Friday, 1st July 2022
Day 1: Friday, 1st July 2022
Message 1
Minister: Rev. Ojo Gbadegesin
Understanding Divine Timing:
The concept of timing came later because in the realm of God there is nothing like time. Even when God made the angels, He did not subject them to time. That is one of the reasons the case of Satan is difficult to deal with because He has no definite time to live. As such, he remains an enemy forever.
In the making of man, God gave him the privilege of timelessness. God has the impossibility of dying, failing and sinning but He gave man the possibility of dying, failing and sinning. So, man’s hope of living on earth forever lied with Adam.
After the fall of man, God’s action in guarding the tree of life shows that there was a possibility for man to live forever if he had not eaten of the forbidden fruit. By the fall, man subjected himself to time.
Now ruled by time, it became really challenging for man to come into God’s timing because God’s understanding of time is more individualistic than generic while man’s understanding of time is more generic than individualistic.
Understanding God’s timing is not a once-in-a-lifetime thing. The kind of programme God is running with us is the type that will make us to keep running to Him. God is looking for men who will depend on Him for even the minutest aspect of their lives.
Exodus 3:1-15
After the fall of man, God began to look for ways to deal with him. He gave him a conscience but with time God saw that his conscience became seared. Later, God instituted a government that could initiate laws but this could not still sustain man. Then, God started covenanting with man.
All the patriachs lived in the promised land as tenants according to Hebrews 11. Abraham lived in the promised land in tents waiting for God’s promise. God told him a time was coming that his descendants would be captives in a strange land but after 400 years, He would bring them out to inherit the same land they were tenants in. If our understanding of God’s promises does not go with our understanding of timing, we will run into depression.
When it was time for God to fulfill His promise, the children of Israel who had the understanding of this promise looked forward to it. Even Joseph instructed that his bone should be taken along whenever they had to live. That was faith at work.
To set things in motion, Moses was born and events orchestrated his landing in the palace as Pharaoh’s daughter’s son but he never embraced the identity of an Egyptian because he was conscious of his Jewish heritage. At some point, he defended the cause of the Israelites and that landed him into trouble. That is what having the understanding of your life assignment without understanding right timing looks like. He eventually left Egypt but while in Midian he had an encounter with the God of his fathers. It was at that point that the timing for his divine assignment was set.
Exodus 3:1-15
God does not only have an understanding of our timing, He also understands where He is sending us to and He prepares us for the task ahead. Moses was versed in all Egyptian knowledge including magic. When he left Egypt, he had not seen magic up to the point of a staff turning into a snake; by the time he returned to Egypt, this was in full operation.
God gave Moses current revelations of the peak of challenges that was waiting for him. When Jesus said “I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it”, it means the church is supposed to always be ahead of the gate of hell in every aspect.
As far as Moses was concerned, he knew everything the Egyptian magicians could do, so them turning staffs into snakes was unprecedented. The Egyptians had advanced in magic! Things had changed! Even in preaching the gospel today, some old modalities don’t work again.
Sometimes, the strategy God gives to us may look common and basic. This is not to mean that God is obsolete, it is only to show us that the gate of hell has upgraded.
When Moses received what God told him to do, he didn’t bother asking God what he should do in case Pharaoh did not agree. He had thought once he dropped the staff and it turned into a serpent, Pharaoh would allow the people to go.
When God says to us “Go, I am with you”, He means it. God made Moses’ serpent to swallow up the other serpents. We must understand our generational times and seasons. If we stay with God, we will see many dimensions of Him. In this changing generation, we must understand that seasons change but the word does not change.
Many times, God will choose not to do things we want Him to do. It is not because He cannot do them, it is because the time may not be right. We cannot apply logic to God’s timing as it is only God who knows when the right timing of every event will be.
Jesus came to die for humanity but there was a right time to die. Dying at the wrong time would not fulfil the purpose. God didn’t allow Herod to kill Him as a baby because it was not time. When He was of age, He hid Himself from the Pharisees when His time had not come to be killed.
John 5:1-9
A man had been at the pool at Solomon’s Porch for 38 years waiting for when he would be able to get into the river and be healed. Unfortunately, he didn’t get healed because the principle that worked with the river was that the first person to jump into the river got healed. That was actually the old order of healing. The coming of Jesus represented the new order of limitless healing. This new revelation was around for close to 30 years but the old revelation was still actively working. This suggests that until the time for a thing is ripe, the existing philosophies cannot be changed.
The conflicts we see all through scriptures is a result of man’s inability to understand God’s revelation of time. It is possible for a man to be doing what seems like the will of God without knowing that what he is doing has expired in God’s timing. When you are not at the centre of God’s will for your life, you will be busy doing your best thinking you are right but where you expect God to act, He will not act and you will blame Him.
It is God who controls time and our spiritual antennas should be able to pick the signals about what He is doing at every point. God is dynamic and we need to yield ourselves to Him. He understands the season every city is in and so he raises the Church in that city to be able to meet the needs of the season that city is in.
There is no peak of knowing God; the higher we go, the more we see. When Moses went to Pharaoh and told him “tonight, God will pass through Egypt and all the Egyptian firstborn will die”, it didn’t happen at Moses’ projected timing. This was because there were certain things to be put in place in order to keep the Israelite’s firstborn alive.
When God changes what we think is our timing, it is to our own advantage. When it seems, things are not happening at our own projected timing, all we need to do is to relax, trust and yield to Him because He understands the seasons.
What assignment has God given to you? Where has He sent you to? You must be patient with Him to understand the codes of what He is sending you to do. When it feels that what God said is failing, it is just that the timing has not come. All we need to do is to have the understanding of His ways. His ways may not be what we think but when we follow Him, we will have a safe landing. Our existence is for the pleasure of God; we must grow to that point where we can live our lives for His pleasure.