TIMING

Years ago, I head an old preacher say, “The right thing at the wrong time is the wrong thing.” That statement is an offense to the culture being worshipped world-wide today. There is a lust for the immediate, as a line from an old movie stated, “Immediate gratification takes too long!”

We want faster internet, immediate responses to our texts, mobile orders at the ready when we walk into Starbucks. What we want, we demand to have NOW. We are masters at justifying ourselves. “Well, we’re engaged already and we’re going to get married anyway, so what’s wrong with us living together and being sexually intimate now?” God’s timing in human relationship is not arbitrary, it is protective and covering. Sad to say, even some who call themselves followers of Jesus Christ choose to justify their living in sexual sin now, because they promise that they will one day get married.

The context where sexual intimacy finds its true meaning and purpose is in the covenant of marriage. That covenant is not a humanly devised institution, but one established by God in creation. That godly covenant is established between a man and a woman whose lives are already surrendered to the will and heart of God in Christ Jesus. Then, led by the Holy Spirit, the two come asking God to join them together by the His power and grace. The Lord God takes two unique individuals and makes of them a new creation made up of two inseparable parts. That is the context of safety and life-long commitment, “come hell or high water,” until we are parted by death where human sexuality has the place God intended. That is where God says it is to flourish and become the giving and receiving blessing it is meant to be.

Our culture is focused on the immediate satisfaction of sexual passion, lust. It objectifies the other as a means pf self-gratification. A chaste good-night kiss at the door at the end of a first date has been replaced by a torrid “roll-in-the-hay” that signifies nothing but the momentary sating of human desire. I think that because of the desperate spiritual deadness of most, the gnawing emptiness and seeming meaninglessness to daily life without God, human sexuality is seen as the last place to humanly alive, for at least a while. The problem is that the right thing at the wrong time and in the wrong context is wrong. God does not mince words when He defines sexual intimacy outside the covenant of marriage as sin.

Sin never can satisfy the deep hunger of the human heart for being known, accepted, and loved. Only God can fulfill that need. His love refuses to “wink at” what He knows will never cause us to be all He created us to be. He has already made a way for human beings to turn from self, to turn back to Him through Jesus Christ, to receive the forgiveness of their sin purchased by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and to receive from God a new heart and a new spirit…a new life.

God’s ways, God’s timing are the things that make for true living, true humanity. Do not be fooled and do not let the world squeeze you into its mold. Change your direction. Change your mind.