Our thought for today comes from a woman who has had more difficulties to deal with than a lot of us put together. That is why she has a right to say what she says, and why we should take notice when she says it.

“I know discouragement comes easy, but I also know things happen when God is ready for them to happen and not a second sooner. God knows why he wants things to happen in the order they have to. We just need to be ready when they come.”

This is a woman in a complex situation seeking to hold onto a childlike faith while displaying an adult-like wisdom. What she’s saying is that she has recognized there are two different time zones going on when it comes to correlating God’s will and our experience. One I’ll call My Desperate Time (MDT) and the other, God’s Own Time (GOT).

Most of us run on MDT. MDT defines our reality. It’s what we see and feel always. We are conscious of it the minute we rise up in the morning until we put our weary heads on the pillow at night. We measure pleasure and pain by it; we judge our overall state-of-being by it.

God, on the other hand, exists in another time zone entirely. In GOT, His will is always done, and nothing is ever late. GOT also takes into account the MDT of everyone, which can often get tangled up. You see there are as many MDT zones as there are people, and that means they can often be in conflict. But with God there is never any conflict. There is only one GOT and as far as He is concerned, everything is right on schedule.

This is why it is utterly silly to wonder if God has heard our prayers based on whether or not He has acted in MDT. God always hears our prayers — He has most likely already answered them — he just answered them in GOT.

Most of our issues with God are all about time zones. Think about the hapless Bible character, Job. Job was smack in the middle of MDT all the while he was suffering, and his best friends were trying to figure out why God wasn’t doing anything in MDT. Well, we know now that God rarely does; He is always in GOT and we can see that now, in Job’s case, because his life ultimately caught up with GOT. Eventually, all MDT will be GOT. In fact, that will be what heaven is all about. We will all be kicking back in God’s Own Time.

So faith is mostly all about time zones. When you pray, know that you were heard, and move ahead, believing in GOT and just maybe, MDT won’t be so desperate.

Question: What “time zone” do you see yourself usually operating in?

by John Fischer
used by permission

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“No one understands”, Katie thought as she struggled with feeling so alone in her decision. Everyone had advice about what she should do.

There were so many opinions. But no one understood the depth of the issue. An isolated feeling of loneliness crept into her soul. Did God even understand? Doubts of her belief in God’s love began to crowd her thinking. “God, show me that you are here,” she called out in despair.

That night she picked up her Bible before turning out the light… would she find hope? Her little daily reading book told her to read Psalm 139. Her fingers flipped through the pages and her eyes fell on these verses.

“O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord. You hem me in – behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me; your right hand will hold me fast… For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” Psalm 139

Katie felt like fresh water was poured over her parched soul. Yes, God cared. Yes, God understood her in a way no one ever could.

God is familiar with your whole situation and He promised to hold you fast! He knows you!. When you were conceived God’s knitting needles went to work creating you in your inmost being. Yes, you can trust Him to guide you through whatever you face today. He understands.

Prayer & reflection:

Heavenly Father, Thank you for this knowledge that you care so deeply and know me so intimately. I will trust your knowledge of me and your hand to guide me. Give me your wisdom today. Hold on to me in my spinning world. Thank you for understanding me. You know me better than I know myself. Thank you for this comfort. Thank you that you are my trustworthy Father! I choose to trust you in my circumstances today! In Jesus Name, Amen.

by Gail Rodgers
used by permission

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The post Better Than You Know Yourself appeared first on Thoughts About God.

You do not know what you are going to do;

The only thing you know is that God knows what He is doing.*

God Knows. The great challenge of faith is that we live and move in uncertainty. I chuckle to myself whenever I hear people lay out life plans: we’re going to finish college before we get married; we’ll wait a few years and get settled into jobs, then start a family. Or, We’re going to move to a cheaper area and work for a while so we can save money, then we’ll move back and be able to buy a house.

The encourager in me cheers on the young couple; the realist wants to start asking, “But what if…?”; the arrogant Bible student in me (yes, he’s there) wants to quote

James 4:13-17
“ Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17 So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.”

God didn’t tell Abram where to go, he just told him to go; I wonder how Sarai felt about that. Jonah was told exactly where to go, and he went the other direction; God compelled a smelly, messy U-turn. Saul (the future evangelist, not the king) was following his plan when God interrupted with a blinding flash; he ended up finishing that journey, but with a very different purpose.

Plans are good and necessary; they help us make decisions today that would be more difficult without some idea of what we wanted to do tomorrow. But for those who want to follow God, our plans need to be held loosely. And when they don’t work out, we must lean on the One who is always certain.

God does not tell you what He is going to do; He reveals to you who He is.*

Know God. No matter how well planned, the future is always uncertain. Even when plans are going just as we … well, planned, life can change in an instant: Cancer. Car accident. Market crash. Layoff. Miscarriage. Or, as with a student teacher I met recently, someone else’s innocent mistake years back has rippled forward and disrupted everything, potentially laying to waste all the work and schooling and training she has done.

When plans are interrupted, life can spiral out of control. Emotions spin, hearts drain, motivation dies. We go from living to existing, and that in the cold, persistent grey of a Seattle winter. Questions drip from the dark clouds, slowly building in intensity until all life is a storm and spiritual vertigo blinds us to any sense of direction.

And it is there amid the tempest that God meets us. There we—like the Psalmist—find in God a refuge. He becomes shield and shepherd, guide and guardian. In the cancer, he is Comforter. After the layoff, he is Provider. In the waiting, he is Emmanuel, God With Us. In the injustice, Merciful.

God is not always who we want him to be, when we want him to be it. In the hospital, we want Healer more than Comforter. In the courthouse we want Judge, not Mercy (unless I am the one on trial). After the layoff, I want a job, not charity.

God rarely meets our expectations—and always exceeds them.

In the midst of the storms of his life, Job had endless questions for God; none was answered. In the end, he only had a new glimpse of the Almighty, and that was sufficient. Saul, too, received new spiritual eyes (though, ironically, he is believed to have had very poor physical eyesight). The blind man’s prayer, “I want to see,” should be our cry when life’s circumstances blind us. The vision we need is not to see the road, but to see God, to know him in ways we have not yet perceived.

Jesus said, “This is eternal life: that they may know you….”

When only God knows, may we know God.

*Quotes are from My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers.

By Randy Ehle
Used by Permission
https://randehle.com/

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The post God Knows – Know God appeared first on Thoughts About God.