God, Time and Disappointment

Have you ever become disappointed with God? Have you ever wondered why God takes so long, at times, to to these questions and many more like them are all related to time. It might help us to understand God’s ways answer prayer or bring about His long promised Kingdom. Have you ever doubted whether God really hears your pleas? Have you ever questioned why God take so long to let you know what you should do? We could answer better if we had His perspective of time. Time is something that is unique to the realm in which we live. The perception of time, especially, points out the huge difference between God’s perspective and ours. Eternity is not bound by time. God lives in an eternity which has no beginning and no end, thus, time is not relevant in His realm. Before time, there is only eternity, and for God eternity is a never-ending present. Because time is such a relevant thing to us, it is beyond our human minds to fully comprehend how God can see what is happening anywhere in the Universe at any given time, past, present or future. We see history and things present in a sequence of "still frames", one after the other, like in a motion picture film reel; but God sees it in all its entirety at once!

When God said in Isaiah 55:9;

"For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts",

it was, undoubtedly, the greatest understatement ever made. It is impossible for us to understand and see things in the same perspective that God does. What we may think is good for us spiritually may not be so at all or at least not at this time. Though the following illustration is far from adequate perhaps the story of the "bug in the rug" might help us to catch a small glimpse of this point. The bug crawling about in a rug sees only what is around him. He feels the ‘scratchiness’ of the fibers and has no idea what the total design of the rug looks like, nor will he ever be able to do so. You and I are like this ‘bug in the rug’ while living upon this earth of ours. We can see only the things immediately around us in small segments but we can never see the whole earth complete before us. To do so, we would have to get beyond the confines of our world and even then we could not see history in relationship to the past and future. We would only see the present moment. But our Mighty God sees everything in its entirety at any given moment. At a single glance God knows what the world is bout and how history will end, while we are very limited, time-bound creatures and must let events come to pass before we know them as history.

God knows all and sees all things in advance, from beginning to end, not in a time-frame concept as we know and see things, therefore, after we have petitioned the Lord on some matter, recognizing His Omniscience, we do well to leave all things totally in His hands to do as He knows is best for us, and when. We should be seeking only to come into harmony with God’s will for our lives on a ‘moment by moment’ basis, being completely abandoned to God’s perfect will for our lives.

After coming into such oneness with God’s will for us, in full trust, then our work is simply one of obedience to that will and cooperating with Him so that He is able to work out His good pleasure in us as Philippians 1:6 assures us He will do;

"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."

God assures us that He is in control of the work that He is doing in you and me and that He will finish it. If we truly are trusting Him, submissive, obedient and pliable in His Hands we can never be disappointed with God. It should be noted that submission is not the same as resignation. To be resigned to God’s will in our lives is to go along with it but with a degree of reluctance, wishing it could be otherwise. Resignation implies we would make other choices if it were possible. Submission is a total and glad abandonment of our will to God and accepts His ways and will as best not wishing it to be any other way. Our prayers then, would be in complete harmony with the words of this hymn of surrender.

All In Thy Hand

My times are in Thy hand. My God I wish them there.

My life, my friends, my soul I leave Entirely to Thy care.

My times are in Thy hand, Whatever they may be;

Pleasing or painful, dark or bright as best seems unto Thee.

My times are in Thy hand. Why should I doubt or fear?

My Father’s hand will never cause

His child a needless tear.

© 2006 Christian Millennial Fellowship

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