“Wondering”. . .Fascinated By God, and By His Truth

(Friends: during this series, the messages may frequently be longer than usual due to the subject matter.  Thanks for your patience, and I think you will find the considerations interesting, and hopefully, helpful in our walk with the Lord.  Glen)

Part 27 – “The Timeless – In Time”

      In the person of His Son, the God who “inhabiteth eternity” entered into the realm of space and time.

     “Great is the mystery of godliness; God was manifest in the flesh” (I Timothy 3:16).

     From the boundless freedom of the timeless into the realm of past, present and future, with its limitations – this is the sacrifice of love made by the Lord Jesus Christ for the eternal redemption of the faithful.  What this involved in the heart and mind of an infinite Being, we do not know.  We can only be sure that the price was inestimable, and that whatever the cost, the Lord Jesus paid it with an abundantly willing heart based on the greatness of His devotion to us.

     We are a race dominated by the clock.  Our lives dash from birth to death, and too many days seem composed of too few hours for the accomplishing of those things we need and desire to do.   “For what is your life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away” (James 4:14).  Indeed, in the first twinkling “moment” of passing from this temporal realm into the everlasting, believers will feel sublime relief from the burden imposed upon us by the constraints and restraints of time.  The past often taunts us, the future threatens, and the present flees before we have opportunity to experience more than a brief sample of the moment.  The older we get, the more we realize the “vanishing vapor” of a life in which time seemed to offer much in the beginning, but then raced away before we could fully grasp its fleeting promise.

     Our Savior took upon Himself this overwhelming burden of time.  It savagely and unmercifully crushed Him, but then He arose into that glory so beautifully described by the writer of Hebrews as “the power of an endless life” (Hebrews 7:16).  Just as wonderfully, He graces us with the same deliverance from the temporal when we believe, as the Spirit of the everlasting enters into the depths of our being.  There, in the born again spirits of the redeemed, the “endless life” of the timeless Christ provides increasing awareness and experience of a dimension without temporal limits.  We may not be able to verbally express the wonder, nor do we understand it.  However, the believer knows deeply within that the Lord Jesus has delivered him from the awful weight of time by taking upon Himself its ultimate consequence.  And, in the moment of such blessed relief and awed remembrance, we worship.

    We fast approach a “day” when there will be no days.  There will be no clocks and no calendars in Heaven.  May the thought bless us with anticipation of an experience of peace made possible by the Prince of peace.  May it even more bless us with the wonder of so great salvation provided by so great a Savior, the timeless One who entered time in order to deliver us from time.

“There should be time no longer.”

(Revelation 10:6)

“Wondering”. . .Fascinated By God, and By His Truth

 (Friends: during this series, the messages may frequently be longer than usual due to the subject matter.  Thanks for your patience, and I think you will find the considerations interesting, and hopefully, helpful in our walk with the Lord.  Glen)

Part 26 – “No ‘When? In God”

      “Time” involves beginnings, endings, and the sequential passage of events occurring within the span therein.  When thinking of God, therefore, we must recognize that He cannot be limited to this temporal measure since “from everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God” (Psalm 90:2).  Our Lord had no beginning, He will have no ending, and He views all things with an infinite understanding based not on the sequence of events occurring in past, present, and future, but rather on the timeless perspective of “known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world” (Acts 15:18).

     There is no “When?” in God.  As A.W Tozer once wrote, beautifully, “The flutter of an angel’s wing a thousand years hence is as known unto God as it were occurring in this moment.”  As completely mind-boggling as such a concept may be, I personally know of no greater peace-imparting truth for the trusting heart.  The One to whom we have committed our lives and eternities sees perfectly all circumstances, conditions, and events as if they were but one moment.  God knows every detail of our past, enabling Him to administer complete redemption from our sins.  He anticipates all that will transpire in the future, making possible perfect planning for every contingency.  Moreover, He knows the present moment with a precise clarity whereby the Lord Jesus Christ comprises God’s supply in exact accordance with our current need.  Thus, we need never ask the Lord, “When will You be what I need You to be?”  He simply is, in this moment and forevermore.  “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58).

  

    As blessed as this truth may be, it also presents to us a profound challenge of faith.  Indeed, when all around us seems to be crumbling, how can we view God as our present supply?    When the past seems filled with catastrophic impact on the current moment, how do we look back with anything other than regret?  And when no solution or hopeful prospect paves the road lying ahead, whence comes the confidence of “My expectation is from Him?” (Psalm 62:5).  Our answers lie in the doctrinal understanding of God’s timelessness, and of the wonder of no “When?” in Him.  “Blessed be the LORD God of Israel from everlasting, and to everlasting” (Psalm 41:13).

     “He is” proclaims the Word of God.  “I Am” declares the Spirit of God.  “You are” testifies the church of God.  Never need we wait for our Lord to be who He is to us.  Never must we ask “When?”  We rather confess, “You are, Lord,” and then discover the perfect faithfulness of the timeless God who “inhabiteth eternity” (Isaiah 57:15).

“The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.”

(Deuteronomy 33:27)

“Wondering”. . .Fascinated By God, and By His Truth

(Friends: during this series, the messages may frequently be longer than usual due to the subject matter.  Thanks for your patience, and I think you will find the considerations interesting, and hopefully, helpful in our walk with the Lord.  Glen)

Part 25 – “Just As Long As It Takes”

     God’s “When?” elicited  bewildered inquiry from no less than David, the Psalmist and King of Israel. 

    “How long wilt Thou forget me, O LORD?   Forever?   How long wilt Thou hide Thy face from me?” (Psalm 13:1).

     God had not forgotten David, nor had He hidden His face from the man declared by the Lord to be “after Mine own heart” (Acts 13:22).  He had, however, worked in David’s life according to His own timetable, wherein “a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night” (Psalm 90:4).  Our Lord bases His “When?” upon perfect knowledge, analysis, and possession of all the salient facts of every circumstance, situation and condition.   Thus, He schedules His involvement in our lives according to the pristine perfection of loving wisdom whereby He is never early and never late in accomplishing that which is best for both His interests and ours.

     As with David, gazing at earthly clocks tempts us to wonder, and to question.  Moments, hours, days, weeks, months, and even years sometimes pass with no apparent Divine activity to deal with challenges in our lives.  We have prayed, we have prayed long, we have prayed earnestly and we have prayed with as much sincerity as possible.  But nothing seems to happen.   “How long, o Lord?” we cry, but no answer is forthcoming.

     In such epochs of difficulty and bewilderment, the hand of God may well be more active than in times when His working seems obvious.  “He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep” (Psalm 121:4).  We may not know what God is doing.  We can, however, know that He is working out perfect purposes for the glory of the Lord Jesus, our well being, and the well being of those around us.  Long journeys of faith when all seems dark actually involve long administrations of faithfulness wherein our Heavenly Father works out the intricate details of coordinating all things together for good in our lives.

    “As for God, His way is perfect” (II Samuel 22:31).  How long?  Just as long as it takes to do that which is best.  Not a second more, and not a second less.  No matter how strongly or how often we face the temptation to believe otherwise, this is truth and reality.  Let us encourage and challenge each other often with the remembrance that “My ways are not your ways” involves our Lord’s schedules for our lives.  They proceed according to the perfection of His love, wisdom, ability and purpose.  Indeed, “just as long as it takes…”

“My times are in Thy hand.”

(Psalm 31:15)