Good morning and welcome to the last full week in October. We’re about one month away from Thanksgiving and we are officially 65 days from Christmas and 71 days from 2020. Speaking of 2020, Marge and I had made some long term plans in 2015 for the year 2020 and Margie lovingly marketed them as our “2020 vision.” At the time it seemed so far away and yet here it is only 71 days away. As I get older it always astounds me how quickly time passes.
Margie is flying to California this week for a sales meeting and this morning her early flight meant that we were both up at 4:45am. As soon as the coffee was on, I sat down to spend time with God. I’m normally up at this time anyway and I treasure my quiet, still time with God in the early mornings. There is something very special indeed about sitting down with God to hear Him explain the glory of His Word. This morning as I continue on in Exodus, one chapter per day, I find myself at chapter 24. If you’re following along with The5MC you have noticed something happen within the book. We have moved from a narrative into a bit more informative history as we see the Law laid out carefully and begin to move into God giving the Israelites rules for social legislation. We’ll see God present rules on things such as the directions for building and caring for the ark of the covenant, building the tabernacle and everything within it, creating the priest’s garments, and the beginning of taxation as well as many other things. As we get to chapter 30, we will see the book merge back into a narrative as we see Moses and the people execute the tasks they have been given.
It’s always fun to see just exactly what God will point out to me every morning and this morning it was a big, long, topic. One that stretches on forever. Time. The chapter tells us of Moses and the elders going up Mount Sinai to meet with God. There are of course very specific rules for all of this, and the chapter ends with this, “And Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights.” I asked myself like you might be doing, why 40 days? Well, apparently 40 days is exactly what God needed and wanted to get His business done with Moses. But why 40 days and not 34 or 44? What struck me is that is took God 40 days to meter out these rules to Moses but if you skip ahead to chapter 32 you will see that in this same 40 days, it all fell into disarray for the Israelite nation at the the foot of the mountain. Even as far as them sliding completely into false idol worship! How can 40 days with God go so right for Moses and yet go so wrong for the people? It led me to think about time and how we view it and live it versus how God views it and asks us to live it. Let’s take a look at what it means to not live on “our time” but to live on “God Time.”
I think anybody that has followed God closely for years will agree that God runs on a completely different clock. We as humans are instinctively impatient. I think it’s simply part of our sin nature. We get our minds set on something and we want it. Now. A college degree, we want it quickly and easily. That perfect husband or wife? We want it now and it when it doesn’t happen in our time frame, we wonder what is wrong. Kids? Those 2.5 kids should come exactly as we plan them. Perfect job? It should be waiting on us the day after we graduate and not a day after. You see, as humans we are not only impatient, but we are pretty good planners. We have our entire lives planned out exactly how we want them and especially when it should all happen. The only problem? None of it involves God’s timing.
So, as Moses is on the mountain dealing with God for 40 days, the people start to panic. To them the 40 days seems catastrophically long. They believe that their leader Moses must be dead so they quickly fashion a golden calf and start worshiping it for provision and safety. How can 40 days go so differently? It’s apparent that the way God sees time is much, much different than the way we see time. There’s a funny little video we show in our leadership training about the life of fly. With only 24 hours to live, the ambitious fly tries to complete his entire bucket list. How hilarious to watch this little animated fly literally kill himself to fit the life he wants and thinks he deserves into the time he has been given. At first it seems silly but then I compare it to the human “race.” Instead of 24 hours we have an average life span of 78.69 years and we do our best to fill it just as the little fly does. But you see, 78.69 years to God is a mere blink of an eye. You see, living on God time will require us to slow down, seek God’s wisdom, apply much patience and well, just relax and wait in Him.
Peter drops a bomb on us in 2 Peter 3:8 when he extols, “But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” The Lord moves throughout and within time in ways that we just will not ever understand. We are told in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth.” He was at the very beginning, even before the earth ever existed. God has been, will always be, and yet exists with us right now. God is outside of time and for us, well, that just doesn’t make sense to our finite views of time and reality.
I’ve learned in my experience that God usually moves much slower than our world, our culture, and ourselves. So, if this is true then there is something that we need in order to effectively operate on God time. It’s something that I think is rather difficult for most to embrace. Something that runs contrary to our nature. Something that is contrary to our world today. Patience.
We live in a world of immediacy today. Food needs to be fast, service needs to be fast, shipping needs to be fast, cell coverage needs to be fast, internet needs to be fast, traffic needs to move fast. We like to have our lives move along at a nice rapid, speedy clip. All of which is the antithesis of patience.
In an ironic note, guess what God’s Word mentions over 174 times? Yep, patience and more specifically, waiting. It’s almost like God knew that we would struggle with this, right? Patience is the key to living on God time. As he requires 40 days of you and you tell yourself that you don’t have 40 days, you will need patience. As you are dealing with that sickness, illness or surgical recovery and you don’t want it to take a day longer to heal, you must call for patience from the Lord. As you are waiting on Mr. or Mrs. Right, that perfect job, your first child or the next instructions from the Lord, you will need to draw upon patience from the Lord. You see, God can see all, knows all and His plan is perfect for your life. It’s just a matter of how you are reacting to His perfect plan. You can embrace it, or you can reject it, but folks it will not change His plan.
I pray today that you go to God and receive His glorious patience to deal with whatever it may be that is trying you. There is a beautiful worship song by the duo, Shane and Shane and it’s based on Psalms 130 and the lyrics sing, “I will wait for You, on your Word I will rely, I will wait for you, til my soul is satisfied.” In order to fully embrace living on God time you will need to wait on the Lord and to do that, you will need the patience of the Lord. I pray today that you will pause and be still. Pray to the Lord and ask for His patience to slow down and wait on His perfect plan to unfold before you. Wait upon the Lord, it will be worth it.
“but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” Isaiah 40:31
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