How to Trust God When Your Circumstances Disagree with Jen Allee ❖ 299

The tree might look still, but the clouds are racing high. God is at work behind the scenes, even when your circumstances look completely frozen." — Jen Allee

What do you do when your prayers are met with deafening silence, and your circumstances directly contradict everything you believe about God?

It is easy to trust God when the answers are flowing. But when you are stuck in the agonizing "in-between"—waiting for a healing, a restored relationship, or a delayed promise—uncertainty chips away at your peace. 

Before long, the quiet, toxic lies creep in: “Has God forgotten me? Am I doing something wrong? Is He punishing me?”
In this grounding episode of the Interviewing Jesus Podcast, host Kristen Wambach sits down with author and ministry leader Jen Allee (When Waiting Feels Like Withholding: Trusting God When You Doubt His Goodness) to pull back the curtain on the silent seasons of faith. Moving past neat spiritual clichés, Kristen and Jen dive into the raw, sacred work of trading performance shame for steady, unshakable trust in the heart of the Father.

In this episode, you will discover:

• The Frozen Tree & The Racing Clouds: The powerful visual shift that proves God is moving at full speed behind the scenes, even when your immediate life feels completely on pause.
• Dismantling the Punishment Lie: Why the cross permanently settled all divine punishment, and how to stop self-blaming when an answer is delayed.
• Healing vs. Resurrection (The Lazarus Shift): Why Mary and Martha wanted an immediate healing, but Jesus had planned a greater resurrection—and how to recognize what He is raising in your life today.
• The Mud, the Mire, and Psalm 40: Practical steps to meditate on scripture until your heart naturally moves from "Can You do this?" to "Thank You that You will."
• The Book of Remembrance: How logging unexpected provisions and simple everyday blessings builds an undeniable testimony of God’s relentless faithfulness.

If you are feeling pinned against the wall by a dream that hasn't materialized, this conversation will equip you to take a Spiritually BRAVE step forward and declare with confidence: It is well with my soul.

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Foundational Scriptures:

1. Walking Beyond Physical Sight (When Circumstances Disagree)2 Corinthians 5:7 (Mirror Bible) "We conduct our lives by the conviction of who we are in Christ and not by what mere physical sight or the senses might suggest to us."
2. The Joy Set Before Us (Enduring the Wait)Hebrews 12:2 (Mirror Bible)
"Gaze upon Jesus, the Fountainhead, Author, and Completer of faith. For the sheer joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross, fully despising its shame, and has taken His seat at the right hand of the throne of God."
3. The Foundation of Sonship & Freedom from PunishmentRomans 8:1 (Mirror Bible)
"There is therefore now no sentence of condemnation, no punitive judgment whatsoever against those who are in Christ Jesus. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has liberated us entirely from the dominion of sin and death."
4. The Mud, the Mire, and the New Song (Old Testament Anchor)(The Mirror Bible focuses on the New Testament epistles; here is the foundational translation from the Passion Translation / NIV for the anchor Psalm)
Psalm 40:1–3 (TPT / NIV)
"I waited patiently for the Lord; He turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; He set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear the Lord and put their trust in Him."
5. The Lazarus Shift (Healing vs. Resurrection)John 11:4, 25–26
"When Jesus heard it, He said, 'This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.' ... Jesus said to her, 'I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live.'"

Punishment was satisfied on the cross with Jesus. Our sin separated us from Him, and Jesus died on the cross and took that punishment for us. So we are never being punished—that is completely off the table." — Jen Allee

What's Inside This Week's Blog Post: 

When our daily reality flatly contradicts what we know about God's goodness, the silence can feel deafening. We want to trust, but the friction between what we pray for and what we actually see on Monday morning creates an ache that religious formulas simply cannot fix.
This week, we are taking a Spiritually BRAVE dive into the heart of the Father to dismantle the quiet fears that take root in the waiting room:

• Shattering the Striving Trap: The exact mental shift required to stop treating God like an employer who rewards performance, and start resting in permanent Sonship.
• Perceiving God’s Hidden Speed: How to read the spiritual atmosphere and spot the fast-moving currents of grace even when your personal circumstances appear locked in place.
• Elevating Your Request Above the Temporary: Moving from the panic of trying to rescue a dying situation to trusting Jesus with a greater, miraculous outcome you never saw coming.
• Rewiring an Anxious Mind with Scripture: A simple, repeatable daily activation to turn a Bible verse from ink on a page into an internal fortress of peace.
• Building an Undeniable Paper Trail of Faith: How documenting the unexpected, quiet mercies in your week dismantles doubt before it has a chance to take hold.

