Life Spark: Wait for God’s ‘right time,’ even if it kills you. (John 7:6-14)
Jesus’ unbelieving brothers cynically challenged Him to go where the action was, to the Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem, to teach the crowds, shake hands and kiss babies.
Therefore Jesus told them, “The right time for me has not yet come; for you any time is right.” (John 7:6, NIV)
The main words for time in the New Testament are ‘chronos’ and ‘kairos.’ Chronos deals with the measure of time (quantity). Kairos has to do with timing being right (quality).
Why was Jesus so concerned with kairos, with timing being right? He didn’t want to get out of sync with God the Father. If He stayed in the public eye too long, if He turned up the heat too fast, the hatred of the religious leaders would be brought to the boiling point too soon, and He would die on the cross ahead of schedule. Thinking of the cross, He said to His brothers: “The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that what it does is evil.” (John 7:7)
The way of the world is to do what I want when I want. In contrast, Jesus came to die on the cross at just the right time, in God’s time. One key to being fully alive like Jesus is waiting for God’s timing, even when it’s hard, even when it kills you.
“I am not yet going up to this Feast, because for me the right time has not yet come.” (John 7:8b, NIV)
Waiting for God’s time is hard for me. He’s so ‘not in a hurry.’ With God, a thousand years is as a day. With me, a thousand years is as a hundred thousand years.
In John 7:6-14, the words ‘right time’ come up twice, the words ‘any time,’ come up once, and the words ‘not yet’ come up three times. I tend not to like the words ‘not yet.’ But I know that waiting is a key to kairos, and kairos is where my time intersects God’s time and temporal kisses eternity. If I submit my life and my schedule to God, He leads me to the kairos. “There is a time for everything, and a season for activity under the heavens.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1, NIV )
Submitting to God’s timing is one key to being fully alive. Kairos is life-time!
Life-challenge: Think of one thing in your life where God might be saying “not yet,” and tell Him you are willing to wait for His right time.