It's a God Timing Thing

Sometimes it seems that when we go to God with an emergency prayer for help, His help is agonizingly slow in getting to us.

You know, we forget that God’s timing is perfect and ours is not.

Do you remember the story of how Jesus’ close friend Lazarus got sick and his sisters, Mary and Martha summoned Jesus to heal him? What happened? They asked the Lord for help in a problem. So far, so good.

But then… before Jesus got there, Lazarus died. Mary and Martha thought Jesus had waited too long, didn’t they? But Jesus didn’t wait too long. He came at the perfect time. The perfect time for God’s purpose, not necessary the most convenient time for Mary and Martha. Yet the prayer was answered and Jesus brought Lazarus back from the dead.
God is never late. However, God’s timing is different than ours, and so is His focus.

He is focused on what is best for us “eternally” and we are focused on what is best for us “instantly”.

God ultimately knows what is in our best interest, and we only think we know what is best for us.

In Romans 5, we learn that suffering builds our character. In James, we are told to consider it pure joy when we have troubles of many kinds, because it builds perseverance.

Our suffering is uncomfortable, but it is for our own good.

Have you ever taken the time to see how a butterfly comes out of a cocoon? It is a very slow and very tedious operation. It seems to take forever, and all the while, the poor butterfly is struggling to free itself of that covering.

A boy once saw this and after a long while, he felt so sorry for what that butterfly was going through that he helped open the cocoon to free the insect faster. What do you think happened? The butterfly was able to get out in less than half the time it would normally have taken, but when it did, it couldn’t fly. Why? Because it is during the time of struggle that its wings are strengthened enough to carry him off. But when the boy took the struggle away, the wings didn’t get strengthened.

The hard time the butterfly was going through was for its own good, wasn’t it? Without the struggle, the butterfly could not realize its purpose in life.

And without our struggles, we cannot realize our purpose in the kingdom of God. It is true that our struggles sometimes seem more than we can bear, but it is of utmost urgency that we remember; during our struggles that God cherishes our faithfulness.