Delays. For some of us, the most difficult ingredient in suffering is time! Short lived, sharp pain is easily endured, but one can become very weary when suffering drags on year after monotonous year. Let’s be honest… A heart can lose strength and without the grace of God, that battered heart can sink into dismal despair and dark depression. I know I’m describing someone’s heart or at best, masses of hearts.
God isn’t inactive when He delays. All of us surely have times where we can certainly disagree with that. But He’s not in a hurry! We need our strength to be matured. We need to be prepared for our purpose. Even Jesus waited thirty years to be ready for His earthly ministry. The Bible tells us this when His parents returned home to Nazareth after dedicating Him to God in the Temple…
“There the child grew up healthy and strong, He was filled with wisdom, and God’s favor was on Him” Luke 2: 40
God spends years preparing those whom He plans on greatly using. Yes, the fires of prolonged pain… God often has to burn lessons into the depths of our soul. He knows the specific amount of time it will take for us to be ready. Like a true goldsmith, He’ll take us out of the fire when He sees His image in the metal. There is a time of deliverance, and that time is fixed of God-a right time; therefore we have quietly to wait for it. And here’s where faith kicks in… Our faith is our assurance that God knows what He’s doing, and faith tells us that He’s still and forever will be on the throne.
“He will sit like a refiner of silver, burning away the dross.” Malachi 3: 3
And with that said, we need to keep our focus on what we are learning in the school of sorrow than to only look forward to the time of our deliverance. There is always a reason behind each lesson. So when deliverance comes, we’ll see that we could never have served in whatever higher place God has put us if it were not for what we have learned in the school of sorrow.
So here’s some advice from someone who’s been in the fire a long time, Don’t run ahead of God and create an Ishmael (Read I Don’t Want to Create an Ishmael), give Him time to speak to you
and reveal His will. Learn to wait. He’s also teaching you the fruit of patience. It’s all about His timing – the second, minute, and hour hand must all point to the precise moment for action.