Missions - The Time Factor

Often as we look to Scripture to see those shining lights that are our examples of faith and we miss the time factor that is involved in God completing that great work that He began in His children.
 

Hebrews 10:12 reminds us, "That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises."

The time and patience factor in the work of God is often stumbled over by God's children.

Abraham was called of God and promised among other things a land, a nation, a son, and to become a blessing to the whole world. Consider the promise of a son to an old man whose wife was barren would not be completed in nine months or nine years but would not come to pass for over twenty years.

Jacob would wait over twenty years before he wrestled with both his flesh and with God and humbled and broken God changed his name to Israel.

Joseph would be given a dream of God using him to bless his family, but his family hated him and sold him as a slave and again nearly twenty years would pass before his family bowed to him and was blessed by him.

Moses was called of God to deliver the Hebrew people from the bondage of Pharaoh in Egypt and at forty years of age would seek to fulfill his destiny only to fail and spend another forty years on the backside of a desert tending sheep before God used him to deliver God's people with God's mighty hand.

Joseph and Caleb both would have the Promised Land delayed for forty years before their greater purpose in Christ was fulfilled.

Consider David was chosen to be king instead of Saul, but it would be many years before David finally sat on the throne in Jerusalem and all of Israel acknowledged him as God's appointed king.

In the Storm Series, I have tried to share that the principles of God are timeless and do not change and that many of the truths that I have shared are not learned over night like a college student cramming for a final exam. Sometimes it takes years before we see the fruition of the dream that God has given us. The danger for us is to lose patience and give up on God's greater plan for our lives. Remember, "God first works in us before He works through us." Many of us want God to work through us before we have yielded to His great work in us.

I remember attending a Basic Youth Conference over 30 years ago and hearing Bill Gothard teach on "Please be patient God is not finished with me yet." This is true for us all and the danger is to one day, in discouragement say with David, after years of waiting for the promised throne, "And David said in his heart, I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul: there is nothing better for me than that I should speedily escape into the land of the Philistines; and Saul shall despair of me, to seek me any more in any coast of Israel: so shall I escape out of his hand." (1 Samuel 27:1)