Psalm 105: God Hasn't Forgotten You in the Waiting

Introduction

"Did they find everybody and forget to find me?" As a child, Stephen Chandler asked himself that question in the back of a closet during a game of hide-and-seek. As an adult, he has heard the same question from many believers: "God, I'm looking for you, I pray, I live to honor you, and you seem to have forgotten me."

A pastor in Maryland and a guest at Elevation Church, Stephen Chandler opens Psalm 105 and the story of Joseph. From it he draws a title that he asks the congregation to repeat to their neighbor: "He hasn't forgotten you."

His message comes down to one conviction: when God makes you wait, he hasn't lost sight of you. He is preparing you. And the longer the preparation, the greater what he has in store for you.

Message Outline

1. The Word of God Will Test You

The text is Psalm 105:16-22. God calls down a famine on the land, but he has sent a man ahead of his people: Joseph, sold as a slave. The psalm says his feet were hurt with shackles and his neck was put in irons, until the time his word came to pass and the word of the Lord tested him.
The preacher asks everyone to tell their neighbor, "The word of God will test you." He admits he doesn't like this verse: he would prefer a Bible that only encourages.
Yet the psalm ends with deliverance: the king has Joseph's chains removed and makes him lord over his house.

2. The Feeling of Being Forgotten

At his grandmother's house in New Jersey, a hundred-year-old home with creaky stairs, he plays hide-and-seek with his cousins. He hides in the closet of the most cluttered room: clothes up to the ceiling, VHS tapes stacked more than six feet high.
The others are found one after another. Two minutes go by, then five, ten, fifteen, twenty. He needs to use the bathroom and realizes he has been forgotten.
That is what many believers go through: you pray, you seek God, and you watch him give a friend what you have been asking for all along.
He also tells of delivery drivers in Maryland: a package photographed in front of a house three doors down, a meal left three streets from his home, on a major road. He went to get it, reheated it, and still canceled the order. "Have you ever felt like God is a disgruntled delivery driver who drops off your miracle three streets from your house?"

3. Joseph, from Dream to Prison

Joseph is Jacob's favorite son. He receives a coat ("a Gucci coat, maybe not in your translation") and has a dream that he tells his brothers with immaturity.
His brothers want to kill him, then sell him. The preacher smiles: "We're believers, we can't be murderers." And he adds: "If you think your family is dysfunctional, read the Bible."
Joseph becomes a slave in Potiphar's house, is falsely accused and thrown into prison. There he interprets the dreams of the cupbearer and the baker, but the cupbearer forgets him (Genesis 40:23).
Between the dream and its fulfillment, years go by. If God makes you wait for a child, a healing, a marriage, a breakthrough, a business, it is because he is preparing you. "Nobody likes to be tested."

4. The Longer the Wait, the Greater the Preparation

A boxing match of ten three-minute rounds lasts thirty minutes in the ring. For those thirty minutes, the boxer spends eight to twelve months in the gym and eight to twelve weeks in a training camp. In the movie Creed, you see him pushing cars and hitting tires with a sledgehammer.
"The longer God delays you, the longer he prepares you. The longer he prepares you, the greater what he has for you on the other side." He invites us to turn frustration into hopeful waiting.
What he calls "useless information": a cat carries her kittens for eight weeks, and a kitten weighs three to four ounces. An elephant carries her calf for twenty-two months, and the calf weighs around 250 pounds. The bigger it is, the longer it takes.
To Jeremiah, God says that he knew him before he formed him in his mother's womb (Jeremiah 1:5). "You're not small, you're not insignificant, you're not forgotten."
"A calling without preparation will crush you." He thinks of a marriage begun without preparation, of a business launched too fast. During the wait, two temptations lie in ambush: pretending, or running ahead of God.
God often announces the calling before its time. The preacher tells how he tells his children about a trip to Orlando only the night before, while his wife tells them right away. "My wife is more like God": God gives you the word in advance to see how you will handle it.

5. First Lesson: Rejection Is a Teacher

If you aren't immune to rejection, you won't walk in your calling.
God sent Joseph well before the famine. If he had announced the famine while the barns were full, people would have laughed at him. His calling was sent before the problem existed. That is why your mother and those around you don't always understand: what God is preparing is things no eye has seen (1 Corinthians 2:9).
A pastor's son, Stephen Chandler wanted to do "anything but pastor." On leaving the University of Maryland, he received two offers: 42,000 dollars in Maryland, or 90,000 dollars with a 15,000-dollar bonus elsewhere. The Holy Spirit stopped him. He argued: "You forgot how numbers work," and even offered to tithe on 105,000 dollars. The answer: "I need you to stay in Maryland." Then: "Your path is not aligned with your calling." If you let God lead you, he takes you where you need to be.
If other people's lack of understanding makes you doubt what God said, those people have become an idol.
Even Joseph's father rebuked him (Genesis 37:10). Joseph was rejected partly because he was arrogant. God also works on the parts of you that push others away. Some people, he says, weren't disturbing your peace: they were challenging your pride.
Rejection teaches you to keep the dream to yourself, to recognize a word from God ("or last night's bad pizza"), and to answer to the Holy Spirit before your circle of friends.
It also teaches you to celebrate others: Jesus did not come from Joseph's tribe, but from Judah's.

