God's Time Is Now

Ministers and elders, friends and acquaintances, often share a common wisdom. I'm sure you've heard it, too. Things will happen "in God's time". More importantly, God's time is not our own, and there is a need for great patience when we're not on the same timeline as God.

I've been reading a Love Inspired romance (by now, you've guessed this is one of my favorite fiction lines) entitled Marrying Minister Right by Annie Jones. The hero of the story is a minister named Michael and during the story, he freely gives his longtime friend and love-to-be, Heather, advice about praying and thinking before leaping and looking for God's timing, not her own. Michael is skilled in handling conflict, but he's the type of guy who would just as soon avoid it whenever possible and has been known to use a delaying tactic or two. This advice about waiting for God's timing comes easy for him, and he lives it every day. At one point in the story, Michael is deciding when to tell his niece the unwelcome news that she will staying in this small, podunk (in her eyes) Kansas town with him for the whole summer.

Heather returns his favor with some advice of her own.

"Some things can not be put off until you are ready to deal with them", Heather tells him. "Doing things in God's time doesn't always mean waiting...Sometimes, God's time is now."

Whew! Smack me up the side of the head. I'm accustomed to waiting for God's timing and mine to coincide. Like Michael, I'm not fond of conflict, and I consider choices and new directions with such great deliberation that I often forget the lesson Heather shares. There is a time for deliberation, for research, for discussion, even for delaying--and then there is a time for action. My husband has commented that I've got to stop thinking something to death, gnawing over it endlessly. Finally, I have to take the leap of faith and JUST DO IT.

We all need Heather's reminder that when God is ready for us to move, whether we're ready or not, more waiting, more delay could spell disaster or failure or unseen hurdles that will make life more complicated. There is a reason we're supposed to act. "Whoever obeys a command [like Get Moving!] will meet no harm and the wise mind will know the time and way." (Ecclesiastes 8:5) A sign of wisdom is knowing how to recognize that the time is now. To save a life, to fight injustice, to do a kind act, to give our very best, to pray. Sometimes, maybe more often than we think, God's time is NOW.

Are you waiting for God's timing on something? Do you need to consider that God's timing is today, this hour? How do you know when the time is now? How does the Spirit of Life give you a shove?

Are you listening? Do you feel it? Is the time...Now?