2 Peter 3:8-9 “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 is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” Today's episode talks about how God's timing is better than ours, even though we don't want to wait for it. Also, God is calling us to help his lost sheep. God is calling us to be kind even when others aren't. God is calling us to sit with Him and ask, "How can I help you?" Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
God’s Timing, Not Ours
2 Peter 3:8-9 “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 is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”
When I read this verse I think about how God’s timing can be so frustrating for us sometimes. I was praying with a friend of mine last night because she is so tired of working at her job. It is not great for her mental or physical health, they are not supportive of her, and the kids she teaches are not well behaved at all. She has been praying to the Lord for a long time now and she is not seeing results. She is tired and frustrated and feels like God is telling her to take a leap of faith, but doesn’t seem to be directing her how to do that. God’s timing is not like our timing. For us, we each have the same 24 hours in a day. Whether we use that to our advantage or not. Whether we are healthy or we are sick. Whether we are young or we are old. We all have 24 hours in a day, it is constant, it never changes.
However, it is not the same for God. This verse is telling us that one day for God could be like a thousand years and a thousand years could be like a day. It is impossible for us to understand how time works for God. He seems to know every move we will make and yet he is also very present in each moment. He is in our future, our present and our past. They are all happening at the same time for Him, which of course makes no sense to us. How can the past and the future be happening at the same time? There are so many things about God that are a mystery. This is one of them.
The next line says the Lord is not slow in keeping his promise as some understand slowness. God is not just stalling. He is not promising you something and then forgetting about it or delaying it because he doesn’t care. On the contrary He cares so much that He is aligning his promise up for you at the perfect time. Sometimes we want things to happen now, but God knows if it did happen now, it wouldn’t work. You wouldn’t appreciate it, or you would waste it, or something else along these lines. However, if God gives it to you in a year, after you have experienced all these other things, you will be able to appreciate it more.
I know we want God to fulfill his promises now. I know we want him to give us what we ask for now. We don’t want to wait, we want it now. I get it. I have been in plenty of situations where I have been asking God for something and it takes far longer than I wanted it to. I felt like I was losing strength and a parent can’t lose strength when their kids are acting up. You need to be on point, you need to be at the top of your game. Yet God says, He is there in our weakness. His power is made perfect in our weakness. Sometimes we need to get to that point so we can realize we need God. Sometimes we need to get to the point where we have tried everything on our own and nothing has worked. Sometimes we need to hit rock bottom so that God can come in and pick us up off the floor. However, if we have a choice, we keep trying to do everything on our own. Often we are not even giving God a chance to work, we are too busy doing it ourselves, so He sits back and He waits. Then we wonder why He is not answering our prayers.
The last line in this verse says, “ Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” Thank you Lord for being patient with me! Thank you for not wanting me to perish! When I read this verse I think about the many times I have heard people say, “Jesus needs to hurry up and come.” People are thinking the world is so terrible that we are ready for the end times. We are ready for Jesus to come for His final judgement and end this world. We wonder what God is waiting for as we feel the world is bad enough. We feel it can’t really get much worse than it is, so what is God waiting for?
This verse answers that question for us. God does not want anyone to perish. He wants everyone to come to repentance. Yes, this world is crazy, and falling apart and so very broken. And yet if Jesus came today for the final judgement, how many of us would be going to heaven? How many of our loved ones would be going? We think we are ready for Jesus to come, but are we really? We just want the awfulness of this world to end, but we aren’t necessarily ready for His judgement. And maybe some of us are ready. If you are listening to this podcast you love Jesus. If you are listening to a podcast about how to walk boldly with Jesus then you probably are doing your best to live your life according to God’s will and law. That is awesome, you are probably ready to join Jesus in His kingdom in Heaven. What about your family members though? Are they ready?
I understand this world is hard and it seems to be getting worse and worse each day. I don’t know that this country has ever been more divided. There is so much racism and sexism. People are just rude and are not at all sorry about it. There is so much hate these days and it seems to drown out the love. So, naturally we want Jesus to come and save us. However, He already saved us. He did his job, now it is time to do ours. Romans 5:20-21 says, "The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Yes there is so much evil in the world right now, and that means there is so much grace as well. God is showering us with grace each and every day and we need to use this grace to spread his love to all we meet. We need to overshadow the hate with love.
This is not easy. It is not easy to be surrounded by hate and to spread love. It is not easy to be that one positive voice amongst a sea of negativity. It is not easy to respond with love when met with hate. This is what grace if for. This is why God is showering us with grace. He is concerned for His children. He is concerned that if He came now so many of His children would be lost. So many of our children would be lost. We can’t wait for Jesus to come and save us, we need to step up to the plate and start trying to save others. We can not save anyone on our own. We have no power on our own. However when we turn to the Holy Spirit, who is living inside all of us who are baptized, we have all the power in the world.
Ask the Holy Spirit how you can help your loved ones? Ask the Holy Spirit how you can spread God’s love to others? Pray each and every day for those who don’t know God’s love. When you encounter hate, pray for that person. I know you don’t want to, I don’t either. I know you don’t feel like they deserve your prayers. You don’t want to waste your breath on them. I get it, I understand what you mean. Don’t do it for them. Do it for Christ, do it for your heavenly Father who’s heart is breaking when He thinks about how many of His children are lost right now.
We wonder what He is waiting for and He wonders why we can’t see it. Why can’t we see how sad He is at all of his lost sheep. It says in the Bible God will leave His 99 righteous sheep to go find that one lost sheep. Think of how it must be for God to see so many of his sheep lost. Let’s try to help Him get them back. Let’s ask the Holy Spirit how we can partner with God to use this grace He is giving us for His good. What can we do to help others rediscover His love? What is one thing we can do that would help make the world a brighter place? What is one thing we can do to shine the peace of Christ and the love of Christ to all those we meet?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we are sorry we get so impatient at times waiting for your timing. We are grateful your ways are higher than our ways, please give us the patience and strength we need to keep waiting for your perfect timing. Lord, please show us where we can partner with you in saving your children. We can feel your pain and we want to help. Show us how Lord. Show us how to shine your love and light into the world. Show us how to respond with love when greeted by hate. Show us how to love the unlovable just as Jesus did. Show us how to start in our homes. Lord, we have so much to learn and we are ready to start. Teach us oh Lord we are ready and willing. We love you Lord, you are so forgiving. You are so patient. We are grateful for all you do for us and we ask all of this in accordance to your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!