#206: You’re Not Waiting on God (What’s Really Delaying Your Breakthrough)

FOR THE WOMAN WHO’S BEEN BELIEVING GOD FOR THE SAME THING FOR YEARS AND IS STARTING TO WONDER WHY NOTHING HAS MOVED.

You’ve prayed about it. You’ve fasted over it. You’ve asked God for more faith and you’ve asked people to agree with you.

And you’ve told yourself you’re just waiting on His timing.

Sis, what if you’re not?

What if something got into your faith a long time ago, and nobody ever told you what it was or how it works… so you’ve been treating it with the wrong thing this whole time?

🎥 Prefer to WATCH the podcast instead of just listening? 👉 Catch this week’s episode of the video podcast on my YouTube channel:

Doubt Is a Virus

We know the enemy seeks to wear out the saints. Daniel 7:25 says it plainly. And most of us have just accepted that as the weather.

I guess he’s going to wear me out. I guess I just have to white-knuckle it.

Not true. There’s a mechanism, and at the chewy center of all that wearing out, there’s doubt. Here’s what I want you to understand about how it operates. Doubt doesn’t work like bacteria. It’s a virus. There’s no antibiotic for it.

A virus attaches to a cell, gets inside, and hijacks that cell’s function so it starts behaving wrong. You can’t kill it from the outside. The only way out is to strengthen the cell so the cell itself pushes the virus out. I learned that one the hard way.

When my son Nate was just a few months old, he got meningitis. I was deep in postpartum anxiety at the time, staying with my mom, barely able to feed or diaper my own child. But I looked at him one afternoon and I knew. His eyes were glassy. Something was wrong. My mom was a registered nurse and she said we could watch him. I said no. We’re going now.

The woman at the ER looked at me and said, “I have never seen anyone bring someone in this quickly.”

They didn’t know yet whether it was bacterial or viral, so they loaded that baby up with three antibacterials and three antivirals while they waited on the cultures. It came back viral. And then something strange happened. His symptoms were almost nonexistent. The nurses kept saying he should be much sicker than he was. Infants with meningitis stay for weeks. We went home in three days.

On the last day, one of the nurses came to me and said, “I think I figured it out. You’ve nursed him nonstop the whole time he’s been here.” Breast milk is one of the most immune-escalating substances on the planet. They threw the entire medicine cabinet at him, and what actually carried him through was the thing God built to strengthen him from the inside.

That’s not a flex on holistic health. It’s the whole point: God’s ways work if you work them. So when the world tells you to beat your doubt by pulling the data, running the analysis, weighing the probabilities and then deciding… that only makes it worse. Now you’ve anchored your hope to something that isn’t 100%. God’s word is the only thing that is.

Faith Is a Noun. Doubt Is a Verb.

So what’s the antidote? Most people say faith. That’s wrong, and the grammar is why. “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” — Hebrews 11:1

Substance. That’s a noun. Faith is a thing you’ve been given, and the Bible says every one of us got a portion of it. You can’t earn it, grow it on command or hustle for more of it.

Doubt is an action. It’s a verb. A noun cannot cross out a verb. You cannot have harder faith or faster faith. That’s not a thing. To overcome an action, you need a greater and opposite action.

So what’s the action form of faith? Faithfulness. Moving your life in accordance with the faith you already have.

My pastor in New York used to say faith is like paint in a bucket. It’ll do nothing for the atmosphere until you get it out of the bucket and onto the walls. Faith is the paint. Faithfulness is you picking up the brush and getting that paint on the walls!

“So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” — James 2:17

And look at the next verse, because James gets sharp: Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. In the world of human connection, action is the only way faith can be communicated at all.

You can say “I believe, I believe, I believe” until you give up the Ghost. Until your hands and feet move in alignment with it, you’re just delaying your own timeline.

Prayer Cannot Offset Doubt

I know. Let me explain before you close the tab. Prayer does enormous work. It brings revelation. It girds your loins. It brings conviction to your heart and puts things in you that weren’t there before. But prayer is not going to move your hand.

When Jesus healed the man with the withered hand, He said, “Reach out your hand.” The man reaching was the faithfulness. The healing was waiting on the other side of the motion.

There’s a father in Mark 9 who brings his son to Jesus and says, “If you can, help us.” Jesus doesn’t even take the question. If I can? He throws it back, because “if I can” is not a thing in the Kingdom.

And the father cries out the line we all know: “I believe; help my unbelief!” — Mark 9:24

That word translated unbelief is apistia. Go to the Strong’s and look at it. It doesn’t mean an absence of belief. It literally means faithlessness. He’s saying: I’ve got the substance. Help me with the action.

Sit with that one for a sec. Like, Selah. Because maybe you’ve spent years asking God for more faith when what you actually needed was to be faithful.

Three Doors Doubt Comes Through

Doubt gets in efficiently, and it always uses one of three doors. It gets you to question God’s character. It gets you to question what God said. It gets you to question who you are.

Look at the garden. Did God really say? Look at the wilderness. If you really are the Son of God. Same three doors, every time. So stop running to get coffee with somebody about it. Name the door. Did I question His goodness? His word? My identity? That’s the diagnosis, and you can do it yourself in about thirty seconds.

Here’s the picture that makes it simple. You were built to keep your faith above your circumstance. Doubt is the action of sliding it underneath. Faithfulness is picking it back up, putting it on top, and walking accordingly.

The Commander Who Almost Died Rather Than Dip

Now let me show you this working on somebody in 2 Kings 5.