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Kristen Wambach (00:01.23)
Hello and welcome. Our guest today is author and ministry leader Jen Allee. In her book, When Waiting Feels Like Withholding: Trusting God When You Doubt His Goodness—have any of us been there? Well, Jen dives straight into the messy, sacred reality of that in-between. That space where waiting stops being an adventure and starts chipping away at our fortitude. She doesn't offer neat, wrapped-up formulas. Instead, she walks listeners straight out of performance shame and into steady, unshakable trust in the character of God. Please welcome Jen Allee to Interviewing Jesus Podcast.
Jen Allee (00:53.84)
Thank you so much. It's so great to be here today.
Kristen Wambach (00:56.66)
Yay, yay. And listeners, Jen and I were talking how we kind of stumbled upon each other. Would you share with them how that occurred?
Jen Allee (01:07.14)
Yeah, I just hopped on that Threads app and said, "Hey, I just want to be a guest on a podcast," and Kristen responded. So here we are.
Kristen Wambach (01:15.21)
Isn't that fun? I love it. It's just those divine moments that God puts two people from miles and miles away, and He just says, "You guys have a conversation together." So I appreciate that very much. Let's jump right in and dive in. Jen, you write in your book that we want to visit waiting—how many of us have... I mean, we've all waited and been in that in-between stage. So the uncertainty in that in-between moment, which chips away from our peace because we don't say maybe, when God's primary mode of communication in that halfway point feels like complete silence. How do we stop our minds from translating quietness and hindrance to hearing His voice instead of the cruelty or abandonment that is so noisy in our brain? How do we do that?
Jen Allee (02:22.33)
Yeah, that's a great question. Well, I think we start with the Word of God, honestly. You know, we have to go back to what the Word says: that He loves us, that He's with us, and that He's not going to leave us. And so when we're in those seasons of uncertainty and it's just foggy and confusing, we have to go back to what the Word says—that He's with us—and we can't let our circumstances speak louder than what God's Word says.
Kristen Wambach (02:46.87)
That is true. In your book, I love your explanations and your stories. The one where you took a scripture and you basically consumed it and let it embed into your spirit. Would you tell our listeners the story about your son and his reaction to tree nuts, but how you brought him to the place—because he was very young—how you brought him to the place of actually learning to be careful?
Jen Allee (03:21.85)
Yeah. So he was really young. He was two when we discovered that he had a nut allergy. But when he was five, he was at a birthday party and he wanted to eat what everybody else was eating. He had gotten tired of me bringing homemade snacks from home. And we hadn't really told him that if you eat a nut, you could die—your throat could close up, he was anaphylactic. We didn't want to scare him when he was itty-bitty. So we just told him, "Don't do it, it'll make your stomach hurt." We tried to just get him to not do it.
Well, anyway, we're at this birthday party, and he decides he wants to eat the birthday cake that everybody else was eating. Bakeries are usually not nut-free facilities, and so I brought his own little cupcake. But he decided he wanted to eat the cake. The mom came over to me and said, "I'm so thankful to hear that Parker's not allergic to nuts anymore." And I just looked at him down the table, and we made eye contact. He knew what was going on. I gave him a look like: you better not eat that birthday cake.
So when he came home that night, he was like, "Why can't I eat the birthday cake?" We just explained to him, "When your skin touches a nut, what happens?" And he said, "It swells up." So we asked, "Well, what happens if a nut touches your throat? What will happen?" And he was like, "It'll swell up." We asked, "Well, then how will you breathe?" And he kind of paused and said, "Well, how will I breathe?" And we're like, "Well, that's why we don't eat nuts."
We just had to walk him through the best way we could at age five to help him understand that it was very serious that he couldn't eat nuts. But now at age fifteen, he outgrew it! He was positive all the way up until his appointment when he turned fifteen, and he is clear now. We no longer carry the EpiPen.
Kristen Wambach (05:17.16)
That is a wonderful testimony. But God taught you how to take scripture and actually let it embed into your spirit so it was part of your daily consumption that helped you through what was a really hard thing to walk through. How do you do that? Would you share with us that tool that God provided for you that helped you through so many life applications?
Jen Allee (05:55.56)
The point of the story was he just didn't understand: Why can't I do what everybody else is doing? Oftentimes in life, especially when we're in seasons of waiting, we just don't understand. We don't have all the facts and all the information, so we're just like, God, help me to understand what's going on here.
In the book, I talk about a season of anxiety I went through that was really challenging. I didn't understand why God wouldn't just take it away. Like, just take it away! But instead, He kept me in that season. In that season, I came across Psalm 40. In Psalm 40, it says, The Lord lifted me out of the mud and the mire, and He set my feet on a rock, and He gave me a firm place to stand and put a new song in my heart.
