Psalm 75:2 - July 29, 2009

Ps 75:2 “You say, "I choose the appointed time; it is I who judge uprightly.” NIV

“Are we there yet!?” How many times have we heard this question; from our children, from our own hearts? “How much longer?”, “Will we ever get there!?” For most people life has a way of bringing us to the pressure point of our souls. We begin in faith, hearts full of great expectation, only to see that those expectations have not been realized. In our minds we expected sooner, bigger, better, more people, higher score, more money, more customers, whatever the measuring stick we had measured by, for many people our dream just hasn’t measured up to the picture we had formed in our minds. Can you say “reality check?” Now say “character development!”
Having been in the construction industry one of the most common errors in that field is to grossly underestimate how long the job will take to complete. We calculate to our best efforts, anticipating every possibility, only to see a pile of things we never could have dreamed would happen creep in to change the face of the project we conceived of in our minds. A common saying in the building trades is “calculate how long it’s going to take and then double it.” In many ways this is a similar concept to walking with the Lord. He has an appointed time for everything! Solomon addressed this very simply in Eccl 3:1 “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.” We may view a situation as a failure, we may be tempted to doubt that we heard the Lord correctly but in the middle of all of this we are invited to instead enter into a place of rest! Faith is not the absence of struggle but a patient rest in the promises of God that are the foundation of what we have invested our lives in.
God is the conductor of the great orchestra of life and like the conductor of a giant symphony He is at work to merge and blend the roles of many musicians and their contributions to the whole of that orchestra into one beautiful harmonic song. Often we fall into the trap of only considering our situation from the perspective of our situation but God is at work on a much larger scale. He is not only concerned with the affairs of your life in an isolated vacuum, He is coordinating your maturation, personal development, and life purpose into the giant symphony of every other life that He is at work directing and all of this is in the context of creating one overarching sound called the purpose and plan of God in the earth. We must remember that the work of God in our lives is not in a vacuum! We are a part of a much bigger picture and God’s ways are perfect. David could have been frustrated if he related to his sufferings on simply a personal level. Moses could have been offended and quit on God if he allowed himself to forget the reality that God’s dealings with him were in the context of a much greater plan of raising up a deliverer for the people of Israel who were crying out in their pain and bondage. Yes God is at work on your behalf. Find rest today knowing that God’s timing is perfect and His purpose good! Find rest in the sound of that heavenly song that your life is becoming a part of!