Why Delay
Jesus loved Mary and Martha dearly – so why would He delay their cry for help? Daniel was beloved of the Lord – so why did he have to wait for an answer? God was the friend of Abraham – so why the unendurable delayed promise?
Four days or twenty-one days is difficult enough, when an answer is desperately sought, but Abraham had a 400 year delay for his descendant’s pledge to be redeemed!
Each request was simple enough for God to carry out, so why the delay?
Why delay when there is serious, ongoing and heartbreaking situations to resolve?
Why delay when we in like manner cry, day and night to God for deliverance?
Why does He seemingly turn His back and apparently walk away from our despair? Why does He delay when His word overflows with contrary pledges of deliverance? Why tax His dear one’s trust and exhaust His precious child’s hope of deliverance? Why does He allow faith to be torn to shreds due to His apparent, uncaring delay?
But God does not leave His children in bitterness of soul for lack of care or love. God has a deeper, wider, greater purpose than His hurting child can understand. Waiting may frustrate us and His silences may thunder in our pounding soul, but He desires to bestow over and above all that we can ask or think or imagine. If we could only comprehend His love, His mind and His reason for His delay!!
Eternal Benefit
Never forget that there are always reasons for His apparent delay, if you can bear it. He is determined that all He does on behalf of His children, is done to His glory.
His delay, however devastating it may appear, is because of His deep love for you.
But He has a further work to achieve in your life, not for the moment but for eternity, and delay is one of the many ways the Lord uses to correct and train and perfect us.
FIRST) He uses delay to glorify His name for He is great and highly to be praised, SECOND) He uses delay to confound and punish the enemy.
THIRD) He even uses delay to test and strengthen our faith in Him, and He will use delay in our lives to the point of exhaustion.
He uses His delays in our lives until we are conformed into His image and He uses delay for our eternal advantage and our own glorious benefit!
I say, postponement or delay in settling that matter keeps us all the time in that state of hoping and waiting for it to be different, and, because the difference does not come, getting downcast and feeling that all is wrong and that the Lord is against us and all that sort of thing, thus giving all the ground that the enemy wants for destroying our testimony.
And as with Abraham and the saints of old who have not yet received the promise, the time for His appointed return will come and it will not be delayed, Hab.2:3
So that at the appointed time His delayed gift will come – and it will come at our best time: for our times are in His hands Psa.31:15 and it is God Who works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.
But when we are not allowed to do anything, when we are cut off from ministry and work and service, and shut up to the discipline of inaction and the discipline of delay, God is preparing for better service than we would ever have fulfilled otherwise.
Delayed Expectation
How lost, forgotten and misunderstood is the truth of His soon and mysterious return. How insignificant, misrepresented, twisted and ignored is the return of our sweet Lord Jesus. How sad that His return for His precious chase virgin has become so meaningless. How blinded are the eyes of believers who focus on the unreality of today..
A delayed expectation can cause the strongest believer to question his hope.
At times the suggestion wouldbe influenced by necessity of circumstances, at times by thepromise of effectiveness in His service, or again byrepresentation of the utter un-wisdom of the line that He wastaking, as when His own brethren, who did not believe in Him,chided Him for delay, saying, Go up to Jerusalem and showyourself!
Just sit calmly still!Thou longest much to know thy dear Lord’s will!While anxious thoughts would almost steal their wayCorrodingly within, because of His delay.Persuade thyself in simple faith to restThat He, who knows and loves, will do the best.
Last Prophet
John was Israel’s last prophet who was to call the nation of Israel to repentance as the time to set up the kingdom of God had finally arrived – their Messiah had come… but the nation of Israel rejected their Messiah and crucified their King and so the kingdom of God had to be delayed for a time – during the church age, and given to a people who would produce its fruit – and so Israel was set aside – for a time…
Deferred hope is not something that only you are facing today; it is Job – in his tempest; it is Abraham, on the long and dusty road to Moriah; it is Moses, in the blistering deserts of Midian; it is Elijah, beside the evaporating brook of Cherith. It is Habakkuk, trembling in his Shigionoth. It is the Son of Man, prostrate in the Garden of Gethsemane. There is no patience so hard to bear as hope that has been deferred. This is waiting for a delayed hope, which requires endurance, patience, perseverance.