When I read that, I thought: that's what I want. I felt like I was in this pit, and I wanted Him to pull me out and set my feet on a rock. I wanted that verse to be true. I reached this point where I was like, I'm either going to take God at His Word and say this is what Your Word says so You can do this, or not. I decided I had no other options. In my own strength, I was not able to overcome my struggle with anxiety.
So I memorized that passage—not intentionally, but I just kept reading it over and over again. I put it on a note card and read it multiple times every day, and it just sunk deep in. I started off by asking God, "Can You lift me out of the mud and the mire and set my feet on a rock and give me a firm place to stand?" As time went on, He built this confidence in my heart. I moved into saying, "I know that You can lift me out of the mud and the mire and set my feet on a rock and give me a firm place to stand."
Then as more time went on, I got to the place where I was like, "Thank You. You are going to do this. I don't know when You're going to do it, I don't know how You're going to do it, but You are going to lift me out of the mud and the mire and set my feet on a rock and give me a firm place to stand." And He did! But I got to the "thank you" phase before He had helped me with my anxiety. He wanted me to learn to depend on His Word and to take Him at His Word: This is what Your Word says, so I can stand on it. He taught me that lesson, and I've used it still to this day. When we really know His Word and stand on it and put our faith in it, He's very faithful.
Kristen Wambach (08:26.95)
He is very faithful. I love the part how you were so honest in saying, "Can You?" Because we can read what's printed on paper, but it doesn't mean that it actually lives in our understanding.
Jen Allee (08:47.48)
Absolutely. I wanted to believe that He could do this, but it felt so big to me. Like I said in the book, it truly was the first thing I had dealt with in my life where I felt like: Is God big enough to handle this? I didn't become a Christian until I was in college, so this was probably ten years into that. It was the first big thing where the anxiety felt so big to me.
I just was honest: "Can You do this?" But the beautiful part was I didn't have to manufacture that faith in my own heart. I didn't have to muster it up. In just reading His Word and meditating on it and thinking about it, He put the faith in me so that I got to the "Okay, You are going to do this," to "Okay, thank You. I know You're going to do this." And He did.
Kristen Wambach (09:45.27)
It is a beautiful thing. For me, trust built in different levels throughout my life. I knew Him as a child, ignored Him as a young adult, and then Holy Spirit introduced Himself to me. That's when trust started to build in my adult life.
Sometimes we get in that place where there is deep disappointment. We don't know what to ask, we don't know what is expected of ourselves or even of God, yet at that same exact time there is tension. How does looking at Jesus' own humanity, like His prayers in Gethsemane, give us permission to bring our raw questions to the Father? You did such a good job of bringing those raw questions, and you didn't let your humanity and God separate you. How did you bring it to that raw, intimate place where you trusted Him enough to ask such huge questions?
Jen Allee (11:14.51)
Well, I think honestly, when you're in a desperate place, you're more free with your raw emotions. When you're in a place of if God does not do this, it's just not going to happen—I've tried all the things and in my own strength this isn't happening—then you're free to be honest because you're desperate. When we're in desperate places, we depend on Him on a desperate level. I think that's what He's wanting all along: Just trust Me on all levels. Sometimes He has to take us to a place where we're desperate to teach us that He's dependable and faithful.
Kristen Wambach (11:55.84)
He is dependable and faithful. It reminds me of the Psalm where it says the Lord is close to those who have a broken and contrite spirit. I chewed on that for the longest time. He finally said to me one day, "Kristen, you don't need to be broken for Me to speak with you. But sometimes that desperateness brings us into a place that will literally chisel off the things that hinder our hearing to hear Him."
Jen Allee (12:36.06)
Absolutely, I totally agree with that. We don't have to be in desperate places for Him to be speaking to us and encouraging us. But when we are in desperate places, we can trust that He will be there. He allows these seasons of waiting—where we're wondering Where are You? or Why can't I have this?—to take us to a place of truly depending on Him.
Kristen Wambach (13:05.05)
I agree with you. He is much more concerned about our Sonship than our comfort.
Jen Allee (13:15.63)
Absolutely. The lessons I learned through Psalm 40 years ago—I'm so grateful I learned the power of believing God's Word and standing on it. I would never have done that in my own strength because I didn't know I needed it. But when I was in that desperate place, it was all I had.
Kristen Wambach (13:39.70)
Can we talk a little bit about those times when our prayers seem to go unanswered? Our internal default is often to look at self: Well, I must not be doing something right. I'm missing it. We get into that rotation of self-blame: What did I do wrong? What am I doing that's blocking the blessing? I must be in sin somewhere. How do we use the truth of our Oneness and identity in Christ to completely dismantle the lie that our waiting is a secret punishment?
