Today my comments are going to go right along with what I wrote yesterday... and the process of growing faith.
In Psalm 35:17 David cries out, "Lord, how long will you look on?" In other words, how long are You going to allow my enemies to triumph over me. How long must I keep walking this valley? How long until You are going to bring deliverance? How long until You will answer my prayers?
Although I haven't been chased like David, by someone seeking my life, how I resonate with that verse as I've cried that same cry again and again over the years... and yet, at least in certain areas of my life, I still wait. I have not yet received the answer to that cry... However, I was just reading something profound in Streams in the Desert and I want to share it here:
"When God delays, He is not inactive. He is getting ready His instruments, He is ripening our powers; and at the Appointed moment we shall arise equal to our task. Even Jesus of Nazareth was thirty years in privacy, growing in wisdom before He began His work. --Dr. Jowett
God is never in a hurry but spends years with those He expects to greatly use. He never thinks the days of preparation too long or too dull.
The hardest ingredient in suffering is often time. A short, sharp pang is easily borne, but when a sorrow drags its weary way through long, monotonous years, and day after day returns with the same dull routine of hopeless agony, the heart loses its strength, and without the grace of God, is sure to sink into the very sullenness of despair.
Joseph's was a long trial, and God often has to burn His lessons into the depths of our being by the fires of protracted pain. "He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver," but He knows how long, and like a true goldsmith He stops the fires the moment He sees His image in the glowing metal.
We may not see now the outcome of the beautiful plan which God is hiding in the shadow of His hand; it yet may be long concealed; but faith may be sure that He is sitting on the throne, calmly waiting the hour when, with adoring rapture, we shall say, "All things have worked together for good."
Like Joseph, let us be more careful to learn all the lessons in the school of sorrow than we are anxious for the hour of deliverance. There is a "need-be" for every lesson, and when we are ready, our deliverance will surely come, and we shall find that we could not have stood in our place of higher service without the very things that were taught us in the ordeal. God is educating us for the future, for higher service and nobler blessings; and if we have the qualities that fit us for a throne, nothing can keep us from it when God's time has come.
Don't steal tomorrow out of God's hands. Give God time to speak to you and reveal His will. He is never too late; learn to wait. --Selected
He never comes too late; He knoweth what is best;Vex not thyself in vain; until He cometh--REST.
Do not run impetuously before the Lord; learn to wait His time: the minute-hand as well as the hour-hand must point the exact moment for action.So what is the question to "How Long?" I believe it is "long enough..." Long enough until God's purpose is fulfilled in our waiting and wandering. Long enough until He sees His own character reflected in our lives. He knows what He's doing and we can trust Him!
[This is powerful! I'm inspired... I think I'm going to write a message about this question!]
Tomorrow's Reading: Deut 23-24 and Romans 5
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