Despondent, I went to my office and prayed seeking for God’s direction. I wanted to know from Him what we should do in this situations. God’s Word promises, in the day of my trouble I will call upon You, For You will answer me.

Confident that God would guide me, I presented to Him the situation and asked Him what we should do. I remained in prayer for quite some time. Eventually the Lord impressed me that He was going to heal Keren.

I went back up and told my family about it. All of us were very happy. I decided that I would continue to pray for Keren until the Lord worked the miracle on her behalf. I spent most of the day in prayer, expecting the healing to take place at any time. I would pray for a while and then go up to check up on Keren and see if she had been healed.

Little Keren displayed a simple faith in God. From the moment I said to her that God was going to heal her, she believed it implicitly and though she was sick, she remained happy.

The day wore on and there was no apparent answer to our prayers. I kept pressing my petitions before the throne. Trying to take hold of the arm of God without doubting. But Keren grew worse. Towards the end of the day, she was very feverish. My wife and I started to practice some natural treatments, but our girl did not improve.

I prayed until late that night. Before I went to sleep I believed that God was going to work the promised miracle during the night and that Keren would be well for the trip. But it was not so the next morning. Keren was not healed, she had not even improved. She was worse.

I grew desperate. We were only a few hours away from the flight to New Zealand and she had not yet been healed. What were we supposed to do? Should we take her anyway or should we decide to cancel her and Mary’s trip? Would I be irresponsible to take her like that? Or would I show lack of faith by leaving them behind? I literally did not know what to do. Had I misread what the Lord had said? Or maybe I was imagining that He had told me she was going to be healed. I cannot begin to describe the confusion that reigned in my mind.

Again I sought the Lord. I opened my heart to Him and told Him what was happening and how confused I was. I expressed to Him that I believed He was going to heal my daughter but that had not yet happened. Then I asked Him, “Lord should we take Keren to New Zealand, or should I leave her and my wife behind?” As I remained in God’s presence and communed with Him, waiting for His direction, it eventually came, very clear… “Take Keren, I will heal her.”

I praised the Lord for His answer and went up to tell the rest of the family. They all were so happy to hear the good news. Little Keren, looked very ill. But her face shone with joy when I told her what the Lord has said.

I believed that God was going to heal Keren before we got to board the plane. God had not revealed when He was going to do it, but I somehow felt that this was going to be the case. We

travelled to the airport and went through the usual routines necessary to fly. Eventually we were standing in line to board the plane. Yet, Keren was not healed. She was itching all over. But somehow, her face had hardly any spots. Her eyes, though, were glassy with fever.

To describe the torment of my mind. The battle between trusting in what the Lord had said and not giving in to doubt because of what I was seeing, was enormous. On the back of my mind the struggle continued to have the assurance that I was not following my own thoughts. I wanted to be sure I was doing the will of God.

At last we all were in the plane, flying towards New Zealand. No one noticed Keren’ sickness. My wife sat with the two girls and I sat with my son Jonathan on a different row from theirs. Every now and then I would walk and check on Keren. She was not better at all. The opposite, she was growing sicker. On one of those visits, Keren looked at me with a big smile but with her face red and her eyes shining with fever she asked me, “Dad, has God healed me yet?’ I looked at her and admired her strong faith, then I said to her, “not yet dear, but soon He will.”

We arrived in New Zealand. The family who was picking us up was waiting for us at the airport. We were driven to the place where we would spend our first night. The lady of the home was a nurse, but strangely enough she did not spot Keren’s situation. Almost immediately after arriving in their home we had to put Keren in bed as she was feeling very ill.

I began to do hydrotherapy treatments on her to alleviate the fever that had reached very hi levels. When night came and everyone went to bed, I stayed with Keren, praying and looking after her. Her body and face erupted with red spots furiously. She was itchy and sore all over her body. I was terribly tortured in my mind. I started blaming myself for bringing her to New Zealand. During the night, every twenty to thirty minutes she would wake up crying, I would get up and put cold towels on her back and wipe her face with cold water. She would go back to sleep, and I would go back to praying. I spent all night crying to the Lord to fulfil His promise. I wrestled with Him like I had never done it before.