Jen Allee (14:30.87)
When we're in these seasons of waiting and our prayers aren't answered or we feel like God is silent, we immediately jump to questions like: God, do you still care? Have you forgotten me? Are you punishing me? We're trying to make sense of it using logic. One of my chapter titles is Are You Punishing Me?, and that's the one people resonate with the most. They're like, I just feel like I must have done something wrong.
One way we can combat that is we have to listen to what we're hearing. If what we are hearing is causing us to feel guilty or shameful or negative, we can know that that is not from God. That's not who He is. He is always trying to build us up and not tear us down. Now, He can point out our sin and say, "Hey, you've made a mistake," and we need to repent and deal with that. But He doesn't leave us in that place of shame. If your punishment-talk is leaving you in a place of shame, that is not from Him.
Scripture tells us punishment was satisfied on the cross with Jesus. Jesus died on the cross and took that punishment for us. So we are never being punished—that is completely off the table because Jesus has already done that. Now, we can be disciplined as children, but we are not going to be punished.
Kristen Wambach (16:39.90)
I agree. You shared a profound perspective on Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, pointing out that the sisters just wanted healing. Like: Jesus, where are You? Why is this taking so long? We're good friends. But Jesus had a plan of resurrection. When our expectations of how God should move don't match what He is doing, how do we shift our spiritual senses to look for what He is raising instead of what is dying?
Jen Allee (17:36.96)
The short answer is that we tend to make life about us and what we want, but life is about Him and His plans. He is here to make Himself known, and He wants to use us to do that. Mary and Martha knew Him and loved Him, and they were hurting. They knew Jesus could fix it. But Jesus was like: It's not just about making Mary and Martha feel better or comforting them, though I love them. I want to make Myself known, and I'm going to use the resurrection of Lazarus to do it on a greater level. Scripture tells us many people came to know the Lord because of the resurrection who may not have if it had just been Mary and Martha talking about Him.
We have to look and see: What is God trying to do to make Himself known? and take ourselves out of the equation. When we're not getting what we want, it's usually because we're focused on our comforts and desires. We live in an instant society where everything is on our phone with a tap. We translate that into our spiritual lives: God, here is my request, and we want instant work. But God says, "No, it's about Me making Myself known. I'm not going to answer instantly sometimes because I'm doing something different."
Kristen Wambach (19:27.17)
When He is giving us an answer and we know it's not about us, that's when I step back and go, Huh, it could be about a family member, my husband, or the community around me. When I allow myself to step back from the immediate discomfort and say, "Jesus, can You show me the bigger picture? Can You show me all the areas You are moving?" it encourages me to rely on His peace. Having been married forty-one years, that might just mean holding my tongue a few more times! Allowing Him to do that work in me allows Him to be known in other people.
Jen Allee (20:51.13)
Absolutely. It's distinguishing between what I want and what is God's will. What He has for us is good if we walk the path He has for us, but it may not match our expectations. When Lazarus was resurrected, I can't imagine Mary and Martha's joy. Their joy was greater having seen him die and be raised than it would have been if Jesus had just healed him. What they really wanted He gave them, but in a way they didn't expect.
Kristen Wambach (21:29.67)
Exactly. It reminds me of carrying children and going through birth. There is discomfort, but when the reward and the gift of the child shows up, it makes it all worth it. From that knowledge, we would gladly do it again.
Jen Allee (22:07.56)
I'm sure that's what Mary and Martha would say too on the back end: Here's Lazarus again—such joy!
Kristen Wambach (22:25.83)
If somebody is listening right now and feels pinned against a wall by a dream, an answer, or a healing that hasn't arrived, what is one practical, Spiritually BRAVE step they can take today to move from "Why are You withholding?" to "It is well with my soul"?
Jen Allee (23:08.24)
We can go all the way back to the Ten Commandments where God says, "Do not make an idol out of anything." Sometimes we get so fixated on what we want—and they may be really good things—but we elevate them above God. We say, "I have to have this thing in order to be happy; I cannot go through life unless You do this."
A practical thing we can do is ask God: "Do I have anything in my life that's greater than You?" That thing says, If You don't give me this, I can't be happy. Taking those idols out of our lives and putting God back in the proper order is the best thing we can do. Then we can be at peace that it is well with our soul because God is back at number one.
Kristen Wambach (24:20.60)
And sometimes that can be a difficult heart-to-heart.
Jen Allee (24:27.64)
Very hard. Things become idols over days, months, and years of elevating them. To take it down is not easy, but in the end, that's where our freedom comes from. That thing tells you, You won't be happy unless you have me, but God is saying, You can always have joy in having just Me. Not an easy process, but worth doing.
