“For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, Line upon line, line upon line, Here a little, there a little.”
Isaiah 28:10
If we don’t get to understand how God deals with us as His children we may end up being frustrated and asking unnecessary questions. One thing we have to know is that God is a patient teacher who longs to bring us into His very will for our lives.
He knows how frail we are and how “dull of hearing” we could be so he would often have us progressively taught in His will by give us incremental lessons.
Why do we become full of hearing and why does God repeat his word until we get his attention? Because of worldliness and lack of time spent in His word. The writer of the Book of Hebrews rightly captures this human phenomenon when he wrote:
“..of whom we have much to say, and hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God..”( Hebrews 5:11)
Now since His leading are incremental because He longs to bring us into His perfect will then suffices to say that we may pray amiss if we don’t understand our place in His will at a given time.
When we pray amiss God in His love may not grant us our “desperate” will because we are praying out of His desire for our lives. This is the reason why many get things even more complicated saying since God did not answer their prayers on time they may as well help themselves.
Why should we then strive to know His will so that we don’t pray amiss? God’s will is perfect than the will of man and gives ultimate peace even in the midst of turbulence. It is like a perfect stream from which we may continually drink and be satisfied.
However we have instances where His children did not cooperate with Him and insisted on their ways. God had to grant them a permissive will that often have disastrous consequences.
We must understand that God’s permissible will does not have His full blessings. In 1 Samuel 8 God wanted to be the king of the Israelites but the people desired one for themselves. They even went to God in prayer complaining bitterly.
God permitted them to have a king but then problems started: they had war after war. Because people go to God crying day and night without waiting patiently to know His will on a matter God may sometime yield not to break their ‘faith’.
However the permissible will always have consequences because we did not wait for God’s perfect timing. Those who must enter God’s perfect will must learn the art of patiently waiting for God’s in prayer and not be foolishly proactive.
God still answers prayers no matter how late it may seem in the eyes of men. Hannah prayed for a son and was given Samuel. Despite Penninah mocking her, she never lost focus; she knew that when she prayed earnestly God would answer her one day.
Beloved waiting on the Lord with a single minded focus is not a lesson in despair and frustration but an art of building spiritual strength and becoming a beacon of testimony for our God.
The book of Isaiah sums it up:
“But those who wait on the LORD Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint”. Isaiah 40:31
Reading James Chapter
