Tags
Abraham and Sarah, glory to God, helping God, Ishmael, Lazarus, old lady and the atheist, prayer, require a miracle, the Lord did it, wrong solutions
Have you ever tried to help God out while waiting for the answers to your prayers? I’ve been there … got a few t-shirts and learned some hard lessons.
The classic Biblical example of a couple trying to help God is Abraham and Sarah. God promised a great nation would come from their loins. Years passed without a son being born. When it appeared God needed their assistance, they took matters into their own hands and had a son (Ishmael) through their servant Hagar. This was not God’s plan, or His promise.
I also think of young couples who get married too soon and live to regret it. Our quick/help solutions are almost always the wrong solutions. We need to wait for God’s solutions, even if they require a miracle, as it did for Abraham and Sarah!
Why does God wait until the last possible moment, when the answer requires a miracle? Why do our circumstances often get worse before He answers?
It is because we tend not to give the Lord credit for answering our prayers until all of our capabilities have been exhausted. When God answers our prayers after all avenues have been exhausted, things can only be explained by God acting on our behalf. Everyone, believers and non-believers alike, realize it was God who moved and answered by His power. The glory is all His and His alone. Sometimes the glory comes from the answer and sometimes it comes from how it was answered. Ultimately, people will say, “The Lord did it.”
We see this clearly when Jesus raised His friend Lazarus from the dead. Jesus wanted an occasion to reveal His power to everyone. Jesus knew He could count on Mary and Martha because they would not deny Him, even though their “personal prayers” appeared to be going unanswered. Jesus delayed and let Lazarus die to show everyone He had the power over the grave! But those four to five days before Jesus arrived were rough on the sisters. All this reveals that the closer we are to the Lord, the more our faith gets tested. If you consider yourself to be a friend of God, then rest assured… you will be tried.
If your prayer has not been answered, don’t give up or act too soon to solve it yourself. Instead, trust God and wait on Him! God wants to reveal His power through your situation…. to you and to someone close to you who needs to know that your God is for real!
A little old lady came out every morning on the steps of her front porch, raised her arms to the sky and shouted, “Praise the Lord!” One day an atheist moved into the house next door. Over time, he became irritated with the little old lady. So every morning he would step out onto his front porch and yell after her, “There is no Lord!”
Time passed with the two of them carrying on this way every day.
Then one morning in the middle of winter, the little old lady stepped onto her front porch and shouted, “Praise the Lord! Lord, I have no food and I am starving. Please provide for me, oh Lord!” The next morning, she stepped onto her porch and there were two huge bags of groceries sitting there.
“Praise the Lord!” she cried out. “He has provided groceries for me!” The atheist jumped out of the hedges and shouted, “There is no Lord. I bought those groceries!”
The old lady threw her arms into the air and shouted, “Praise the Lord! He has provided me with groceries and He made the devil pay for them!”
Blessings,
Pastor