02.10. Chapter 10. Delayed Answers
Delayed Answers
If it he said that God does not always so deliver, but sometimes delays His help, or even allows His people to suffer need, it must be asked if there is not a cause. The writer has had such experiences. Partly from want of funds. he was once detained for three months in an Eastern city at which he had planned to stay hut three days. During those month only a few shillings reached him, and expenses went on accumulating. That detention resulted (1) in very distinct and lasting blessing to a group of needy native Christians; (2) in developing patient waiting for the Lord in a not too patient spirit; and (3) in a remarkably encouraging proof that God well knows how the handful of meal can long be kept from vanishing into nothing, and can fill the barrel to the full when the right hour has come. Thus by the want and the delay most blessed ends were served, and, moreover (4) God’s servant was kept from going into a Bithynia to which he was essaying to depart.1 "And therefore will the Lord wait, that
He may be gracious unto you, and therefore will He be exalted, that He may have mercy upon, you: for Jehovah is a God of judgment [He does not act. capriciously and without due reason] blessed are all they that wait for Him."2 Oh learn to trust My changeless love, Though love may seem to cease. To faith the darker of My paths The fuller are of peace.
Yea, all My ways all-perfect are, Though stones and thorns annoy; For steep ascents lead up through clouds To sunlit realms of joy. And if I keep thee waiting long I have not thee forgot; And pangs of sorrow bring to birth Rich joys earth else knew not. And know, the more I win thy love, The more I thee shall test; For thus My best beloved friends I fit to share My best.
Mid when seasons come that we seem wholly unable to explain, let it be remembered that such are the very best of occasions for gratifying our Father’s heart by trusting Him in the dark. Dr. A. T. Pierson used to speak of a ladder of prayer, up which faith ascends by the rungs of experience, and the highest rung of which is when God does not even say No to our requests, hut leaves us in silence and darkness. - The most awful hour that eternity shall ever know was when He Who had never been denied a request was constrained to exclaim, "I cry, . . . but Thou answerest not." But it was at that moment that faith rose to its supreme height, for the Son of God, denied and forsaken, immediately justified God for so treating Him, by declaring, hut Thou art holy."
1 Acts 16:7.