Timing 202

At God University, after Instant Obedience 201, you usually take the extension course, Timing 202.

That's the class where you learn that timing really is everything. You discover that when God says, "Do it Now," He means do it Now.

Not in two hours. Not next Thursday.
Not when you feel like it.
Not when you believe tomorrow would be a better, wiser time.

Now is when He's giving you His anointing. Now is when another person's heart is ready to receive what God is speaking through yours. Now is when His power and Grace are at the gate, waiting to be released, like water from a canal wall.

And that's the class where you learn if you wait past Now, it usually means you've blown it. Sometimes God gives you a second chance, but often He doesn't. It's humbling to discover God thinks our own bright ideas are just a huge waste of time. That's all part of the pop quizzes. The goal of Timing 202 is to show us that only what is done for--and by--God will last. Only when we listen and obey His terrific ideas will there be lasting fruit.

But you also learn to Wait when God says Wait. That's just as hard sometimes, because sometimes He gives you the words to say before He wants you to say them. Before the timing is His. That's all part of the pop quizzes, too. Will we zoom out ahead of God and leave His anointing, His timing in our dust? Will we skip blithely ahead with God's words, but our own timing, our own ways, our own ideas--all of which will, more than likely, lead us to a big, fat mess?

Will we race ahead before God is ready or before we are or before others' hearts are ready, too?

Timing 202...Vital, vital stuff. Trust me, at the beginning of that class I was like a wild, untamed horse just chomping at the bit, kicking at the gate and wanting to be released to what I thought was freedom. It took a few catastrophes, though, to learn that real freedom is when God can trust you with the gift He gave you.

And at the end of my thrashing and loud insistence upon rights and running around putting out fires I began myself.....when exhaustion had to bring me to the place of giving up and doing things exactly God's way... Well, it was like the end of the movie, The Miracle Worker. Remember that? The blind, deaf and mute Helen Keller, after years of no discipline and following weeks of physically and emotionally fighting her teacher, Annie Sullivan--Helen finally, finally understood that Annie was giving her a way out of the darkness. And that evening, in the silence, after what had been weeks of wild, rebellious storms, Helen stepped quietly into Annie's darkening room and sat upon her lap in a rocking chair. And, together, they rocked slowly in the blessed peace of acceptance--and true freedom.

Well, it was like that.

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