building of character, discernment, resilience, and faith that the next assignment would require.
God doesn't waste a season. Not one.
The Question That Changes Everything
Instead of asking "Why is this taking so long?", which is a normal question, ask this:
What is God building in me right now that my next season is going to need?
That question reorients everything. It shifts you from passive waiting to active participation. It gives your current season a purpose even when the outcome isn't visible yet.
And it keeps you from doing the most dangerous thing a woman in a waiting season can do. It keeps you from rushing ahead of God to manufacture an outcome He never authorized.
Reevaluate Your Position
Listen to me.
Regardless of the way it looks, God has not forgotten you. The women around you who appear to be further along are not proof that God skipped you. They’re on their own timeline with their assignment and their preparation season that you didn't see.
Your season is on time for you. You’re on God's time.
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. -Ecclesiastes 3:1
He knew the season you'd be in right now before you were born. He built the preparation into the plan. That may be hard to understand, but it doesn’t change the fact that God knows. He sees, and you’re not alone.
What To Do While You Wait
Stay in the Word. Stay connected with your community. Stay faithful to what's in front of you right now. Instead of focusing on the assignment you're waiting for, focus on the assignment you already have.
And give yourself permission to stop responding to those feelings that everything is urgent. Be the woman who is genuinely trusting God in your preparation season, who holds a particular kind of peace. You don’t need all the answers because you know the One who has them.
That peace is available to you. Right now. In this season.
If You're Ready to Move Forward With What God Has For You…
The Winners Win Experience for Women gives you a biblical framework for doing exactly that…moving forward with direction, conviction, and your identity fully intact.
Taneka Rubin wrote Winners Win from inside her own preparation season. She and I built the study guide because we know women need more than inspiration. You need a structured space to process what God shows you and how to move in agreement with it.
One reader recently told me,
"It really is a jewel to my life. I've been working the book." - A. Daniels
That's what it was designed to do.
The Winners Win Experience for Women includes both books, guided reflection prompts, and a free bonus eBook through March 31st — all for $25.
You know God is leading you to more. This experience will help you move toward it.
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