Divine Delay

In our Sunday school class, we have begun studying the book of Luke. I’ll share with you some of what we discussed in Sunday school today. How many of you have received a promise of a gift that you never received? When I graduated from high school, a lady who was a friend of our family told my sister and I that she had a present for each of us. Here we are, more than 15 years later, and I still haven’t gotten that gift. I don’t think that was her intention; I think she just forgot to ever give them to us. At this point, I think it is safe to say that we won’t ever receive the gifts she had for us. I’m not holding my breath anyway.

Has anything like that ever happened to any of you? Has anyone ever made a promise to you and didn’t keep it? It is safe to say that we can all think of at least one unkept promise. In most instances, our friends and family members have the best of intentions. Then, life happens; they make mistakes or forget what they said. Then, we find ourselves expectant but disappointed.

How many of you have felt that same way about an unanswered prayer or a promise that you were sure God made you? Sometimes his promises take a long time to come to pass too. It isn’t that he has forgotten about the promise he made you. You can rest assured that he has a purpose for the delay.

This past week, I studied the first two chapters in the book of Luke. By the way, if you are looking for a Bible study to do, the First 5 is a free app, and it is great! Special thanks to my friend, Lauren, for telling me about it. It is exactly what I’d been looking for.

Back to Luke: I’ll summarize the first chapter. Zechariah was a Jewish priest who served in the Holy Place. While serving, he had the honor of being the priest who would burn the incense at the altar. While there, the angel Gabriel told Zechariah that God had heard his prayer. Now, since Gabriel was a priest, he had likely prayed many corporate prayers for the people of Israel who were anxious for the Messiah to come. But, he had prayed personal prayers too, specifically one for a child. The angel Gabriel told him that his wife would become pregnant and bear a son for him. Zechariah had no idea who interwoven his two prayers were. His son, John the Baptist, would fulfill a the prophecy of being the one who would prepare the people’s hearts for the coming Messiah, Jesus Christ. But, since Zechariah's prayers for a child and the Messiah were so intertwined, the answer to his prayer likely took much longer than he had expected. He even tells the angel that he and his wife are both old now. But, unlike the lady who forgot to ever give me my graduation gift, God did not forget about answering Zechariah and Elizabeth’s prayers. The time would come; they just had to wait for it and continue working and serving while they waited.

If God has spoken a promise to you, don’t get discouraged when a week passes and nothing has changed. Maybe a month or six months – maybe even years will go by, and it will be hard to see the progress. It is so important that we recognize that there are divine delays that happen for a reason. Maybe the reason is to stretch you and to grow who you are in your faith. Maybe it’s because there are things in motion that have specific timeframes and you need to increase your patience. Or, maybe you’ll never know the exact reason for the delay. But remember, God was working and waiting for the perfect time to answer the prayers of Zechariah and Elizabeth, and he is doing the same for us.

Over the next few studies of Luke in our Sunday school class, we are going to look at Zechariah’s question to the angel and Mary’s question to the angel and explore why they got much different reactions (Zechariah was turned into a mute, but the angel answered Mary’s question without reprimand). We will also dig into why Elizabeth hid herself for the first five months of her pregnancy. Join us for Sunday school as we dig into this Gospel. There’s so much to learn!