A couple had two boys, 8 and 10, who were always getting into trouble. The parents were sure that if any mischief occurred in the community, their two young sons were involved. They didn’t know what to do with their boys.
Then the mother heard about a clergyman who'd been successful in disciplining children, so she brought the boys to him. The minister asked to see the boys individually, and the youngest went first. The clergyman sat the boy down and asked, “Where is God?” The boy made no attempt to answer. The question was repeated in a sterner voice but still no answer. Then the minister shook his finger at the boy and asked in an even sterner voice, “Where is God?” At that the boy ran from the room and into a closet and slammed the door.
His older brother followed him in and asked what happened. The younger brother replied, “We're in trouble this time. God is missing, and they think we did it!” (The Bridge; www.PreachingToday.com)
These days, it seems like God is missing from many places in our country, and we’re in trouble! That’s why so many of us are praying for revival. We’re praying for a mighty visitation of God again, asking for the powerful sense of His presence.
But what would happen if God actually did show up? What would happen if God actually did pay us a visit? Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Genesis 21, Genesis 21, where we see what happened when God visited Abraham and Sarah.
Genesis 21:1 “The Lord visited Sarah” The word is used often in the Old Testament of the mustering (or the gathering) of troops for battle. In this context, God musters the resources of heaven on Sarah’s behalf and gives her a child in her old age.
Genesis 21:1-3 The LORD visited Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did to Sarah as he had promised. And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the time of which God had spoken to him. Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him, whom Sarah bore him, Isaac. (ESV)
The name, “Isaac,” means laughter!
Genesis 21:4-7 And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. And Sarah said, “God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh over me.” And she said, “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.” (ESV)
God did the impossible and brought laughter into their home. He gave a 100-year-old man a son, along with his 90-year old wife. It’s so incredible, it makes us laugh. Only here, it’s the laughter of pure joy. Previously, when God told Abraham and Sarah they would have a son in their old age, they laughed because they couldn’t believe it. Now, the laugh of doubt has become the laugh of delight, as God keeps His promise to them.
So wait on the Lord like Abraham and Sarah did. Wait on Him and…
EXPERIENCE THE JOY OF FULFILLED PROMISES.
Let your laughter of doubt become the laughter of delight when God does what He said He would do. Let Him bring laughter into your home again as he keeps his word to you.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re too old or too young. It doesn’t matter whether you have the physical resources or not. It doesn’t matter what your circumstances are. God musters the resources of heaven on your behalf to give you the joy of His fulfilled promises. All you need to do is wait on Him.
When I was growing up, our family, every summer, spent the last full week of August at Central Manor Bible Conference. It was an old fashioned camp meeting with an open-air tabernacle, surrounded by cabins in the woods of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. They had five preaching services a day for the adults and special programs for the children and the youth.
My favorite speaker in those days was Rev. Art Larson, who took a special interest in the teenagers. I remember him gathering us teens together and talking about his days in college. There was a man on campus who seemed very spiritual. At first, they thought he was putting on a show, but as they examined his life, they knew he was for real.
One year, this student went through some deep trials, including the loss of a parent. Even so, he continued to exhibit a joy in the Lord that was unexplainable.
Then one day, he left his Bible in the room after a campus Bible study. Art Larson thought to himself, “Now’s my chance to see what makes this guy tick.” So he picked up the Bible and thumbed through it. He noticed something very strange – several “T’s” and “TP’s” scattered throughout the entire Bible.
When the student returned to pick up his Bible, Art Larson asked him, “What are all the T’s and TP’s in your Bible?”
The student replied, “Whenever I find a promise in God’s Word that speaks to me, I put a ‘T’ beside it. That stands for ‘tried.’ Then I go out and try that promise. When God comes through on that promise for me, I put a ‘P’ beside it. That’s what the ‘TP’s are all about. They mean, ‘Tried and Proven.’
And that was the secret of this man’s joy despite his circumstances. He had tried and proven dozens, if not hundreds, of promises in the Bible.
Oh my dear friends, if you haven’t done it before, I urge you: Start trying the promises of God in His Word. Then experience the pure delight of Him proving His Word to be true time and time again.
Greg Gilbert, in his book What Is the Gospel, talks about trying to teach his son to swim when he was about a year old. The little guy didn't like getting water in his face in the bathtub; so at first, “teaching him to swim” meant getting him to splash around a bit on the top step of the pool, and maybe putting his lips in the water enough to blow bubbles if he was feeling really brave.
Eventually Greg convinced his son to walk around with him in the shallow end, with a death-grip around his daddy’s neck. Once they mastered that, it was time for the Big Show—Jumping Off the Side. Greg lifted his one-year-old son out of the pool, stood him on the side, and said, “Come on, jump!”
