How many times have you wondered what God is up to? You may have been praying for something and it seems that your prayers are not answered. Something that we must understand is that God does not always operate according to our time table. Even as we pray, \”Thy Kingdom come,\” we realize that the phrase immediately following that is, \”Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. In other words, we know what ought to be best for us, and what we earnestly desire of God, but we also know that it is according to His perfect will. This has to do with the timetable of the Father.
There is a basic, yet profound principle revealed in the passages we read, and that is that everything in this world order is moving along a time line which was established by God before the foundation of the world.
Gal 4:4.
He came when the time was perfect. When you look into the prophesies of the Old Testament at all that had to take place before Jesus could come as the Messiah you will see how meticulously concerned God is about time
And then, when Jesus became a man He continued to be totally surrendered to the timetable of the Father. We tend to think that Jesus in His deity was operating on earth according to His own will and His own pleasure, but a careful examination of scripture will reveal otherwise.
Jesus said in John 6:38 “For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.”
This is the key to peace with God and power in our faith. To be surrendered to the perfect timing of the Father.
As children of God, as a part of this Kingdom on earth we are able to have this tremendous sense of peace that our lives are being guided according to this divine timetable of God, and that we by the Holy Spirit can discover that timetable and move with perfect harmony according to God\’s purpose.
We can discover the joy of resting in Him. You don\’t have to strive to make things happen, you don\’t have to push and connive, you don\’t have to be caught up with the tyranny of the urgent.
In order to get to a starting point in this principle in the life of Jesus, lets turn to Mark 1:14 \”After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. [15] \”The time has come,\” he said. \”The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!\”
What was the time that Jesus was speaking of? It was time for the beginning of His ministry on earth. John had been put in prison. His entire ministry had been preparatory to the ministry of Jesus. The time was now ready for the beginning of the ministry of Jesus.
Everything that happened in the life of Jesus was in perfect timing with the Fathers will. Throughout the Gospel of John we see examples of this. In John 7:30, they tried to lay hands on Him. They wanted to kill Him, but the Bible says, No one laid hands on Him because His time had not come.
Even the enemies of Jesus were powerless against Him because His time had not yet come. Even ungodly, hateful, rebellious man is governed by God\’s timetable. There is nothing that He is not in control of.
I is so important is it for us to understand this concept of waiting on God, yet many of us have our greatest struggle in this area. We want everything to happen in a hurry and we don\’t like to wait.
My dad has a plaque hanging on the wall in his living room.
\”Lord, grant me patience, I want it right now!\” This is typical of the human temperament. Instant everything. We are “I Want it now” kind of people.
But God doesn’t make us wait simply because He gets a kick out of our frustrations. There is a very definite purpose in what we perceive to be delays on God’s part. Once we come to know what that purpose is, we will be more inclined to trust Him in all of His ways.
I want to read the story of a well known event in the life of Jesus. It is found in John 11:1-45.
Several things we can learn in regard to the purpose of God’s timing from this experience.
The first is:
I. In God\’s Timing His Purpose is Established
John 11:1-45
In reading this story there are many questions raised. Why did Jesus delay. Why did He appear to be so uncaring. But for Jesus, there was a specific purpose. He had an established agenda that is far beyond our understanding at the time. But when we look back we can see that His ways are perfect.
We see here upon looking back into this event that Jesus operated according to His own time schedule in order that His first purpose might be:
1. To Establish His Authority.
The Father establishes a time line according to His own authority. It is not always for us to know what His timing is.
One of the reasons that Jesus did not respond immediately was that it was imperative for those followers to be reminded that Jesus only did what He did in response to the Fathers prompting. In John 5:19 \”Jesus gave them this answer: \”I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.
Those disciples, the sisters of Lazarus did not fully understand the sovereignty of God, yet it was a lesson that they would have to learn if they were to survive the trials that were yet to come. So Jesus purposefully delays his response to their need
Family this principle of God\’s timetable working according to His established purpose ought to bring tremendous relief.
If it brings trouble, it may be an area of rebellion in your spirit. Those who have entered into this rest have come to the realization that our sovereign God, our loving heavenly Father really does all things well. He does them for our good and for our blessing.
The purpose of God through His timing of events in our lives and in this universe is so that He may make known to us His authority and sovereignty over all things.
But there is another purpose.
2. To Evaluate the Authenticity of Our Faith.
See vs. 14. \”So that you may believe.
Those present on that day had a certain kind of faith, but it was not faith in the true sense of the Word. They had faith that Jesus could heal the sick, but they did not have saving faith. They had faith in Jesus as a great teacher, but that was not faith that would stand the test of time. They had faith that Jesus was a great prophet. But that was not faith that give them eternal life. They had to have faith that He indeed was the son of God for only that kind of faith is saving faith.
Sometimes we do not always know whether we have the genuine variety of faith. So God allows us to be tested in those waiting periods.
This is how it usually goes.
God gives me a promise. I receive it with joy.
Then the trial comes. The trial that comes is the delay factor. God delaying the fulfillment of the promise. That is the time that my faith will either be proven to be genuine or when my faith will be exposed as being a counterfeit because it does not have the quality of faithful endurance. True faith is patient. True faith endures. True faith trusts regardless of the trial and persecution.
Someone once said. \”Faith that fizzles at the finish, was faulty from the first.\”
How many times have you had a promise. You have been convinced it was from God. You got so excited about it that you wrote it down. Then you began to eagerly anticipate the fulfilling of that promise. Days to weeks. Weeks to months. And then the enthusiasm began to fade. Maybe you were mistaken. Maybe that promise was for someone else. Or, you try and fill God\’s gap by going another way or improvising. Or taking second best to what He promised. Family, so many times we pluck the blossoms and never experience the fruit. God\’s promises are sure and on time if we could just learn to wait on Him he will come through with that promise.
True faith goes even beyond that.
We are told in Hebrews 11 that the Patriarchs had true faith. Even though they never saw the promise in their time, their faith never wavered.
You cannot give up on a promise of God, or it never was a promise to begin with and your faith was not genuine. Because faith comes from where? From hearing the Word. Not by seeing the Word fulfilled.
True faith goes beyond the superficial things of our faith. It goes beyond the experiences we may have. Beyond the miracles and the prophecies. It has to be established in the fact that Jesus Christ is more than that. That He is God and that God is sovereign. His promises are eternal. His ways are perfect.
God’s timing teaches us about the quality of our faith. In the third place, it enables us to:
3. Enlarge Our Understanding of Who He is.
vs 25
vs.41
Jesus wanted Martha to know that through Him, even if Lazarus never lived again on this earth that this was not the end. He wanted all of those to know that He was more than they had ever imagined that He was.
In our struggles we are drawn to Him in a new way. In our times of waiting we find out things about our Lord that we may never have known if we had not had to wait.
We know of Him as the lifter of our burdens, but if we do not walk through the fire we will never know the power He has to protect us from the flame.
His timing teaches us to enlarge our understanding of who He is. Finally, in waiting upon the Lord learn:
4. To Elevate God\’s Glory.
vs. 40
When we pass through the waiting and God comes through, He is the one who is glorified.
Isaiah 40:28-31 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. [29] He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. [30] Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; [31] but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.
We pray in the Lord’s prayer, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”, whatever and wherever that may lead. I trust you with my life, my family, my circumstances, all that I have and am are given to your will and your purpose, in your time.
God was at the beginning, is now and will be at the end of time. He is sovereign.
Our preoccupation should be simply to live out the life of Jesus. To be witnesses to the life of Christ. Not to be concerned with the when of God. He has the times perfectly in His hands.