In our fast paced life it is good to STOP and read again Isaiah 40:28-31, “Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? There is no searching of his understanding. (29) He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. (30) Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: (31) But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” Remember wherever Jesus went He walked. He never seemed in a rush. He kept His own timetable, operated at His own speed. He never wore a watch, but He always knew the hour. He never wasted a minute, but He never rushed through a day. We’re not used to that pace, and sometimes it seems to us that Jesus is slow to respond and late on the scene. On several occasions during His ministry, Jesus appeared to have been tardy.

When the disciples were caught in the storm on Galilee, He tarried until the “fourth watch,” sometime between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. He could easily have rescued them at 9 p.m., and all could have enjoyed a good night’s sleep; yet He waited.

Remember the time Jairus begged Jesus to come and heal his daughter who was at the point of death. Jesus started in that direction but paused to deal with the woman who touched the hem of His garment. He arrived at Jairus’ house too late, or so it seemed.

Similarly, when our Lord heard that His friend Lazarus was sick, He tarried two more days in the place where He was, and Lazarus died.

Christ was working on a different schedule, patiently waiting until all the circumstances were correctly aligned for the fulfilling of His purposes. He still employs the same keen, impeccable sense of divine timing in answering our prayers and directing our lives.

Quite often, the writers of the Psalms extol the virtue of waiting on the Lord. In reading the Psalms, we run across phrases like the end of Psalm 27:13-14, “I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. (14) Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD.” Yet the same authors who tell us to “wait on the Lord” also keep asking, “How long…?”

Psalm 6:3, “My soul is also sore vexed: but thou, O LORD, how long?”

Psalm 13:1, “How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? … how long wilt thou hide thy face from me?”

Psalm 74:10, “O God, how long shall the adversary reproach?…”

Psalm 80:4, “O LORD God of hosts, how long wilt thou be angry against the prayer of thy people?”

Psalm 94:3, “LORD, how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked triumph?”

There are twenty-eight “waits” in the book of Psalms, and eighteen “how longs.” We can identify with this dilemma. On one hand, we’re told to patiently “wait on the Lord”; on the other hand, we are impatient people with urgent needs. When we’re in distress, pain, or adversity, we cry out, “Lord, how long?”

The secret is placing ourselves in His hands and pacing ourselves according to His timetable. “The delays of God are not meant to discourage our faith, but to develop it,” wrote Amy Carmichael. An unknown poet put it this way:

His wisdom is sublime; His heart profoundly kind.

God never is before His time, And never is behind.

The Lord Jesus Christ is Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last. He knows the end from the beginning, and the apparent delays in life are simply God’s way of aligning circumstances for our benefit. If you’re facing a time trial, don’t compete with God’s timing or be discouraged and abandon your hope in Him. Do as Psalm 130:5-6 suggests: “I wait for the LORD, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope. (6) My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning.” 

In His Amazing Grace,

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http://TheWeeklySermon.com/2008/29/