River Church NOLA
Wed Sept 2 How to Deal with Delay
  • Open Up The Heavens
  • My Jesus
  • Way Maker
  • I Belong to You
  • Intro
    Life is full of questions nobody can really answer. A long time ago, I started keeping a list of the ones I’m going to ask God when I get to heaven.
    Why did He make mosquitoes? Red Bugs? And poison ivy, for that matter?
    If nothing sticks to Teflon, how did they get Teflon to stick to the pan?
    Where did the missing socks go?
    Why do they put the flotation device under the airplane seat instead of just handing everybody a parachute?
    Why is there always one shopping cart with a bad wheel? Why do I always find it?
    Why did you give babies so much energy and parents so little?
    Was my life’s purpose really supposed to involve this many passwords?
    And why is it that when we’re driving around lost, looking for an address we can’t find, the first thing we do is turn down the radio?
    Fun questions. But there’s one question that sometimes keeps me up at night — and I’m guessing it keeps some of you up too:

    Why does God delay?

    If He hears our prayer the instant we pray it, and He has all the power in the universe to answer it, why the delay? This is a season in life nobody really wants to be in or talk about. Waiting.
    How many of you like the word… delayed?
    Think about the last time you were at the airport rushing to get through security and get to your gate only to find out your plane is delayed. Of you had a court date and they delayed it. Or you got the notification from Amazon that your package was delayed? None of us like those… at least I don’t.
    But here is what we need to know.

    There is always a delay between our dream and God’s answer.

    There is always a gap between when we ask God or even get a promise from God and when he actually makes it happen. Nobody gets their dream immediately.
    So let’s ask the question.

    Why does God Delay?

    There are delays all through the Bible.
    Abraham dreamed of becoming the father of a great nation, and he waited ninety years before he was even told he’d have a son.
    Noah had a dream of building an ark, and it took him 120 years to finish it.
    Joseph was shown, in a dream, that he would rule — and then he spent years forgotten in an Egyptian prison before it happened.
    David was anointed king as a teenager, and then spent years running for his life from a jealous King Saul before he ever sat on a throne.
    Jesus waited 30 years to begin his ministry.
    Paul waited 3 years to begin his ministry.
    There is always a delay between the dream God gives us and God’s provision of that dream.
    But the classic story of delay in all of Scripture is the exodus. Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt — and then they wandered in the wilderness for forty years before they ever set foot in the Promised Land. Here’s what’s incredible about that: it’s roughly a two-week walk from Egypt to Israel. Two weeks. It took them forty years. What in the world was going on?
    Exodus 13:17 NLT
    17 When Pharaoh finally let the people go, God did not lead them along the main road that runs through Philistine territory, even though that was the shortest route to the Promised Land. God said, “If the people are faced with a battle, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.”
    God delayed them on purpose. Why?

    1. God delayed them to prepare them for what was ahead.

    The Israelites weren’t ready for war. Every dream you have will eventually run into difficulty, and God uses the delay to get you ready for it. This delay wasn’t an accident. It was designed.

    2. God uses delays to test us.

    Moses told the next generation…
    Deuteronomy 8:2 NLT
    2 Remember how the Lord your God led you through the wilderness for these forty years, humbling you and testing you to prove your character, and to find out whether or not you would obey his commands.
    How you respond to delay is a test of your maturity. Anybody can trust God when the answer comes fast. The real test is how you handle it when it doesn’t.
    I know some of you have been praying for an addicted child or a lost spouse or family member for a while.
    Sadly, Israel flunked the test. Of the entire generation that walked out of Egypt, only two men — Joshua and Caleb — ever walked into the Promised Land. Everybody else died in the wilderness. An entire generation forfeited the dream, not because God changed His mind, but because of how they handled the delay.
    So the real question isn’t “why isn’t God answering my prayer? Why is he delaying?” The real question is,

    “How do I get through the delay?”

    The Bible gives us 4 things God says not to do while you wait during the delay. He says not to do these things because they will prolong the delay. Don’t fear… fret… faint… or forget.

    1. Don’t fear

    This was Israel’s first mistake. When the twelve spies came back from scouting the Promised Land, ten of them gave in to fear: Num 13:31-33
    Numbers 13:31–33 NLT
    31 But the other men who had explored the land with him disagreed. “We can’t go up against them! They are stronger than we are!” 32 So they spread this bad report about the land among the Israelites: “The land we traveled through and explored will devour anyone who goes to live there. All the people we saw were huge. 33 We even saw giants there, the descendants of Anak. Next to them we felt like grasshoppers, and that’s what they thought, too!”
    Think about that — they had enough faith to walk out of Egypt, but not enough faith to walk into the Promised Land. They had faith for the exit but not for the entrance. That’s fear.
    Fear is a delay-extender. It keeps you circling the same mountain in the wilderness of your life. A lot of the dreams in this room have never been fulfilled — not because God said no, but because fear said “one of these days” one too many times. God’s answer to fear is simple: don’t.
    Illustration.  I’ll be honest with you — I’ve lived this one myself. There were years I sat on a dream God had clearly given me to start a ministry to young people, simply because I was terrified of the idea of raising the financial support it would take. Fear had me convinced the dream would fail before I’d even taken the first step. That’s what fear does — it talks you out of a God-sized dream by making you rehearse every way it could go wrong, long before you’ve given God a chance to show up.

