Following and Trusting : Encountering God Out of the Box

A question landed in my feed recently that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about.

Someone in a ministry group asked it honestly, and asked it well:

“How do you live faithfully, psychologically healthily, and relationally ethically when you believe you’ve received significant prophetic revelation, circumstances appear to contradict it, and you cannot yet tell whether you’re experiencing delay, partial fulfilment, misinterpretation, human free will, or a word that ultimately needs correction?”

She’d read the books.
She’d sat through the trainings. 

And she said what a lot of us have quietly felt but rarely say out loud: most prophetic teaching stops at “here’s how to hear God’s voice” and never actually addresses what to do after you’ve heard it — while you’re still waiting to see if it comes true.

She wasn’t looking for “just trust God.”
She was looking for a map.

So let’s build one…

Prophecy (aka: Hearing and Obeying God) Isn’t a Superstar Calling

Here’s something I’ve noticed in my own life: after I receive a prophetic word that is genuinely major, I don’t get swept up into instant fulfillment.

I get led into the wilderness.
Not as punishment.
As preparation.

It’s as if God uses the gap between the word and its fulfillment to squeeze out any pride I didn’t know I was carrying — until I have nothing left to lean on but Him. So that when the fruit does come, there’s no question about who gets the glory.

Prophetic ministry culture can sometimes make receiving a word feel like being handed a badge.

Scripture tells a different story.
It requires suffering.

Every person who carried a significant word in the Bible walked through a season that looked nothing like the word they’d been given.

Let’s look at a few of them…

Noah: Obedience Without Confirmation

Noah was told to build a boat in the desert. He absorbed decades of ridicule from people who could see exactly what he could see — dry ground, no rain, no sign of anything coming.

There’s no recorded moment where God shows up mid-build to reassure him it’s on track. He just keeps building, one plank at a time.

Hebrews 11:7 calls this “reverent fear” — not certainty, not visible confirmation, but obedience to a word that every circumstance gave him reason to doubt.

Joseph: Faithful in the Actual Circumstances

Joseph might be the clearest case study of the prophetic gap in all of Scripture. (Re-reading his story over 20 years ago, kept me from suicide.) He received his dream at maybe seventeen. Then came the pit, slavery, false accusation, and prison — over a decade of what looked like flat contradiction.

Genesis never records him getting a second word of clarification during any of it. What we do see is Joseph staying faithful to the character of God in the actual circumstances in front of him — integrity in Potiphar’s house, faithfulness in prison — rather than trying to force the dream’s fulfillment or demanding God explain the delay.

The dream didn’t tell him how. He had to walk that part out blind.

David: Refusing to Force It

David was anointed king by Samuel and then spent roughly fifteen years being hunted by the very king he was meant to replace.

Twice he had Saul in his power. Twice he refused to force the word’s fulfillment by his own hand (1 Samuel 24, 26).

(Meanwhile, Abraham and Sarah tried to force God’s promise and look at what happened. Yet, somehow Abraham is called the father of faith. God is so merciful!)

This is the ethical piece so many people miss in the prophetic gap. The real temptation usually isn’t unbelief. It’s taking control to make it happen. David’s restraint here is worth sitting with.

Habakkuk: Arguing Honestly, Then Waiting

Habakkuk may be the most direct address to this exact question in the whole Bible. He gets a word. Circumstances flatly contradict it. And instead of manufacturing false peace, he argues with God about it — out loud, in writing (Habakkuk 1–2).

God’s answer isn’t “just trust me.” It’s this:

“This vision is for a future time. It describes the end, and it will be fulfilled. If it seems slow in coming, wait patiently, for it will surely take place. It will not be delayed.” (Habakkuk 2:3 NLT)

The waiting itself is framed as part of the process — not a sign that something has gone wrong.

Mary: Holding It Without Resolving It

Mary carried a word about her son from before his birth. Luke tells us twice that she didn’t resolve it intellectually — she “treasured these things and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19, 51).

That’s a real and available posture: holding a word without needing to fully interpret or explain it yet.

Jesus: Intimacy Over Explanation

Even the life of Jesus didn’t look at all like what the disciples expected. He knew the plan — not because circumstances confirmed it, but because of intimacy with the Father. And even He asked the Father to take the cup from Him.

His path is its own category. But it still tells us something about where certainty in the gap actually comes from — relationship, not explanation.

The Pattern

Set Jesus aside for a moment and look at the rest: Noah, Joseph, David, Habakkuk, Mary.

None of them received a second revelation to explain the delay. Not one.

What they had instead:

• Ordinary obedience, right where they already were
• A refusal to force the outcome by their own hand
• A decision to keep the word rather than discard it or manufacture it
  

I don’t think navigating the prophetic in-between is a technique. I think it’s a posture.

Where to Actually Look for Help?

Most prophetic-ministry books stop exactly where this question starts. If you’re in this gap right now, I’d point you somewhere different — not material marketed as “prophecy,” but material that deals honestly with this terrain:

• Habakkuk itself, read as a short study rather than a devotional
• The Joseph narrative, worked through as a discipleship arc — not a Sunday school story

My Own Forest Fire

I’ll tell you where this is personal for me.

Weeks after I received an incredible prophetic word — spoken over me by two people from the Middle East who had been tortured for their faith — I entered a two-year medical leave. I had to learn to walk and talk again.

That’s not the part of the testimony anyone wants. But here’s the rest of it…

After those two years came fruit I couldn’t have manufactured on my own. It was like the new growth that comes after a forest fire — not despite the fire, but because of it. (I tell the full story here…)

If you’re in the gap right now — holding a word that hasn’t landed yet, watching circumstances contradict everything you thought you heard — you are not doing it wrong. You may be exactly where Joseph was in the pit, where David was in the cave, where Habakkuk was mid-argument with God.

Keep the word.
Stay faithful where you actually are.
Don’t force it by your own hand.

The fire isn’t the end of the story.

Have you lived through your own version of the prophetic in-between? I’d love to hear it — it’s part of what I want to keep exploring here.

Merri Ellen 🙂

He has more for you!

YOU are a sacred space.

Meet with a trained coach to walk with you.

Join other hungry women seeking the Lord together.

Enjoy the books: “God, Show Me What You See”
or “God, Show Me More of You“