God’s Time Isn’t Hours
Well, I just can’t stay away from a good play on words. In fact, I can’t resist a bad play on words. Have you ever wondered if God is listening to you because He seems not to answer for an incredibly long time? Or, have you prayed in complete faith, but kind of “shake your head” later in wonderment at how long it’s taking God to work? You know He could do this instantly, snap of His divine fingers and all that, but it takes hours, days, years for Him to come ’round to it? Why?Isaiah 55:8 makes it clear that God’s thoughts are completely different than ours. In fact, they don’t even occupy the same realm as His. It makes sense then, that He does not measure time as we do. God is not bound to our thought patterns, and He is not bound by linear time. Psalms 90:2 shows that God has always been here. This means that He is not bound by time or space as we know it. He can spread it out like a canvas and view it in ways we cannot. He can see all of time as a tapestry, while we march along a single linear thread. Psalms 90:4 goes on to show that though God can see all time “points”, they are all equally vivid to Him. God can also act in the time-line that we see. There are a multitude of verses that show God’s action in the world, and some (like Acts 17:30-31) that show that He has things planned in “our future”. 2 Peter 3:8 further states that not only is God’s perception of time different, it is very different.
Since God is perfect, we must know that it is His time that is right and good, and that if we are impatient with this, that we are the ones who have an incomplete understanding. While you and I look around at what seems a fairly permanent world, God knows that this place is just a breath and that our lifetimes are only a whisper in terms of eternity. In this place, and for these people Christ came and died so that we can be with Him forever, and that is what God is focused on. His will and action in the world is focused on saving us from our sins to rejoice with Him forever, and we respond in an effort to glorify Him here, as we will there. I think that the more we focus on His will, the less we focus on our own. The more He increases, and the more we decrease, the less difficulty we have with a perception that God isn’t working “fast enough” in this world.
God has it handled, and we fight a battle that is already won. Our destination is secure, so lets plant the seed of the gospel in others, and let God handle the watering and cultivation.
