This morning I would like to pick up where I left off last week. You may recall how I had said that the Lord made Joseph wait thirteen long years before finally letting him out of prison and then making him the number two man in ancient Egypt. He also made David wait a long painful time before He allowed him to occupy the kings’ throne.

Undoubtedly those two men would have been praying for these events to occur much sooner but that wasn’t part of God’s plan. He made them wait, just as He often does you and me before granting us something we want very much. It wasn’t as though they were praying for something that was contrary to His will because God had previously revealed His plans to each man. Nevertheless, our sovereign Lord who is infinite in wisdom and perfect in love made them wait.

Last week I went on to remind us that whatever blessing the Lord was pleased to bestow upon folks through those two men or through you and me for that matter, especially if He had been preparing us for some special work, that blessing would not have been possible without each of us first patiently waiting for Him to give us what we had been asking for.

For instance, God didn’t immediately put David upon the king’s throne. On the contrary, after the Lord anointed him through the Prophet Samuel, David was subjected to a period of severe testing. When he was brought into the prophet’s presence we read in 1 Samuel 16:12-13 (ESV):

12 And he sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy and had beautiful eyes and was handsome. And the Lord said, “Arise, anoint him, for this is he.” 13 Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward. And Samuel rose up and went to Ramah. 14 Now the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him.

“After his “anointing,” David experienced a period of great testing. The coming of the Spirit upon him was followed by an encounter with the great enemy Satan and the next thing we read is of David being sent to calm King Saul who was terrified by an evil spirit. Shortly after that we find Him going forth to fight Goliath—who was a figure of Satan.”

We can’t help but notice the similarity between David’s experience after his anointing and that of his future Son and Lord, Jesus Christ after Jesus was baptized. Matthew 3:13-17 (ESV)

13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. 14 John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” 15 But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. 16 And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; 17 and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
Matthew 4:1-3 (ESV)
1 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”

“After the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Him at His baptism, Christ was tempted by the Devil for forty days. So it was with David. The principle which I’m illustrating is one that would do each of us well to take to heart: regardless of how unpleasant it is, our patience has to be tested and our faith must be strengthened.

Humility must be evident in our daily walk. Furthermore, before we will be ready to enter into God’s best for us we must rightly use what God has already given to us, if our heart’s desire for Him to give us more of His best.[1]

A couple of weeks ago we looked at the entire eleventh chapter of the Gospel of John so that we could gain insight into why God often makes His children wait before He answers their prayers. In that chapter John gives a vivid account of the heartbreaking illness followed by the glorious resurrection from the dead of a friend of Jesus named Lazarus. We can sum up the reason why Jesus didn’t immediately answer the prayers of Lazarus and his sisters with one word love.

John 11:4-6 (AMP)
4 When Jesus received the message, He said, This sickness is not to end in death; but [on the contrary] it is to honor God and to promote His glory, that the Son of God may be glorified through (by) it. 5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. [They were His dear friends, and He held them in loving esteem.] 6 Therefore when He heard that Lazarus was sick, He still stayed two days longer in the same place where He was.

Remember that key word therefore. Jesus loved them, therefore He didn’t come immediately. And Jesus loves you and me; therefore He doesn’t always give us what we would like immediately.

You may recall I said last week that throughout our lifetime there are some prayers that we pray fervently for but then we finally stop. Those were the ones that you become convinced He wasn’t going to give you what you wanted and so you stop asking. The thought of Him granting your request just leaves your mind. You moved on and it became a fading memory.
However, in other cases, “especially when our desire and faith remain buoyant and elastic, and still the answer doesn’t come, Gods intention is that in making us wait our spirit will be led to take up a position which it has never assumed before, but from which it will never be dislodged again.”

“Christ’s delays in answering our prayers are the delays of love. All of us have experienced intense desires for the removal of some bitterness or sorrow in our life, or for the fulfillment of something which we were really expecting and had been wishing for. Something which we truly believed on the best evidence that we could find, to be in accordance with His will, and which we have been able to make prayers out of, in true faith and humble submission. These are the kinds of prayers which we have had to pray over and over and over again, and still no answer came.”

