“The Hour Is His”

"The Hour Is His"

    We live and give as stewards, not as owners.

    "The world is Mine, and the fulness thereof" (Psalm 50:12).

    The peace of knowing that all belongs to our Father prepares and enables us to grip our possessions lightly, in the knowledge that they are not "our possessions."  They are His.  We are His.  This includes not only our possessions or money, but our time and how we use it.  I may plan to spend a particular portion of the day performing a necessary responsibility or enjoyable privilege.  Should the Owner of my life have other plans, however, we must remember that "my times are in Thy hand" (Psalm 31:15).  Or, as Solomon declared, "A man's heart deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth his steps" (Proverbs 16:9).  Suppose I've been planning to cut the grass for several days, and have blocked out a specific hour in which to perform the task.  As I'm getting the mower out, I remember a friend who is experiencing a particularly difficult trial and might benefit from a phone call.  A strong sense of making that call pervades my thoughts.  However, I'm also thinking about the task at hand.  "I've been wanting to cut the yard for days, and I'm not going to have another chance until the weekend!"   In such times, we trust the Lord for His guiding wisdom, and our devised way may defer to His directing of our steps.  Because we are His, the hour is His, and that time is in His hand.

    The principle holds true in every aspect of our lives.  To live and give as stewards rather than owners blesses us with peace.  However, it also challenges us with the will of God that sometimes flows against the current of our natural inclinations.  No less than the Savior prayed in the Garden of prayer and pressure that drew sweaty blood from His pores, "Not My will, but Thine be done!" (Luke 22:42).  The Lord Jesus perfectly knew the Father to whom He belonged.  Thus He overcome the tempest of temptation to walk in the tranquility of "Thy will be done" (Matthew 6:10).  As a friend often says, "we must know who we are, and Whose we are."  We live and give as stewards, and and as sons and daughters devoted to a Father whose "way is perfect" (II Samuel 22:31).  Our times are in His hand and our well being is in His heart.  We seek His will accordingly, and trust Him to lead us in the love of Christ that assures us of life, peace, and the reality of realization…

"Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?"

(I Corinthians 6:19)

Weekly Memory Verse

    Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

(I Timothy 1:17)