Appointed Time

I remember being in my teens and early twenties and feeling like time was standing still.  I remember looking at my watch and thinking how slowly everything seemed to move.  How slow moving my life was and how nothing seemed to be coming to me as I planned.

Now, I sit and an hour can pass me by in a matter of seconds.  Now, I can look at my clock and wonder how I came to the end of the day already.  I am not sure if that is patience or the curse of being young, maybe a little of both.

I haven’t executed patience, but I would like to think that I am better with patience than I was fifteen or twenty years ago.  To think that staying home on a weekend is my choice of recreation, over being out and spending time with my friends.

It is funny how time changes, once you are at the age to finally appreciate it, it seems to become elusive to you.  It seems to fall through your hands like sand, and the moments have now become countable by all the lines on your face, and the grey hairs on your head.

We wear time like a badge of honor but yet, when you are waiting for something valuable, for something from God, time can take you back to that teenager and feeling like a minute, sixty seconds, is actually sixty minutes.

I still deal with time, as we all do, but my understanding of time and my appreciation for time is different now.  But that doesn’t mean that my patience for what I perceive to be God’s slowness has diminished.

In Mark 1:15 the very first line caught me off guard.  The very first line made my stop reading and sit and think how time, the appointed time, still feels very slow.

Mark 1:15 And saying  The (appointed period of) time is fulfilled completed…  This is literally where I stopped.  I didn’t read any farther as I know time is an issue for me and God filled my head with the feelings I had as a young person waiting to be set free for the weekend. 

Appointed period of time.  Appointed Period of Time… APPOINTED PERIOD OF TIME…

We all know that to have an appointed period of time, means an exact time, a time that has already been determined and set.  A time that has been written down, confirmed and is not changing. 

God already has an appointed period of time for your healing, your breakthrough, and your deliverance, or maybe your lesson learned. 

God has that time written down in the transcripts that are our lives.  He knows that on such a day, and at such a time, this will happen and He also knows how painful it is for us to wait for that time.

I am sure that you are believing for something, waiting for something, hoping for something and surely praying for something, and if you are like me, the moments until the appointed time can be extremely taxing and long.

But what if we need all of those moments, seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years to be ready for the appointed time.   I know that personally I would absolutely hate for my appointed time to come and I am not prepared for it.   I would hate for the thing I am praying for ,so diligently, would come and here I am not ready to receive it.

What would I or we do then?  How could we go back and make sure we rectify that mistake?  We can’t because it’s an appointed time.  We know that God works in seasons, and He often refers to our seasons as a farmer refers to their fields.  There is the seed time, and harvest time, and then a lot of time in between.

There can be weeks, months, or even years, before a farmer yields a good harvest off of the seeds that he planted, and just like the farmer, we too have a seed time and harvest time, and just like the farmer, it can take an unspecified amount of time.

I don’t think waiting is fun at any age, but waiting on a promise, I think that is even harder.   When we wait we should have the mindset of harvest.  We should be in a season of preparation and praise.  We should be thankful for the opportunity to be prepared for the harvest and use the time wisely to learn what God is showing us and changing us into so we can be ready for the appointed time.

What we need to know and accept, me especially, is that God has an appointed time for a reason.  He isn’t just making us wait, for the fun of watching us squirm.  No, He is making us wait to teach us how to wait on Him.  How to put our focus on Him and how to appreciate the time in-between.

Just as a mother has to wait nine months to meet her child, we must wait the appointed time to receive our blessing. 

There is a rhyme and reason to everything that God does, and will do, and it is up to us, to keep a hold of the vision that He gave us in the beginning and praise Him in the middle.

I have it on good authority, that if I praise God in the middle, in the times I hurt, in the times I have lost patience, and in the times it doesn’t seem like anything is ever going to happen, that I will see His face, His hand, and His blessing in the end.

So while the Appointed Time is not something that we love to hear about, or even think about, it is something that we need to be sure about.  Nothing is going to change God’s appointed time in your life, and we should be thankful and praise Him for knowing us so well, that He knows when it’s time for advancement and when it’s time for learning.

Appointed Time, we will all come to our Appointed Time, but how you wait in the middle, that will show you, who you are, and where you are with God, for your harvest that’s coming at its Appointed Time!