EXPERIENCING THE LOVE OF GOD’S “NOT YET”
MIKE CUNNINGHAM
FEBRUARY, 5, 2006
Regardless of your age I know that if I were to ask you how many prayers you have prayed in your lifetime you wouldn’t have a clue anymore than you know how many stars are in the sky. Probably the best you could come up with is that there’s a lot.
I believe that not only do we not know how many prayers we have prayed but we have forgotten the specifics of perhaps most of them. However, there are some of our prayers that do stand out and which we never forget. For instance, I can still visualize myself sitting alone in a doctors’ examining room several years ago. I was glancing out the window looking down at the parking lot and watching people coping with a raging hurricane.
My thoughts wandered to the memorial service that I would be conducting in a few short hours. A young mother of five little children had died of cancer.
As I thought of the ordeal that mom and her family had endured, I can remember pleading with God in prayer asking Him to please be merciful and let the oncologist tell me that I didn’t have leukemia.
I will never forget how I kept thanking Him over and over again, when, after what seemed like an eternity of waiting, the doctor finally gave me the good news. I still can’t help praising Him for that particular blessing to this very day. God had given me my hearts desire.
From time to time during that particular ordeal He had mercifully given me reason to be hopeful. Nevertheless, He still allowed me to endure a lot of other medical tests and anxious moments over a period of about eighteen months before granting my wish. It wasn’t as though I hadn’t been praying fervently. Nothing can be further from the truth. It’s just that every time I kept hammering away pleading for good news His answer always was, “Not yet Mike, not yet!
It may not have been medical but I sure you folks have had similar experiences. He doesn’t always give you the desires of your heart immediately such as the time he saved the Apostle Peter from drowning (Matthew 14:31). Even though we may have good reason to be hopeful that He will grant our request, our sovereign Lord often makes us wait.
I’m reminded of a seventeen year old kid who had good reason to believe that God was going to make him a big shot. He seemed to delight in letting those closest to him know it. That kid really rattled their cages. So much so that they caused him to go through some truly rough times. We can be certain that he prayed continuously during very painful years. However, just as I experienced, God’s answer was, “not yet, not yet.”
I can think of another young guy that shrinks would diagnose as being delusional if they had an opportunity to examine him. This kid had excellent scriptural justification to believe God had already made him a really, really big shot. Nevertheless, he was forced to endure great suffering and personal humiliation for a seemingly endless period of time. He prayed repeatedly but all he seemed to hear God say was not yet, not yet.
How about you folks? Have you had similar experiences? I’m not talking about those prayers that we pray fervently for but then we finally stop. You know the kind I mean. They are the ones that you become convinced He isn’t going to give you what you want and so you stop asking. The thought of Him granting your request just leaves your mind. You move on and soon forget about it.
However, there are other burdens which you can’t seem to let go of. And so you don’t give up. To the best of your knowledge you have every good scriptural reason to believe He will give you the desire of your heart because you do delight in Him. You sincerely do struggle and do seek to honor Him and to bring glory to Him in your daily walk. You really are trying to do your best to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and to become more Christ like. And so, you continue to lift up your requests to God. Nevertheless, He seems to answer you by saying, “Not yet Lori or not yet Scott or not yet Doris or Beeb or the rest of you folks.”
Matthew 14:22-32 (NIV)
22 Immediately Jesus made the disciples get
into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the
crowd. 23 After he had dismissed them, he went
up on a mountainside by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone,
24 but the boat was already a considerable
distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it. 25 During the fourth watch of the night Jesus went
out to them, walking on the lake.
26 When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. "It's a ghost," they said, and cried out in fear. 27 But Jesus immediately said to them: "Take courage! It is I. Don't be afraid." 28 "Lord, if it's you," Peter replied, "tell me to come to you on the water." 29 "Come," he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. 30 But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, "Lord, save me!" 31 Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. "You of little faith," he said, "why did you doubt?" 32 And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down.
