Look at the Time!

I want to talk to you about time and timing. God operates on a schedule. He is not random. Just because you don’t know there is a clock or don’t believe in one, doesn’t mean there isn’t one.

The heavenly bodies are on a circuit of precision.

We have seedtime and harvest, four seasons, night and day. Jesus came in the fullness of time (Galatians 4:4) and his death and resurrection were on such a perfect schedule as to defy any other conclusion. But people do.

We are living IN the clock and have become so accustomed to the ticking, we don’t hear it or see it. Daniel heard the clock and knew the 70 years was up. He was shown the clock in the future and wrote about it in code, sealed up until the last days. The sons of Issachar were able to read the clock (discern the times) and as a result, they knew what to do. So did the Magi. But we’ve tuned out the clock. Or perhaps we simply tuned into lesser things.

For some time, I’ve become aware of the clock.

I could hear the ticking but couldn’t find the clock. So I began studying patterns and seasons in hopes of finding the clock and discerning the time. Then slowly, I began to hear the faint ticking of the clock. I could hear it softly in Daniel. Then recently in Exodus. Slowly the time began to come into focus.

It puts a new slant on “teach me to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom”. You can’t number your days without a counter, a clock, a means of measuring time. The most recent piece came after a short (2 day) fast that ended this past Sunday. What I discovered in the context of what I knew startled me – to put it mildly.

I was seeking the Lord about what to do.

He showed me instead the clock. It was similar to a child asking his parent whether he could watch a movie or read a book, and the parent points to the late hour on the clock and the child knows – it’s bedtime!

I was closing in on the clock when a dear friend of mine shared the piece he had found. It was like one of those game shows where you know there’s a 12-letter word but you only know 3 letters. Then someone hands you a vowel and suddenly, you know the word or the phrase and you win the prize. My friend handed me that vowel in his sermon. Thank you Vin!

It’s not the blood moons.

It’s nothing I’ve seen before – and I’ve seen a lot. In one sense I feel like the guy late at night on the Titanic who spotted the fatal iceberg. It’s one of those moments where you finally see what you have been looking for and it’s size and magnitude startles you.

We run our lives by the clock. Shouldn’t we plan our lives based on God’s clock? It puts urgency in my business, soberness in my daily walk and expectation in my heart. If you like, I will share the time with you, but only if you let me tell you how the clock works – something I am still discovering.

Until next TIME, be fruitful and multiply!