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. 2 Peter 3:8.

“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways.” Isiah 55:9

“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” ~ 1 John 4:18

His Miracles Take Time 

We treasure time as if it’s currency
Something we can lose or save.
But we should all be wary of time
It can easily make us its slave.

Is God as concerned with time?
Does He regard it the same way we do?
Does He count hours and minutes?
Or does He have a whole different view? 

As humans, we are really impatient.
Waiting takes time we cannot afford.
But the Bible has a different sense of time
And tells us to wait on the Lord.

Sometimes we forget God’s great power,
By which He created the universe.
Then created us to give His name glory
As we obey and worship and serve.

God doesn’t exist for our gratification,
Our prayers are not orders He fills.
He is our omnipotent Father in Heaven
And we should pray for only His will.

But as we pray we must not forget
He is a Good Father whom we can trust.
For, hope and a prosperous future
Is His plan for each of us.

We are His children, wonderfully made
Through a process inexplicable.
He took time to make each of us different
Individual miracles.

Linda Troxell © 08/15/2021

Last week my daughter shared a YouTube video with me. It was a Christian-themed song called “While I Wait.” The song’s intended message is that we need to praise God and believe His promises while we wait for our prayers to be answered; and even if it seems they won’t be answered. A perfectly good message, indeed, a much needed massage. However, It was not the first message I took away after listening to the song. 

That’s because what grabbed my focus was the line, “Some miracles take time.” I thought to myself, “How much time?” That made me chuckle as I realized that we have no way of knowing what our concept of time means in the Kingdom of God. I’ve not read anything in the Bible that made it clear to me what time means to God. 

In the book of Revelation we read time referred to as, “…a time, and times, and half a time. I cannot make sense of that sentence, let alone discern its meaning. It only serves to confuse me more. And Peter says this about time: 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. 2 Peter 3:8. I can understand Peter’s sentence, but his meaning is not much clearer than that in Revelation. 

Our inability to understand time in relation to God’s kingdom should serve to remind us that we know very little at all about God’s Kingdom. His world is so much bigger than our world; just as He is so much bigger than us. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways.” Isiah 55:9

Even though the Bible says little about the meaning of time, waiting is a big topic in both testaments, specifically waiting on God. According to the Concordance the Bible has 152 passages containing the word  “wait”, 39 of which are referring to waiting on the Lord. Waiting is not something that fits well with the American culture which has always placed a premium on time and believes waiting is not a good use of it. 

We see time as something we can lose or waste, much like money. In fact, many of our popular aphorisms illustrate this, “time is money”, “time and tide wait for no man” or “time is the longest distance between two places.” So it’s easy to see that waiting has never been popular in our culture. 

It’s difficult for us earth-bound beings with our focus on our own needs and our obsession with time, to wait. We can barely tolerate waiting for a bus, let alone a miracle. And it becomes even more difficult for us to wait as the cyber world makes waiting less and less necessary in so many cases. 

We forget that not so long ago we thought the internet itself was a miracle. And we gladly waited through the two or three minutes of beeps and buzzes that told us we were being connected over the telephone lines. Now we become inpatient if we have to try twice to be connected to a webpage. 

But so many of those who use the internet today were not alive during that time. They are used to the current speed of cyberspace. And as a culture, we are simply addicted to instant gratification. Every time we believe the definition of instant has reached its pinnacle and our needs can’t be fulfilled any faster, Silicon Valley comes up with something faster. So, why wouldn’t we expect God to get faster too? 

However, as much as we don’t know what goes on in God’s world, I think we can safely assume that it is not operated by a computer chip or an algorithm. In our addiction to instant gratification, we need to be careful not to start relating to God as a computer that is in our control, rather than our God who controls everything. We can’t expect our prayers to be answered instantly.

Far too many Christians seem to be confused about our relationship with God. Too many think God exists to bless us and prayer is how we place our orders for His favor. But God does not exist to please us, and the purpose of prayer is not to petition God for intervention in our lives. Certainly, we can use prayer to ask God for intervention, but that is by no means its purpose.

That misunderstanding of God can serve to limit His power in our lives. Don’t be mistaken, I’m not suggesting that our misunderstanding would diminish God’s power;  nothing can diminish the power of God. I’m simply pointing out that such a limited understanding of the totality of God’s power and the prayer process diminishes our ability to receive His power in our lives. 

God made us in His image that we might glorify Him. And prayer is the vehicle He has given us to praise, worship, and celebrate our love and thankfulness for Him  “Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before Him with joyful songs. Enter  into His gates with Thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise; be thankful to Him and bless His name.” Psalm 100:1-3 

God, is full of love and grace. And in His grace, He created a way for us to worship Him that benefits us at the same time. For, the same prayer by which we worship God can help us to feel closer to Him, and to better feel His comfort. Prayer is also how we can ask for and receive discernment. And it anchors us to God when we are afraid, unsure, or anxious. 

