Delayed Deliverence

Each and every one of us needs to understand that God has a purpose behind every problem, every situation and every circumstance. God uses circumstances to develop our character. In fact, he depends more on circumstances to make us like Jesus than he depends on our reading the Bible. We read the bible every once in a while, but we go through circumstances 24/7.

Jesus warned us that we would have problems in this world. No one is immune to pain or insulated from suffering. No one gets to skate through life problem free. Life is a serious of problems. Every time you solve one, another is waiting to take its place. Not all problems are big, but God uses even the little ones in his growth process for us.

1 Peter 4:12 says “think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you”.

God uses problems to draw you closer to himself. The bible says that “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted, and he rescues those who are crushed in spirit.”

Your most profound and intimate experiences of worship will likely be in your darkest days. When our heart is broken, when we feel abandoned, when we are out of options, when the pain is great, that’s when we turn to God the most. It’s during suffering that we learn to pray our most heartfelt prayers. When we are in pain we don’t have time for no superficial prayers we want to hear a word from the Lord.

We learn things about God in suffering that we can’t learn any other way.

God could have kept Joseph out of Jail. God could have kept Daniel out of the lion’s den. God could have kept Jeremiah from being tossed in a slimy pit. God could have kept the Shadrack, Meshak, and Abindigo from the fiery furnance, but he didn’t. He let those problems happen and every one of them was drawn closer to God because of what they went through. Regardless, what the cause, none of those problems could have happened without God’s permission. You’ll never know that God is all you need, until God is all you got.

We must realize this morning that sometimes God does not always move when we want him to. Sometimes God’s deliverance is delayed. And the reason that God sometimes delays his deliverence is so that you and I can go through the storm and learn exactly what he is trying to teach us. In order to get out of something you first have to go through it.

Joseph had to go through the jail in order to get out. Daniel had to go through the lion’s den in order to get out. Jeremiah had to go through the pit in order to get out. Shadrack, Meshak, and Abindigo had to go through the furnance of fire in order to get out. And sometimes, you and I have to go through our problems and our situations before God delievers us.

In our text this morning, Mathew paints a picture of the miracle working Jesus. In the miracle of the feeding of 5,000, these people had been following Jesus all day. His disciples felt that a crisis was brewing. There were so many people, and nothing for them to eat. They asked Jesus to send the people into the villages where they could buy themselves some food.

The Lord assured them that there was no need. Why should the people leave the one that can supply all their needs according to his riches in glory.

Jesus said, “You give them something to eat.” The disciples were staggered. “Give them something to eat?” We don’t have anything but five loaves and two fish.

They had forgotten that they also had Jesus. This lesson point out that when we are willing to give Christ our little all, he multiplies it to feed thousands. These five thousand men who were fed had their hunger satisfied only for a short time, those today who feed upon the living Christ are satisfied for eternity.

The disciples going through a storm was a miracle that was a sequel to the feeding of the 5,000. As per custom, Jesus was working on the between system. And you do know that Jesus work’s on the between system don’t you? Somebody says, “Bro. Pastor what are you talking about?” (I’m glad you asked.) Between pour in and pour out, Jesus turned water into wine. Between breaking and distributing, Jesus got fish out of fish and bread out of bread. Between a dark backward and a bright forward, 10 lepers were healed. Between who touched me, and go tell, the woman with the issue of blood was healed. Between rise up, and take up they bed and walk, the man that had been at the pool of Betheseda for 38 years was healed. Between 195___ and 2004, he picked me up and turned me around.