When Breakthrough Waits: A Season In Diligence

When the long-awaited breakthrough doesn’t come, and the new year comes wrapped in celebration and hope while your own world stays dim, it can feel like you’ve been overlooked by God.

I felt that deep ache of being overlooked in the season after my divorce. January didn’t offer the fresh start everyone else seemed to embrace. Forget fireworks and New Year’s Resolutions, I was doing my best just to survive, putting one foot in front of the other. Nights were spent reminding myself to believe in a miracle that things would change. Into this season of dormancy, God spoke a single word to me: diligence.

Not a breakthrough. Not healing. Not relief. Definitely not the miracle I was praying for. Just diligence—the quiet, steady repetition of the “right” things we know to do when nothing feels resolved. It wasn’t the word I wanted to hear. Like many people, I entered January hoping for clarity of direction and spiritual momentum. I wanted God to rush in and fix things, lift the fog, vindicate me, and maybe set my feet on the path I felt I’d lost.

Diligence is too close to endurance, and I felt I’d already endured enough. It felt like being asked to keep walking even when the path hadn’t changed underfoot.

Even as I kept moving through the disciplines—worship, prayer, Bible reading, service at church—everything felt meager, barely enough to get by. Nothing was giving me life the way it usually did. I wasn’t avoiding God out of rebellion; I simply didn’t have the energy to engage. Intimacy felt like a luxury I couldn’t afford when survival consumed everything. I was numb, enclosed in a kind of bubble. Spiritual routines weren’t chores but certainly weren’t life-giving. Words fell flat. My heart wasn’t distant on purpose; it simply couldn’t respond the way it used to.

Diligence became a daily practice instead of an old-fashioned word. Some mornings I would read a single verse and meditate on it for several minutes before moving on. (Some mornings, one verse was all I could sit with.) Oftentimes, I cried more than prayed. Some mornings, devotions looked like watching the heron in the lake outside my window. I relied on journaling as a lifeline, writing scripture and praying it back to Him with little embellishment and even less hope. Serving at church shifted from a ministry to others to more of a conscious act that kept my feet on the path of faith. Each discipline was a quiet declaration that I would continue walking even if I couldn’t see the outcome.

And yet, when I withdrew, God most certainly didn’t. He waited gently, patiently for the moment I could receive him again. That moment came unexpectedly for me, as I worked with my church’s youth summer camp. My heart opened just enough to whisper, “I’m ready to hear you again.” For God, of course, it was no surprise. He had been patiently waiting for this moment all along.

God responded immediately. Through the camp speaker, who had no knowledge of my story, he spoke a word from the Lord that pierced through the fog and reiterated promises that only God and I could know. It was a moment of recommissioning. It reminded me that his desire isn’t just to instruct us, but to walk alongside us, just as he did in the Garden of Eden. It revealed to my heart the God who pursues us with relentless love.

From January through the summer, I walked in diligence—quiet, steady, disciplined trust—leaning into the God who revealed himself in the past and trusting that he would do so again. This path of discipline wasn’t easy. Every day required returning to prayer, Scripture, and worship, even when they felt woefully inadequate. By the time summer arrived, my heart had been tilled and softened. When God recommissioned me at that youth camp, He made Psalm 16:11 resonate like never before: “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

Looking back, I now realize the months of quiet discipline were a form of preparation I could not have rushed. Each act of diligence was a rehearsal in trust, teaching me that God would be there as I reached for Him. Without those steady, often monotonous practices, the soil of my heart might not have been ready for the next season, that most assuredly would come just like each season in creation follows another.

Diligence had kept me on the path, preparing my heart to receive the joy of intimacy that had already been unfolding quietly over months.

If you find yourself in a similar season where breakthrough seems delayed, where prayers you’ve whispered and the efforts you’ve made feel like they aren’t producing the results you’ve hoped for, take heart. God may not hand you a miracle in the way you expect, but He will walk with you along the path of diligence. It’s in the quiet and unnoticed rhythms of daily trust that God does the deep, hidden work of shaping your heart and preparing you for the season ahead. Your heart may feel numb, your routines may feel insufficient, and your progress may seem invisible, but God is present. The Bible reveals a God who pursues us relentlessly, inviting you into a transformative relationship with him.

This kind of “revelationship” is not about dramatic experiences or perfect moments. It is about God encountering you exactly where you are, teaching you to trust him with your story. It is about us surrendering the desire for instant resolution and instead counting and recounting God’s faithfulness as the Psalmist teaches, until God leads us into the transforming joy and flourishing spaces (Psalm 18:19) that come from his presence. You don’t need flawless execution of a perfect plan or a spectacular breakthrough to step into the next season, just a willing heart and the courage to take one steady step at a time.