He's An On-Time God...But My Clock Must Be Broken

"..With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.  The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness..." [2 Peter 3:8-9]

" 'My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,' says the LORD. 'And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.' " [Isaiah 55:8]

If you are anything like me, there has been more than one time in your life when there was an "urgent" need that you had and in front of you was a specific date and time that loomed over your head and seemed to tick like a time bomb.  

• You've been planning your wedding, and the final payment on the venue is almost due, but you do not have the funds to pay it...
• You are coming up on the end of your car lease and have no idea what car you will get next or how you will get it (because your credit and your income is hardly the same as it was when you originally got your current car lease)...
• Your maternity leave is almost over and you have not found a child care provider for your new baby...
• You are a homeowner who has struggled to hold on to your home, but the foreclosure auction date stands tall before you...
• Your landlord contacts you to inform you that she's sold the house you rent, and you must leave in 2 months...what will you do and where will you go?
• Your issue is not even materialistic...you're desiring to have a baby and you feel your biological clock is about to stop ticking altogether...you are desiring to finally meet the man God has for you, and you're not getting any younger...will you live life as a spinster?

I could go on ad nauseam (to a ridiculous degree) with a trillion other scenarios that we have all possibly faced or are actually and currently facing.  But in all of the possible scenarios, our common bottom- line issue is this:  In our minds, these urgent needs and desires have a TIME factor (often quite specific) attached to them and we NEED God to intervene and/or show up RIGHT ON-TIME!

But the problem with that is, our God's ways are not our ways, He does not think the way we think, and to us, often His timing may not seem "on-time" at all!  Personally, I have jokingly referred to God as an "11:59 kinda God".  In my past, there were times when I needed God to ACT!  By the time I said my prayer, I had already needed Him to show up on the scene to change things or show out and provide the finances I'd needed to handle a particular situation.  One time in particular, when I was going through a rough time in my marriage, I desperately needed and desired to get a phone call from my husband by a certain time.  I prayed to God, early in the afternoon and specifically asked that God would allow my husband to contact me no later than 5:00 p.m. that day.  Well, the hours ticked by, and I became more anxious, antsy, and confused.  During the 4 o'clock hour I was about to lose my mind, "God must have turned down my request."  And just when I was about to fall deep into a depressed state and give up, the phone rang at 4:59 p.m. with my HUSBAND's voice on the other line.  He was my 11:59, almost-the-stroke-of-midnight, kinda God!  Just before the clock struck twelve and God's Cinderella was about to turn back into a simple girl of rags and cinders, and in front of the Prince...God showed up and delivered her!

Most often, according to our timing, God is not on-time.  And what we will have to realize and get comfy with is that He may show up right at the :59th minute of the hour, or even after the hour.  This THING is...Our GOD is LORD!  He is Lord over this Earth, Lord over our situations and Lord over our earthly sense of time!!!  Nothing can get by us or can happen that our God does not allow to happen.  And truly, if God really needs to, He will make TIME STAND STILL, just as He heard Joshua's prayer and  let the sun stand still for an entire day, to allow Joshua and his troops to have more sunlight in order to demolish their enemy (Joshua 10: 12-14).  Since God is no respecter of persons (Romans 2:1) and He is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8), what He did for Joshua, He CAN & WILL do for us and our situation.  We just have to do our best to REST in His timing, and know that even if time seems to be "up" and the date is about to pass, He's in control, has a plan, and is working behind the scenes for our good.

Believe my words, I have experienced too many times when God has showed up at the last minute or after the hour.  I have experienced Him giving me favor with dates and times, and has worked out miraculous extensions of time (in some situations extensions as long as 2 1/2 years) to meet my "urgent" needs and deadlines.  And even in the times when I had given up, the time and date had long past by, and I had resolved within myself that He had ultimately turned down my prayer, sometime...months later I'd be overwhelmed to realize that He was "on it" all along and had not not give up on me...He had used His own creative methods and plans to supply that very need and deal with that specific date I'd worried about all along (but according to His time and according to His way).

ULTIMATELY...He Has Proven to Be and WILL BE an ON-TIME GOD, 

for me & for YOU!

"If we are unfaithful, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny who he is." [2 Timothy 2:13 NLT]

"I am waiting for the Lord, my soul is waiting for Him, and my hope is in His Word." 
[Psalms 130:5]

"When I was waiting quietly for the Lord, His heart was turned to me, and He gave ear to my cry." [Psalms 40:1]

Please enjoy the sounds of Dottie Peoples singing, "On Time God", complements of YouTube.

Mad Luv~Teri