“ We need to remember that it is part of the method of divine Providence that the removal of our burden and the arrival of our desires ought to be viewed by us as a being a hope postponed. Instead of you and me stumbling over this mystery, or feeling as if it is making a great demand upon us by the testing our faith to the max, wouldn’t it not be wiser for us to lay hold of that little word “therefore” that I elaborated upon earlier, and to see in it a small window that opens out on to a infinite panorama, and a glimpse into the very heart of the divine motives in His dealings with us?”

“If we could just get that firm conviction into our hearts and keep it there, think of how peacefully we would be able go about our daily walk! What a beautiful Christ-like patience there would be in us, if we consistently believed and trusted that the only thing which triggers God’s providence in its choice of the time to fulfill our heart’s desires and the lifting of our burden’s is our own ultimate good! Nothing but the purest and simplest love, transparent and without a fold in it, sways Him in all that He does. Ask yourself this question: “Why should it be so difficult for me to believe this?”

“If we would cultivate the habit of looking at life, with all of its often unwelcome problems, and its arrows of pain and sorrow, and all the disappointments and frustrations and other ills that it is heir to, as a discipline, and were to think less about the unpleasantness, and more about the purpose of what happens to us, we would find far less difficulty in understanding that His delay is born out of the womb of love, and is a truly a token of His tender care.”

“Sorrow is often long-drawn-out for the same reason that it was sent. It is of little use to send it for a little while. In the majority of cases, time is an element in its working its right effect upon us. If the weight is lifted, the flexible substance beneath it springs up again. As soon as the wind passes over the cornfield, the bowing ears raise themselves again. Some times you have to steep grimy things in Clorox for a long time before it washes out the stains.”

“ And so time is an element in all the good that we get out of the discipline of life. Therefore, the same love which sends these challenges often must prolong them longer than we would like in the discipline under which we are put. If we thought of it, as I have said, more frequently as discipline and schooling, and less frequently as pain and a burden, we would understand the meaning of things a great deal better than we do, and would be able to face them with courageous hearts, and with a patient, almost joyous, endurance.”

“If we pause and think of some of the purposes of our sorrows and burdens, we will be able to recognize very clearly that time is needed for accomplishing them, and that; therefore, perfect incomprehensible love has no other choice but to delay its coming to take them away. For example, the object of them all, and the highest blessing that any of us can obtain, is that our wills would be bent until they coincide with God’s, and that takes time.”

“Our will can be broken with a heavy blow, but it will take time to bend it. And just because swiftly passing calamity have little permanent effect in molding our wills, it is a blessing, and not an evil, to have some lingering challenge in our lives, which will make a continual demand upon us for continually repeated acts of humbly bowing ourselves beneath His sweet, though it may seem severe, will.”

“God’s love in Jesus Christ can give us nothing better than the opportunity of bowing our wills to His, and saying, ‘Not mine, but Thine be done.’ If that is why He stops on the other side of the Jordan River, and keeps us from entering the Promised Land, so to speak, and He does not come even to the loving pleas of His beloved children, such as Martha and Mary and Lazarus and you and me, it is then that He shows His love in the sweetest and the loftiest form. So, dear friends, if you carry a lifelong sorrow, do not think that it is a mystery why it should lie upon your shoulders when there are omnipotence and an infinite heart in the heavens.”

“If it has the effect of bending you to His purpose, it is the truest token of His loving care that He can send. In like manner, is it not worth carrying a weight of unfulfilled wishes, and a weariness of unalleviated sorrows, if these do teach us three things, which are one thing — faith, endurance, prayerfulness, and so knit us by a threefold cord that cannot be broken, to the very heart of God Himself?”[2]

“No praying breath is ever spent in vain. If you can believe for the blessings you ask for, they are certainly yours. The goods are consigned, though “not yet” delivered. The blessings are labeled with your name on them, but they are “not yet” sent. The vision is still for a predetermined time: it will come and not tarry. The black head of hair may become white; the bright eyes may become dim, the loving heart may become impaired in its beating; but the answer will come in God’s perfect time exactly as He has planned. God will give it at the earliest moment which is consistent with the well-being of the one He loves.”[3]

“This delayed help always comes at the right time. Don’t forget that Heaven’s clock is different from ours. In our day there are twelve hours, and in God’s a thousand years. What seems long to us is to Him ‘a little while.’ Let us not imitate the shortsighted impatience of His disciples, who said, ‘What is this that He saith, A little while? We cannot tell what He saith.’ The time of separation looked so long in anticipation to them, and to Him it had dwindled to a moment. For two days, forty-eight hours, He delayed His answer to Mary and Martha, and they thought it an eternity, while the heavy hours crept by, and they only said, ‘It’s very weary, He cometh not, they said.’ How long did it look to them when they had Lazarus back?”