As our creator, God deserves our worship. Still, as our heavenly Father, He wants us to come to Him in times of pain or uncertainty. He wants to give us relief and comfort, but we can never forget, He also requires our obedience.

The concept of obedience often brings to mind fear and punishment. But our obedience is not born of fear. For, God’s love is perfect and perfect love drives away fear. “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” ~ 1 John 4:18

The obedience that we give to God comes from trust. We know that God knows our needs more fully and more clearly than we do. So when we trust Him enough to be obedient He can lead us on the path to the fulfillment of our needs.  

Prayer is for guidance, for comfort, and for celebration. It is also for confessing, repenting, and asking for forgiveness of our sins. There is nothing that will diminish our connection to God and silence the voice of the Holy Spirit like unconfessed, unrepentant sin. 

God does not expect us to live sinless lives. If we could do that His Son would not have had to suffer and die on that cross. God knows we just can’t do it. So, because His love is so powerful, He made a huge sacrifice to create a way in which He could continue to be our God even in our sin. We all know the story. But I don’t mind telling it one more time. 

God sent His son to earth to live a sinless life. Can you imagine? I can’t. I can’t even live a sinless week. Then, acting as a scapegoat, Jesus took the sins of the world upon Himself and was crucified on the cross to redeem all sin.

After three days He was resurrected from the grave to give us eternal life. This miracle of death and resurrection is the gift God has given us that allows Him to abide with us although we are still sinners. And it is a miracle that took time. 

All sin was forgiven when Jesus died. However, because we are still sinners, to keep our relationship with God open we must continue to confess our sin and ask for His forgiveness. And He will forgive us.

This is the part where someone always says “That’s too easy. If that’s all it takes everyone would keep sinning”. These are folks who have never felt the love of our Heavenly Father or the joy of the Son He sent. But still, they are right it isn’t that easy. 

We need to be serious in our remorse. God created us and He knows our hearts. Of course, He knows when we are being real. We must be remorseful in our hearts and we must be making progress in our sanctification, the process by which we become more like Jesus. If we are we can confess, repent of our sin, and ask for God’s forgiveness. And He will forgive us.

However, we must not devolve into seeing God’s work in our lives as a series of answered or unanswered prayers. God’s work is so little about answering prayers and so much more about love and creation. His work is a continuous process of creation through love.

Not because God can’t create miracles, He can create things we’ve never dreamed of in a moment with His thoughts alone. See the creation of the world for reference. But He doesn’t perform miracles without consideration, and they take time.

The dictionary says a miracle is: “An extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs.” If He just walked around creating miracles on a whim they would cease to be extraordinary. Just as the internet became commonplace, God’s miracles would too. I believe miracles like these are well thought out, infused with divine love, and rare. They take some time. 

God does, however, create miracles regularly. Every child born into this world is a miraculous gift from God. He creates these miracle to continuously grow and unfold, in partnership with Him, over a lifetime beginning in the mother’s womb and lasting into eternity.

We are, each of us, God’s miracles. Fearless and wonderful expressions of His creative love. We are made to always be connected to Him. As He guides us and we worship and obey Him we are in perfect balance. When we understand that full well, we will fully understand, too, why God’s miracles take time. “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”  Psalm 139:14

Let’s Pray Father in heaven we ask you to please bless us all. Help us to know that you are not a product of Silicon Valley working on an algorithm to answer our prayers. Help us too to remember that your Kingdom does not run on a computer program. Allow us, God, to be patient so we can enjoy time with you. Unhurried, calm, and individual time when we can connect with our Heavenly Father. Often we forget that the things we give our time to and that seem important in this world have no meaning and no value in your world. Help us Lord to slow down at least one time a day and think about that which has value in your reality.  Things like our love for one another, our love for you, taking care of the less fortunate, helping each other through the hard times. These are all important in your Kingdom. Help us to pay attention to our sisters and brothers, especially in these frightening times of such division. Help us to take time out to check on how someone else is doing and if we can be of help. Help us to remember that not everyone knows how to reach out for help. Help us to take time out for our families and spend time just enjoying them. Help us God to remember that time is not something we can lose, spend or waste. But it is something that reveals that which we hold important. For where we spend our time is where our heart wants to be. Help us Lord to always make that place you, your kingdom, and your people. We pray this in the mighty name of Jesus Amen.

Points for Pondering or Prayer

Or

Perhaps for Putting Pen to Paper

What is your relation to time? Do you think of it as something that you can lose or waste or is it only a reference to you?

Where or with what do you spend the majority of your time?  If that isn’t by choice, then where do you spend most of your by choice time. 

Can you see those things as where your heart wants to be?

How much time do you spend helping others? How much do you spend with God?