BUT GOD. God can cause the distressing delay to blossom into a thing of beauty. God can replace the chalice of bitter herbs with a brimming cup of blessing. God will change the long night of waiting into a morning of joy and rejoicing.
The wonderful thing is that whether maturity is sought immediately or delayed – all things in life will be worked together for our good, and for God’s glory.
Delaying Groom
But what if the bridegroom were to delay his coming? What tantrums and tears would follow! What grief and distress would be displayed! Would she wait a minute, an hour, a week, a month for the one she loves so dearly? Would she wait a year with increased expectancy to fall into his loving embrace? Would disinterest seep into her longing to be with him? Would irritation remove the pain of being apart from him? Would she seek after others to woo her or be lulled into some narcotic sleep?
Patient Waiting
Waiting for Love’s embrace is far from easy when the object of love is delayed. I go to prepare a place for you, He promised.
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself. Should not this promise of the heavenly Bridegroom cause our hearts to rejoice? Should not the deep desire or His heart move our own to an even deeper longing? Knowing that He prayed: Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am..” John 17:24. Should not our yearning love for Him overshadow any concern about His delay? For having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them to the end.
What a beautiful love story we discover in the Song of Solomon, and what reassurance it gives us to know that despite His long delay, the time is coming when we shall be with Christ Jesus forever.
Jesus knew the Jews were seeking to kill Him, and so He deliberately delayed His journey to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles. He remained in Galilee until the last possible moment.
However, the Jew's bitter hatred for Jesus had reached boiling point, and they sought to kill Him, which was the reason He delayed His journey.
In this verse we read: Now the feast of the Jews, the Feast of Booths, was near, and although Jesus delayed His journey to Jerusalem following the taunts of his brothers, we read that Jesus did eventually go up to the Feast of Booths, but He went quietly because His time had not yet come.
Christ uses the parable of the widow woman and the unjust judge to encourage us to be continually in prayer, to pray without ceasing, and to remain in constant communion with the Lord as we petition Him for the blessings we need from His gracious hand, especially when those blessings seem to be delayed.
And we are assured that any perceived delay is His wise preparations.
His delay is not inactivity or disinterest, but a preparation to make all things work together for good, to those that love God and are called according to His purpose.
They called this out at His First Coming BUT then crucified Him, causing his kingdom to be delayed - for a season.When God's programme through the Church has been completed, then the Lord will remove the witness of His Church from the earth and graciously re-establish His work of redemption through Israel, during the coming time of Jacob's Trouble.
If he delays there is a reason, and any delay pours an additional stream of grace into a Christ-rejecting sinful world, enabling sinners to turn to Christ for salvation, allowing the prodigal son to return to the Father's embrace, permitting the saint to grow in grace and a knowledge of his lovely Lord Jesus, for everything that God does is VERY GOOD.
God is working His purpose out and He will come back at the right time, not too early, not too late and Peter gives us insight into His timing: The Lord does not delay his promise, as some understand delay, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance.
But Jesus deliberately delayed His journey and His beloved friend died and was buried in a stone-cold tomb.
Jesus could have healed Lazarus from a distance, just as he had healed the nobleman's servant, but He delayed His visit for a purpose - and that purpose was for the glory of God.
Zephaniah's serious warning should also admonish all who know the truth of the gospel of grace, not to be indecisive but to turn from their sin, seek the Lord while He may be found, and not delay their decision.
And so He called out, giving a loving response to their prayer without any delay: But immediately Jesus spoke to them saying, 'Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.'Did you see that?
It was not a lack of love that caused His delay, nor was it fear of the Jews who were motivated to kill the Lord Jesus if He ever showed His face in Jerusalem again.
For Your own sake, O my God, do not delay, because Your city and Your people are called by Your name.
