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Timing is everything in life, isn’t it? Few things are worse then when that thing that you so need seems to show up late. Throw on top of all that the fact that time is such a challenging thing to figure out yet alone control and timing can be such a victim making event in our lives.
Today’s Bible reading is one that really makes me think. It comes from the Book of Galatians. Galatians was a book written by the Apostle Paul to a church he helped form some time before. Apparently this church had been visited by teachers who were corrupting the simple message of salvation with rules and regulations that had the church confused to the point of disunity.
Paul wrote this letter to his beloved church with the hopes they would reject the restrictions being put on them and live fully in the freedom of the saving grace of Jesus Christ alone. This letter is just as important to us today. So many of our religious organizations want to add to the simple message of God’s grace in ways that work to rob us of the freedom God paid so much for us to have.
Right in the middle of Paul’s plea for his friends to choose freedom in Christ, he gives us today’s reading. It says;
What I am saying is that as long as an heir is underage, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. The heir is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. So also, when we were underage, we were in slavery under the elemental spiritual forces[a] of the world. But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir. Galatians 4:1-7 (NIV)
So much of the things that we are involved in are what Paul would classify as slave making events. It isn’t that we are necessarily being brutalized by these events It is that we are still in a place where the next step into the fullness of freedom hasn’t come to us as yet.
What controls the timing of that next step? According to our reading today, it is God Himself. Until such time as set by God… Those are powerful and haunting words. God actually knows when it is our time to take that next step from the bondage of slavery to the freedom of being an heir. Of course, the fullness of this walk towards freedom will come at the end of time when we meet God face to face. Until that time, we have to exercise our patience muscles and be willing to recognize when it is our time to move forward.
What is it in your life that is controlling you? What are the circumstances that are keeping you in bondage? They don’t have to be bad things, even the good things of this world can be tied to slavery in a way that fits Paul’s description of moving into greater and greater levels of understanding when it comes to our heirship in the Kingdom of God. Whatever they are, know this, there is a time set for you. A time when you will be fully empowered by God to step out of the place of bondage into the next level of freedom afforded the Child of God’s.
When is that time? Ah, there’s the question of the day. Today might just be your day! How will you know? You just will. Maybe it is a set of circumstances that just can’t be missed that catches your eye. Maybe it is a word from God that is so clear and resounding. Maybe it is just a feeling of resolve that won’t go away.
What ever it looks like your victor status guarantees that God has times for you. Times are set when you will shake off the past and take on the future in ways that make victim thinking something that is easier and easier to not bind you up in ways it use to. As you wait for those times set by God rejoice in your status as a victor. Do all you can to shed the ways of this world that drag you down and wait on Him. His timing is perfect. So are you in His eyes. Rest in that fact until He says it is time to move, then move out into that place of heirship He has made available to you and to me.
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