Divine, Satanic Delays and Human Responses (1)

He sent a man before them, even Joseph, who was sold for a servant: Whose feet they hurt with fetters: he was laid in iron: Until the time that his word came: the word of the Lord tried him. The king sent and loosed him; even the ruler of the people, and let him go free - Psalm 105:17-20

Our responses differ to whatever we are going through in life. Many times, we do not understand how delay works. How can God say he loves you, yet he allows you to be delayed? He wants us to develop character. He is more interested in maturing us than our convenience. A woman is inconvenient in pregnancy, but she will not say she does not want a child. Maturity is not based on how old we are, but on our speech, thoughts, and understanding. Maturity looks at the after effect of things rather than the immediate effect. God has blessings for all of us but as long as we remain children, we cannot access them.

You do not develop muscles by eating food alone or reading books but by carrying weights. Many times, what makes us sorrowful when we are going through a divine delay is our lack of understanding of the mystery of God in our lives. Divine delay means God planning our lives as a result of the totality of the future. The Israelites went through a long route. Egypt to Canaan would be about eleven days journey. God did not take them through a short and sharp route but through a longer route. This was a divine delay. Many wonder why God took them through a longer route, the wisdom of God is seen in Exodus 13:17b. They were disappointed in the wilderness; they could not understand the process. Man is always impatient. God wanted to train them so that they could see life in another perspective.

When Joseph had dream, he told his brothers, he did not know that he would go through the discomfort of the pit, to Potiphar’s house and the loneliness of the dungeon of Pharaoh. He was kidnapped for 13 years of his life, until one day he became the prime minister. By the time the brothers came to buy food, vengeance was out of him by the fact of what he had gone through in the wheel of the Potiphar’s house. Impunities, sin, impatience, unbelief, lust, love of prominence had been removed.