Word of Encouragement (2/24/2021)

Yesterday, we thought about why God might say “Wait!” to our prayers. Let’s think about another reason. Simply put, it is because God is the sovereign Lord of all and He works all things together for the good of all His people, not just for our individual selves, and for the fulfillment of His plan for the whole world. In other words, God’s answer to a person’s prayer must be coordinated not only with His answer to other people’s prayers but also what He is doing throughout the whole world.

Think about Israel’s possession of the Promised Land. Even though the promise was given to Abraham, he could not take possession of the land in his lifetime. God told him, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” (Gen. 15:13-14, 16). Do you see all the things that had to be worked out for Israel’s possession of the land, all the things that were connected to it? It would coincide with the timing of God’s judgment on the Amorites four generations later, when their iniquity would reach its fullness. It also had to do with God’s judgment on Egypt and God’s plan of enriching Israel through their plunder of Egypt as God’s punishment on Egypt.

Think also of Israel’s return from their Babylonian Exile. Their exile was set for seventy years. Why? Because Israel failed to give the land its Sabbath rest during most of its tenure in the land: God would make up all the Sabbath rest the land had missed during that time while Israel was in exile (Lev. 26:34-35). Israel’s return would also coincide with God’s judgment on Babylon for their iniquity (Jer. 25:12). What is more, God would punish Babylon by the Medo-Persian Empire, whose policy was radically different from that of Babylon: whereas Babylon’s policy was to displace the conquered peoples and spread them out throughout the empire (thus, Israel’s exile from the land), Persia allowed the conquered peoples to return to their lands and even rebuilt their temples as long as they pledged their loyalty and prayed to their gods for him (thus, Cyrus’ decree, allowing the Jews to return to Palestine and rebuild their temple).

We can assume that this kind of coordination happened not only at the international level but also at the personal and the interpersonal levels. There are so many stories of someone in dire financial trouble, for example, and another person unexpectedly blessed with finances, and the latter helping the former at the prompting of the Holy Spirit. This can happen in all kinds of different ways for all kinds of different things. Paul said, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (2 Cor. 1:3-4). The adversity you are going through now may very well be for the comfort of someone else as you may be comforted by someone, who went through a similar affliction by God’s providence so that he can comfort you today.

God is awesome and amazing, isn’t He? We should not be discouraged by the seeming delay in God’s answer to our prayers. We should wait patiently for God’s appointed time, for which God is working things out not only in your life but also in the lives of others.