God’s Time, Not Ours

January 22, 2015

God’s Time, Not Ours

The Lord is good to those who depend on him,

    to those who search for him.

So it is good to wait quietly

    for salvation from the Lord.

Lamentations 3:25-26

Do you remember the passage in the Gospel of John when Nicodemus came in the dark of the night to meet with Jesus? In their conversation, Jesus tells Nicodemus, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God” (John 3:3). Being born again is a reference to our conversion experience, the moment when we accept Jesus by faith, and are born into the Kingdom of God. However, it is not a once-only experience. In my journey seeking the life in Christ as my way of life, I have been born again, and again, and again and again. This is not a matter of losing my salvation and having to start over; it is a matter of going deeper in the spirit with Jesus. It is this going deeper with Christ that Jeremiah is referring to in the passage from Lamentations above.

The Apostle Paul paints a beautiful picture when he says, “anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). This is certainly true, but the old life is not gone in an instant and immediately replaced with the new person. Transformation is in karios, God’s time, not ours.

God’s loves us as individuals, and works within us with respect to all of our brokenness we bring to His table. I am hesitant to put forth a universal rule for how transformation is worked out in our lives, but I am convinced it does take time, a lot of time. By some estimates, as much as twenty to twenty-five years passed after Saul’s Damascus Road experience and the re-commissioned Paul emerges in the New Testament church.

It has also been my experience that the transformation of my brokenness into a new person in Christ follows my first accepting, and loving my brokenness with the same tenderness in which God loved me, and Christ died for me, while I was a sinner. Maybe that is why it takes so long. It is one thing for the father to wrap his loving arms around his long lost prodigal son, who stunk to high heaven; it is another thing for me to wrap loving arms around myself.

   

Sē’lah

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(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  The meditations are published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/ and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com. The BLOG is also available on Amazon Kindle, by subscription.

Publications by Alex M. Knight:

·        Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New Testament and Psalms is available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

·        The second edition of  First Think – Then Pray is available on Amazon Kindle.

·        Meditations on The Story of My Life as told by Jesus Christ  is available as an e-book on Amazon Kindle.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188.