    What’s the antidote for fear? Focus on God’s presence.

    We have to focus on being in God’s presence.
    Isaiah 41:10 NLT
    10 Don’t be afraid, for I am with you. Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.
    There are more than a hundred “fear not” statements in Scripture. God isn’t saying that because positive thinking works, or because a motivational tape will fix you. He’s saying it because He is with you — on your good days, on your bad days, when you feel it, and when you don’t. You will never face a single situation that God is not already standing in with you.
    Some of you are in the delay phase right this moment. You’ve been praying about something (healing, salvation, relationship, finances) and it hasn’t happened yet, and a quiet voice keeps telling you God forgot. He hasn’t. This is a delay by design — He’s building your character and teaching you to trust Him. Don’t be afraid.
    That takes care of what fear does to your emotions. But there’s a second reaction that shows up just as fast — what delay does to your mouth.

    2. Don’t Fret

    Fret simply means worry — getting uptight, getting stressed, starting to complain. This was Israel’s second mistake.
    Numbers 21:4–5 NLT
    4 Then the people of Israel set out from Mount Hor, taking the road to the Red Sea to go around the land of Edom. But the people grew impatient with the long journey, 5 and they began to speak against God and Moses. “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die here in the wilderness?” they complained. “There is nothing to eat here and nothing to drink. And we hate this horrible manna!”
    That’s the typical human reaction. But God had just done ten plagues and split the Red Sea in front of their eyes, and a few days later they’re complaining about the menu. We don’t actually mind waiting — we just want the right to complain while we do it.
    But grumbling is what shows up in us exactly when we’re waiting on God to act. We get in a hurry, and “impatience will get you into trouble” (Proverbs 19:2, GNT). The moment we try to take a situation into our own hands, we get ourselves into a mess trying to help God out — as if He needed the help.
    Illustration.  Abraham is the case study. God promised him a son. At seventy-five, he still didn’t have one, and Sarah could not conceive. So Abraham got in a hurry and fathered a child through Sarah’s servant, Hagar. They named him Ishmael, and for a while Abraham assumed Ishmael was the promise fulfilled. He wasn’t.
    Years later — long after it looked biologically impossible — Sarah gave birth to Isaac, the true child of promise. Isaac became the father of the Jewish nation; Ishmael, whom God blessed in his own right, became the father of the Arab nations.
    Much of the conflict in the Middle East today traces back, in part, to one moment when a man of faith got tired of waiting and tried to manufacture God’s promise on his own timetable.
    That’s what impatience costs. God doesn’t need your help. He needs your trust.
    Illustration.  Contrast that with a boat on the Sea of Galilee. Jesus and His disciples were caught in a violent storm, and Jesus was asleep in the stern. The disciples panicked and woke Him — “Don’t you care that we’re about to die?” His sleep wasn’t carelessness; it was trust. He was showing them, in His own body language, that you can rest in the middle of a storm because you trust the Father with the outcome.
    Psalm 37:7–8 LBP
    7 Rest in the Lord; wait patiently for him to act. Don’t be envious of evil men who prosper. 8 Stop your anger! Turn off your wrath. Don’t fret and worry—it only leads to harm.
    If you’re the one lying awake at three in the morning running the numbers again, that’s usually a sign you’re not resting in faith — you’re trying to fix it yourself.
    Ecclesiastes 3:11 GNB
    11 He has set the right time for everything. He has given us a desire to know the future, but never gives us the satisfaction of fully understanding what he does.
    His timing is perfect, even when it doesn’t feel like it. It’s easier to work than to wait — but He can fix it better than you can. Don’t fret.

    What is the antidote for worry? Prayer Thankfulness & Focus

    Philippians 4:6–8 NLT
    6 Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. 7 Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. 8 And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.
    If the delay drags on long enough, it starts to work on something deeper — your heart. That third reaction is discouragement.

