Abraham and Sarah waited a long time for their promised child. Joshua and Caleb waited forty years to enter the promised land. So why does God allow delays to your blessings? Get the answer in this must-hear message by Joseph Prince and be encouraged to know that delays don’t spell the death of your dreams. • See how waiting time is not wasted time as the Lord preserves you and imparts to you what you would otherwise not have. • Be recharged with renewed hope and a fresh consciousness of His love for you as you continue to look to Him for the manifestation of His promise!
Today, I want to share
with you about delay.
If you are asking:
“Pastor, I have been praying,”
“I’ve been praying for this,
and I know God wants me”
“to have this,
it’s in His Word.”
“You have preached on it Pastor,
and I’ve seen it in the Word,”
“but where is the manifestation?”
David sometimes says:
“Has God forgotten His mercies?”
“Why is He so slow?
Have You forgotten me?”
Well Abraham felt
that way too, isn’t it?
Abraham, when God called
Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldeans,
which is the present day
Babylon, Iraq.
When God called him out.
“I’ll show you a land.”
God says: “And I’ll
make of you,” What?
“A great nation.”
How can you have a nation
without posterity, right?
So God promised him,
from that day,
God promised him that
God will make him a great nation
when he didn’t even
have a baby,
and Sarah had always been
barren, even in her young age.
And now she is 65,
at that time,
and he was 75 when he departed
to go to the land of Canaan.
Well, the Lord told him—
he wasn’t perfect, was he?
But God called him.
And think about it.
If you were in Abraham’s shoes,
you waited year after year
for your manifestation.
God Almighty appeared to you!
In fact, Stephen, in his address
in Acts 7, in the book of Acts,
he said this: “The God of glory.”
I like that.
“The God of glory appeared
to our father Abraham.”
When God appeared,
God appeared to Abraham
as the God of glory.
I’m sure there was an amazing
light infusing out of Him,
His being, His presence,
when God said:
“I’ll make of you a great nation”.
And yet, month after month,
Sarah would cry.
Weeks became months,
months became years,
years became a decade.
Even a decade passed and
all these things going on.
Please, I’m talking about you
and you believing God,
and you asking
the question: “Why?”
Because you are special.
Because Abraham was special.
Abraham was special.
He looked around, He looked
at the Philistines,
Philistines’ wives
walking around,
another one walking
with a wheelbarrow.
He looked around, everywhere
he went, every city he went.
He went to Egypt, alright?
Egyptian women walking around,
being carried, left and right
by servants or slaves
because they were so pregnant.
Some of them with triplets,
quadruplets, sextuplets,
and they are just so full.
And these are heathens,
and Abraham saw all these
and Abraham says:
“The God of glory appeared to me.”
And it’s not recorded for us
how many times
Sarah would tell him:
“What’s happening, Abraham?”
“Are we missing God?”
Now, I want to tell you
something about the devil.
The devil will turn your
times of delay, alright,
of non-manifestation into
times of questioning God.
If your faith is such that
you say: “I know my God.”
“Though He slay me like Job,
yet will I trust Him.” Alright?
If your faith is like that, then
he will do the other approach.
“Something wrong with you then.
There must be some sin in your life.”
“There must be something
you did, maybe in the past…”
Alright? “That is now haunting you,
that is now affecting this whole thing.”
“You know that there’s nothing
wrong with God, right?”
“There’s something
wrong with you.”
“There’s something wrong
with your wife.”
“There’s something wrong
with your parents.”
I mean, he will accuse
you at the drop of a hat!
Every time something
happens like this,
he will do his very best
to make sure you
come under condemnation,
because condemnation is
something that will cause you
to repeat that behaviour.
Is it because of the
wrong decisions that
the baby was delayed?
No.
God was going to give him
a revelation of Himself that
all the heathen woman
who walked around pregnant
will never know.
I find that.
Ladies, who are believing
God for a baby,
let me tell you this.
I find that in the Bible,
ladies who are barren,
when they believe God,
and some of them
long delays before
they conceived.
They always bring
forth champions.
They always bring
forth champions.
Sarah brought forth Isaac.
Amen.
Manoah brought forth Samson,
in their old age. Amen.
Zechariah, his wife Elizabeth,
the first two names you find
in the New Testament.
Zechariah or “Zakar-yah.”
“Zakar” means “Remember.”
God, Yahweh remembers.
“Elizabeth” or “Eli-she-va.”
Means God’s promise.
God remembers His promise
and brought forth
“Grace” or “John”
in their old age.
When the child is born
out of faith, now,
the rest of them, they just
get together, boom.
Imagine a Philistine passing by:
“Why don’t you call upon your God?”
“Pray to your God,
pray to your God, huh?”
How do you think Abraham felt?
Abraham looked around
and Abraham is wondering:
“They are getting manifestations,
or are they?”
“Abraham, you do not know,
you don’t see their hearts.”
“Yes, they have the
physical thing but”
“that child is not a champion.”
“Your child will be.”
I said: “Your child will be!”
When the child comes, wow,
what a champion!
