DAILY DEVOTIONAL FOR YOUTHS AND STUDENTS. Today’s devotional for 11th September 2026, inspired by the teaching of Apostle Arome Osayi. Topic: What You Must Avoid While You’re Waiting on God.
MEMORY VERSE: “Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste.” – Isaiah 28:16 (KJV)
TEXT: Isaiah 28:14-16; Psalm 27:13-14
TODAY’S DEVOTIONAL
Waiting is not an empty season. It is a working season. Something is being formed in you while nothing appears to be moving around you. But the same waiting room that produces strong believers also ruins careless ones, because there are things a waiting person must refuse to do. Isaiah gives us the first and most important one: “he that believeth shall not make haste.” Faith is not proved by how fast you move. It is proved by how still you can stay until God speaks.
Avoid haste. Haste feels like progress, but it is usually fear wearing the clothes of faith. A young man may sit under sound teaching for years and then throw it all away in four days because his emotions felt like confirmation. Spiritual principles do not bend for our excitement. When you break them, they break you back, and the counsel that could have guided your decision is reduced to counsel for managing the damage. If God has not told you to move, the pressure of people, the passing of time, and the fear of missing out are not reasons to move.
Avoid outsourcing your prayer life. Many believers treat waiting as a period to hand their burdens to a pastor, a prayer group, or a prayer chat and then go quiet themselves. There is nothing wrong with asking others to stand with you, but no man can carry your altar. The man you are dumping your prayer points on is himself a limited man who needs help. God designed you to reach for Him directly, and He designed the waiting season as the very place where you learn how.
Avoid discouragement and the depression that follows it. Waiting tests whether you will still believe when heaven seems silent. Scripture calls God One who hides Himself, not because He is playing games, but because He wants to be sought. A waiter in a restaurant is paid to wait whether or not customers come; waiting is the job, not the interruption of the job. If you let disappointment settle into your thinking, the enemy will take a seat in your mind and begin playing your thoughts like a piano. Fight that with long, deliberate prayer before it takes root.
Avoid spiritual softness. Paul described the believer as an athlete who buffets his body and brings it into subjection so he can finish the race. Your flesh will never volunteer to pray, fast, study, or wait. It wants comfort now. But a spirit that has never been stretched will collapse on the day trouble arrives. Do not wait for a crisis to learn how to reach God. Build the habit while things are calm, so that access is familiar when things are not.
If you are a student, this is where your waiting season is decided. You are waiting for admission, for results, for a job, for a relationship, for a clear sense of direction, and your friends seem to be moving faster than you. Avoid the temptation to copy their timeline. Avoid cutting corners in your academics because the honest route is slow. Avoid entering a relationship you know God has not approved simply because the waiting is lonely. Use these quiet years to build a real prayer life, real study habits, and real character. The sons of Issachar were honoured because they understood the times. Ask God for that same understanding, and let Him tell you when to move. As Apostle Arome Osayi put it, “There’s no prayer as powerful as prayers that you pray that is consistent with timing.”
KEY POINT: Waiting on God is not passive delay but active discipline, and what you refuse to do while you wait protects what God is preparing to give you.
FURTHER READING: Isaiah 45:15; Psalm 27:13-14; 1 Corinthians 9:24-27; Lamentations 3:25-26; 1 Chronicles 12:32
DAILY PRAYER
Father, teach me how to wait well. Deliver me from the haste that runs ahead of Your voice and from the discouragement that gives up before Your time. Give me a personal altar, so that I stop depending on other people to carry what You have given me to carry. Strengthen my spirit like an athlete in training, that I may be ready in the day of trouble. Open my eyes to understand my times and my seasons, and let me move only when You say move, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
