Scripture and You The End of the Long Night of Waiting By Dr. Paul M. Elliott From the TeachingtheWord Bible Knowledgebase Part 5 of a series. Read part 4. God may end a Christian's long night of waiting in many different ways, according to His wise and glorious purposes. Out of the depths I have cried to You, O LORD; Lord, hear my voice! Let Your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. If You, LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with You, that You may be feared. I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in His Word I do hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning - yes, more than those who watch for the morning. O Israel, hope in the LORD; for with the LORD there is mercy, and with Him is abundant redemption. And He shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities. Why Isn't It Morning Yet? Often in the Christian pilgrimage, our waiting is like a yearning for the end of a long night. In verse 6 of Psalm 130 the saint of God writes, "My soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning - yes, more than those who watch for the morning." Just as there are different kinds of depths, there are different kinds of "dark times" when we are waiting for the morning to come. We are waiting for God's answer. Often, in that time of watching and waiting, we are saying in our hearts, "Morning should be coming. Morning should be here by now. Why isn't it morning yet? Where is the light? Why is it still dark? Why am I still crying to God 'out of the depths' and not from the heights? What is wrong? Has God forgotten me? Where is He? Where is His answer? Where is His promise?" 1
The questions are real, and we have them in our hearts for many reasons. What are some of the reasons? Answers Given, But Not Yet Obvious It may be that God's answer is not yet obvious. God has answered, but we have not seen it yet. Some time ago, I heard of a man who was in the ministry. He had come to the end of his rope financially, through no fault of his own. This man had prayed and prayed about the situation for several weeks, and he had come to the point where he had nearly given up on God. In his despair he got busy trying to make his own answer to the situation. But what he was doing was not helping. Actually, he full well realized that the things that he was trying to do to pull himself "out of the depths" were not the will of God. They were taking him in a different vocational direction than the one to which he knew God had called him. This man had a post office box where he received some of his mail. But he got so busy trying to make his own solution to the problem that he didn't go to the post office and check the mailbox for over a month. When he finally did, there in the mailbox was a large check from a totally unexpected source. The date on the check was the day he had started praying about the need, before he had started trying to make his own way out of the difficulty, apart from God. The Lord had answered, but the answer was not yet apparent. This brother said he learned a great lesson from this, about the will of God and the workings of God, the need to pray in reliance upon God for the answer, and to wait with expectation. No two situations are the same, and the answer to your need may not be a financial answer. The answers you seek may pertain to many different kinds of needs. But often, God is already at work answering before we are aware of it. In His sovereign providence the answer is often already in process before we even ask. This was God's prophetic promise to His people in Isaiah chapter 65, verse 24: "And it shall come to pass, that before they call, I 2
will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear." Answers Delayed By Spiritual Warfare Also, there are times when God's answer is, from our perspective, a delayed answer. In the 10th chapter of Daniel we read that Daniel sought an answer from God - the answer to the burning question on his heart, "What is going to happen to captive Israel?" No answer came for a considerable period of time. But then we read that an angel appeared to Daniel and said, O Daniel, man greatly beloved, understand the words that I speak to you, and stand upright, for I have now been sent to youã?â?ã?â. Do not fear, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand, and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard; and I have come because of your words. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days; and behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I had been left alone there with the kings of Persia. Now I have come to make you understand what will happen to your people in the latter days... (Daniel 10:11-14) God's answer was delayed in coming because there was warfare in the unseen world. The "prince of the kingdom of Persia" - an agent of Satan - fought the angel of God sent to deliver Daniel's answer. The archangel Michael came to help in the battle. This is the world of "principalities and powers" that we read of in Ephesians chapter 6 and elsewhere: For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 6:12) That unseen world is real. Spiritual warfare goes on in that realm. I believe that we can say on the authority of Scripture that there are times when God's answer to our prayers does not come immediately because there is a battle being fought in the unseen realms. There is warfare over us, dear friends. Such a thing should make us tremble - that the forces of darkness are at war against us. But such a thing should also cause us to rejoice: Christ has won the victory, and Christ's 3
angelic hosts, unseen by our eyes, are at war on our behalf when Satan would seek to delay or impede God's answers to the petitions of His saints. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. (Colossians 1:16) Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it [that is, in His cross]. (Colossians 2:15) Answers Can Be Beyond Our Lifetime There are also times when there simply seems to be no answer. We pray about something or someone, perhaps for years, and nothing seems to happen. Like Abraham, we have the expectation of a promise from God - in our case, the promises we find in His written Word - but we do not see the fulfillment of God's promise for a long, long time. Or, we may not see the answer at all, at least not in our lifetimes. Many a Christian parent has died before an unsaved child or grandchild that they had prayed for, for years and years, finally came to faith in Christ. Many a Sunday school teacher or Christian school teacher has prayed for a student who just did not seem to grasp the Gospel message. Many a pastor has prayed and labored over people in a congregation for years and years without seeing any signs of regeneration. In these things and in many others, we watch and wait for God's answer like those who watch for the morning, as we read in Psalm 130. Sometimes Suddenly, Sometimes Gradually Sometimes God ends the night of waiting suddenly, as with Peter in Acts chapter 12. In Peter's case it was both a spiritual night of waiting and a literal night. Peter was in prison, and the church was praying for him. We read in Acts 12:7 that suddenly there was light in the darkness of the prison, an angel stood by Peter, and he struck Peter on the side and said, "Peter, get up! It's time to go!" His chains fell off and he was led out into the street, and the next day Peter was once again preaching the Gospel. 4
Sometimes God ends the night of waiting gradually, as he did with the children of Israel in Egypt. God had told Abraham all the way back in Genesis 15:12-20 that his descendants would leave the land of Canaan, that they would go to live in a land that was not theirs, and they would go into slavery and be afflicted for 400 years. And God told Abraham, "You are going to die in peace. You are not going to see all of this happen. But it is going to happen. That is My promise. And in the fourth generation, I will bring your descendants back to the promised land." We read in Exodus 2:23-24 that it did happen exactly as God said: And it came to pass in process of time, that the king of Egypt died: and the children of Israel sighed [or more accurately, groaned] by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. But even then, God's answer came gradually. God first spoke to Moses at the burning bush. God sent Moses back from Midian (present-day western Saudi Arabia) to Egypt, a journey of several hundred miles. Moses and the children of Israel went through the ten plagues of God's contests with Pharaoh, demonstrating Jehovah's power over the pagan gods of Egypt, before they were allowed to leave their bondage. Even then, because of their sin they wandered for another forty years in the wilderness, and an entire generation died, before the Lord finally brought His people into the Promised Land. The Ultimate End of the Christian's Waiting Sometimes, God ends the long night of waiting by taking His saints to glory. There is a sense in which all of this life is, for the Christian, a time of waiting in the dark for that great morning to come. Psalm 30 verse 5 tells us that "weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning." Literally, in the original, "a shout of joy comes in the morning." 5
And so it is that the Holy Spirit through Jude gives us that great benediction at the end of his epistle: Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen. (Jude 24-25) God may end a Christian's long night of waiting in many different ways, according to His wise and glorious purposes. But the Christian who is trusting God even while "in the depths" can say with the Apostle Paul that Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:37-39). Next: Things the Angels Desire to Look Into say0082 Copyright 1998-2017 TeachingtheWord Ministriesmmmmmwww.teachingtheword.org All rights reserved. This article may be reproduced in its entirety only, for non-commercial purposes, provided that this copyright notice is included. We also suggest that you include a direct hyperlink to this article for the convenience of your readers. 6