Amen!
You know how long
Abraham waited?
You know how long
Abraham waited until
finally Isaac came?
And during this time,
do you know what he did?
He did his best,
he listened to his wife.
The wife says:
“Looks like God doesn’t
want me to bear anymore,”
I mean she literally said:
“God has restrained me
from bearing,”
“so why not go
to my servant girl?”
Abraham says: “Okay.”
Abraham went to the servant girl
and then got Ishmael
from the servant girl.
After that you know,
Sarah came complaining
because now Hagar is proud.
The maiden girl who got
pregnant by her master Abraham
is proud, looking at her
mistress, saying: “Mmhmm.”
Alright and now Sarah came
to Abraham and said:
“It’s your fault, my
wrong be on you.”
And Abraham said:
“Now you blame me!”
Imagine all the quarrel
they went through,
all the while Abraham is
Saying:
“Where is Your promise, God?”
“Where is Your promise?”
“What happened
to Your promise, Lord?”
Are you in that place?
You know how long he waited?
24 years.
24 years!
“24 years, just waiting
for a chance, to tell her”
“how I love her and maybe
get a second glance,”
“but now I got to get used
to not living next door to Alice.”
“24 years…” That’s an
old song by the way.
You all wouldn’t know,
this generation, alright,
I sound so young,
praise God.
Anyway, 24 years, that’s
how long he waited.
Poor old Abe.
But when the boy came,
hallelujah, he was a champ!
And during this time, just
before the boy came,
you know what God did?
You all know the story.
He went down to this place
in a Philistine area,
and the Abimelech, which is
the title of the Philistine king,
saw Sarah, and this time
Sarah was about 90 years old.
In other words, if God
makes you wait, God will,
God is a God Who restores.
If God makes you wait,
God will keep you young.
If God makes you wait,
God will do something
to your body, that other
women do not have.
Because when she was
90 years old,
something happened
to Sarah’s body.
She was beautiful, that
even a heathen king,
and don’t forget heathen kings
go by their eyesight.
They have no spiritual discernment.
So God literally, changed
the physical beauty of Sarah,
make her young again.
Amen.
And there was something else
that the devil accused them of.
Look, Abraham prayed for what?
For God to heal Abimelech
in which area?
“For the Lord had closed up
all the wombs of the”
“house of Abimelech.”
He’s praying for open wombs
when his wife is not even pregnant.
For years.
So, the devil will try to make
you feel like a hypocrite.
But therein lies God’s wisdom.
When you don’t have
the manifestation,
find somewhere and
bless someone else with it.
Pray for someone else,
pray for a blessing on someone.
See what happened in
the next verse, the next chapter.
I put it down there because
it’s all one continuous flow.
The next chapter says:
“And the Lord visited Sarah
as He had said,”
“and the Lord did for Sarah
as He had spoken.”
And why is it that
this verse comes right
after he prayed for the
open wombs?
Pray tell me. Why do you
think that is so?
God wants you to know.
Do not stop praying for the sick,
even when you are sick.
Do not stop ministering to
people even when
you don’t have that
manifestation.
The devil will tell you:
“How can you?
You’re a hypocrite.”
Are you listening, people?
24 years.
He started praying.
I do not know whether God
used him to pray for anybody else,
but it’s amazing, maybe
he was under accusation,
I do not know.
But one thing I do know,
when he started praying
for open wombs,
his wife’s womb opened.
Sometimes we are so
self-absorbed.
My healing, my healing,
my manifestation,
my child’s manifestation,
my, my, my family, my family,
that God wants you to
break out of that self-occupation,
and start getting involved
in praying for other people.
If you are in a clinic, start
praying for people that
you see around you.
Pray for that child,
pray for that lady,
pray for that man,
start praying, amen?
And all of a sudden, you’ll
find your own stress level,
your worry level,
anxiety level just drops.
Start praying for others.
And God turned the captivity of Job
when he prayed for his friends.
What the devil wants
to tell you is that:
“It’s your fault!”
“Something is happening
because of this delay.”
“It’s your fault.”
No, my friend. Listen.
In the Old Testament even,
alright, like Abraham’s story,
it wasn’t because
of Abraham’s sin.
Are you listening?
God waited until
Abraham could not,
and then when Isaac came,
all the glory goes to God.
God waited until Abraham
could not, but the thing is this,
there was a lesson.
When Abraham finally
received his manifestation, listen.
God told him, “I’ll multiply your
seed as the stars of the heaven,”
“and as the sand
on the seashore.”
And today, when
you look around,
Look! All these are the
seed of Abraham!
Abraham has more seeds
than all those Egyptian women
walking around. Amen.
All the Philistine women
walking around pregnant.
Today, we are called
sons of Abraham!
Best of all, Abraham started
learning about who God is,
His wonderful person,
that all these other people,
never got to know.
Sometimes, in the delay
is a revelation.
And because He loves you,
He delays, so that
you’ll have a revelation
that others don’t have.
Those heathen never
knew the revelation
that Abraham had.
Isn’t that wonderful?