God’s Timing (GG)
GOD’S TIMING
It is reasonable to expect that God will use whatever means may be appropriate at the time. The time I refer to is God’s time, not ours. We will know when we need to know, not before.
When I review “all the way which the Lord my God hath led me”—those segments of the way I can remember because they seemed to me significant—I realize that nearly all of my trouble with finding out the will of God came because I wanted it too soon. I like to plan. I like to have things mapped out well in advance, and uncertainty of any sort puts me on edge. Perhaps it is for this very reason God has often asked me to wait until the last minute, right up to what looked like the screaming edge, before I found out what He wanted me to do.
My acceptance of His timing was a rigorous exercise in trust. I was tempted to charge the Lord with negligence and inattention, like the disciples in the boat in a storm. They toiled frantically until the situation became impossible, and then instead of asking for Jesus’ help they yelled, “Master, don’t you care that we’re drowning?” They weren’t perishing, they were panicking. It was not too late. Jesus got up and merely spoke to the wind and sea.
On that other occasion, many centuries earlier, when the power of God to command water was what was needed to lead His people, the priests of Israel actually had to get their feet wet before God did anything. Why does He put us to this kind of test? Probably to give us the chance to make a conscious act of faith, often a specific, physical act, a move of some kind toward Him. “And when . . . the feet of the priests bearing the ark were dipped in the brink of the water . . . the waters coming down from above stood and rose up in a heap.”
Sometimes we are in a quandary because we have already been shown what we ought to do and we are not satisfied with it. We are saying, “Lord, when are You going to tell me?” and the truth is that He has told us.
Sometimes the word comes very slowly. In Psalm 112:4 we read, “Light rises in the darkness for the upright” (RSV). It may be a gradual thing, imperceptible at first as the coming of the dawn, but long before we see it, the cock crows and there are stirrings. There is no question at all that the dawn will come. We have only to wait.