Delays, Detours And Disappointments
Christine Beadsworth
Dec 21, 2007
Today I was pondering on why it seems to take so long for the Lord to bring His promises to pass. Many have been holding on to promises received concerning their loved ones or their own breakthrough. Sometimes we struggle to understand the timing of the Lord. I personally have prayed using this verse from psalm 118 many times:
Psa 119:82 My eyes fail watching for the fulfillment of Your promise; When will You comfort me?
So often it seems that all the signs are pointing in the right direction and then suddenly there is an unexpected turn of events and one is catapulted back into the waiting room and left to wrestle with hope deferred and to re-examine one’s movements, wondering whether somehow one has inadvertently derailed God’s plans. When this happens repeatedly, exhaustion is the overriding feeling and yet, because we truly hold onto a God-breathed Word of promise, it eventually bobs to the surface of our hearts once again just like an inflated lifebelt. Not even the biggest wave or the strongest under-current can keep it submerged indefinitely! The breath of God can not be kept down – His words rise toward the heavens from which they came and do accomplish the purpose for which He sent them! However, it is the time between the speaking of a promise and the embracing of its fulfillment that forms the crucible in which we are forged as suitable earthen vessels. And it is precisely here where we desperately need understanding of God’s ways – otherwise we are tempted to doubt His character and integrity!
So this time when I was wrestling with the reason for the delays, detours and disappointments we encounter en-route to fulfillment-point, the Lord whispered, “these are my synchronizing tools” and I had the impression of a number of different clocks all being adjusted so that they would display the same time and strike in unison. I was immediately reminded of Joseph languishing in prison, seemingly wasting the best years of his youth. Yet the Holy Spirit reminded me of psalm 105:
Psa 105:16 Then He called down a famine on the country, He broke every last blade of wheat.
Psa 105:17 But he sent a man on ahead: Joseph, sold as a slave.
Suddenly I understood - God knew the famine would be coming upon Egypt and so years before that happened, He began to set in motion a plan which would not only counteract the effects of the famine but also bring the family of Jacob to Egypt. God’s plan was embodied in a man – Joseph. In order to produce a vessel which would effectively carry out the elaborate plan, God instituted a remarkably complex and, at times baffling, series of experiences in the life of Joseph. It wasn’t only about Joseph but also about every person whom his life would touch along the way. Eventually they ALL benefited from what God did through Joseph!
To our human minds, the shortest route from A to B is the most preferable. However, God has the welfare of more than one person in mind. John 3:16 tells us that God so loved THE WORLD that He sent His only Son. When God is unfolding His plans, they are intended for the good and the benefit of far more than just our little inner circle. What God was doing with Joseph was intended to benefit not only his family but the whole nation of Egypt! This is where the picture of the clocks comes in. Some of those clocks were running fast and had to have their hands turned back. Others needed moving forward. Every single one needed adjustment in order to synchronize them to strike at the appointed moment with the large central clock. In the same way, in Joseph’s case, God kept Joseph in prison until the appointed moment when the warning dream was given to Pharaoh. If Joseph had been let out years earlier, he would have blended back into Egyptian society, probably finding work in yet another government official’s house. He may even have tried to return home. God needed Joseph to be in prison when the butler and baker were there briefly. There needed to be a connection made between the butler and Joseph because God was going to use the butler in order to position Joseph exactly where He had planned years before for him to be.
Psa 105:19 Until God's word came to the Pharaoh, and GOD confirmed his promise. God sent the king to release him. The Pharaoh set Joseph free; He appointed him master of his palace, put him in charge of all his business To personally instruct his princes and train his advisors in wisdom. Then Israel entered Egypt, Jacob immigrated to the Land of Ham.
The detours Joseph took firstly to Egypt and then into the prison house were God’s synchronizing and positioning tools in order to fully complete the promise He had given Joseph in dreams in his youth. The disappointment Joseph experienced when the butler left prison and forgot about him and the delay in his release date served to synchronize the clock of Egypt with God’s prophetic purpose for His people Israel.
So many have focused on Joseph arising to rule in Egypt and dispensing grain in the time of famine. Yet God’s positioning of Joseph accomplished so much more than this. Joseph was instrumental in causing Jacob and his sons to immigrate to the land of Ham, as the above psalm states. If it had been any other man dispensing grain in Egypt, Jacob’s sons would just have fetched supplies and returned home. God sent Joseph ahead in order to prepare a place of safety for His people. Influence with Pharaoh meant that Jacob’s family was assured safe passage through Egypt to Goshen where they could pasture their herds. This placed them in a geographical position where the next chapter of God’s promise to Abraham could play out.
Egypt also represents the world. There are those whom God has prepared in pits and prisons in order to bring them to a place of influence in the world at His appointed time. They are there not only to bring wisdom and strategy but to draw God’s people out of their holy huddle and into the world outside where the greatest harvest the church has ever seen is waiting to come in. Joseph caused Benjamin, the son of the right hand, to be brought to light in Egypt. Previously Benjamin had been hidden at home in his father’s house. At God’s appointed time Joseph was instrumental in bringing Benjamin into view. For those who are waiting in prison and wrestling with the reasons for the delays, detours and disappointments they’ve encountered, know that God is preparing to use your life to bring Benjamin out of the insular little gatherings we call ‘the Father’s house’ and manifest the Son of the Right Hand, Christ, in the world. In His appointed time….
