Some prayers ask for an outcome. This one, a under-three-minute recitation posted by Maria Gullo on her channel The Deeper Connection, asks for something harder: the strength to keep waiting while anxiety and sadness press in. Built loosely on Psalm 40, the prayer opens with a confession of endurance ("For you, my God, I wait and I wait"), moves through a catalogue of rescue and gratitude, admits that old troubles still deceive the speaker, and ends in a bluntly repeated request: "My God, don't delay." Read closely, it is a compact map of how faithful people talk to God when the answer has not arrived yet.
The video's own description frames the piece as a prayer for times when you need help with your faith and with waiting on God. That framing matters, because the prayer does not treat waiting as passive. Gullo's opening line, spoken at the 0:04 mark, sets the tone: the speaker is still waiting, and the repetition ("I wait and I wait") admits that the waiting has gone on for a while. There is no pretense of calm. The prayer begins where most people actually are.
What follows is a sequence of testimony. At 0:09 the speaker says God hears the cry for help, and at 0:13 that God lifts "me out of the depth of depression and confusion." The imagery is vertical and physical: depth, lifting, rescue. Then comes a pair of contrasts that carry much of the prayer's weight. At 0:21 God "transform[s] me from guilt and worry / to confidence and faith." Notice that the prayer does not ask to skip the worry. It describes a movement through it. The speaker is not who they were, and the prayer locates that change in God's action rather than in the speaker's effort.
Between 0:38 and 0:48 the prayer makes a distinction that is easy to skim past. "Happy is the one who puts their trust in God, / not looking for their answers in the world." Then, at 0:48: "For God pours out wisdom to all who are willing to ask and receive." These lines are not an argument against seeking help. They are a claim about where steadiness comes from. When anxiety is high, the mind reaches for quick certainty: a news cycle, a decision, a reassurance from someone else. The prayer names that reflex and sets it aside, pointing instead to a wisdom that is poured out rather than extracted. The phrase "willing to ask and receive" puts the work in the posture of openness, not in ingenuity.
The most striking turn in the prayer arrives around 0:59. "Being perfectly religious / is not what you want from me, / but rather to listen to you / with open ears and a willing heart." For anyone who has tried to pray through anxiety by getting the words exactly right, this is a release. The prayer says God is not asking for correctness. It asks for attention and willingness. The speaker then answers at 1:14 with a deliberately simple reply: "And so I say here I am."
"Here I am" is an old and humble phrase of availability, and in this prayer it becomes the hinge between confession and surrender. The lines that follow spell out what that availability involves: receiving God "into my whole being," doing God's will, and letting God's way be "written on my heart." Then comes a small but revealing wobble: "and may my heart never forsake me." The prayer does not pretend the heart is reliable. It asks for the heart to stay faithful, which is a request made by someone who knows how fickle their own attention can be.
At 1:46 the tone changes. "For darkness, anxiety, and sadness / have overwhelmed me, / and sometimes troubles from the past / deceive me." This is one of the most honest passages in the prayer. It names three distinct conditions (darkness, anxiety, sadness) and then adds a fourth thing that is harder to pin down: the past, which does not simply hurt but deceives. Old wounds can speak as if they were current facts. A prayer that gives language to that deception gives the speaker a way to answer it. The lines do not argue the speaker out of their feelings. They place those feelings in front of God.
The response, beginning at 2:02, is a set of direct petitions. "But my Lord, / in your compassion deliver me quickly. / May your love and faithfulness / be my shield." The shield image is worth lingering on. A shield does not remove the arrow or the battlefield. It stands between the speaker and what is coming. That is a modest and realistic hope, and it fits the prayer's whole approach: protection during the struggle rather than an instant exit from it.
"Though I may be weak and needy, your care and compassion strengthens me." (Maria Gullo, reciting the prayer in the video, around 2:22)
That line may be the emotional center of the piece. It does not ask the speaker to become strong before approaching God. It admits weakness and need as the starting condition, and then locates strength in God's care. For someone whose anxiety makes them feel they must have it together, that sequence is a gentle correction.
The closing lines are short and insistent. "Great are you, Lord. / You are my help and my deliverer. / Don't delay. / My God, don't delay." At 2:39 the phrase arrives a second time, addressed directly to God. The repetition is the most human moment in the prayer. After all the language of patience, trust, and open ears, the speaker drops the composure and asks plainly for speed. That honesty is part of the lesson. Waiting on God does not require pretending you are not impatient. The prayer shows that you can hold trust and urgency in the same breath.
The prayer is short enough to memorize, and that is one of its practical strengths. A reader or listener might move through it in stages: first naming the waiting honestly, then asking to be lifted from the place they are in, then listening for wisdom rather than demanding it, then naming the darkness and the old wounds, and finally asking for help without apology. You do not need to believe every line on the first attempt. The prayer itself allows for that, with its admission that the heart may fail and its plain request that God not delay.
If this prayer speaks to you, watch Gullo's video on her channel The Deeper Connection and say it slowly, pausing after the lines about "open ears and a willing heart" and after "don't delay." Notice which phrase catches in your throat. That is usually where the waiting is most real. Then try writing your own version, keeping the same sequence: honesty about the wait, a request for lift, a confession of the past, and a short, undiplomatic plea for help.
