Here’s a page in a devotional that I flipped to “randomly” today. It is so fitting that I have to share:
He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
to proclaim the acceptable year of our Lord.
Isaiah 61: 1a-2b NKJ
God’s timing is perfect! When He speaks, the time to respond in obedience is now. We often act as if we have all the time in the world to obey Him, but history doesn’t wait on our commitments. There is no such thing as postponing a decision with God. Either we obey, or we disobey. It is either faith or unbelief, obedience or disobedience.
When God announces that now is the acceptable time, what you do next is critical. How often people have been unprepared when a word came to them from the Lord. God said, “Now is the time for you to respond to Me,” and their response was, “but I’m not ready. I have some things I need to do first. I’m too busy!” (Matthew 8:21). God’s timing is always perfect. He knows you, and He is fully aware of your circumstances. He knows all that He has built into your life until now, and He extends His invitation knowing that His resources are more than adequate for any assignment He gives you.
That is why Scripture tells us God is concerned with our hearts. If we do not keep our hearts in love with Jesus, our disobedience when God speaks could affect the lives of others. When God speaks, it is always out of the context of Eternity. We don’t have to know all the implications of what He is asking. We just have to know that it is a word from Almighty God. “Now” is always the acceptable time to respond to the Lord!
Blackaby, Henry T. and Richard Blackaby.
Experiencing God Day by Day.
B & H Publishing Group, Nashville, Tennessee, 2006. Page 65.
My Thoughts . . .
As recently as last August, Roy and I had no idea that we would be moving to Idaho–ever. Family members asked us if relocating was a possibility, and we both said, “No.” We couldn’t see it ever happening–unless there was some “ministry-related reason.” Here we are, less than a year later, getting ready to move to begin a ministry in Southern Idaho.
How we got from point A to point B involves a lot of little steps along the way, but the major highlights are these: We began the year, as a family, with prayer and fasting, and God said, “Drop your nets and go!” There have been times when we’ve considered whether we need more preparation or planning, but we keep hearing God say, “Go!” and to trust Him with the details. God has been telling us that if we want to see Him do big things, that is going to require big change from us–a big response from us–not going about business as usual. God is going to do something new, and it is going to require that we live in a new way.
God has given us a vision for big and exciting things. We don’t know how they will all come about, how long it will take to see them come to fruition, or what we will be doing from now until that point, but we don’t need to know all the particulars. He is telling us to keep moving forward and focus on taking the next step–to allow Him to be the lamp that lights our path, just a few steps ahead each day. We’ve been asked if that is scary, and it could be if we were counting on ourselves to make things happen, but we have risked our futures on the prompting of God and His power to see this dream become a reality, and risking everything on God is really no risk at all.
Wendy Clark