Is God Running Late?

When their brother, Lazarus, got sick, Mary and Martha sent word to Jesus. And they waited and waited. Maybe they were even bragging to their friends, “You know, we are so tight with Jesus. He will be here any moment. He will come walking down that road like He always does, and He will heal Lazarus. Then Martha will make Him a great meal, and we’ll have great time.”

But Lazarus got sicker and sicker. And then he died. Worse yet, there still was no sign of Jesus. Not only did He miss healing His close friend, but He missed the funeral too. So in their estimation, Jesus had failed. Jesus was late.

If He really loved Lazarus, why didn’t He immediately go and heal him?

Mary and Martha were looking at the small picture, but Jesus was looking at the big picture. They were looking at the temporal, but He was looking at the eternal. They were looking at the physical, but Jesus was looking at the supernatural. They wanted a healing. But Jesus wanted a resurrection.

In the same way, when hardship, tragedy, or even death comes into our lives we might ask, “If God really loved me, why did He let this happen?”

Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, “Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time” (NLT). God’s delays are not necessarily His denials. A no today might turn into a yes tomorrow.

Sometimes the reason God doesn’t answer your prayer in the way you want Him to is because He has something bigger in store for you than what you could have dreamed. God is able “to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20 NLT). That’s why it’s always a good idea to pray, “Father, not my will, but Yours, be done.”

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