Greg said, “The look on his face, in about two seconds, went from confusion to dawning understanding, to amused rejection, to outright contempt.”
His boy frowned and said, “No. I go see Mommy.” But Greg refused to surrender. He chased his little boy down and eventually convinced him (with various bribes) to come back to the pool.
Greg jumped into the water again and stood in front of his boy with my arms outstretched. “Come on, kiddo,” he said. “I'm right here. I'll catch you. I promise!” Greg’s boy looked at him half skeptically, did a little wind-up, bouncing at the knees, and then fell into the pool with what was more a flop than a jump.
And Greg caught him.
Greg says, “After that we were off to the races.” “Doot 'gain, Daddy! Doot 'gain!” his little boy squealed. And so began half an hour of jump, catch, lift, reset, jump, catch, lift, reset.
When it was over, Greg and his wife started to worry that maybe their son had gotten a bit too comfortable with the water. What if he wandered out to the pool when no one was there with him? Would he remember all the times he'd safely jumped into the water and decide he had this pool thing whipped? Would he jump again?
Over the next few days they watched him around the pool, and what they saw both comforted them as parents and touched Greg deeply as a father. Never once did his little boy think about jumping into the water—at least not unless his dad was standing underneath him with his arms out, promising to catch him. And then he would fly!
You see, his son's trust was never in his own ability to handle the water. It was in his father, and in his father's promise: “Come on kiddo. Jump. I promise I'll catch you.” (Greg Gilbert, What Is the Gospel? Crossway, 2010, pp. 71-72; www.PreachingToday.com)
In the same way, when we depend on our Heavenly Father to keep His promises, we laugh with delight as we fly into His arms. But when we depend on our own abilities, we often groan with despair as we find ourselves in a place way over our heads!
So patiently wait for the Lord’s visitation. Wait on Him and experience the joy of fulfilled promises. More than that, wait on the Lord and…
EXPERIENCE THE JOY OF ANSWERED PRAYER.
Know the delight of God hearing you when you cry out to Him and providing for your every need.
That’s what he did for Hagar. She has a teenage son, who causes a lot of trouble, and it gets them kicked out of their home, but God intervenes on her behalf, as well.
Genesis 21:8 And the child grew and was weaned. And Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned [at about 2 or 3 years of age]. (ESV)
Genesis 21:9-10 But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, laughing. So she said to Abraham, “Cast out this slave woman with her son, for the son of this slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac.” (ESV)
Sarah wants to get rid of this boy who is mocking her son. He is laughing, but his is the laughter of derision. Hagar’s son, Ishmael, is making fun of Isaac, not in a playful sort of way, but in a very hurtful manner. Galatians 4:29 says that Ishmael actually “persecuted” Isaac. This 16 or 17-year-old teenager is bullying his 2 or 3-year-old half-brother. He’s out of control, and Sarah has had enough. She tells Abraham, “Get rid of him!”
Genesis 21:11 And the thing was very displeasing to Abraham on account of his son. But God…”
There are those two word again. You have an out of control teenager, an angry mother, and a distressed father, BUT GOD!
God, in His grace, intervenes even when His people make a royal mess of things. Remember, Ishmael was born when Abraham and Sarah tried to take matters into their own hands. Instead of waiting on God to give them a child, they cooked up their own scheme to help God out. Now, 16 or 17 years later, the un-favored son is bullying the favored one. BUT GOD!
Genesis 21:12-13 But God said to Abraham, “Be not displeased because of the boy and because of your slave woman. Whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for through Isaac shall your offspring be named. And I will make a nation of the son of the slave woman also, because he is your offspring.” (ESV)
God assures Abraham that He will take care of the boy and his mother. So…
Genesis 21:14-15 So Abraham rose early in the morning and took bread and a skin of water and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child, and sent her away. And she departed and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba. When the water in the skin was gone, she put the child under one of the bushes. (ESV)
Literally, “She cast the boy under one of the bushes.” This is the action of an exhausted mother, who half supported, half dragged her teenaged son towards the shade of a bush (Derek Kidner). He was dying in the desert, and mom couldn’t bear to look.
Genesis 21:16 Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot, for she said, “Let me not look on the death of the child.” And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept. (ESV)
She is at the end of her rope. There is nothing else she can do except cry. Have you ever been there? If you have, then you know that’s when God begins to do his best work.
Annie Johnson Flint put it this way:
When we have exhausted our store of endurance,
When our strength has failed ere the day is half done,
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources,
Our Father’s full giving is only begun.
Hagar, at the end of her strength, at the end of her resources, and at the end of herself, is about to find that out.