The apostles had just gone from a spiritual high when they witnessed Jesus feed over five thousand people with five loaves of bread and a couple of fish. According to Matthew’s account in the 8th chapter, the apostles had previously witnessed Jesus heal the centurions servant who was paralyzed and suffering terribly (vs.7); they watched in astonishment as He healed the man with leprosy Matt. (vs.4). How could they ever forget Jesus casting out the demons from all those tormented souls (vs.16), or healing all the other sick folks that were brought to Him, or bringing the little girl who had died back to life (Matt. 9:25).
Can you imagine the apostle’s conversation as they got into the boat and started rowing across the lake? Can’t you just hear Peter, speaking about the bread and fish say something like; “Wow, “did you guys see that?” Can you hear Thomas answering by saying, “If I didn’t see it with my own eyes, I never would have believed it, while the rest of them thought to themselves, “yeah Tom, we know.”
Jesus was all alone up on the mountainside praying. What do you think He may have said? I don’t know about you but I can almost hear Jesus thanking His Father for performing the miracle of multiplying the loaves and fish through Him. I can hear Jesus once again praising His Father for glorifying Him through another supernatural act. Can’t you just picture Jesus delighting in the day’s events and playing them over and over in His mind in worshipful adoration?
But in light of the events that followed that memorable day, I can also imagine His thoughts being interrupted by something that would have disturbed Him greatly. I can almost here Him pleading with His Father, as he would do later towards the end of His Earthly ministry, when He told Peter in Luke 22 verse 31: "Simon, Simon, Satan has just asked for permission to sift you as wheat.” Satan wants to really shake you guys up.
32But I have prayed for you, Simon that your faith may not fail.” I can also imagine Jesus, who is the same yesterday, today and forever, praying the same kind of prayer on our behalf, whenever our Heavenly Father gives Satin permission to test us.
Now Jesus is looking down from the mountainside at the little boat with loving eyes that pierced the darkness. It was still a considerable distance from land. “He saw His disciples straining at the oars, because the wind was against them” (Mark 6:48).
Can’t you just picture those waves pounding the little boat and the spray exploding against its bow and cascading all over the apostles, drenching them from head to toe? Can you identify with the apostles? Are you able to imagine yourself getting pounded by one of the storms of life your loving Sovereign Lord has planned for you to experience?
You can take comfort in knowing He is watching over you just as He did His disciples a long time ago. The God who watches over you neither slumbers nor sleeps (Psalm 121:3-4.) He knows your every anxious thought and watches your tossing and turning and sleepless nights. He knows how many tears you already have shed and how many you more will shed before you arrive at safely home.
Jesus hears your every plea. He’s watching over you just as He watches over every single bird flying in the air (Matthew 6:26). Nothing happens by chance. There’s no such thing. History, which can be called “His Story,” is being controlled and directed by Him (John 19:11; Acts 4:28). He’s working out everything in accordance with His perfect plan (Ephesians 1:11). He knows exactly what He is doing.
There was much more activity during that memorable occasion that the apostles were probably oblivious of. Jesus saw Satan accompanied by a host of diabolical demons descending on His beloved apostles like a school of Piranha that hadn’t eaten in a week? Can’t you just imagine watching the spirits of frustration, fear, worry, anxiety, and hopelessness, followed by the darkest of all, the spirit of despair, bombarding the terrified apostles with a vengeance, looking for a week spot in the apostles faith so that they can establish a beachhead?
Don’t ever forget to remember that there is an unrelenting fierce unseen spiritual battle raging all around us between the cosmic powers of darkness and our God (Ephesians 6:12), and you and I are the battlefield. The apostles were never alone, even for a millisecond of their harrowing journey towards the other side of the lake, any more than you and I are as we make our way through this dark polluted world headed towards our heavenly home.
But Jesus was doing infinitely more than just watching His apostles. As their great high priest (Hebrews 4:14; 8:1), He was constantly asking His Father not to allow them to be tempted more that they could handle. He would also have pleaded with His Father to provide them all the assistance they needed to stand their ground and not crumble. He would have been pleased to see His Father, who is now also our Father, grant Him His hearts desire. He watched God’s angelic spirits of courage and encouragement and hope and trust and all the rest, fight and repulse the enemy at every juncture. Child of God, do you think He loves you any less than His apostles?
