John 7 - God's timing

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John 7

​“You can’t be famous if you hide like this!  If you’re so great, prove it to the world.”

“My time has not yet come, but your time is always here,” Jesus responds to his brothers prodding Him to go to Judea to the masses.

The parents of Jesus received incredible promises about their son prior to His birth. No doubt they also saw incredible hints of who He was as He was growing up. He had a calling, and He was exceptional. How would parents today respond? Enroll Him immediately in a highly selective & competitive gifted program? Hire private trainers to hone His skills?  Contact the best PR firm to craft His image?  Reach out to the acclaimed consultant? Push, push, push…you can’t let this talent go to waste, the world commands. Cross all t’s and dot all the i’s…ensure the world knows just how special He is. You can’t leave anything to chance; stop at nothing to ensure His chance for greatness.

But this isn’t at all how Jesus lived. His childhood was uneventful. He doesn't rush things. He spends quality time with people. He retreats to be alone and pray. He withdraws from attention and praise. He is patient and purposeful.

We live in a world of immediacy. Instant food. Instant communications. Instant gratification. And we expect the same from God. But that isn’t how He works at all, and it frustrates us.

God gives us hopes, dreams, and passions, but He rarely gives us a glimpse at His timing. Rick Warren says, “when you get a dream from God and make the decision to go for it but then are forced into God’s waiting room, you start to try to figure out ways of doing God’s dream on your own.”

In the waiting, we begin to question our calling. We question God’s goodness even. We begin to look to others instead of God, both for advice and comparison. We start to orchestrate things on our own. And before we know it we are on a path waaaaay off course, faced with a painful and long journey to find our way back.

We when live under our timing, we are not living under the authority of Christ. When we seek to execute our calling from God according to worldly wisdom and culture’s ideas of how to get there, we get caught in a cycle of selfishness and materialism, rather than Godliness.

​God’s timing is perfect and purposeful. The waiting tests us. The waiting prepares us. The waiting grows us. The waiting humbles us. We need our wilderness time to fulfill our calling. The wait helps us to face what is coming that only God can now see. The sooner we come to peace with this truth, the sooner we will have peace. We don’t stop dreaming, rather we lean into the places and roles God puts us in, and instead of grumbling, we make sure we learn everything we can in them. We don’t waste one minute of our precious God-ordained waiting time. 

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