Most of us know how to tell what time it is just by looking at a clock.
In today’s age, some cannot read an old-fashioned clock, or what is known as an analog clock because they have grown up with digital clocks, the kind that straight out tells you what time it is, usually in big bright red numbers.
That’s just progress. If we go far enough back in time most of us would have a hard time reading a sundial. I’m thankful that we have clocks, computers, and cell phones that can tell us what time it is.
The Greeks had two words for telling the time. One is Chronos. Chronos is “quantity” time. That is time measured by the clock & calendar. It’s based on 60 seconds per minute, 60 minutes per hour, 24 hours to a day, 7 days to a week, etc.
I don’t believe there are calendars or clocks in heaven. But we need them down here, don’t we?
The other Greek name for time is Kairos. It is “quality” time measured by special moments. That’s God’s time. Let me give you the best example I can think of: Jesus was conceived in Mary’s womb in a special moment. That was Kairos or quality time. But it took about 9 months for Him to be born. That was Chronos time or quantity time. He grew to age 30 in Chronos time. He was baptized by John and began His ministry. That was a special moment or Kairos time.
He taught, healed, cast out demons, and raised the dead in kairos time or special moments. Then when the fullness of time had come, He was crucified. A very special moment in Kairos time. Nine hours later, in quantity time, He died. An extraordinarily special moment in time. He was buried, and His Body spent three days of quantity time in the grave. But on the third day, in a special moment of time, He resurrected. But it was all in God’s time.
A church bulletin once had this comment: “I can’t number the times I have wished God would hurry up and answer my prayer to bail me out in the middle of my trouble. . . But there is one well-established principle in the Scriptures, you cannot rush a Resurrection”
Everything is in God’s time. We can’t manipulate Him to change His time to ours. If it’s not in His timing, which Romans 8:28 tells us He always works out for our good, it should not, and will not, happen.
Why am I putting so much emphasis on time? Because we’re in the last days and in the fullness of time, they’re coming to an end. Before the end, in a special moment of time, Christians will be Raptured out of here.
In the meantime, every Christian has their work cut out for them. This message is to encourage you to know that when you pray, when you lay hands on someone for healing, when you prophesy, when you do anything in the Name of Jesus and by the Power of the Holy Spirit, the manifestation is always in God’s perfect timing.
Maybe you have been praying for days, months, or years for the healing of a friend or a loved one and they still are not healed. Only the Lord has the complete answer for those times. But we have the Word of God to guide us.
Matthew 7:7-8, (from The Amplified Bible) “Keep on asking and it will be given you; keep on seeking and you will find; keep on knocking [reverently] and [the door] will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who keeps on asking receives; and he who keeps on seeking finds; and to him who keeps on knocking, [the door] will be opened.”
Keep on praying until you get a release from the Holy Spirit. Keep on believing because the Word of God is true. Keep on hoping because hope leads to faith & faith leads to manifestation.
A.B. Simpson said: “Hope expects and is always in the future. Faith accepts and is always in the present.”
So, keep on hoping, keep on praying and believing in faith but whatever you do, don’t grow weary and give up. Galatians 6:9, “And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.”
There’s a due season for you but only God knows the time.
Why don’t we see farmers out in the fields harvesting corn in winter? Because there are times and seasons for sowing, harvesting and farmers don’t get to pick the times. When we pray for healing, we don’t pick the time for it to be manifested. It could happen instantly, but it could also happen sometime in the future.
A lot of people do things out of impulse or impatience and later regret it. Maybe it was buying a used car without test-driving it or signing a contract without reading the fine print. Or maybe it was a marriage that was based on the wrong motives or on an impulse.
In each case waiting for a little while would have made a big difference and a mistake could have been avoided. God doesn’t make mistakes and He never runs out of time. That’s why His timing is perfect.
The thing that bothered the Pharisees the most about Jesus wasn’t just that He healed people. His timing to do it offended them because He did it on a Sabbath day. Jesus had no problem with healing people on the Sabbath. God’s timing is based on His love for His people. Yes, the Sabbath day was important but it’s important to man because man wasn’t meant to work seven days without rest. When God gave the command to keep the Sabbath day holy it was not only for His glory but for man’s well-being. Jesus said that man wasn’t made for the Sabbath, but Sabbath was made for man. (Mark 2:27)
When the Pharisees saw Jesus healing people on the Sabbath, to them it meant He was working, and you weren’t supposed to on the Sabbath. Jesus asked them if one of their sheep fell into a pit on the Sabbath day wouldn’t they lift it out? There was no answer.
Then Jesus healed a man with a withered hand. The point Jesus was trying to make was that man had a need and Jesus had the answer.
Proverbs 3:27-28, “Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it. Say not unto thy neighbour, Go, and come again, and to morrow I will give; when thou hast it by thee.“
In 2 Kings 8:1-6 there is a good example of God’s perfect timing: “Then spake Elisha unto the woman, whose son he had restored to life, saying, Arise, and go thou and thine household, and sojourn wheresoever thou canst sojourn: for the Lord hath called for a famine; and it shall also come upon the land seven years. And the woman arose, and did after the saying of the man of God: and she went with her household, and sojourned in the land of the Philistines seven years. And it came to pass at the seven years’ end, that the woman returned out of the land of the Philistines: and she went forth to cry unto the king for her house and for her land. And the king talked with Gehazi the servant of the man of God, saying, Tell me, I pray thee, all the great things that Elisha hath done. And it came to pass, as he was telling the king how he had restored a dead body to life, that, behold, the woman, whose son he had restored to life, cried to the king for her house and for her land. And Gehazi said, My lord, O king, this is the woman, and this is her son, whom Elisha restored to life. And when the king asked the woman, she told him. So the king appointed unto her a certain officer, saying, Restore all that was hers, and all the fruits of the field since the day that she left the land, even until now.”
