Our God Is a Time God

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses:
How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Post 27: Our God Is a Time God

When we cry out to God; He promises His comfort. However, He does not promise “quick answers.” He is a “time God.” He does not come before time. He does not come after time. He comes just on time. And . . . He comes in His way for His glory and our good.

Stage Six: Wailing

So, when His time and our timing are light years apart; we wait. We resist the temptation to regroup and to fix things on our own.

But let’s be honest, that brings more pain. So we are tempted to deaden the pain of waiting for healing, for hope, for cure.

In “stage” six of the grieving process, we move from deadening our pain to wailing: longing for heaven and living passionately for God and others while still on earth.

Deadening Described

The barren Shunammite woman of 2 Kings 4 helps us to picture deadening. After years of barrenness, she bears a son who fulfills a lifetime of hopes and dreams. Tragically, he dies. Life sent her two caskets, the first her inability to conceive, the second the death of the child she finally bore.

Rather than face her groaning, she repeats five times, “It’s all right.” Her heart is sick, her soul vexed, yet she keeps insisting, “It’s all right. I’m all right.”

She eventually screams at Elisha, “Did I not say to you, ‘Don’t deceive me! Don’t get my hopes up.’” Deadening refuses to ever hope again, to ever dream again.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick. Hope hoped for, received, then lost again, makes the heart deathly ill. Fragile. Needy. We hate being there, so we block it out. We deaden ourselves by refusing to hope, long, wail, or groan because groaning exposes us for the needy people that we are.

The problem is, God made us longing, thirsting, hungering, desiring beings. So we follow a trillion different strategies for deadening our desires and shutting out the wail of our soul. We live as if this world is all there is. We refuse to hope for something more. We make it our goal to satisfy the flesh in order to quench the ache in our soul.

Staying Alive to Life When It Crushes Us to Death

How do we stay alive to life when it crushes us to death? That’s the question we probe tomorrow.

A Moving Experience

A Moving Experience

It's been a while. We moved to the greater Chicagoland area while still working in the Greater DC area. Go figure! The creative work arrangement allows us to be near our college kids, near family, and commute four weeks per year to teach modular counseling courses, and do the rest of my work from home! Gotta' love it! And I do.

But, you're not here just to hear about my nice "set up." At least, that's not the point of the Changeless Truth for Changing Times blog.

Here's what I'm learning that could be transferable truth. Have you ever wanted something? Of course. Have you ever waited and waited and it seemed like that something would never come? Of course.

I've been there, done that.

For over a quarter of a century, I longed to minister near where family lived. But I never did. Though serving in the US, I felt like I was a missionary. Far away from home and family. And, truly, I was.

Many times I thought that the time was right to return home.

Our God Is a Time God

God had other ideas. Our timeless God works on His own time table.

And yet, as I learned from my African American friends while working on Beyond the Suffering, "God is a time God." He does all things well in His time.

I see that now. After a quarter of a century.

How amazing. God knows what He's about!

So, waiting on God for something? Maybe for you it will be a quarter of a year. Maybe a quarter century. Honestly, for some things, for you and for me, it may not be until Heaven.

Reading Randy Alcorn's book Heaven I have been encouraged by his "theology of continuity." God's promises in our lives will come true someday. Thing is, that some day may be the better day in Heaven.

So, while you wait, know that every promise, every legitimate, God-created, Spirit-inspired longing may some day come true. Forever.

A former professor at Capital Bible Seminary longed to write a comprehensive systematic theology. After teaching and researching for over three decades, he was finally able to retire and begin his project.

Within months, he suffered a debilitating stroke.

No systematic theology.

At least . . . not in this life.

But, since Heaven is an endless journey of ever learning more and more about our infinite God, and since the Bible teaches the principle of "continuity" between this life and the next, I am convinced that my friend will pen an awesome systematic theology . . . in Heaven.

What do you long for? Dream of?

Pursue it now . . . with passion.

Pursue it now . . . with confidence, for someday, even if it is in that Great Eternal Day, it will come to pass.

You have God's word on it.

In Christ's Grace,

Bob