Kristen Wambach (25:13.35)
The scripture talks about setting the joy before Him. In Jesus' humanity, just like on the Mount of Transfiguration, He experienced the outcome in the Spirit before He paid the cost.
Jen Allee (25:45.15)
Hebrews says He endured the cross because the joy was set before Him. Because the joy was set before Him, He was able to do that hard thing. When we have the joy set before us, we're able to do the hard things like dismantling idols or surrendering a dream.
Kristen Wambach (26:17.20)
For me, it helps to feel His joy. I'm a tangible person, so I ask Him for a portion of that joy so I can walk through with strength. He is so faithful to give that tangibility of His love.
Now, could you share the story where you and your family walked through a transition right before COVID when your husband's job situation changed?
Jen Allee (28:09.74)
My husband was unemployed a couple months before COVID hit. He was looking for church staff positions, and then COVID hit and nobody was hiring. We didn't know how long the pandemic was going to last, so we told the Lord our first "yes"—whatever the first yes was—we were going to take it and trust that was the job He had for us.
He applied for everything. A computer IT position opened up; it wasn't what he wanted to do, but he knew he could do it. They were willing to offer him the position and said, "We're going to get paperwork to you." Weeks went by, and they kept delaying sending it. In the meantime, another position opened at a church. He was very interested, had a first interview, and then we didn't hear anything for several months. We assumed they hired someone else.
Several months went by, and I was sitting on my back porch feeling so sad. I looked at the tree in my backyard, and it was perfectly still—not a leaf moving, just a frozen picture. That's how I felt: like our lives were frozen. I asked, "God, when are You going to move?"
Then I happened to look up. As I looked up, the clouds above me were racing by! I was so confused: How can the clouds be racing by when nothing is moving in front of me? I felt God say to me: "I'm at work. Your life looks paused, but I am at work."
A month or two later, the church called back and offered him the position. They had just put the hiring process on hold because of COVID; they hadn't hired someone else. The very next day after he accepted that church job, the IT job finally sent the paperwork! But we were able to say no because we had already said our first yes to God's best.
Kristen Wambach (30:58.44)
How much time was it that you didn't have income coming in?
Jen Allee (31:13.24)
It was eight or nine months. What was so sweet was we just started getting cards in the mail from people. Consistently, the cards would say, "You were on my mind, God put you on my heart, and I wanted to send you this." It would be a gift card to a grocery store, Target, or a check. We never asked for it, but by the end of that nine months, we had received a sizable amount of money.
After he said yes to that church job, we never got another card in the mail! God provided fully that whole season. We were never in need. It was so obvious God was at work.
Kristen Wambach (32:26.16)
There is a hidden tool in there: you logged down every single off-the-cuff help that showed up, and at the end you added it up. When we journal even the simplest encouragements, we see God moving. At the end, we have a testimony to look at the whole picture.
Jen Allee (33:19.03)
God tells us in scripture all the time: Remember, remember, do not forget what I've done. It's so important to write down when we see God moving so we can look back and remember.
Kristen Wambach (33:37.26)
Yes! I'm an avid journaler. Malachi 3 talks about God having a Book of Remembrance, so when we create one, we are mirroring Him.
Jen, this is such a grounding, liberating conversation to talk about that hard in-between. For our listeners who are navigating their own in-between right now and want to dive deeper into your work, where can they connect with you and grab a copy of When Waiting Feels Like Withholding?
Jen Allee (35:15.06)
Everything is on my website at jenallee.com. I have the book, When Waiting Feels Like Withholding, and a companion 13-chapter Bible study guide with weekly journal prompts. You can get both on Amazon directly through my website. I also have my speaking schedule there. You can find me on Instagram and Facebook at @jen_allee_author.
Kristen Wambach (36:09.63)
I will have all those links in the show notes for you. Now, Jen, would you pray for our listeners wherever they find themselves in that in-between place?
Jen Allee (36:49.42)
Father, thank You that You are so faithful and that You are with us in the wait, even when we can't see it. I pray for anyone listening today who is struggling with that—that You would do something with their name on it so they know You see them, hear them, and are with them.
Give them eyes to see where You are at work. Lower any walls of disappointment, confusion, or frustration so they can hear Your voice clearly. Help each one of us in our seasons of waiting not to miss out on what You are teaching us, and fully accomplish what You want to do in our lives. In Jesus' name, Amen.
Kristen Wambach (38:07.40)
Thank You, Jesus. I felt Holy Spirit releasing His breath through you to encourage people. Thank you for being with us today!
Jen Allee (38:37.95)
Thank you so much for having me, I really enjoyed it!