“He saw the disciples straining at the oars,” And He also saw His Holy Spirit hovering over the scene jogging each man’s memory and enabling them to recall passages of Scripture they laid up in their hearts like treasured possessions and He heard them cry out to God asking Him to deliver them from all their fears.
O how His tender heart must have ached as He listened to each man’s mournful cry for help. Can you imagine how Jesus must have felt when He heard them beg God to help them immediately and when they cried out: “I’m really scared?” “I’m worn out Lord and I don’t know how much more of this pounding I can take. I’m stressed to the max. Please have mercy on me,” and Jesus had to restrain Himself and softly whisper, “Not yet, not yet?”
There was once a man and his wife who used to go to England to shop in the beautiful stores. They both liked antiques and pottery and they especially liked teacups. One day in a real fine shop, they spotted a unique teacup. The man asked, "May I see that? I have never seen one quite so beautiful." As the saleslady handed it to him, the teacup suddenly spoke: "You don't understand," it said, "I haven't always been a teacup. There was a time when I was red and I was clay. My master took me and rolled me and patted me over and over and I yelled, 'Let me alone.' But he only smiled and said, 'Not yet! Not yet!
"Then he placed me on a spinning wheel," the teacup added, "and suddenly I was spun around and around and around and around. 'Stop it! I'm getting dizzy' I screamed. But the master only nodded and said, 'Not yet! Not yet! "Then he put me in the oven. I'd never felt such heat! I wondered why he wanted to burn me. I yelled! I knocked at the door. I kicked and screamed with tear filled eyes. I could see him through the opening and I could read his lip’s as he shook his head and said, 'Not yet! Not yet! "Finally the door opened, he put me on the shelf and I began to cool off. There, that's better,' I said. Then he brushed me and painted me all over. The fumes were horrible. I thought I would gag. 'Stop it! Stop it!' I cried. He only nodded and said, 'Not yet! Not yet! "Then suddenly he put me back into an oven. It wasn’t like the first one. This one was twice as hot and I knew for sure I would suffocate and die. I begged. I pleaded. I screamed. I cried. All the time I could see him through the opening nodding his head, saying, 'Not yet! Not yet!' I would never make it, I thought. I was almost ready to give up. But the door opened and he took me out and gently placed me on the shelf. An hour later, he handed me a mirror and said, 'Look at yourself,' and I did, and I said, “That's not me, that couldn't be me, it's beautiful. I'm beautiful!" 'I want you to remember,' he said, 'I know it hurt to be rolled and patted, but if I just left you, you'd have dried up. I know it made you dizzy to spin around on the wheel, but if I had stopped, you would have crumbled. I know it hurt and it was hot and disagreeable in the oven, but if I hadn't put you there, you would have cracked. I know the fumes were bad when I brushed and painted you all over, but if I hadn't done that, you never would have hardened. You would not have had any color in your life, and if I hadn't put you back in that second oven, you wouldn't survive for very long because the hardness would not have held. Now you are the beautiful teacup I planed for you to be (Author Unown). Now I don’t pretend to know the reason for all of His not yet’s. But this much I do know. Those two kids I mentioned in the beginning of my message are well known to you and me today. The Lord made him wait thirteen years before He let him out of prison and made Joseph the number two man in ancient Egypt. He also made the second kid wait a long painful time before He allowed David to finally occupy the kings’ throne. He is the Potter and we are His clay (Isaiah 64:8). The day will come when each of us will be the beautiful Christ like creature He has planned us to be from before the creation of His world just as He has promised (Romans 8:29). But it will be in His time, because He makes all things beautiful I His time.
I assure you that whatever blessing the Lord was pleased to bestow upon folks through those two men or through you and me for that matter, especially if He had been preparing us for some special work, would not have been possible without each of us first patiently experiencing the love of God’s “not yet.”