How often do we feel this way "Even Me Lord" after waiting for what sometimes seems like forever. How often have you been tempted to give up on God....on prayer......on waiting.....on patience and endurance because God delayed in answering prayer immediately? How many of you are parents and after praying for decades have still not seen the salvation of a child? I'm still praying. How many believers have prayed night and day for healing, but still suffer or have to behold the suffering of a loved-one? I remember praying and fasting many nights for financial needs to be met and have agonized because of mounting debt. BUT GOD was and still is in full control and always no matter how hard it is to understand there is a reason for the delay. For delays are not denials. Its so easy to stop praying because we see no results and wonder when its gonna come but we must continue to pray, for only God knows how close to the crest of the hill we are. We must not give up despite disappointments, for God will justify Himself and bring glory to Himself. That great man of faith remember Elijah, not only prayed to God for rain he also kept gazing toward the horizon for the tell-tale signs of a cloud, until eventually a cloud the size of a man's fist appeared. He persevered until the heavens unleashed its glory, and God's word was fulfilled. The joy that cometh in the morning might be far less thrilling, had not it been for all the weeping that endured all night. Ask me I know! Had Jesus forgotten Mary and Martha? We see this very clearly in the raising of Lazarus the most touching of all miracles. When Lazarus was ill - when his state had become critical -Martha and Mary you remember sent word to Jesus. Now Jesus loved Lazarus and his sisters, and the happiest memories encircled that village home; yet the Gospel tells us that when Jesus heard the news, He abode two days still in the place where He was. There are seasons when two days seems like a moment; there are seasons when two days seems an eternity. What did it mean? Had Jesus quite forgotten them as we sometimes think He forgets us ? Was He deaf and dead to the prayers of the sisters' love? I think that Martha and Mary, with their eyes on dying Lazarus, knew the burden of divine delay. Did we get everything we craved for in the very hour of asking it, the one sure way to ruin a young child is to give it immediately all for which it asks and I'm sure Jesus feels the same way about us. Work reveals character, but so does waiting. We need to be tested to prove if we are worthy just to receive and use the thing we crave. So it often is that God delays, and will not answer us, and keeps us waiting. It is not in scorn but in the wisest love that He will not for a while. Then it is very helpful to remember that divine delay does not mean inactivity. God is not idle when He does not answer us; He is busier preparing the answer than we think. So when we pray and strive and nothing happens, till we are tempted to say God does not know, God does not care. Perhaps God, like some of the busiest men I know, is doing most when He seems to be doing nothing. There is definately Love in Delay And so in closing I would say to you: do not lose heart at the delays of God. Speed after all is but a relative term, and there is more love in God's slow method than you think. Being a parent I sometimes look back on those years when my children played and if i had some great news to tell them I deliberately withheld it for a time like we were going to Chucky Cheese maybe "If I told them that night there wouldnt be one wink of sleep; if I told them when they woke, there would not be one bite of breakfast and so deliberately I held back the blessing, and I did it just because I loved them other than the fact they would have worried me to no end. If ye then being evil act like that, is it incredible that God should do the same? I think it is wiser to pray on, strive on, casting all doubts to the devil who inspired them; believing in a love that never mocks us, and that will give us our heart's desire in His own time. Just know that He hears you and Delays are not Denials just Hold On it's coming!
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