Psalm 90:12
Teach us to number our days so that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Teach us to number our days so that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
In a few days most of us in the United States, will be adjusting our clocks backward in observance of daylight savings. So it's going to get darker sooner for us as we gain an hour to our day. I researched that daylight savings was enacted in the early 1900's primarily, as a means to conserve energy and to enjoy more sunlight during the summer months.
In the summer, we take an hour from our morning and give it to our evening and we take that hour back from our evening to add it to our morning in the winter months.
In the summer, we take an hour from our morning and give it to our evening and we take that hour back from our evening to add it to our morning in the winter months.
When I was younger, I can recall feeling that hour exchange mostly in the summer. I hated losing an hour of sleep. I believe it was just a few years ago though when my disdain for an hour being subtracted, would make no difference to me.
The show would have to go on.
It amazes me how slothful people are when it comes to time. Time is by virtue, a very precious and valuable entity of which I'm afraid many have yet to really harness and take advantage of.
Hence, not being further off than they were at the beginning of the year, at years end and thus forced to feign New Year's resolutions to save face.
Hence, not being further off than they were at the beginning of the year, at years end and thus forced to feign New Year's resolutions to save face.
We procrastinate and put off things without hesitation as if we have time to waste. We spend God awful hours being sidetracked by the seemingly perfect lives of others on social media. Wishing we could somehow trade places with people who appear to be living their best lives. Yet we erupt in jealousy and envy when someone pops up on the scene out of nowhere who appears to be an overnight sensation. Not realizing that they didn't happen overnight. Instead, these people were the ones squeezing the necessary supplements out of every minute of their hours to become what's visible to you.
This is even more so true of those who've come into agreement with God's divine clockwork.
Some of the greatest blessings and tangible manifestations will come to those in this hour who will freely give God all of their deadlines and agendas in exchange for His way.
These type of transactions will come with pretty swell benefits that will look like being positioned at the right place at the right time, meeting the right people, and having the right conversations to propel them forward.
It's because God's clockwork will literally bypass all kinds of snags, glitches and delays as well as the inevitable restrictions surrounding our own plans.
The reason why God's timing is impeccable because He isn't governed or ruled by it.
He created time for us.
He created time for us.
On the other end of the spectrum, if we aren't wasting time, we're rushing time. By skipping steps and cutting corners. Left later, wondering why that thing which we rushed has so many flaws and defects.
God specifically gave us 24 hours in A DAY.
That's 1,440 minutes. That's 86,440 seconds. Nothing more and nothing less.
Why did He give us this time?
To maximize our divine potential.
Every day that you waste is a day taken away from making the most of the time allotted towards reaching your potential.
Every day that you rush is taking away from reaping the benefits of development and maturation.
A fruit that is not consumed during the days that it is most ripe will eventually rot.
A fruit that you attempt to consume before it is ripened will be bitter.
If God is the potter and we are the clay; time is the pottery wheel.
He can slow it down if He wants to and speed it up if He has to.
Here's why we can't be disheartened when something we expected to happen at a certain time doesn't or adopt a lackadaisical approach to life because we think we have more time than we do.
No. No. No.
God can take something that was typically supposed to happen in five years happen in just one. And He can prolong the process for a thing that could have happened in one year by five years. It depends on you and your relationship to His desired outcome.
I'm sure God could have created everything described in the book of Genesis, in ONE DAY! But He didn't. He created everything in 6. Then, He rested.
This is indeed the beauty of God's clockwork.
There is a method to His greatness.
Why am I exhausting this blog post to get you to embrace the concept of God's timing?
I want you to determine what your current coordinates are.
Are you abusing your 24 hours by placing anvils on your responsibilities and sandbags in front of your progression?
Are you trying to push the hands on the clock ahead of it's actual time to meet those little clippings you taped on your vision board at New Year's Eve?
There are so many components housed within an event coming to past, that wasting time will undermine and rushing time will erode.
