Time keeps on ticking...

This week's memory verse:
"Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." -- Philippians 1:6

We keep hearing (and saying) that we are a fast food society...we want what we want and we want it NOW! If we know that to be true because we experience it everyday, but we don't LIKE the fact that society has made us that way...why do we get all impatient with others, with ourselves and with God when we don't get what we want when we want it? If we KNOW better...why do we keep perpetuating the situation?

Time seems to move so slow when we want something, but move fast when we are looking back...wanting time to move slower. It's a conundrum. (I just love that word, don't you? A riddle whose answer is a riddle.) I look at my daughter...it truly seems like yesterday she was five...stepping on that big old school bus for the first time. Now she's within a year of driving and college and a life out on her own is just a couple of years away! Why don't THOSE moments go slow and the hour that I wait in the doctor's office go fast? It's all a matter of perspective...the way we think and look at things.

God doesn't think like we do. His thoughts are far above our thoughts...he's GOD. (Isaiah 55:8-9) God's time frame is not the same as ours "With God, one day is as good as a thousand years, a thousand years as a day." 2 Peter 3:8 

When we pray for something...we want it to happen NOW! When we don't see results right away, we get impatient and think God isn't there or isn't listening. But he is not slow to keep his promises to us. He knows what is best for us..his thoughts are far above ours...he wants what's best for us and will answer us when the time is right...maybe YEARS later (like a moment to him) 

2 Peter 3:9 goes on to say that God is patient with us, not wanting ANYONE to perish, but EVERYONE to come to him. Since he doesn't force us to believe in him or to love him, he gives us time...even to the very last seconds of our lives...to finally see the light and come to him. He created EVERY ONE of us...we are his children, no matter the race, color, religious background, personality, failings, sins...he wants us ALL to come to him and realize that he is our father. He is patient with us...he gives us time. He waits on us like a farmer waiting on a field to produce a crop. (James 5:7-8)

Jesus said in John 15:5 (One of my favorite verses)...Jesus is the vine, we are the branches. The branches apart from the vine can bear no fruit, but will wither and die.

God sent Jesus to earth...Jesus WAS God on earth. In saying that he is the vine...our nourishing vine...God is telling us that without him, we are just marking time...we are doomed to needing more and more and NOT getting what we need because we are disconnected from that nourishing vine. We NEED God in our life to survive! We need TIME to grow, to become a strong branch with plenty of leaves and TIME to get more nourishment to produce good healthy fruit. We need to learn to rest in the Lord...to trust him and his timing...to study and learn from him so that we do become strong enough to bear fruit.

I see this in my own life. I am learning lessons every day about God's timing and being patient with God. While I want results right now, I believe he is training and teaching me...trying to get me to see how much fruit I will bear if I just trust and obey him. I have seen snippets of that fruit...but then I get impatient again and go forging ahead on my own, trying to get something to happen before God is ready for it to happen. I lose focus and a little trust in God because nothing works out the way I planned. But then...I sit back, remember that nourishing vine and rest in him again...do what I feel he is leading me to do and I see more fruit. It's a process...it takes TIME...God isn't finished working in me! THANK GOD!