How to Think Like Jesus Christ pt 3

Lesson 3 – In God’s Timing

One of the major shifts we all need when beginning to think like Jesus Christ is an almost guaranteed dissonance between your timing and God’s.

This was picked up in an early clash of ‘time alignment’ with Jesus’ family.

Here’s the first part John chapter 7…

After these things, Jesus was walking in Galilee, for he wouldn’t walk in Judea, because the Jews sought to kill him. Now the feast of the Jews, the Feast of Booths, was at hand. His brothers therefore said to him, “Depart from here and go into Judea, that your disciples also may see your works which you do. For no one does anything in secret while he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, reveal yourself to the world.” For even his brothers didn’t believe in him.

Jesus therefore said to them, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always ready. The world can’t hate you, but it hates me, because I testify about it, that its works are evil. You go up to the feast. I am not yet going up to this feast, because my time is not yet fulfilled.”

Perhaps the most well-known passage on timing is the beautiful passage in Ecclesiastes chapter three…

For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven:

a time to be born,

    and a time to die;

a time to plant,

    and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

a time to kill,

    and a time to heal;

a time to break down,

    and a time to build up;

a time to weep,

    and a time to laugh;

a time to mourn,

    and a time to dance;

a time to cast away stones,

    and a time to gather stones together;

a time to embrace,

    and a time to refrain from embracing;

a time to seek,

    and a time to lose;

a time to keep,

    and a time to cast away;

a time to tear,

    and a time to sew;

a time to keep silence,

    and a time to speak;

a time to love,

    and a time to hate;

a time for war,

    and a time for peace.

One of the most challenging aspects the New Jesus Christ-like Thinker will have to adopt is the fact that there is a time for war.

When we don’t have an accurate Theology, the BIG issue will always be, “Why does God allow such and such to happen?”

Jesus NEVER promised an easy journey – quite the opposite in fact.  Why?  Because the truth is we are at war and have been since the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden.

There is a time for every purpose under heaven – for everything, there is a season.

Thus, NOW is the time of the YHWH’s favour – the spiritual equivalent of the Year of Jubilee – when all of Israel’s tribes had restored what they had lost.  They found rest.  They found peace.  It IS a time for peace for us, but it has to be entered into, just as the tribes of Israel had to enter into and ‘take’ the promised land.

The New Testament message is that all the powers of darkness have been defeated.  But defeated is not the same as absent.  It took a long time to mop up the resistance from the Japanese in the Pacific after VJ Day in the Pacific.  Some deep jungle Japanese warriors went on waging guerrilla warfare for decades!

Whilst the devil may know that he is defeated, what other options does he have but to fight?

Let’s accept, therefore, that we are at war, and we always will be.

There’s a powerful moment in the first Independence Day movie where an alien uses a human to speak to the President.  The President says, “Can there be peace between us?”  The chilling answer comes back: “No peace…”  This mirrors the truth of the war between the forces of the Kingdom of God and the principalities and powers of darkness.

In a strategic campaign in war, timing is a key ingredient.

God has a plan.

He has timings.

Some are not for us to know.

The rest are!

To understand God’s timing, we have to learn to listen.

To enjoy the silence.

Go on a date with the Holy Spirit.

Go off into Nature.

Find quiet

And stop talking.

Stop talking, start listening.

Ask God to unveil His timing for your life.

Remember the veil of the Temple was torn from top to bottom – and thus not by human hand.

You and I SHOULD be able to go ‘within the veil’.

But first, we have to get past the gatekeeper.

The gatekeeper is called by some preachers, “The Fanatic in the Attic,” though I prefer, “The Idiot in the Attic.”  Jesus was clear that we should never call anyone a fool – but the word for ‘fool’ suggests a morally deficient person.  By ‘idiot’ I mean an ego-centric needy part of the human psyche.

There is a monkey in our mind that just chitter-chatter-chatters most of the time.

The Holy Spirit is not in the storm of the chatter.  He is not in the noise.

Some psychologists talk about the Ego, the Id, and the Super-Ego.  The Id is what Paul would call, “the flesh,” the carnal fallen instinctive animal aspect of humans.  The Ego is the “I’ – the self.  The Super-Ego is more akin to the regenerate spirit in the born-again believer.

To ‘hear’ God’s timing, you and I will need to listen more often to the Super-Ego.  This is what I call, “The Sensei in the Cellar.”

The Fanatic-in-the-Attic is the noisy, needy, self-centred mindful awareness.

The Sensei-in-the-Cellar is the deeper, quieter, older, wiser aspect of ourselves that listens to God.

To discover God’s timing for your life you must invest time – quiet time… and know that ‘quantity’ matters!!!

Seek Him while He may be found… the favourable Year of YHWH is about to expire.