Group 6 – Time and Timing
We are so often ahead of God or behind His schedule. And He feels no pressure to make our out-of-time actions work.
Tragically, there is little teaching and preaching about staying synchronized with God’s timepiece.
Here is an initial set of strategies to move toward that objective.
Prayer Strategies
Strategy #1
Two pictures.
Quarterback has the ball, scrambles, looks downfield. He has three receivers and throws the ball to one who catches it. Pretty technical and exciting.
Quarterback has the ball. He has two hundred receivers and has to throw the same ball to all 200 simultaneously, high for some, low for others, right-handed for some, left-handed for others.
Reality check #1: No speaker can land the same truth in 200 different people, each at a different point in their lives.
Reality check #2: God can.
NOT an original problem.
Time and timing is not a common Biblical theme these days. We will have to dig into the Word, week after week, to break down the stories about time and timing into the components that can be converted into principles that we can pray.
My all-time favorite is the crucifixion. The Jews did not want it to happen when it did. The Romans did not want it to happen when it did. The devil surely did not want it to happen at the right time.
And the absolutely hilarious dynamic is that GOD PLAYED THE DEVIL. The devil entered into Judas to betray Jesus right on heaven’s time, because God is the God of Time and Timing and He can get stuff done!!!
My second best is the Sanhedrin believing in the resurrection that the apostles did not believe in. They went to the Romans, got soldiers and the wherewithal to “seal” the tomb. The weight of Imperial Rome’s law and military was imbedded into the wax LOCKING the stone in place.
And God Almighty flicked aside the entire legal and military power of the Roman Empire and the Jewish government, and raised Jesus from the dead RIGHT ON TIME.
Because He could.
Such fun.
So the stories are there. We need to dig them out and find the “so what” to those stories.
But first we need to look inside and see where we are on our journey.
Your first assignment is to study your life in five-year increments looking for time and timing episodes.
Time has to do with seasons of our lives. I am keenly aware that I am in transition from one season to another RIGHT NOW. I don’t know who I am going to be when I grow up, but I know the ME that you know is on the way out. A different version will show up for the seminar.
Some of your seasons are marked by social events like getting married. Others are done completely internally, while your external world seems to remain unchanged.
Timing has to do with God nudging us or God shifting circumstances to make something possible.
I got an Elbow to PHONE a lady I had not spoken to for a couple of years. God’s timing. She had just faced a mystifying issue in her life and didn’t know what to do about it.
Each person has a different journey. We want to tap into the way God has been preparing you for this season, rather than fit you into an arbitrary mold of what we need you to do.
If there are patterns that can be easily seen and languaged, take a moment to briefly write them out.
Let’s get your own story figured out in the next two weeks, then we will move into some customized implementation.
Strategy #2
For the next window of intercession, let’s focus on time – as in seasons.
I am keenly aware that I am at the end of a season. We are deconstructing many programs that were drawing us away from the primary calling in SLG.
In December, we will be discussing at length what we know about the new season, and in January will be implementing new facets.
I have a very clear perspective about being at the end of a season, because I have a fair amount of experience in transitioning from one season to the next.
Not everyone can perceive that, nor lean in with principles.
God knows who is in transition, and most particularly, who needs to get their transition done before the event.
For this next period of intercession, lean into those who ARE in a seasonal shift and don’t know it.
The Holy Spirit is skilled at midwifing transition, so cry out for Him to help the people who don’t know they need help, to get closure before February.
Strategy #3
OK, team. We have dealt with some peripheral things. Now I need you to pour into the big one.
This is the issue of how much time at the seminar I allocate to each topic.
Please go to Free Audio and download the Canaanite Curse from the Seven Curses album. It would be good to update yourselves on that spiritual dynamic.
At the minimum, I need to have my ears on to hear what the Spirit wants included in each ministry session. On the high end of wonderful would be God expanding time to hold more content.
I will be making a LOT of judgment calls along the way as I try to sense where the Spirit is at any given moment, when to drill down with more at some point, when to just pause in silence.
Pray into the pauses.
My experience is that there are some people who just can’t handle silence, especially from the front. And their agitation robs the people around them of peace.
Ask God to identify the perpetual motion people and to douse them in a good dose of the peace of God when I am silent, watching the spirit work and waiting for the Elbow to continue.
Copyright by Arthur Burk