What would have happened if the woman had become worried about her property and returned early to check on it? She might have lost her land. But God’s perfect timing said for her to take her family away to another land and return in 7 years.
Maybe you’ve been waiting for God to act on your behalf and you’re about to give up. Maybe it’s been 6 years, 364 days and you’ve had all the waiting you can handle. Could you wait one more day to complete the 7 years as that woman did? The answer to your prayer or healing could be on its way. It could be that God has been working in the background making sure everything is in place, not only for your good, but for the good of everyone else involved. That’s the way God works.
Galatians 4:4, “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,”
The timing of God is not only revealed in Galatians, it’s all through the Old Testament and especially in the Book of Daniel.
Daniel 9:25-26, “Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times. And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.”
This is an amazing prophecy! It told the Jews exactly when the Messiah was to come. There’s a lot more to teach about this but the following is a simple explanation.
According to this passage, the Messiah was to come in 69 sevens, or 483 years (69 x 7 = 483) after the command to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. Because Daniel was using the Babylonian calendar of 360 days a year, we can multiply 69 x 7 x 360, which equals 173,880 days.
On March 14, 445 B.C. King Artaxerxes gave the command to Nehemiah to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. Exactly 173,880 days later, on April 6, 32 A.D., Jesus made his triumphant entry into Jerusalem.
God’s plan of redemption took a lot of time to be worked out but look at the results.
Ecclesiastes 3:1 says, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven”.
Here’s another example of God’s timing: Before God brought the Hebrews into their land, He told them to let the land rest every seventh year (Lev. 25:1-7). That was known as the 7th year Sabbath. Even land needs to rest occasionally but for 490 years the Hebrews disobeyed this command and sinned in other ways too. So, God raised up Babylon as a world power and allowed the Babylonians to conquer Jerusalem and take the Hebrews captive. They were to be captive for 70 years, one year for each 7-year Sabbath which they did not keep. Then God raised up the Medo-Persian Empire and used King Cyrus as His instrument for freeing the Hebrews from Babylonian captivity and allowing them to return to their land.
When God was through with Cyrus, He raised up Alexander the Great and established Greece as the third great empire. God used Alexander to establish the Greek language as the universal language of the world which God would use in writing the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the whole New Testament. And since Greek had already been established as the universal language, everyone would be able to hear & understand the Gospels.
After completing His work with Greece, God established the Roman Empire. The Romans were great road builders. God used the Romans to build the roads to carry the Gospel in the Greek language to the united empire originally established in Babylon. That’s God’s perfect timing.
Remember the story of Lazarus of Bethany? Lazarus was sick. His two sisters, Martha and Mary, sent word to Jesus to come and heal him. What did Jesus do? John 11:6 tells us, “When he had heard therefore that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place where he was.”
Although Jesus loved Lazarus and the two sisters, He didn’t rush to Bethany. He waited.
When Jesus finally got to Bethany Lazarus had died and been in the tomb for 4 days. Why didn’t Jesus rush to Bethany at the first word of the sickness of Lazarus? When He was first told of Lazarus being sick Jesus said, “. . . This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.” (John 11:4)
Jesus knew Lazarus would die but He didn’t rush to Bethany because it wasn’t a matter of life or death, it was a matter of God the Father and God the Son getting glory by the Holy Spirit. In other words, everything was under control.
God the Father knew it. Jesus knew it. The Holy Spirit knew it. Everyone else was in a panic.
Why did Jesus wait until Lazarus had been in the grave for four days? According to the law of that day, a person had to be buried for 3 days to be declared legally dead. What did Jesus do? Jesus waited one more day so there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Lazarus was dead.
John 11:39, Jesus said, “ Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days.”
For Lazarus to walk out of there alive but the wrappings probably smelling like a dead man, everyone knew it had to be God.
If you will read on in the next chapter of John, you’ll see that the raising of Lazarus was the deciding factor for the Pharisees to plot and kill Jesus and that led to His crucifixion and eventually, resurrection. It was the fullness of time coming to pass for the redemption of man.
If Jesus had gone to Bethany and healed Lazarus when they called Him, the Pharisees and Sadducees could have said Lazarus didn’t really die and would pass off Jesus as a hoax. They may have had him flogged and put in jail for a few days but not kill Him. If that would have happened, where do you suppose we would be today?
It’s all in God’s time.
What have you been praying for and are still waiting for an answer? Have you been praying for years for a specific need and are about to give up? Are you thinking God doesn’t hear your prayers?
Here’s the problem. You are in the wrong time zone. You are going by Chronos time, checking the clock and calendar, counting the days.
But God is going by Kairos time.
If your prayer hasn’t been answered, maybe the “fullness of time” in your situation has not happened because God is still working things together for everyone’s good.
Romans 8:27-30, “And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.”
You have a purpose in life, a purpose that nobody else has and in the fullness of time, God is going to see that you fulfill that purpose. That is His priority for you, to be certain that you accomplish His purpose for you and you cross the finish line where He is waiting with these words,
“. . . . Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.” (Matthew 25:21)