“The longest prolonging of the fulfillment of the most yearning expectation and fulfilled desire will seem but as the winking of an eyelid when we get to estimate duration by the same scale by which He estimates it, the scale of Eternity. The ephemeral insect, born in the morning and dead when the day fades, has a still minuter scale than ours, but we should not think of regulating our estimate of long and short by it. Do not let us commit the equal absurdity of regulating the march of His providence by the swift beating of our watches. God works leisurely because God has eternity to work in. The answer always comes at the right time, and is punctual though delayed.” A good case in point is experience of the Apostle Peter.

Acts 12:1-11 (ESV)
1 About that time Herod the king laid violent hands on some who belonged to the church. 2 He killed James the brother of John with the sword, 3 and when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also. This was during the days of Unleavened Bread. 4 And when he had seized him, he put him in prison, delivering him over to four squads of soldiers to guard him, intending after the Passover to bring him out to the people. 5 So Peter was kept in prison, but earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church.

6 Now when Herod was about to bring him out, on that very night, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries before the door were guarding the prison. 7 And behold, an angel of the Lord stood next to him, and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him, saying, “Get up quickly.” And the chains fell off his hands. 8 And the angel said to him, “Dress yourself and put on your sandals.” And he did so. And he said to him, “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me.” 9 And he went out and followed him. He did not know that what was being done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision.

10 When they had passed the first and the second guard, they came to the iron gate leading into the city. It opened for them of its own accord, and they went out and went along one street, and immediately the angel left him. 11 When Peter came to himself, he said, “Now I am sure that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from the hand of Herod and from all that the Jewish people were expecting.”

“Day after day the Church kept praying for Peter without receiving an answer. The week of the feast came. Intense, fervent and continuous prayer was made. Still no answer. The slow hours pass away. The last day of his life, as it would appear, comes and goes. Still no answer! The night gathers; prayer rises up to heaven. The last hour of the last watch of the last night that Peter had to live has come, and as the veil of darkness is thinning, and the day is beginning to break, ‘the angel of the Lord shone round about him.”

“Did you notice that there was no haste in his deliverance? All was done leisurely, as in the confidence of ample time to spare, and perfect security. He is told to get up quickly, but there is no hurry in the stages of his liberation. “Dress yourself and put on your sandals.”

“There is no fear of all those soldiers waking, or of there not being enough time to do everything. We can imagine the half sleeping and wholly bewildered Apostle fumbling at the sandal-strings, in dread of some movement rousing his guards, and the calm face of the angel looking on. Once the sandals were fastened, Peter is told to wrap his cloak around himself and follow the angel.

“With equal leisure and orderliness he is then escorted through the first and the second guard of sleeping soldiers, and then through the prison gate. He could have been lifted up at once clean out of his dungeon, and then set down in the house where many were gathered praying fervently for him. But more advantageous to Peter and the praying church was the demonstration of power which such a gradual deliverance gave, when it led him slowly past all those obstacles and paralyzed their power.” [i]

God is never in a hurry. Nor does He ever come a Mila-second too soon or too late. God works leisurely because He has eternity to work in. As I said earlier, and I hope you are able to see it a little clearer now, is the indisputable fact that there’s a vast difference between ours and “Heaven’s Clock.”

[1] The references I have made to the three authors in this message do not reflect actual quotes. In the interest of clarity I have modernized some of the language while maintaining their thoughts.

[2] Maclaren Expositions of Holy Scripture, Alexander Maclaren, Baker Book House, Reprinted 1984, Vol. 10. p 75-78.

[3] Gospel of John, F. B. Meyer, Oliphants Blundell House, Goodwoood Road, London, S.E. 14,pp, 168.