Ecclesiastes 3:1: "To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven..."
We are affected by the passage of time. Time is critical in everything we do. This is perhaps far more obvious when we are praying to God and He seems to be unaware of the pressure that we face as He takes His time in dealing with our prayer.
Surely, Abraham and several other examples in the Bible will come in handy here. Abraham waited for 25 years before Sarah gave birth to the promised seed. Isaac waited 20 years before he and Rebecca had their twins. Joseph waited 13 years before he became the Prime Minister of Egypt. David waited several years before he became king over the whole of Israel. The most dramatic example would no doubt be Lazarus who eventually died whilst waiting for the Lord to heal him.
Faith suffers when it is tied merely to human time. Divine time is everything. God does not and will not work to human time: if there is a coincidence of our time and God's time when we receive answer to prayer, it is not that God has abandoned the divine timing that attends all His actions; it is simply that our time has "caught up" with His time!
Therein lies the irony: we are finite; God is infinite. Our faith is subjectively experienced in bounded time; our reality is subject to the "artificial" clock we have created to make meaning of our life; our rationality hangs completely on the logic of the preciseness of a 24-hour-a-day calendar. In this time frame, God will often be late, as divine time is often offline with human time.
We have to pray and hope always, petitioning God to grant us the grace to endure until His word is manifested in our life, in real time! Job had a real panic when God was running late on him: "Oh, that You would hide me in the grave, That You would conceal me until Your wrath is past, That You would appoint me a set time, and remember me!" (Job 14:13)
Anyone who truly waits upon God for an answer to their prayer would have been in a similar predicament. God doesn't turn up on demand! His miracles are not on tap that you can switch on and off at will. The most that prayer can do at any time is help us gain insight into the mysterious workings of divine timing. Prayer can never force God off His own agenda or set time. Rather, prayer helps us to remember that God is in charge and He will answer us according to His faithfulness in His own time!
Surely, this idea of our understanding of divine timing is what is being expressed by the Psalmist as follows: "You will arise and have mercy on Zion; For the time to favor her, Yes, the set time, has come." (Psalm 102:13 ) God has a set time, the time of His favour which happens to be the same time that the patient in faith is always eagerly waiting for!
Again, the Psalmist: "But as for me, my prayer is to You, O LORD, in the acceptable time; O God, in the multitude of Your mercy, Hear me in the truth of Your salvation." (Psalm 69:13) Clearly, we must pray always without fainting, or becoming weary. However, the key here is knowing that the answer is coming on the wings of something labelled "the acceptable time". The acceptable time is divine time, it has nothing to do with the urgency of our prayer or the desperation of our situation in our own eyes.
Our prayer should be fervent and urgent, passionate and demanding. That's us, that's the response we have subjectively engaged as a result of our anguish and pain. However, it does not in any sense put a forceful pressure on God to act offline or offside to His divine purposes and timing. God, mysteriously and carefully, through His precious Holy Spirit, orchestrates and calibrates our prayer to provoke His own response. However, only those who understand that He does not act out of panic or pressure will know that His response is timed to meet divine purposes solely.
As the Prophet Isaiah found out: "Thus says the LORD: "In an acceptable time I have heard You, And in the day of salvation I have helped You..." (Isaiah 49:8) Until the acceptable time, we have to keep praying, stacking up our prayers before the mercy seat of God. When the stack reaches the set time, the acceptable time, something mysterious begins - God moves!
As you read this article, may the LORD bring about your own "acceptable time" and grant you an amazing answer to prayer!
We are affected by the passage of time. Time is critical in everything we do. This is perhaps far more obvious when we are praying to God and He seems to be unaware of the pressure that we face as He takes His time in dealing with our prayer.
Surely, Abraham and several other examples in the Bible will come in handy here. Abraham waited for 25 years before Sarah gave birth to the promised seed. Isaac waited 20 years before he and Rebecca had their twins. Joseph waited 13 years before he became the Prime Minister of Egypt. David waited several years before he became king over the whole of Israel. The most dramatic example would no doubt be Lazarus who eventually died whilst waiting for the Lord to heal him.
Faith suffers when it is tied merely to human time. Divine time is everything. God does not and will not work to human time: if there is a coincidence of our time and God's time when we receive answer to prayer, it is not that God has abandoned the divine timing that attends all His actions; it is simply that our time has "caught up" with His time!
Therein lies the irony: we are finite; God is infinite. Our faith is subjectively experienced in bounded time; our reality is subject to the "artificial" clock we have created to make meaning of our life; our rationality hangs completely on the logic of the preciseness of a 24-hour-a-day calendar. In this time frame, God will often be late, as divine time is often offline with human time.
We have to pray and hope always, petitioning God to grant us the grace to endure until His word is manifested in our life, in real time! Job had a real panic when God was running late on him: "Oh, that You would hide me in the grave, That You would conceal me until Your wrath is past, That You would appoint me a set time, and remember me!" (Job 14:13)
Anyone who truly waits upon God for an answer to their prayer would have been in a similar predicament. God doesn't turn up on demand! His miracles are not on tap that you can switch on and off at will. The most that prayer can do at any time is help us gain insight into the mysterious workings of divine timing. Prayer can never force God off His own agenda or set time. Rather, prayer helps us to remember that God is in charge and He will answer us according to His faithfulness in His own time!
Surely, this idea of our understanding of divine timing is what is being expressed by the Psalmist as follows: "You will arise and have mercy on Zion; For the time to favor her, Yes, the set time, has come." (Psalm 102:13 ) God has a set time, the time of His favour which happens to be the same time that the patient in faith is always eagerly waiting for!
Again, the Psalmist: "But as for me, my prayer is to You, O LORD, in the acceptable time; O God, in the multitude of Your mercy, Hear me in the truth of Your salvation." (Psalm 69:13) Clearly, we must pray always without fainting, or becoming weary. However, the key here is knowing that the answer is coming on the wings of something labelled "the acceptable time". The acceptable time is divine time, it has nothing to do with the urgency of our prayer or the desperation of our situation in our own eyes.
Our prayer should be fervent and urgent, passionate and demanding. That's us, that's the response we have subjectively engaged as a result of our anguish and pain. However, it does not in any sense put a forceful pressure on God to act offline or offside to His divine purposes and timing. God, mysteriously and carefully, through His precious Holy Spirit, orchestrates and calibrates our prayer to provoke His own response. However, only those who understand that He does not act out of panic or pressure will know that His response is timed to meet divine purposes solely.
As the Prophet Isaiah found out: "Thus says the LORD: "In an acceptable time I have heard You, And in the day of salvation I have helped You..." (Isaiah 49:8) Until the acceptable time, we have to keep praying, stacking up our prayers before the mercy seat of God. When the stack reaches the set time, the acceptable time, something mysterious begins - God moves!
As you read this article, may the LORD bring about your own "acceptable time" and grant you an amazing answer to prayer!