6. Second Lesson: Faithfulness Comes Before Promotion

Be fruitful even outside your calling. In Potiphar's house and then in prison, "the Lord was with Joseph" and made everything he did prosper (Genesis 39:2-4, 21-23). Joseph becomes the best slave, then the best prisoner.
As long as you complain about what is unfair, you aren't ready. "Can you succeed as an employee before being a CEO, behind the scenes before being up front?" Behind closed doors, God builds your confidence. "Don't skip the prison stage."
"If you have not been faithful in that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own?" (Luke 16:12).
The preacher has been lead pastor of his church in Maryland for fifteen years, and a member of that church for thirty years. Before that, for fifteen years, he got up at six o'clock every Sunday: turn on the lights, change the batteries in the microphones, check the screens and the overhead projector, back in the days of four-verse hymns.
He led worship for seven years. Bible study on Monday, leadership training on Wednesday after a forty-five-minute drive from the university (back home at 11 p.m.), youth night on Friday, prayer on Saturday morning.
Having become a pastor at 23, he was accused of favoritism. His answer: "I put the batteries in those microphones for two decades, building someone else's dream." Serve someone else's dream, and God will give you your own, whether by doing the dishes at your mother's house or by filling up a borrowed car.

7. Third Lesson: Delay Is a Multiplier

"Hope deferred makes the heart sick" (Proverbs 13:12). The preacher quotes a theologian: long-deferred waiting causes emotional, mental and spiritual pain.
Abraham, about a hundred years old, considers his own body and Sarah's womb, but he is "fully assured that what he had promised, he was also able to perform" (Romans 4:19-21). God sometimes waits until you are fully persuaded.
"The delay of dreams either kills dreams or grows faith. You decide." God is able to do "far more abundantly than all that we ask or think" (Ephesians 3:20).
Earlier this year, at an airport in Maryland, the security lines were taking three to four hours. A young woman told him: "If you knew how much I paid for this trip and what it cost me, I won't let a little inconvenience keep me from getting there." A man who had been waiting for five hours was smiling: he was headed to the Caribbean, to an all-inclusive hotel. "I spent so much time planning and imagining."
When God doesn't make you wait, you risk taking the miracle lightly and thinking you are owed it. Waiting increases the value of what comes.
He concludes: "You can cry, but don't give up. You can be discouraged, but don't let go of your faith." In the appointed time everything will be fulfilled, and what God has prepared for those who love him goes beyond what the eye has seen (1 Corinthians 2:9).

Key Takeaways

God hasn't forgotten you: the wait is part of how his word tests and prepares you.
The longer God delays you, the longer he prepares you, and the greater what he has in store for you.
Rejection teaches you to stand firm in what God has said, to let God work on your pride, and to celebrate others.
Faithfulness with what belongs to someone else comes before what God wants to entrust to you. Don't skip the prison stage.
Delay can kill the dream or grow your faith: you decide.

Personal Application

In what area do you feel that God has forgotten you, when he may actually be preparing you?
Does the opinion of those around you weigh more than what God told you?
Is there pride in you that God wants to work on, behind what you call "protecting your peace"?
Are you faithful where you are today, even if it isn't yet your calling or your gift?
Whose dream can you serve this week, without expecting recognition?

Verses Cited

Frequently Asked Questions

What does "the word of the Lord tested him" mean in Psalm 105?

Psalm 105:19 says that Joseph remained in chains until the time his word came to pass and the word of the Lord tested him. For Stephen Chandler, the word of God doesn't just encourage us: it tests us. Between Joseph's dream and its fulfillment, God prepared him for what he was about to entrust to him.

Why does God seem to delay what I ask of him?

The preacher compares waiting to a boxer's preparation: months of training for a few rounds in the ring. "The longer God delays you, the longer he prepares you. The longer he prepares you, the greater what he has for you on the other side." The delay is not forgetfulness, it is preparation.

What should I do during a season of waiting, according to Stephen Chandler?

He draws three lessons from Joseph's life: rejection is a teacher, faithfulness comes before promotion, and delay is a multiplier. He urges us not to let go: "You can cry, but don't give up. You can be discouraged, but don't let go of your faith."