He confessed the sins they had committed and recognised they were not worthy of God's grace and deliverance, but his prayer was founded on the holy name and the unchanging faithfulness of God towards His people and he wept, Do not delay, because YOUR city and YOUR people are called by YOUR HOLY NAME.
The blowing of the trumpets will be delayed during heaven's half an hour of silence, as the seven angels watch and wait to sound their instruments, as the smoke of the incense, intermingled with the prayers of the saints, will ascend in the presence of God.
They were to focus on their important ministry and not be needlessly delayed by profitless talk or diverted from their important task by unnecessary diversions.
God had brought them out of Egypt and was ready to give them great victory in the Promised Land, but disobedience caused their entrance into the land of promise to be delayed for forty years.
He had hoped to be in Jerusalem during the feast of Passover, which was the anniversary of Christ's crucifixion and glorious resurrection, but this murderous plot delayed his journey.
However, the wicked plot to assassinate him caused Paul to alter his arrangements and delay his trip by almost six months.
The instruction, not to greet anyone along the way, does not suggest that God condones rudeness, but rather it encourages an urgency in the mission set before them (and us)... which should not be delayed by long, ceremonial greetings or unimportant gossip.
And so, as Peter drew his final letter to a close, he entreated Christians everywhere to recall the teachings of Paul and to consider any apparent delay in the Lord's return as a demonstration of God's grace, whereby sinners are being given time and opportunity to turn from their sin and trust in Christ for forgiveness.
As we wait for the soon return of the Lord Jesus for His saints, let us never forget that any apparent delay in Christ's return exposes the goodness and kindness of God towards unrepentant believers, leading them to repentence.
Both men urged their readers to be diligent to grow in grace, mature in the faith, be found in Christ, and to understand that any perceived delay in Christ's return points to God's long-suffering kindness towards men, for it is not God's will that any should perish but that all come to repentance and find peace in Him.
God did not immediately remove the evils from the path of His faithful servant David - for delay in God's judgement on the wicked is a demonstration of His mercy and grace towards the children of men.
The Lord desires that all men repent and are saved, and His delay is designed to give a greater opportunity for the wicked to renounce their evil ways, repent of their sins and turn to the Lord and be saved.
His delay in the punishment of the wicked in the time of David concluded in joy and rejoicing - just as the multiplication of evil in our day will one day be halted in our lives too - and it will be to His praise and glory and for our eternal benefit.
The promised kingdom had to be postponed, and the end-time prophecies of Joel, which began on the Day of Pentecost, had to be delayed for a future 'Day' when Israel will repent and call on the Lord.
The fact they they failed at Christ's first coming and had fallen into centuries of gross spiritual apostasy did not cancel God's plans, but certainly delayed the work..
The wrath of God, which must eventually be poured out on all sin, if His justice is to be fully satisfied, was delayed... to give men the time to repent of their sin.
Every day God's wrath is delayed, is one more day of grace, when Jew and Gentile alike are being convicted of sin, brought to repentance, and receiving salvation through faith in Christ.
May we always remember that God's delay is often a demonstration of the riches of His kindness, tolerance, and patience, toward carnal Christians, as well as lost sinners - which is leading many to repentance and salvation... for the forgiveness of sin, and security in Christ.
Knowing, therefore, that his planned visit to Timothy might be delayed, we find Paul giving this young pastor some valuable instructions concerning elders, deacons, their wives, and children.
Paul wrote of the importance of guarding the truth of the glorious gospel of grace within the Church family - and so we read, but in case I am delayed, I write, so that you will know how one ought to conduct himself in the household of God, which is the church of the living God - the pillar and support of the truth.
Timothy had been entrusted with a pastoral role at the Church in Ephesus, and in case he was delayed, Paul wanted to be sure that this young man was spiritually equipped to live in a manner that honours the Lord, and to instruct others in the congregation.
But Paul also knew that rejection of the Lord Jesus by his people, Israel, would delay them the salvation God planned for them through Christ, for they did not recognise the time of their visitation.
He did not delay or prevaricate, He did not question or argue, but his action demonstrated a trust in God that has caused Abraham to be called the father of faith.