INTERACTIVE WATCHING PROMPTS FOR YOUTUBE LIVE "ASK" 

When you join us for the YouTube LIVE broadcast, don’t just watch—participate with us in real-time! Grab your coffee, open your heart, and drop your thoughts in the chat as we journey through these moments together. Welcome to "Ask," just to the right of the share button!
THE FROZEN TREE & RACING CLOUDS (~28:55): Drop in the chat if you are currently staring at a situation that looks completely frozen or stalled! Type "HE IS AT WORK" in the comments as a declaration of faith that God’s invisible momentum is moving behind the scenes right now.
DISMANTLING THE PUNISHMENT LIE (~16:34): Tell us in the chat: Have you ever caught yourself wondering, "What did I do wrong to delay this blessing?" Let us know how you are choosing to stand on the finished work of the cross today and permanently kick self-blame out of your waiting room.
THE PSALM 40 PROGRESSION (~08:08): In the comments, share where your heart is resting today on a scale of:
1️⃣ "Can You do this?"
2️⃣ "I know You can do this."
3️⃣ "Thank You that You will!"
Drop your number 1,2 or 3 in the chat so our community can agree with you in prayer!

How to Trust God When
Your Circumstances Disagree.

Have you ever looked at your life on a Monday morning and felt like everything was frozen solid?
You prayed. You believed. You stood on every biblical promise you could find. Yet the relationship is still fractured, the career path remains blocked, or the healing hasn't broken through into physical reality. In that quiet hallway between an initial promise and its fulfillment, silence often becomes the loudest thing in the room.
When our immediate circumstances flatly contradict what we know about the goodness of God, our human logic frantically searches for an explanation. The internal accuser loves to step in and whisper: “What did you do wrong? Are you missing it? Is God withholding this to punish you?”
This week on the Interviewing Jesus Podcast, I sat down with author Jen Allee to talk about her book, When Waiting Feels Like Withholding: Trusting God When You Doubt His Goodness. Together, we stripped away the tidy religious clichés to look straight at the messy reality of the "in-between"—and discovered how accessing the heart of Jesus provides a practical path to unshakable peace.