Hear this, God will manipulate time to preserve and to protect us. Some things we need to be preserved for and other things we need to be protected from and He'll use time to do it.
An example of God using time to protect; One Friday evening, a colleague and I went to see Lauren Daigle, a new Christian artist in concert at the Rosemont Arena in Rosemont, Illinois. We decided to share a Lyft ride back once it was over. As we headed back to Chicago, the expressway was reduced to one lane and then eventually turned into a parking lot. I assumed there was accident ahead. My colleague was fast asleep. I on the other hand was engaged in an illustrious conversation with our driver who happened to be from Palestine.
I didn't know we weren't moving until it begin to rain heavily.
Time was creeping close to midnight when the pitiful one lane started to move.
As we picked up speed, I saw a vision of the car we were in and multiple headlights coming towards the left side of the car.
I quickly prayed, "God don't let us get in a car accident tonight."
Lo and behold a fender-bender had occurred, causing the bottleneck.
Once we made it past the accident we were able to drive at a regular speed even though it was still pouring down.
When we made our exit off of the expressway, the driver made a left turn to go east on a street designated for motorists to drive west.
Yes. We were driving on the wrong side of the street!
Immediately, the vision I'd seen while on the expressway flashed before my eyes as I looked ahead and saw the cars positioned in our direction.
Fortunately, our driver was able to make a U-turn without disruption mainly because the cars were waiting at the stoplight.
What if, we'd never got caught in that traffic jam?
In that short amount of time, the traffic jam gave us enough time to be caught going in the wrong direction while the cars going in the right direction were caught by a red light.
Does that make sense?
We could have all died that night or suffered some very serious injuries.
Romans 13:11
And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.
An example of God using time to preserve; Saturday on the final day of my church's super dope conference the World Changer's Summit, after the morning session was over and everyone was permitted to grab lunch, I decided to stick around the arena. I wasn't hungry and I told myself I didn't need a brownie from the Starbucks across the street because it would tear my stomach to shreds. So, I paid a visit to the vendor tables and snagged me a cool shirt. I ran into some familiar faces and chatted briefly. Then meandered around the venue to find a quiet place to sit until the invitation to go back into the auditorium was made.
The hallways were busy with lively, happy, eager people. But my introverted side was beckoning for a lonely corner to recharge. I mean, I'd spent three days in the midst of thousands of people, I NEEDED MY CORNER! Ha!
I wound up walking around the entire arena until I found a space that was not as lit as the other spaces. I leaned on a pillar for a minute or so. Then chose to sit on a concrete arched bar across from it.
I looked at the time on my phone. I had about an hour to chill where I was. Shortly after checking the time, a young lady came by and sat next to me. I was provoked to make conversation with her while laughing at memes.
I started off by asking her if this were her first time attending the conference. She told me it was and that she'd only been in Chicago for two months. She shared that I was actually the second person that had introduced themselves to her since being here. She went on to tell me that she was from Nigeria but she moved to Pakistan to earn her degree as a doctor. After she earned her degree, she moved to Chicago to join my church. Fascinating right?
She was honest when she expressed to me her desires to be a Gynecologist in order to minister to women but the financial burden she feel likes she's placed on her parents due to her inability to get a job here on a student visa and a place to stay other than the temporary dorm room she resides. The board test that she needs to take to become licensed to practice in this profession, is 18 months away and she stated that she was not sure if she'd be able to survive that long.
And that's when my stomach caught fire like someone turning on a furnace. God gave me a word for her. He told her first not to worry. That she would be receiving financial aide from various means and would be sustained. He told her by the first quarter of next year, her parents' assistance would just be a subsidy because most of her financial assistance would come from somewhere else. He then told her where she would end up working and living. Come to find out it's the place where I lived before I lost everything. I was able to combine the information that He had me give to her with the wisdom from my personal experiences,
turning it into a roadmap as well a calming agent to sooth her anxiety.
You know what she told me afterwards?
