October 24, 2001
Reading
“On that very same
day” (41)
How difficult it is at times when we pray for something or someone and the answer from the Lord never seems to come. Do we not conclude at times that God did not hear our supplication or that His answer is “No”! We cry with the Psalmist, “Make haste to me, O God! You are my help and my deliverer; O LORD, do not delay” (Ps 70:5). How we need to learn patience, or better yet, to learn how to trust God.
God has His timing and will bring about His purposes
for our life and those we love when it is His right time. God told Abraham that
his descendants would be “strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will
serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred
years” (Gen:
There is no delay in God fulfilling His purposes;
“I, the LORD, will hasten it in its time" (Isa 60:22). When that day of
fulfillment arrives, God will not put it off for another day. We are so used to
others failing to keep their word (or perhaps this is a personal trait) that we
have difficulty believing in the faithfulness and integrity of God. We say we
do believe, yet when the “desires of our heart” are not forthcoming, we begin
to question God. “He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it” (1 Thess
God is so faithful that at times He will answer before we pray! “It shall come to pass that before they call, I will answer; and while they are still speaking, I will hear” (Isa 65:24).
Maybe, if the answer is delayed, God is waiting for us to put something right in our lives. After all, does He not say, “Delight yourself also in the LORD, and He shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD,
trust also in Him, and He
shall bring it to pass” (Ps 37:4-5)? God promises that the desires of our heart
will be given when we “delight” in the Lord and when we “commit” our way to
Him. Surely we know that the desires of our heart will be given when it can be
said we “delight” in the Lord! For when this is true then our desires will be
His desires. We will want only those things that are according to His will and
purpose: “Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we
know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that
we have asked of Him” (1 John
The greatest of all the promises Almighty God has given was fulfilled exactly at the time He purposed: “But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son” (Gal 4:4). At that exact time in history Mary “was found with child of the Holy Spirit” and Jesus was born. God has His timetable and will answer our prayers in the time He sees fit. Are we not called upon to walk by faith? Why then is our faith so weak when it comes to the promises of God?
“The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us” (2 Peter 3:9).