Praying and Waiting
“Therefore the LORD will wait, that He may be gracious to you; and therefore He will be exalted, that He may have mercy on you. For the LORD is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for Him.” Isaiah 30:18, NKJV
God often delays in answering our prayers. That can be a great mystery to us. Why does God wait to answer our prayers?
We have several examples of His delay in answering prayers in scriptures. Jacob did not get the blessing from the angel until near the dawn of day—he had to wrestle all night for it. The woman of Syrophenicia did not receive an answer for a long while. Paul asked the Lord three times that “the thorn in the flesh” might be taken from him, and he received no assurance that it should be taken away, but instead received a promise that God’s grace would be sufficient for him.
If you have been praying about a matter and have not received an answer yet, there is probably a good reason for God’s delay.
Sometimes God delay in His answer is to show His power and His sovereignty over us and over that which we have been praying for. It is a display of God’s power and authority that we need to learn to respect.
Usually God’s delay will be for our good. God knows that when He delays our answer, it will but make us pray all the more and it will also cause us to be more dependent on Him. That is one thing that God desires from us; to be more dependent upon Him.
Sometimes God’s delay’s reveals that there is something wrong with our request. Perhaps our request is not good for us in the long term. God knows our future and He will not give us something that will bring harm to us.
Perhaps God’s delay in answering our prayer is because He knows we are asking for all the wrong reasons. We are specifically told that in James 4:3.
There are many reasons that God delays in answering our prayers.
The main lesson from our scripture for this day is that God’s purpose is to be gracious to us and to answer our prayers in a way that will be in our best interest. We must learn to trust and wait on the Lord in our praying.
Be encouraged today in knowing that God always answers our prayers but it is not always as quickly as we would like.
With Blessings,
Riley Pippen