She said she came to the conference for a word and was expecting to be called out of the audience and given that word. When she didn't get that word she said she went home that night disappointed but heard God say, "Stop trying to make Me come to you in the way you want me to. You just want it that way for attention. It's going to come to you from somewhere else."
We both wept. She wept because she'd received her word. I wept because I'd received my sign. I came to the conference looking for a sign that I was headed in the right direction. God used her as my sign of what it looks like to branch out on faith and take risks. You know how when you're traveling from one state to the next and you're greeted by a "Welcome to," and the name of the state you just entered? I compared my interaction with her as a sign that I've entered into a new spiritual state and that I'm headed in the right direction.
What if I'd gone to Starbucks to kill time? What if I hadn't taken that long trip around the arena to find my desired quiet space? I wouldn't have gotten my sign. And she wouldn't have gotten her word. We were both preserved on that day.
Did I at least do an OK job at painting the picture? Listen beloved, the enemy would prefer for you to do one of two things; that's either forfeit the clock or swallow your hours whole. Either way, you'll miss your destination and become a stale piece of bread or a rotten fig.
Let's not be caught as either one. Let's take advantage of God's clockwork!
Don't let the devil make you time out!
God specifically gave us 24 hours in A DAY.
That's 1,440 minutes. That's 86,440 seconds. Nothing more and nothing less.
Why did He give us this time?
To maximize our divine potential.
Every day that you waste is a day taken away from making the most of the time allotted towards reaching your potential.
Every day that you rush is taking away from reaping the benefits of development and maturation.
A fruit that is not consumed during the days that it is most ripe will eventually rot.
A fruit that you attempt to consume before it is ripened will be bitter.
If God is the potter and we are the clay; time is the pottery wheel.
He can slow it down if He wants to and speed it up if He has to.
Here's why we can't be disheartened when something we expected to happen at a certain time doesn't or adopt a lackadaisical approach to life because we think we have more time than we do.
No. No. No.
God can take something that was typically supposed to happen in five years happen in just one. And He can prolong the process for a thing that could have happened in one year by five years. It depends on you and your relationship to His desired outcome.
I'm sure God could have created everything described in the book of Genesis, in ONE DAY! But He didn't. He created everything in 6. Then, He rested.
This is indeed the beauty of God's clockwork.
There is a method to His greatness.
Why am I exhausting this blog post to get you to embrace the concept of God's timing?
I want you to determine what your current coordinates are.
Are you abusing your 24 hours by placing anvils on your responsibilities and sandbags in front of your progression?
Are you trying to push the hands on the clock ahead of it's actual time to meet those little clippings you taped on your vision board at New Year's Eve?
There are so many components housed within an event coming to past, that wasting time will undermine and rushing time will erode.
Hear this, God will manipulate time to preserve and to protect us. Some things we need to be preserved for and other things we need to be protected from and He'll use time to do it.
An example of God using time to protect; One Friday evening, a colleague and I went to see Lauren Daigle, a new Christian artist in concert at the Rosemont Arena in Rosemont, Illinois. We decided to share a Lyft ride back once it was over. As we headed back to Chicago, the expressway was reduced to one lane and then eventually turned into a parking lot. I assumed there was accident ahead. My colleague was fast asleep. I on the other hand was engaged in an illustrious conversation with our driver who happened to be from Palestine.
I didn't know we weren't moving until it begin to rain heavily.
Time was creeping close to midnight when the pitiful one lane started to move.
As we picked up speed, I saw a vision of the car we were in and multiple headlights coming towards the left side of the car.
I quickly prayed, "God don't let us get in a car accident tonight."
Lo and behold a fender-bender had occurred, causing the bottleneck.
Once we made it past the accident we were able to drive at a regular speed even though it was still pouring down.
When we made our exit off of the expressway, the driver made a left turn to go east on a street designated for motorists to drive west.
Yes. We were driving on the wrong side of the street!
