By Jill Roberts and Michael Canalé
In most of our lives, the circumstance of a delay causes us frustration, if not all out anger. The thing delayed does not even have to be something desirable. For example, how many times have we been frustrated by a delay in getting somewhere we really didn’t want to go!
Delay causes us to apologize for our tardiness with both reasons and excuses. Most egregiously, it can reach into our spiritual persona, precipitating a crisis of faith when we pray for something and God is, in our limited knowledge, late in answering that prayer.
Today, Michael and I are going to write about delay with a capital D – delay not through serendipity but through the absolute full intention of God. Hopefully, by the end of this study, we will find that delay is, in the divine paradigm, not a negative development at all. And, having discovered or, in some cases, been reminded of this, we will learn to fully embrace it when it comes across our paths in this world.
Last week, we began with Michael’s profound comment about how God works:
“Great thought is not just given by God to one person. When one is gifted great thought, it comes in a sequence and it comes to more than a single person.”
This week, we will build on this, revealing how God, frequently, utilizes delay to carry out exactly what Michael is saying. In the section of Exodus where we are presently camped, delay is an enormous part of God’s way to sequentially change the thoughts of man toward Himself. At the center of this, is God’s hardening of the heart of Pharaoh.
Controversial among Biblical scholars and the casual reader of Scripture, as well, the idea that God would harden the heart of the Pharaoh has caused many to question God as to this. No matter the cruelty and evil nature of the King of Egypt, some have felt that it just wasn’t fair of God to purposely strengthen the already patent tendency of Pharaoh to be hard hearted.
We need not set forth every verse in Exodus which reiterates that this is what God was doing – they are both numerous and explicit throughout the passages we have been studying these past few weeks. There is just no question about it, God purposely hardened Pharaoh’s heart so that he refused to let the Israelites go.
Why would God, Who is all good, do such a thing? The answer can be summed up in one word – DELAY. He needed additional time to reach the hearts of Moses, the Israelites and even the Egyptians.
As earlier noted in previous blogs, God was working to make Moses a leader and the Israelites, worshipping followers of Himself, after such a long period of slavery and the inability to worship.As to the Egyptians, He was bringing them to a point where they knew the true God and His limitless power.
And how was He going to cause all this to come to pass? DELAY! God was buying time at each juncture where the Pharaoh refused to release the Israelites because of a hard heart. With each plague and each subsequent extension of days and weeks, more and more people were turning to God and His ways.
Did this ultimately work? The better threshold question is probably not how it worked but with whom was God working. He was, of course, working with mankind, flawed mankind. Because God never violates humanity’s free will, the results were mixed, as God knew they would be.
Moses progressed amazingly and stepped into leadership, so as to be the commanding presence we see on the pages of Scripture. In time, however, problems arose, as we will see in future blogs.
The Israelites were, again, cognizant of Who the LORD is and began to faithfully follow Moses’ instructions, passed on to Moses by God. Later, their backs, up against a seemingly insurmountable problem, the Red Sea, they wavered as to Moses’ strategy, but they did not second guess God, Himself, the true hope of the LORD in His delay strategy. More on this next week.
As to the Egyptians, some immediately forgot the good they learned about the LORD and, once again, became God’s and Israel’s enemies. Other Egyptians actually gained greater allegiance to God and His People and in amazing, powerful ways.
This is a preview of the story soon to unfold.
Finally, to return to our major theme, Delay, and God’s use of this strategy, we, also, must always translate and dovetail this into our lives today.
How easy it is to question God as to His delays We are extremely frustrated by them. We pray about them. We expect God to act on our timetable. It is so important to remember that God has a reason for every delay in our lives, and that it often involves our readiness to even handle that for which we are asking. God knows and, truly, we don’t.
With regard to the LORD, Michael always reminds us,
“God is not human. He is so much more complex than that.”
God loves us beyond measure and He knows what’s best. We pray for we know not what, because we pray with limited knowledge. We make assumptions. There is a great legal objection that often echoes in our courtrooms when a lawyer poses a question that makes a false assumption., prompting opposing counsel to say, “Objection. Assumes facts not in evidence.” We do the same thing, as we have incomplete access as to facts in our own lives, especially regarding the future.
We pray for our will to be done and then complain of delay in the train wrecks about which we sometimes pray. God help us!
As the song goes, “Thank God for Unanswered Prayers!”
May we change our reactions to God’s delays. May we embrace, not lament them. How many times, in how many ways, has He saved us from God knows what, by this one divine act — DELAY!
Postscript:
As you may have noticed, this blog arrived a day early. Next week’s will be sent to you one day late — on Sunday, March 19th.
God bless each of you so mightily!
You always make my day. But today, you truly brought my thoughts to what my profession needed. I was a teacher and administrator. I used delay. There was never a need to be confrontation with kids. I would always look at an angry child, and asked if they were angry with me. Then I would throw them a cutie( mandarin orange) and tell them we’d talk in a bit. The power of delay. And giving them something to chew on.
I love this blog! Reminds me of the way we can pray for what we think we want and not hear God’s unanswer as he says “No you don’t “.