CONNECT WITH JEN ALLEE

Website: Jen Allee

Instagram: @jen_allee_author

Devotional / Featured Content: Life Bible: Wrestling with Waiting Devotional

When Waiting Feels Like Withholding Book by Jen Allee

When Waiting feels like Withholding Study Guide by Jen Allee

How do you come to terms with a good God when He seems silent about the one thing you want most?
Waiting is hard, but waiting while it feels like God is withholding something can be heartbreaking. When a longing in your heart is met with silence, it can shake your faith and leave you wrestling with uncertainty, disappointment, and unanswered questions. In the ache of unfulfilled prayers, it is easy to wonder if God sees you, cares for you, or is holding out on purpose.
With honesty, compassion, and biblical truth, Jen Allee invites you to hold on to hope when it feels like God is holding back. Through personal stories and Scripture, this book will help you:

• Find satisfaction in life that is not dependent on your dream coming true
• Step out from under shame and regret, and stop believing you are the reason God is withholding something
• Recognize the habits and thought patterns that quietly intensify the pain of waiting, and learn how to release them
• Practice one simple, practical way to keep fear from taking over as you face an uncertain future
• Know what to do when God’s answer is “no”

If you are tired of waiting, weary from wondering, and ready to trust God’s goodness again, this book will guide you toward peace, courage, and steady hope in the middle of the wait.

The Frozen Tree and the Racing Clouds

During a long nine-month season of unemployment, Jen walked out to her back porch, overwhelmed by the stillness. She looked at a tree in her yard—not a single leaf was stirring. It was an image of complete paralysis. She asked, "God, when are you going to move?"
Then she looked up.
Above the motionless tree, the clouds were racing across the sky at full speed. In that moment, the Holy Spirit gave her a living picture: Your life looks frozen, but Heaven is in constant motion.
As spiritual investigative journalists of our own journey, we must recognize that sensory data only reports temporal facts—it does not dictate eternal truth. Francois Du Toit captures this in The Mirror Bible:

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"We conduct our lives by the conviction of who we are in Christ and not by what mere physical sight or the senses might suggest to us." (2 Corinthians 5:7)

When your physical eyes see zero momentum, do not mistake divine silence for divine absence. God’s unseen provision is already moving toward your address.

Dismantling the Punishment Lie

When prayers seem to go unanswered, the human default is self-blame. We assume our waiting is a penalty for a hidden flaw or past mistake.
Here is the Monday-morning reality: Punishment was permanently satisfied on the cross.

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"There is therefore now no sentence of condemnation, no punitive judgment whatsoever against those who are in Christ Jesus." (Romans 8:1, The Mirror Bible)

Pleading for a Healing vs. Receiving a Resurrection

Consider Mary and Martha. When their brother Lazarus fell ill, they sent for Jesus, asking for a healing. When Jesus delayed and Lazarus died, their expectations were shattered.