Accusing thoughts were plaguing me. I imagined I was crazy. I thought that because of my non sense people in the plane would get sick. Even worse, the innocent people in the house would also get sick because of my stupidity. I had acted irresponsibly. All was the result of the imaginations of my own mind. I was strongly tempted to believe that God had not spoken to me, what I had heard was my own imagination. Yet, I could not shake from me the conviction that it had been God who had led me to this experience. If I had chosen for myself, I would had left Keren in Australia under the care of my wife. As I prayed I was impressed that God had been with me throughout this experience. The Holy Spirit led me to remember that it had been God who had provided the funds for all of us to travel together. I was reassured that it had been Him who had told me He was going to heal her and also to bring her to New Zealand in the state she was.

The night wore on very, very slowly. It was a long night of great wrestling with God, myself and also with the powers of darkness. But victory came at the dawn of the day, after I had changed Keren’s towel the last time. I went back to pray. During this prayer, the Lord spoke to me clearly. During the night He had not spoken at all, silence from Him had been very difficult to endure, but now I heard His voice. He spoke plainly and very short. He said to me, “son, go to sleep, she will be well in the morning.” It was simple, it gave me instant peace. I went to sleep immediately.

After sleeping for some hours I opened my eyes, Jonathan had come into the room and he was talking with Keren. Light was coming through the windows, I could tell the morning was well advanced. Keren’s voice sounded cheery. I got up with a jump and went to see her. She looked normal. I touched her forehead, there was no fever. Then I inspected her more closely, there were hardly any red dots left on her entire body. Her face showed signs of being a bit tired, but nothing else. I was amazed! I knew the Lord had healed her and so did Keren. She got up, got dressed and went out to see her friends. She was completely recovered and did not experience any of the discomforts associated with chicken pox again! What a joyous thanksgiving prayer we had as family that morning.

Through this experience I was taught that when the Lord promises He will fulfil it in spite of the time it may take. In other words when God gives us a promise, there may be apparent delay on the fulfilment of the promise that will test our ability to wait for the fulfilment. It is in these experience we are to learn to wait on the Lord. Over and over the Word of God encourages us to wait on the Lord

. This waiting is necessary to develop our faith. If God gave us immediately every time we asked of Him something, our faith would never develop deep roots. But, as the Lord in His wisdom, tarries to give us the answer to our petitions, the waiting time forces us to take hold of Him and in the middle of temptations to doubt our faith grows stronger.

Through the waiting time God allows circumstances to come along that will tend to deny His promise. However, when we choose to believe God’s promises in spite of the surrounding circumstances faith grows and strengthens. Sadly, in the case of many, they never continue to trust in God when the going gets tough and the circumstances seem to say that God is not going to fulfil what He has promised. However, the Bible gives us the assurance, God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?

I have tasted many times that these words are true.

In this situation our waiting was short, just a couple of days. But look at some of the stories of the great men and women of the Bible. Learning to trust and wait in the Lord was the most important lesson they had to learn in life. For some of them the time they waited to see the fulfilment of the promises God had given them was extended and the circumstances they faced were most foreboding.

As an example, consider the experience of Abraham. God promised Abraham that he was going to have descendants like the stars of heaven. Abraham was 75 years old when God gave him this promise. His wife was 66. In the midst of the struggles Abraham and Sarah had to take hold of the promise, the promise was fulfilled to them. Yet, Abraham was 100 years Old and Sarah 91 when Isaac, the son of the promise, was born. They had to wait 25 years for the promise to be fulfilled! Yes 25 years. But what I want to highlight is that the promise WAS fulfilled. When God promises, He means it and He will do it, in spite of the time that may lapse until the fulfilment of it.

The promise given to Abraham of being heir of the land of Canaan was fulfilled 400 years later. The promise of the coming Messiah took 4000 years to be fulfilled, and so on and on. I hope you get the picture. God, at times makes us wait, for our own good. He is God and in His love He knows when it is the right time for us to receive what He has promised us. He always does it at the right time!

Notice the following promises to those who wait on the Lord,

For evildoers shall be cut off; But those who wait on the LORD, They shall inherit the earth… Wait on the LORD, and keep His way, And He shall exalt you to inherit the land; when the wicked are cut off, you shall see it.

I waited patiently for the LORD; And He inclined to me, and heard my cry.

The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him. It is good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.

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.

I can confidently say that if you learn to wait on the Lord you will not be disappointed.