Naaman commands the army of Syria, Israel’s enemy. He’s a great man, highly favored, and he has leprosy. And buried in verse one is a line that should offend your brain: the Lord had given victory to Syria. God gave the win to the enemy, because God was setting up a story.

A little Israelite girl, taken in a raid, is serving in Naaman’s house. No chip on her shoulder. No bitterness. She just says to her mistress, I wish my lord were with the prophet in Samaria. He’d cure him.

She couldn’t overpower him. She got him curious. And curiosity suspended his pride long enough for him to go. But it’s like DayQuil. It’s not a cure for a virus. It wears off. Naaman shows up at Elisha’s house with his horses and his gold, Elisha sends a messenger instead of coming out himself, and the man loses it. Behold, I thought he would surely come out to me and wave his hand. He turns and rages off, still leprous.

Pride and offense are the Trojan horse doubt rides in on. With them riding shotgun, your doubt feels completely reasonable. Of course I’m justified. Look what just happened. But what just happened got colored by the offense you were already carrying. The prophet gave him the solution. He just wouldn’t try it.

Then his servants do the bravest thing in the chapter. My father, it is a great word the prophet has spoken to you. Will you not do it?

Curiosity, again. Aren’t you even curious? Read Job and you’ll find Leviathan, king over the sons of pride, with scales so tightly knit together nothing can get between them. You cannot overpower pride. But curiosity is a thin liquid that finds the cracks.

He went down and dipped seven times, and his flesh came back like a little child’s. Seven dips. That’s the faithfulness. The healing lived on the other side of the action.

Your Testimony Seals It

Naaman went back to Elisha to testify. That matters more than it looks. Ten lepers got healed in Luke 17. One came back. And to that one, Jesus said, Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well. Nine got the healing. One got the word over his life.

Testimony is what seals your immunity on that matter. And if you’re reading this from the bottom of something, hear me. God allows desperation because He will not let you go. His goodness and mercy are chasing you down every time you turn around.

“Nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” — Romans 8:39

In Christ Jesus. That’s the part we skip. If you’re running, return to Him. Then ask Him one question: what is the faithful action to take today? Take that faith out from under the situation, put it back on top as a banner, and move.

Amen.

🎯 Your Next Steps + Resources For You:

📖 Come Study the Book of Nehemiah with Me! Monday nights at 7:00pm ET on Zoom. A full leadership study on rebuilding what’s been broken down and building healthy spiritual habits, co-ed, taught alongside my husband. It’s not too late to jump in. Get signed up and let’s dig in!
👉🏽 revivetampa.org/biblestudy

☀️ Join me for Get Ready with God: Come start your day with me, Sis! LIVE weekday mornings at 7:30am ET. 30 minutes of inspo, prayer and the word before the noise of the day gets to grab the wheel. Let’s get ready with God! 💃🏻
👉 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ericapyle
👉 Facebook: https://www.ericapyle.com/BizFB

⛪️ Come worship with us at REVIVE Church of Tampa:
🙌 Sunday worship at 11am, in person and online.
📍 1803 N. Howard Ave, Tampa, FL 33607.
👉 https://www.revivetampa.org/churchonline

🎧 Subscribe to Positioned to Prosper Podcast: This is where breakthrough gets built, the kind that changes the pattern for you, your family, and the generations coming behind you. Subscribe so you do not miss the next one.
👉🏽 Apple Podcasts: ericapyle.com/apple
👉🏽 Spotify: ericapyle.com/spotify
👉🏽 YouTube: youtube.com/@ericapyle

Erica co-leads a local church alongside her husband, Doug, in Tampa, Florida called REVIVE Church of Tampa. You can visit the church’s website for more information about who we are, what we believe and how we show up as the Church in the heart of West Tampa and beyond.

REVIVE Church of Tampa

REVIVE Church of Tampa streams service live on Sunday mornings at 11am ET. You can find that livestream on our church Facebook page:

Live Service – Sundays at 11am ET

If you’re interested in joining the online campus of REVIVE Church of Tampa, you are welcome to join our community group on Facebook where we offer weekly discussion around the Friday and Sunday messages as well as discipleship Zoom groups and the opportunity to host others in your home as you stream services. You can find us here:

The ROCC: REVIVE Online Campus Community

About this podcast:

Welcome to the Positioned to Prosper Podcast with Erica Pyle, where we dive deep into Biblical mindsets, strategies, and inspiration to help you thrive in every area of your life. Whether it’s faith, health, relationships, finances, business, or ministry, Erica’s here to equip you with the tools you need to get unstuck, overcome overwhelm, and avoid burnout as you pursue your purpose with intention.

Join Erica, co-lead pastor of REVIVE Church of Tampa, and founder/lead mentor of The Jesus Girl Gang, an online, group coaching mentorship for Christian women with a pioneering spirit, as she shares powerful teachings, practical advice, and pivotal strategies for breakthrough living without compromising on the things that matter most to you. With over 13 years of experience in pastoral ministry alongside her husband Doug, Erica brings a wealth of knowledge and a passionate heart for helping you live out God’s best for your life.

Each week, tune in for transformative insights that will empower you to build a Kingdom business or ministry, nurture your personal well-being, and create balanced, prosperous relationships. If you’re a faith-driven woman seeking to align your life with God’s purpose, you’re in the right place.

Connect with Erica on Social For More Daily Encouragement, Strategy & Inspiration:

Instagram: www.instagram.com/ericapyle
Facebook: www.facebook.com/ericapyle.biz

Subscribe to Erica’s Email List and We’ll Send You New Podcast Episodes and More:

erica pyle

erica pyle

Podcast

October 20, 2026