GOD'S TIMING

We develop "timelines" that we reason are appropriate for how and when God should act in our circumstances. We forget that we are not God and that He alone IS.

We want God to anoint our five-year-plan because we believe we have figured out what needs to happen and how it will work and what the results will look like. We forget that we don't even know what tomorrow will bring. He alone does and has made provision in it for us.

God speaks to us through His Word by the Holy Spirit. We can receive His promise believing the promise because of Who the Promiser is. 

Then, sadly too often, we try, using finite human reasoning, to determine how we should interpret God's promises based on what we want and how we want it. We want a road map that we can follow without having to really check back with Him when God gives us Himself. He wants us to trust Him, not because we seem to have clarity at the moment, but because He is God and He loves us.

Abram had been promised an heir from his union with Sarai. Twenty-five years passed and God's promise had not changed. Abram was focusing on what he could see rather than on the fact that God was able to implement His own promises. In Genesis chapters 15 and 17, God restates His promise of a son, an heir from Abram and Sarai. He uses a covenantal method in chapter 17 that was well known to Abram to show He meant business. God understands our frailty.

Abraham and Sarah had their names changed by God. What God had promised had become an overwhelming impossibility for them to "make happen" by human effort. This would not be about human prowess, but God's power. 

The angel Gabriel stated to Mary and to Elizabeth and Zechariah that what was impossible for mankind was not impossible with God. The sheer reality that what God said would happen could not be accomplished through human effort made sure that the credit and glory was God's alone. He simply asked them all to trust Him.

When God makes a promise, the "how" and "when" depend on the "Who" that has promised. We believe God can...but will He? We struggle with believing and trusting that what God wants more for us in infinitely more than we could ever imagine or conceive of. We forget that Jesus told us that is the Father's good pleasure to give us the Kingdom.

The clarity of a life of faith is never grounded in what I can see or what is in my hand, but in trusting the Eternal Trinity, the Living God, to bring to completion in us the good work He has begun. That good work of salvation, redemption, restoration, and life-transformation was NOT initiated by us and is NEVER brought to completion by us, but by Him.

Abraham, Sarah, Mary, Elizabeth and Zechariah all had to trust God's timing, not their agenda. "Fear in the absence of faith will drive us to look for easy answers rather than trusting that God is able to bring about what He has promised." the preacher stated today.

The same preacher stated, "Faith is hard. Clarity is easy. You can just Google to get answers about all sorts of stuff that seem to tell you that you just need more knowledge rather that dependency upon God. The choice is again between the "tree of the knowledge of good an evil" (human clarity) or the Tree of Life experienced only by trusting God for life and wholeness.

The results of, the fruit of Salvation belong to God alone. The results are in His hands. God reveals Himself in and through His Word and by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Incarnation was an utter impossibility apart from God acting in history to redeem us. Conception is the dead wombs of Sarah and Elizabeth were just as impossible as conception in the virgin womb of Mary.

We can become so wed to our own "timeline" while our lives are informed by sorrow, pain, and struggle that our waiting on God seems to indicate that He doesn't care or is mercurial. That idea is a poisonous, satanic lie that whispers that we need something more than what God has provided in Himself. In Romans chapter four we read that Abraham believed that God was able to implement His own promise and so he acted on God's word when it seemed impossible. Sarah bore Issac, the son of promise. Elixabeth bore John, the forerunner making the way ready for the revealing of Jesus, the virgin-born Son of God through young Mary.

My hope can never be grounded in myself, my abilities or present understanding. I must remember all that God has done for His people, remember His eternal promises to give us a future and a hope, to bless us, not to harm us. What I know of the Lord Jesus has been revealed to me, made real by the Holy Spirit. It has never been nor will it ever be what I have discovered, but only what God has revealed and given to me by grace through faith. 

That is why Jesus' disciples can walk on the water in the present storm and chaos of life because Jesus told them they could. It was His Word that gave them the ability and authority to do the impossible. Exceedingly, abundantly more, above all we could ever ask or imagine by the power of the Holy Spirit at work in us NOW. God's desires for us are eternally greater than what we think we need.

What is impossible for us is not an impediment to God and His purpose. His answer will reveal His glory, His covenant love and mercy, His kindness and faithfulness. He knows our struggle and He is Life within us to bring to completion what He began in us. Believe Him.