Genesis 21:17-21 And God heard the voice of the boy, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What troubles you, Hagar? Fear not, for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Up! Lift up the boy, and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make him into a great nation.” Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. And she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink. And God was with the boy, and he grew up. He lived in the wilderness and became an expert with the bow. He lived in the wilderness of Paran, and his mother took a wife for him from the land of Egypt. (ESV)
Sometimes God waits until we get to the end of ourselves before He intervenes. But when He does, He more than supplies our needs. God gave Hagar and Ishmael water to drink, a glorious future with a wife and many descendants, and best of all, His own dear presence through it all. Did you see it in verse 20? God was WITH the boy, and He grew up.
My dear friends, that’s what happens when God visits us. He hears our cry and provides more than we need. Best of all, He gives us the gift of Himself. All we need to do is cry out to Him.
Hebrews 5 says of Christ, “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence” (Hebrews 5:7). Jesus prayed for a rescue, but God gave Him a resurrection instead, so that all who believe in Him might find eternal life!
That’s the way God loves to answer prayer – abundantly beyond all that we could ask or even imagine. So wait on Him. Don’t take matters into your own hands. Cry out to the Lord and wait patiently for His answer. You’ll be amazed and delighted at what He does for you if you just wait on Him.
In his book Embraced by the Spirit, Chuck Swindoll shares a story about a conversation he had with a Christian leader who started a new ministry for the Navigators in Uganda. The man told Swindoll that after much discussion and prayer, he and his wife were convinced that God wanted them to move to Uganda. So they uprooted their family and flew to Kenya, where he put his family up in a hotel so he could rent a Land Rover and travel across the border into Uganda.
The man told Swindoll, “One of the first things that caught my eye when I came into the village where I was going to spend my first night were several young kids with automatic weapons, shooting them off into the sky. As I drove by, they stared at me and pointed their guns.”
Naturally he started to wonder if God was really in their decision. Finally, after a long day exploring Uganda, he pulled up to a dingy, dimly lit hotel. Inside, he went up to the registration counter. The clerk, who spoke only a little English, told him there was one bed available. So he walked up two flights of stairs and opened the door and turned on the light—a naked light bulb hanging over a table. He saw a room with two beds, one unmade and one still made up. He immediately realized, I am sharing this room with somebody else. A chill went down his spine.
At this point he definitely needed the kind of encouragement only God can give. The man told Swindoll, “I dropped to my knees, and I said, ‘Lord, look, I'm afraid. I'm in a country I don't know, in a culture that's totally unfamiliar. I have no idea who sleeps in that bed. Please, show me that you're in this move!’”
And then, he said, “Just as I was finishing my prayer, the door flung open, and there stood this six-foot five-inch African frowning at me, saying in beautiful British English, ‘What are you doing in my room?’”
The man from America said, “I kneeled there for a moment, and then I muttered, ‘They gave me this bed, but I'll only be here one night.’”
“What are you doing in my country?” the African asked.
“Well, I'm with a [Christian] organization called the Navigators.”
“Ahh! The Navigators!” Suddenly the tall African broke into an enormous grin, threw his arms around his new roommate, and laughed out loud as he lifted him up off the floor and danced around the room with him.
“Praise God, praise God,” said the African. “For two years I have prayed that God would send someone to me from this organization.” And he pulled out a little Scripture memory-verse pack and pointed to where, at the bottom of each of the verses, it read, “The Navigators, Colorado Springs, Colorado.”
“Are you from Colorado Springs, Colorado?” he asked.
“I was,” said the American. “But I'm coming to Uganda to begin a work for the Navigators in this country.”
This Ugandan eventually became a board member for the new Navigators ministry in Uganda. He helped the American leader find a place to live, assisted him with the language, and became the Navigator staff member's best friend. (Chuck Swindoll, Embraced by the Spirit, Zondervan, 2011, pp. 111-114; www.PreachingToday.com)
Wow! Look at what happens when we wait on God even in a scary situation. When we cry out to Him, He visits us in a powerful way. He hears our prayers and answers them in ways far beyond anything we could have asked or even imagined. He did it for Hagar. He did it for Abraham and Sarah. He’ll do it for you.
Just patiently wait for the Lord’s visitation. Wait on Him and experience the joy of fulfilled promises along with the joy of answered prayer.
God, Grant me to be silent before you – that I may hear you;
at rest in you – that you may work in me;
open to you – that you may enter;
empty before you – that you may fill me.
Let me be still and know you are my God. Amen.
(Sir Paul Reeves in a prayer at the WCC Seventh Assembly in Canberra, Australia. Christianity Today, Vol. 35, no. 11; www.PreachingToday.com)
