Trusting and Timing

Let us talk a little about trusting and timing.  This is a biggie.  Jesus was "led" into the wilderness to be tempted.  I feel like I could stop here.  We could spend days in contemplation.  The three temptations are appetite, presumption, trust.  This is the whole of life.  Where Adam and Eve failed, Jesus gained victory.  He had to undo what Adam and Eve did.  Have you ever been in a situation where you feel you have to undo the mistakes of others or your own mistakes?  This has a lesson in it for us about timing. 

When looking towards our "callings," we need to see that attached to the "calling" is time in the wilderness...undoing the wounds of the past.  This purifying of motive, the letting go of self agendas, prepares us for the "calling."  We need healing in the same three areas...appetite (not just food, but anything we have a passion for), presumption (taking God's word and making it say what it does not say in order to justify our rebellion/disobedience), and trust (Satan offered Jesus the easy way of doing  what He came to do by the way of the cross...if He had knelt down and worshiped Satan that would have meant that His god would have been Satan). 

After Jesus endured the temptation (the purification of motive) process, He was a step closer to being in the timing of His ministry.  Jesus did not need the purification process.  The accuser of the brethren (Satan) demands it as proof that there is no sin that warrants our death (see Romans 8).  All that Jesus did (baptism and temptation) modeled for us the first stage of our life path and that life path leads to crucifixion.  He is showing us how to do it successfully...one step at a time.  Even with the water to wine story (the wedding feast), Jesus reminds His mother that "His time in not yet come."  It wasn't about the miracle, it was about putting Himself out there for rejection.  On the front end of Jesus' ministry, He would tell the people that He healed not to tell anyone.  Why?  He was going to be rejected, but He had much to do before that rejection.  Another lesson for us.  We are going to be rejected.  In all our visions of ministry, we rarely see this truth.

Timing is an important thing.  Beholding Jesus in His process...which is our process if we embrace His journey...is essential to laying down all our agendas.  We most often take our agendas to God and ask Him to bless them.  In effect, we are asking to not have to go by the way of the cross.  Otherwise, we would not get upset when things don't go our way.  Enter into His courts with praise and thanksgiving and blessing His name.  Here is the place to start...lifting up God.  Our missions and ministries are all His.  Trusting in His timing keeps us from being in deep water before we are ready.  It also keeps us from doing damage to the image of God because of our spiritual immaturity and motivations which really are driven by neediness and wounding. 

Looking at Jesus, the author and finisher of our salvation, His guidance is not only about His work in salvation, but His work as our model for embracing the journey.  We often think that time is getting by and we are getting left out.  That is fear-based thinking.  You must be the missionary at home before you can do that job anywhere else.  It is very easy to put the home, the community, the friends and family on the back burner while we have visions of somewhere else.  Jesus started at home, and He had the disciples start at home.  It is the best place for that purification process to start.  There seem to be certain stages in life where we feel we just have to be "doing" something wonderful, and it is something other than what we have in front of us.  Look to the model of Jesus, and see the whole process.  Ask for purification and strength to move towards the cross.