Dr Paul Allen

  Judges 13:8–21 Here we witness God answering prayer and giving the promise of a son to a childless couple from the tribe of Dan. Manoah’s wife had been visited by an angel of the Lord and been told that she would have a son; she had also been given instructions concerning that child.  When she informed her husband of the visitation he entered into prayer and entreated the Lord for a further visit so that they could be given advice on the upbringing of that son. We notice that Manoah was a man of faith. He had total confidence in the word of his wife and never doubted that the child would be born. He knew that God had given her the message and that God’s word would soon be fulfilled. He no doubt felt the enormous responsibility of impending parenthood and so wisely sought the help of God. It is always true that no parents can adequately discharge their responsibilities without the help of the Lord. God answered his prayer and the angel visited the woman a second time. This time she ca

“Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.” ( Psalm 139:16 ) This is an amazing verse, testifying as it does to the omniscient fore-planning of our Creator for each human being. Each person has been separately planned by God before he or she was ever conceived; His eyes oversaw our “unperfect [not imperfect, but unfinished] substance”—that is, literally, our embryo—throughout its entire development. Not only all its “members” but also all its “days” (the literal implication of “in continuance”) had been “written” in God’s book long ago. While modern evolutionists argue that a “fetus” is not yet a real person and so may be casually aborted if the mother so chooses, both the Bible and science show that a growing child in the womb is a true human being. Instruments called fetoscopes have been able to trace every stage of embryonic development, showing that

Peter tells us that “the Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness” (2 Peter 3:9). At some point, each of us joins the “some” group. We reach places where it’s painfully clear that our sense of time-urgency must be different than God’s. And it is. We prefer to measure time in minutes, rather than months. But the Ancient of Days measures time by millennia (2 Peter 3:8). God knows that he sometimes appears slow to us, which is one merciful reason he gave us the Bible. This book, which God took millennia to assemble, shows us that God is not slow, but patient in working out his redemptive purposes in the best ways (2 Peter 3:9). And it shows that he is compassionate toward us when we wait for him for what seems like a long time. Not as Some Count Slowness Abraham and Sarah were not only the parents of all of God’s faith-children (Romans 4:16); their lives are perhaps the most famous picture of God’s redemptive purposes in what seems like his painfully slow pace.