El­der Arnold Gopeesingh

And the Lord said, “I have sure­ly seen the af­flic­tion of my peo­ple, which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by rea­son of their taskmas­ters, for I know their sor­rows. And I am come down to de­liv­er them out of the hand of the Egyp­tians and to bring them up out of that land un­to a good land and a large one, un­to a land flow­ing with milk and hon­ey, un­to the place of the Canaan­ites, and the Hit­tites, and the Amor­ites, and the Per­izzites, and the Hivites, and the Je­busites.

“Now there­fore, be­hold, the cry of the chil­dren of Is­rael is come un­to me: and I have al­so seen the op­pres­sion where­with the Egyp­tians op­press them.” (Ex­o­dus 3:7 to 9).

The time of the Is­raelites be­ing in Egypt spanned over 400 years, but it must be known that they were not slaves to the Egyp­tians all these years. When they were there, God heard their cry and saw all the af­flic­tions that they were go­ing through at the hands of the Egyp­tians, but it took Him some time be­fore God made His move to de­liv­er them by the hands of Moses, His ser­vant.

There are times when life can throw some­thing at you un­ex­pect­ed­ly, and this can cause you to pan­ic, for you nev­er in your wildest dreams ex­pect­ed this to hap­pen to you. None of us tru­ly knows what to­mor­row will bring, but we stay be­liev­ing that the best will al­ways come our way, and that is the right thing to do.

Yet we read in the scrip­ture, “Many are the af­flic­tions of the right­eous, but the Lord de­liv­ereth him out of them all.” (Psalm 34:19). Do not be­lieve that know­ing Je­sus Christ as Lord and Sav­iour or hav­ing a re­la­tion­ship with Him in­su­lates you from the at­tack of the fiery darts of the dev­il. When you be­gin to serve God, you be­come a tar­get for the king­dom of dark­ness, but the good news is, as de­clared in the above Psalm, “But the Lord de­liv­ereth him out of them all.” You may be sit­ting there think­ing that no one cares and that God seems not to be hear­ing your cry or un­der­stand­ing what you are go­ing through; that, my friend, is far from the truth. God is a God of tim­ing, and no one can ful­ly com­pre­hend Him.

It is writ­ten in the scrip­ture Isa­iah 55:8 to 9: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nei­ther are your ways my ways,” saith the Lord. For as the heav­ens are high­er than the earth, so are my ways high­er than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. My open­ing scrip­ture, if you check his­tor­i­cal­ly, you will see that God did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to the cry of His peo­ple while in bondage in Egypt. But rest as­sured, there would have been rea­sons for this.

The ques­tion can be asked, “What should I do af­ter I bring my pe­ti­tion to God?” Per­mit me to leave a few things with you. The very first thing may sur­prise you, and it is this: con­tin­ue go­ing be­fore God with what­ev­er you de­sire to see change or what need you want met. The prophet Isa­iah prayed nu­mer­ous times for rain, “And it came to pass at the sev­enth time that he said, Be­hold, there ariseth a lit­tle cloud out of the sea, like a man’s hand. And he said, “Go up, say un­to Ahab, ‘Pre­pare thy char­i­ot, and get thee down that the rain stop thee not.” (1 Kings 18:44).

You must per­sist in pray­ing and cry­ing out to God; push un­til some­thing hap­pens, for it is writ­ten, “Re­sist the dev­il and he will flee from thee.” The prob­lem with many of us is that we so of­ten want a fast fix; there is no guar­an­tee that this will hap­pen every time you pray or cry out to God. Hence, the rea­son you must have a de­ter­mined at­ti­tude. Once you are in God’s will, stay there as the prophet Eli­jah did.

Sec­ond­ly, learn to have pa­tience with God. At times, He can come through im­me­di­ate­ly, but there can al­so be oc­ca­sions when you will have to wait. We are told in Philip­pi­ans 4:6: “Be care­ful for noth­ing; but in every­thing by prayer and sup­pli­ca­tion with thanks­giv­ing let your re­quests be made known un­to God.” It is a nor­mal hu­man re­ac­tion that we want what we pray for as soon as pos­si­ble. I can tes­ti­fy to this in my own life, but we live and we learn.

De­lay, my friend, does not mean de­nial. Wait on God. He al­ways knows best.

Fi­nal­ly, put your trust and con­fi­dence in Him. Job said in Job 13:15: “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him; I will sure­ly de­fend my ways to His face.” This is a right­eous man who went through what I call “hell” on earth, los­ing every­thing, yet he re­fused to turn away from God. In the fi­nal out­come, he arose vic­to­ri­ous and in­creased in pos­ses­sion much more than be­fore.

I en­cour­age you to stay faith­ful; God heard your cry, and He will show up.

Bless­ings al­ways.