Immediately, the vision I'd seen while on the expressway flashed before my eyes as I looked ahead and saw the cars positioned in our direction.
Fortunately, our driver was able to make a U-turn without disruption mainly because the cars were waiting at the stoplight.
What if, we'd never got caught in that traffic jam?
In that short amount of time, the traffic jam gave us enough time to be caught going in the wrong direction while the cars going in the right direction were caught by a red light.
Does that make sense?
We could have all died that night or suffered some very serious injuries.
Romans 13:11
And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.
An example of God using time to preserve; Saturday on the final day of my church's super dope conference the World Changer's Summit, after the morning session was over and everyone was permitted to grab lunch, I decided to stick around the arena. I wasn't hungry and I told myself I didn't need a brownie from the Starbucks across the street because it would tear my stomach to shreds. So, I paid a visit to the vendor tables and snagged me a cool shirt. I ran into some familiar faces and chatted briefly. Then meandered around the venue to find a quiet place to sit until the invitation to go back into the auditorium was made.
The hallways were busy with lively, happy, eager people. But my introverted side was beckoning for a lonely corner to recharge. I mean, I'd spent three days in the midst of thousands of people, I NEEDED MY CORNER! Ha!
I wound up walking around the entire arena until I found a space that was not as lit as the other spaces. I leaned on a pillar for a minute or so. Then chose to sit on a concrete arched bar across from it.
I looked at the time on my phone. I had about an hour to chill where I was. Shortly after checking the time, a young lady came by and sat next to me. I was provoked to make conversation with her while laughing at memes.
I started off by asking her if this were her first time attending the conference. She told me it was and that she'd only been in Chicago for two months. She shared that I was actually the second person that had introduced themselves to her since being here. She went on to tell me that she was from Nigeria but she moved to Pakistan to earn her degree as a doctor. After she earned her degree, she moved to Chicago to join my church. Fascinating right?
She was honest when she expressed to me her desires to be a Gynecologist in order to minister to women but the financial burden she feel likes she's placed on her parents due to her inability to get a job here on a student visa and a place to stay other than the temporary dorm room she resides. The board test that she needs to take to become licensed to practice in this profession, is 18 months away and she stated that she was not sure if she'd be able to survive that long.
And that's when my stomach caught fire like someone turning on a furnace. God gave me a word for her. He told her first not to worry. That she would be receiving financial aide from various means and would be sustained. He told her by the first quarter of next year, her parents' assistance would just be a subsidy because most of her financial assistance would come from somewhere else. He then told her where she would end up working and living. Come to find out it's the place where I lived before I lost everything. I was able to combine the information that He had me give to her with the wisdom from my personal experiences,
turning it into a roadmap as well a calming agent to sooth her anxiety.
You know what she told me afterwards?
She said she came to the conference for a word and was expecting to be called out of the audience and given that word. When she didn't get that word she said she went home that night disappointed but heard God say, "Stop trying to make Me come to you in the way you want me to. You just want it that way for attention. It's going to come to you from somewhere else."
We both wept. She wept because she'd received her word. I wept because I'd received my sign. I came to the conference looking for a sign that I was headed in the right direction. God used her as my sign of what it looks like to branch out on faith and take risks. You know how when you're traveling from one state to the next and you're greeted by a "Welcome to," and the name of the state you just entered? I compared my interaction with her as a sign that I've entered into a new spiritual state and that I'm headed in the right direction.
What if I'd gone to Starbucks to kill time? What if I hadn't taken that long trip around the arena to find my desired quiet space? I wouldn't have gotten my sign. And she wouldn't have gotten her word. We were both preserved on that day.
Did I at least do an OK job at painting the picture? Listen beloved, the enemy would prefer for you to do one of two things; that's either forfeit the clock or swallow your hours whole. Either way, you'll miss your destination and become a stale piece of bread or a rotten fig.
Let's not be caught as either one. Let's take advantage of God's clockwork!
Don't let the devil make you time out!
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