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Mary and Martha wanted an immediate rescue from discomfort. Jesus planned a resurrection that would alter eternity.
Often, God allows our initial timeline to fall away because He refuses to settle for a temporary bandage. He wants to reveal a dimension of His resurrection life that an easy answer could never produce. When you surrender your demand for an instant fix, you position your spiritual senses to witness what He is actually raising from the ashes.

The Practical Move: From "Can You?" to "Thank You"

How do you practically bridge this gap when anxiety threatens to pull you under?
Jen shared a simple activation using Psalm 40. When panic was high, she wrote out verses 1–3 and placed them where she could see them daily. Over time, her prayers shifted through three distinct stages:

1. The Question: "God, can You lift me out of the mud and set my feet on a rock?"
   
2. The Conviction: "Lord, I know You can do this."
   
3. The Resting Place: "Thank You that You are doing this, even before I see it."
   

She reached the "thank you" stage before her circumstances shifted. That is what it means to be Spiritually BRAVE.

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Coaching Church Activation

Take five minutes today and start your own Book of Remembrance (Malachi 3:16). Write down every simple blessing, unexpected gift, and quiet mercy you have received over the last month.
When you document His faithfulness, you build an undeniable altar of truth that silences fear and anchors your heart in a simple reality: He has never failed you, and He will not start now.

When God's answer seems delayed, step back from the immediate discomfort and ask Jesus to show you the bigger picture. He is far more concerned with cultivating your Sonship and revealing His resurrection power than simply serving our temporary comfort." — Kristen Wambach

“Hey there, Kristen Wambach

 Here—author, speaker, and host of the Interviewing Jesus Podcast.
As an ordained pastor and spiritual coach who has walked alongside seekers and leaders across the globe, I know firsthand what it feels like when life comes to a screeching halt. You’ve prayed, you’ve stood on every scripture you know, yet your physical circumstances flatly refuse to cooperate with what you believe about God.

In those silent hallways of waiting, it is so easy to let human logic take over—to slip into performance shame, wonder if you missed it, or ask if God is somehow holding out on you. But our mission here is to pull back the curtain on the unseen realm and access the supernatural heart of Jesus for practical, Monday-morning wisdom that rewrites your daily reality.
Today, we are stepping past religious clichés with author Jen Allee to discover how to stay Spiritually BRAVE, dismantle the lie of punishment, and anchor your soul in unshakable peace—even when the tree in front of you looks completely frozen.”

Individual Coaching with Kristen Wambach

FINAL  SUMMARY
When our daily circumstances flatly contradict what we know about God's goodness, silence can feel like abandonment. In this episode of the Interviewing Jesus Podcast, host Kristen Wambach and guest Jen Allee (When Waiting Feels Like Withholding) pull back the curtain on the sacred "in-between." Together, they dismantle the toxic lie that delayed answers are divine punishment, expose how human performance striving robs our peace, and reveal why God often pauses an immediate fix to prepare a greater resurrection. Through raw personal stories—from navigating overwhelming anxiety with Psalm 40 to watching God move like racing clouds above a frozen tree—this conversation delivers practical, outcome-focused tools to help you trade weary striving for the unshakable certainty that it is well with your soul.
CALL TO ACTION
Are you ready to stop letting temporal facts dictate your peace?

1. Take Your Spiritually BRAVE Step Today: Open your journal and begin your own Book of Remembrance. Write down three unexpected provisions or quiet mercies God has given you recently, and declare your "Thank You" before the physical breakthrough appears.
2. Grab Jen’s Resources: Connect with Jen Allee at jenallee.com, pick up a copy of When Waiting Feels Like Withholding, and dive into her companion study guide.
3. Join the Community: If this episode gave your heart a safe path through the silence, subscribe to the Interviewing Jesus Podcast, leave a review, and share this conversation with a friend who is waiting on a promise today.

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