Skip to main content

The God of All Time

God created time in the first act of creation. From the moment He created light, He formed the beginning of time called the first day.  I'm grateful for time and the way that it brings hope to the end of painful realities as well as measures the wonder of blissful hours. 

Time is a gift no matter how you look at it. We are only offered so much time in any given day.  How we use our gift is up to us.   It will affect the way we experience heaven when time is no more. (For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad 2 Corinthians 5:10).

I write this as I sit waiting for others’ schedules to merge with mine.   All I have been told is that it is going to be a while.  I can grow frustrated in the land of the unknown and experience the time I have before me as a prison, or I can accept the gift of time called waiting and wonder why God has me here at this time and at this place.   The best way to enjoy time is to see what the God of all time may be up to in the moment you are living.

With this thought in mind, I try to talk to the young man experiencing the wait along with me.  I ask his feelings about what it means to his life and the rest of his day.  He is reticent to share with a stranger but politely opens up in guarded measure about his life, his children, his job and his hopes for the end of this long wait.  I tell him about my wait.  I feel for him and tell him that I will pray for him, and he surprises when he tells me that he will pray for me.  It was an unexpected conversation while I sit and wait.  I learned a lot from him.  He will never know that many of the things he so reluctantly shared were an encouragement to me and helped me see my own life from a different perspective.  I see things differently because I talked to this stranger.  Perhaps I would never have grown in this way if I wasn't forced into this unwanted wait.

1 Timothy 1:16 finds Paul appreciating God’s great patience.  But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life.

I too am grateful that God is patient with me, but I'm totally amazed that I can gain so much by allowing the Holy Spirit’s patience to flow out of me.

Just wait, the God of all time has time to show you how much He loves and cares for you.  Don't let impatience block the strength of waiting patiently.  You will need a lot of patience to grow in Christlikeness.

Copyright 2014.  Deborah R. Newman  teatimeforyoursoul.com  All rights reserved.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Fifth Monday in Lent through Palm Sunday

Fifth Monday in Lent: Righteousness Needed Jesus is all about bringing us righteousness yet we are too worldly focused to think we have much of a need for righteousness. Most of us think we need healing or exciting miracles. We might try to get a little righteousness by going to church on Sunday and giving some spare change to a beggar. God sees the bigger picture and knows that there is nothing which we are more bankrupt than righteousness. He sees that we are totally incapable of getting the righteousness we need through our own actions, so He sent Jesus to give us His righteousness through His sacrificial work on the cross. Lent is a season of repentance and preparation for the Easter celebration. No matter how sacrificial your Lenten fast, it could never be enough to earn your righteousness. I have been practicing Lent for   years, and every year at the end of my fast I come face to face with how far I am from righteousness. Some of the first recorded words of Jesus in th

A Pilgrimage that Started with Tears

                Who would think I would shed tears deciding to set out on a wonderful journey that I have longed to take for many years?   Before I was ready to fully accept God’s invitation for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, I had to journey to a place of agreement between what my soul wanted and what the Lord wanted for me.   For years I have been declining opportunities to travel to Israel—not because I didn’t want to go but because I wanted to go with my husband by my side.   I know that God could have arranged that for me, but instead He asked me to accept that He wanted me to be willing to go and leave everything behind.   When I was asked to make a decision about going on a Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, God gave me this verse in answer to my prayer -- Debi, observe therefore all the commands I am giving you today, so that you may have the strength to go in and take over the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess (Deuteronomy 11:8).   I decided through tears that I would go on

The Missing Tribe of Dan

            The reason I love studying the Bible with a group of people is that they teach me things I don’t know.   I love it when I don’t know the answer to a question.   That is how I learn.   So when someone recounted the ugly tail of Dan’s idolatry in Judges 18 concluding with the passage in Judges 18:30-31 :   There the Danites set up for themselves the idol, and Jonathan son of Gershom, the son of Moses, and his sons were priests for the tribe of Dan until the time of the captivity of the land.   They continued to use the idol Micah had made, all the time the house of God was in Shiloh. I wanted to know if that could possibly be true that the Danites never ever worshiped God!   How could that be?             Before I had a chance to settle that question, someone in the class read the passage from Revelation 7 where the tribe of Dan was omitted.   I never considered that!   I never realized that a whole tribe of Israel was not found in the New Testament.   What could that