Jesus was both the Son of Man and the Son of God. He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief until His resurrection. Then He ascended to the right hand of the Father and is now seated and reigns as the Son of God in power. Joseph as a type of Jesus also was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief until he arose from the prison to a place of glory and honor as Pharaoh’s right-hand man. Benjamin was called Benoni, ‘son of my sorrow’, for the first seven days of his life. Then came the eighth day, the day of naming and circumcision, when his father declared him to be Benjamin, ‘son of the right hand’! Benjamin’s first eight days of life are a précis of Joseph’s first thirty years and a picture of what God is doing in the lives of His sons as he prepares to unveil them to the world.
Timing is everything and hindsight brings understanding! Simply put, God sees the whole picture and we are aware only of our own little portion. God unfolds His plans for the good of all involved. He is so determined to fulfill His desires for our lives that He even works trans-generationally in order to put everything into place and synchronize events in time with His eternal purposes. Lets look at the generation which came before Joseph and see how God used delays, detours and disappointments as tools in manifesting His determined purpose.
Jacob desired to marry Rachel and did whatever was required in order to marry her.
Gen 29:18 And Jacob loved Rachel, and said, I will serve you seven years for Rachel your younger daughter. And Laban said, It is better that I give her to you than that I should give her to another man. Stay with me. And Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him a few days, for the love he had for her.
Yet the morning after his wedding, he discovered he was married to her older sister. Talk about disappointment! How heartbroken Rachel must have been to see her father deviously dressing up her sister as the bride and then to be told she could marry her beloved after he had spent a week’s honeymoon with Leah! I sense some of God’s people have experienced this. They have seen some sort of fulfillment of God’s promise but there is an ever-present Leah marring their experience. This is not the way they had pictured the unfolding of the promise – why is heartbreak mixed in with joy? Isn’t God powerful enough to have prevented Laban from carrying out his deception? Three is a crowd, not to mention the two nursemaids!! Can you call this a fulfillment of the promise of God? There seem to be too many actors on this stage – someone must have the wrong script! Or so it seems until we realize that the play that God has written has many more scenes than we envisaged and the grand finale is not even going to be played out in this generation of the family!
If we take a few steps back and try and see this story from the perspective of God’s plan which would continue to unfold in the next generation, we realize that if Jacob had married Rachel straight away, he would never have married Leah because he would have had his heart’s desire. Also, having completed his seven years of work for Rachel, the couple would have left to seek their own fortune elsewhere. Leah was a very necessary part of the whole plan because she provided Joseph with most of his older brothers! Synchronization, delay, detour – God’s positioning tools! If Jacob had married Rachel first and she had borne Joseph as their first son, who would have been jealous of Joseph and sent him off to Egypt in chains? The older brothers were a very necessary part of shaping Joseph into the vessel ready to carry out God’s ultimate purpose for him! So Rachel’s disappointment, her barrenness and the delay in conceiving Joseph, all contributed to the synchronizing of the clocks and the provision of the other players in the unfolding drama of God’s secret plan.
As Rachel watched son after son being born while she remained barren, she secretly wrestled with God, being shaped in the process into a vessel which would be meet to raise the young Joseph in his early years. The fact that she named him Joseph, meaning ‘He will add’, is evidence of the strength of her faith in God as a fulfiller of her heart’s desire. She effectively was saying that Joseph was the first-fruits of her womb, there was more to come. This was not all there was to the fulfillment of His promise to her. For many in the Body of Christ, they too have joyously embraced the first-fruits of the manifested promise. Yet, when the remainder has come forth bringing days of wracking pain and heartache in the birthing process, they have called this portion ‘son of my sorrow’, Benoni, and have let go of life, closing their eyes and giving up. Remember, beloved, just as Jesus experienced sorrows and was acquainted with grief for a season, just as Joseph had a pit and a prison, so too for those who are bringing forth the promises of God into the earthly realm, there is appointed a season, seven days, of sorrow and death. But glory, hallelujah, there is always an eighth day, a day of elevation, a day of name-changing, a day when the Son of the Right Hand is lifted up and declared in the earth. From the grave of those who have laid down their lives to bring forth the Man of Sorrows, the Son of God will be glorified and given His rightful place.
So, my precious brothers and sisters in Christ, keeping all these things in mind, view your own situation. All those places where delay seemed to derail God’s promise and yet you held on; all the times where breathless expectation gave way to disappointment as the pictured manifestation took wings and disappeared; every signpost which you thought was a confirmation but which led you on a long detour; do these mean that God is not going to bring to pass His Word to you? Of course not! A Word uttered by the mouth of the Eternal God cannot return void – it WILL accomplish exactly what He sent it to do; just as Joseph accomplished exactly what God sent him to do! All the places that caused you to doubt your ability to hear or God’s ability to complete, were in fact just instances where the Almighty hand needed to further synchronize earthly clocks in order to bring an outcome for the good of many more people than you are aware of!
All things DO work together for the good of those who are called according to His purpose, even the delays, detours and disappointments. We can’t see it now but one day hindsight will make it plain. Until then, let us breathe a sigh of relief, we haven’t missed the train, passed the turn-off or derailed God’s purpose. Let us trust the unsearchable wisdom and goodness of God.
Romans 11:33 Oh, the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgments and His paths past tracing out!
When our hearts are submitted to Him, there is nothing the enemy can do to destroy or abort God’s spoken plans. We are safely in His hand and He is busy working all things for our good and His glory. He will get you where you need to be right on TIME. Chairos and chronos time will coincide and our lives will resound with the chimes of His glory.
Psalm 57:2AMP I will cry to God most high, Who performs on my behalf and rewards me - Who brings to pass His purposes for me and surely completes them!
Selah!