    3. Don’t Faint

    To faint here means to get discouraged, to lose heart, to give up. This was Israel’s third mistake, and it’s the one that finally sealed their fate.
    Numbers 14:2–4 NIV84
    2 All the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron, and the whole assembly said to them, “If only we had died in Egypt! Or in this desert! 3 Why is the Lord bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword? Our wives and children will be taken as plunder. Wouldn’t it be better for us to go back to Egypt?” 4 And they said to each other, “We should choose a leader and go back to Egypt.”
    Notice the two phrases: “if only,” and “let’s go back.” Those are the tell-tale signs that you’re fainting.
    “If only” is you second-guessing whether you ever really heard from God in the first place.
    “Let’s go back” is you idealizing a past that wasn’t nearly as good as your memory is telling you it was.
    The truth is, the grass isn’t greener on the other side of the fence — it’s greener where you actually water it. Israel had spent four hundred years enslaved in Egypt, and after a little bit of hardship in the wilderness, they were ready to go back. Some people would honestly rather live in a familiar slavery than face the fear of an unfamiliar freedom.

    Instead of fainting, Scripture says to be persistent and pray.

    Illustration.  Remember Jericho. God told Joshua to march the people around the city walls, and the walls would fall. It didn’t happen on lap one. They marched around the city once a day for six days — nothing.
    Then on the seventh day, they marched around it seven times, and only then did the walls come down. If God was going to knock those walls down eventually, why not do it on day one? Because He was teaching an entire nation to be persistent.
    Galatians 6:9 NLT
    9 So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up.
    That’s the law of the harvest — you always reap what you sow, and there’s always a delay built into the process. Nobody plants corn in the morning and harvests it by dinner. God is watching to see whether you’ll keep sowing even when you can’t see anything growing yet.
    Illustration.  Calvin Coolidge put it this way:

    “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘press on’ has solved, and always will solve, the problems of the human race.”

    Jesus said essentially the same thing two thousand years earlier, when He told His disciples a story “to show that they should always pray and never give up” (Luke 18:1) — the story of the persistent widow who wore down an unjust judge simply by refusing to quit asking.
    You’ve really only got two options while you wait: pray continually, or lose heart. You’ll always be doing one or the other.
    Isaiah 40:31 NLT
    31 But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint.
    Don’t faint.
    Fear attacks your emotions. Fretting attacks your mouth. Fainting attacks your heart.
    But there’s a fourth danger, and it’s the sneakiest of all — because it doesn’t feel like a decision. It feels like time just quietly erasing your memory.

    4. Don’t Forget

    When a delay drags on, we often forget the dream. We forget what God has already done. We forget His goodness, His power, His presence.
    And once we forget what He’s done, all we can see is the problem in front of us. This was Israel’s fourth mistake.
    Psalm 106:7–9 NLT
    7 Our ancestors in Egypt were not impressed by the Lord’s miraculous deeds. They soon forgot his many acts of kindness to them. Instead, they rebelled against him at the Red Sea. 8 Even so, he saved them— to defend the honor of his name and to demonstrate his mighty power. 9 He commanded the Red Sea to dry up. He led Israel across the sea as if it were a desert.
    Psalm 106:13 NLT
    13 Yet how quickly they forgot what he had done! They wouldn’t wait for his counsel!
    Think about how fast this happened.
    God does ten plagues in Egypt, and days later, staring at the Red Sea, they’re screaming, “We’re all going to die!” — as if the ten plagues never happened.
    God splits the sea, they walk through on dry ground, and almost immediately they’re panicking about thirst.
    He gives them water, and next it’s food. He gives them manna, and then they complain about the menu. Their memory span for God’s faithfulness was about as long as their memory for what they’d had for breakfast.
    Before we judge them too harshly, we should admit we do the exact same thing. When the current delay hits, we start acting like God has never come through for us before — even though He has, over and over, sometimes in ways we never even found out about until later.
    Illustration.  It’s actually why, the moment Israel finally crossed into the Promised Land, God told Joshua to have twelve men each carry a stone up out of the Jordan riverbed and stack them into a memorial on the bank. His reason was simple: “In the future, when your children ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them…” (Joshua 4:6–7
    Joshua 4:6–7 NLT
    6 We will use these stones to build a memorial. In the future your children will ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ 7 Then you can tell them, ‘They remind us that the Jordan River stopped flowing when the Ark of the Lord’s Covenant went across.’ These stones will stand as a memorial among the people of Israel forever.”
    God knew His people would forget, so He had them build something physical they couldn’t forget — a monument to what He’d already done, standing right where they’d see it every day. If you struggle to remember God’s faithfulness, build your own stack of stones. Keep a written list — a prayer journal, a page in the back of your Bible — of the specific times God came through for you. When the next delay comes, and it will, you won’t have to search your memory. You’ll be able to point at the stones.
    The consequence of Israel’s forgetting is summed up in one devastating sentence: “they would not wait.” Instead of forgetting, remember His promises — there are more than seven thousand of them in Scripture, and every one of them is bigger than the problem you’re facing.
    Psalm 103:2 NLT
    2 Let all that I am praise the Lord; may I never forget the good things he does for me.
    2 Peter 3:8–9 NLT
    8 But you must not forget this one thing, dear friends: A day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day. 9 The Lord isn’t really being slow about his promise, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent.
    A man asked God, “What is a million years like to you?” God replied, “Like one second.” The man asked, “And what is a million dollars like to you?” God said, “Like one penny.” So the man smiled and asked, “God, could I have a penny?” God replied, “Certainly—just give me a second.”
    If you’re asking why God hasn’t fulfilled a promise in your life yet, flip the question: maybe He’s not waiting on the calendar. Maybe He’s waiting on you — to learn not to fear, not to fret, not to faint, not to forget. Don’t forget.

