Friday, March 19, 2010

Humans take time

We spend a lot of time talking when we pray. We ask for this and that, we spend some time asking God to help others, and then we start asking things either for ourselves or for our own curiosity. Sometimes we ask God questions about what we should do in our lives or what decisions we should make. Sometimes we wait to ask until the decision really needs to be made and we expect God to answer right then! We say that we believe that everything happens in God's time and it certainly does, but when we wait until the decision absolutely needs to be made to ask God what to do, we are not giving Him or ourselves time. Now God does not need time to process things like we do. He always knows what's going to happen and what decision needs to be made, but the "His timing" part comes in with His timing on when to tell us and sometimes it takes longer because we don't listen! One would imagine that when we ask God a question, we would listen for His answer, but that's not always true. We ask questions and wait for the answer we want, not necessarily the answer we need and when we don't get the answer we want, we stop listening. So God has to bring people and circumstances and whatnot to bring us back around to His way of thinking.

Time, humans take time. We are slow and oftentimes stupid creatures and when we deny God time in our lives, we deny Him the power to change our lives. Ecclesiastes 3 says there is a time for everything. A time to be born, to die, to plant, to uproot, to kill, to live, to cry, to laugh, to mourn, to dance, to search, to give up searching.... to sit down and shut up. We hear in our churches to go out and do, to not be afraid, to learn, to grow, to teach, to blah blah blah and there is nothing wrong with any of those things. But when in all of our going and doing are we spending any time with God? When in our ministry are we intentionally communing with the One who sent us out? Jesus hand chose his disciples intentionally, He taught the lessons that He intentionally at each time and each place. He didn't just throw stuff out there hoping that someone in the crowd would get it. He knew each ear that would hear, each mind that would process, and each hand that would rise in action based on His words. We of course cannot know all these things, we're human. But God can and if we spend time with Him, He wants to tell us. To be prepared is to know the Spirit of God in any given situation. Sometimes we honestly do not have that kind of time and that's why God is God and we are not. But God wants to tell you what He's planning, if we will only sit still long enough to listen.

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