God-Appointed Down Times

When you are down to nothing, God is up to something! - Barbara Franklin(1)

Have you ever been assigned a task from the Lord, or been asked by Him to do something specific? Perhaps you’ve been called to pastor a church, become a missionary, attend seminary, or even start a new outreach in the church. Maybe God’s placed something else on your heart altogether.

Do you have a deep passion to see that vision fulfilled; however, you haven’t heard from the Lord in a while concerning that particular calling? Do you sometimes wonder if God’s ever going to bring it to pass, and do you feel like you just keep waiting with no response from Him?

When the Lord provides a vision and we don’t see His calling fulfilled immediately, we can easily become discouraged and question Him. What I want to emphasize in our message this evening is how those silent times can often be ordained by God. I wish to share about God-appointed down-times, as we look at how the apostle Paul had to undergo both a three-year and a fourteen-year down-time consecutively.

Down-Time in Arabia (Galatians 1:15-17)

In Galatians 1:15-17, Paul began sharing about his two interim periods, and he mentioned how his first one came immediately after he had received Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior:

But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately confer with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went to Arabia, and returned again to Damascus (Galatians 1:15-17).

In the event which Paul described, he was formerly called by the name Saul. When Paul spoke of God revealing His Son in him, he was referring to his Damascus road experience with Jesus, where Christ appeared to Saul asking why he was persecuting Him (Acts 9:4).

Saul said, “Who are You, Lord?” and He replied, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” The passage continues to tell us, “So he, trembling and astonished, said, ‘Lord, what do You want me to do?’ Then the Lord said to him, ‘Arise and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do’” (Acts 9:5-6).

When Saul opened his eyes he was blind. The Bible says that a disciple named Ananias was commanded by the Lord to lay hands on him and pray for his sight to return. Saul was then filled with the Holy Spirit and the Lord revealed his ministry (Acts 9:10-18). He was informed that he was a chosen vessel to bear the name of the Lord to the Gentiles, to kings and to all the children of Israel (9:15).

The Lord gave Paul an amazing revelation of a world-impacting ministry, and Paul said that he “did not immediately confer with flesh and blood” (Gal 1:16), meaning that He did not immediately begin his ministry! So, what did he do instead? He stated, “I went down to Arabia, and returned again to Damascus” (1:17). Paul spent three years in Arabia, for he continued to say in verse 18, “Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and remained with him fifteen days.”

How could someone who had been shown that he was to have such a world-changing ministry retreat from the scene for three years, and why? What did Paul do for those three years? Warren Wiersbe says, “God sent Paul to Arabia for a time of meditation and investigation,”(2) similar to what occurred with Jesus when the Bible shares how, “Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness” (Lk 4:1-2); and we can conclude that Paul went to Arabia at the prompting of the Holy Spirit. M. G. Easton states,

Immediately after his conversion he retired into the solitudes of Arabia, perhaps of “Sinai in Arabia,” for the purpose, probably, of devout study and meditation . . . It is a mysterious pause, a moment of suspense, in the apostle’s history . . . which ushers in the tumultuous storm of his active missionary life. Coming back, after three years . . . he began to preach the gospel ‘boldly in the name of Jesus’ (Acts 9:27).(3)

A down-time is often called a wilderness experience. Many great prophets and godly men had to undergo a time in the wilderness before they were allowed to enter the plan that God had for them. The wilderness can be a time of silence from the Lord, and it can be a time of testing or trials (Ps 95:8) that can be likened to a refiner’s fire. In Isaiah, the Lord declared, “Behold, I have refined you . . . I have tested you in the furnace of affliction” (48:10).