    A Delay is not a Denial

    I want to close with a story that has stuck with me — because it takes everything we’ve just walked through and shows you what it looks like lived out.
    A woman named Marty Sprague, who’s walked with Jesus for almost three decades, will tell you flat out: “I hate delays.” In the spring of 1990, she finally acted on a lifelong dream — writing a book. She’d already had a couple of articles published, and through a friend she connected with the editors at a large, successful Christian publishing house, the kind where practically every book they touched became an instant bestseller. They invited her to write to their exact specifications. All that was missing was a signed contract. For almost a full year — every spare minute she had, raising three young children — she poured herself into that manuscript.
    Then the phone rang. Her editor had bad news: the publisher’s leadership had come across another manuscript on the same subject and decided, overnight, to publish that one instead. Her editors fought for her book. It didn’t matter. A year of work, gone in a single phone call. She was devastated — she cried for hours, and then off and on for weeks. Over the following months, forty-three other publishers turned the manuscript down. It looked like her writing career had hit a dead end before it ever started.
    She grieved that loss for three years. But here’s the line from her own account I want you to remember: “The Lord was teaching me during that time that as a Christian I don’t need to ask, ‘Why, God?’ That’s not really the right question. The question I need to ask is, ‘Lord, what is it You want me to learn during this time, during this delay?’”
    Three years later, in February of 1994, the phone rang again. It was one of the forty-three publishers who had rejected her first book. This time, the CEO asked her, out of nowhere, to write a book for his company — a lighthearted book about hosting Christmas parties. Within days he’d faxed her a contract. Four months later she turned in the manuscript. That November, Thirty-Six Best Christmas Party Ideas went on sale in bookstores across the country. God had a deliverance planned that she never could have dreamed up during those three silent years — and He hadn’t forgotten what she loved, even when it looked like everyone else had.
    Conclusion
    I don’t know what your dream is. I don’t know what you’ve been asking God to do …maybe for years. I don’t know how long your delay has already lasted, or how much longer it’s going to run. But I want to leave you with the same word Marty Sprague leaned on:
    2 Peter 3:8 NLT
    8 But you must not forget this one thing, dear friends: A day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day.
    What have you been waiting on God to do? Turn a problem around? Answer a prayer you’ve almost stopped praying? Open a door that looks permanently shut — financially, physically, relationally? Bring the right person into your life? Turn a crisis into a solution?
    Hear this:

    God has not forgotten. A delay is not a denial.

    Not yet is not the same thing as no.
    Habakkuk 2:3 NLT
    3 This vision is for a future time. It describes the end, and it will be fulfilled. If it seems slow in coming, wait patiently, for it will surely take place. It will not be delayed.
    Whatever you’ve been waiting for, God will bring it to fulfillment — if you do not faint, do not fret, do not fear, and do not forget.
    CLOSING PRAYER
    Father, thank You that every delay in our lives is a delay by design, not a sign that You’ve forgotten us. Forgive us for the times we’ve let fear, worry, discouragement, or a short memory talk us out of the dream You gave us. Teach us to trust Your presence, rest in Your timing, keep praying instead of giving up, and remember every stone of faithfulness You’ve already stacked in our lives. We trust You with what’s still delayed. In Jesus’ name, amen.

      • Exodus 13:17NLT

      • Deuteronomy 8:2NLT

      • Numbers 13:31–33NLT

      • Isaiah 41:10NLT

      • Numbers 21:4–5NLT

      • Psalm 37:7–8NLT

      • Ecclesiastes 3:11NLT

      • Philippians 4:6–8NLT

      • Numbers 14:2–4NLT

      • Galatians 6:9NLT

      • Isaiah 40:31NLT

      • Psalm 106:7–9NLT

      • Psalm 106:13NLT

      • Joshua 4:6–7NLT

      • Psalm 103:2NLT

      • 2 Peter 3:8–9NLT

      • 2 Peter 3:8NLT

      • Habakkuk 2:3NLT

River Church NOLA
robert@riverchurchnola.com
504-578-8317
https://riverchurchnola.com
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