I came to Christ at a Passover dinner when I was 18 years old. The Passover dinner was part of a fellowship meeting led by a man in his 50s named Don. Don had a very troubled past. He was an alcoholic. He and his wife would frequently fight over Don’s abuse of alcohol. One night when he was severely depressed, he decided to kill himself by driving his car onto some railroad tracks in front of a train. Don waited in his car by the railroad crossing. As the train came in sight, Don stepped on the gas and drove his car directly into the path of the oncoming train. The conductor had no time to stop. Right before the train struck Don’s car, Don put up his hands and cried out, “Jesus, save me!” The train struck the front of Don’s car, shearing the entire front end off. Don was left with just some scratches on his hands. Shortly after that, Don was saved at an evangelistic meeting and became one of the kindest, most gentle people I have ever had the privilege of knowing.
The Apostle Paul writes in Romans 5:6, “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.” God’s timing is perfect! Never a moment too soon or a moment too late! He intervened in Don’s life at just the right time!
God’s Timing was Perfect in History. Michael Green, an English pastor and theologian, wrote a wonderful book some years ago titled “Evangelism in the Early Church.” In this book, Michael Green remarks: “The spread of Christianity would have been inconceivable had Jesus been born half a century earlier.”
Why did Dr. Green claim this? There were four factors that contributed (humanly speaking) to the spread of the gospel. These factors were:
First, the Roman peace known as the Pax Romana. Under Augustus, for the first time, the whole known world was effectively under the control of one power – Rome. So the Christian gospel entered the world at a time of peace unparalleled in history, making travel and communication easy. It was a peace maintained by military force. What this meant was that people, like the Apostle Paul and other preachers of the gospel, could travel between cities in the Roman Empire with relatively little fear from bandits or pirates. A century earlier, the Roman world was plunged into a bloody civil war and communication and travel would have been much more difficult.
Second, the Romans were great road builders. They focused on maintaining their roads linking the cities and towns of the Roman Empire with the city of Rome. This made travel and the spread of news, including the Good News of the Gospel, easy.
Third, there was a common language used throughout the Roman Empire – Greek. Everywhere a person traveled throughout the Roman Empire, whether in North Africa, Europe or Asia, people knew Greek. Think about how difficult the task is for missionaries today. They must spend years learning the language and culture of the particular people group the missionary is seeking to evangelize. But the Apostle Paul and the other preachers of the gospel could easily move throughout the Roman Empire preaching in Greek, and everyone who listened could understand the gospel message.
Finally, the first century world had grown weary of the religions and philosophies that they had inherited. The Greek gods and goddesses had failed to satisfy people spiritually or intellectually. Educated people no longer believed in the pagan gods. Judaism was shot through with corruption, division and legalism. The philosophers offered people no hope. Into a world providentially prepared by God for the spread of the gospel, at just the right time, God sent his Son, Jesus Christ.
God’s Timing is Perfect in Our Lives. Here’s the testimony of Kerry Davis, one of our longest serving Vineyard Columbus pastors.
I was going through a divorce, and God had brought this Christian into my job six months prior to my wife’s demand for the divorce. He saw my distress at work and cornered me asking what was the matter. I told him, expecting to be judged by the Christian. But I received grace instead and his home phone number. Two days later I was planning to take my life and saw his number in my pocket. I called him and he shared the Gospel with me. After we hung up the phone, I invited Christ into my heart. I slept and ate for the first time since my wife had asked for the divorce. The next day I had forgotten all about taking my life, and I had a powerful encounter with the Lord as I listened to “Blinded by the Light” on QFM 96. I experienced his love in a powerful way and heard him say, “Kerry I love you. I’m going to take care of you. It doesn’t matter what you have done in the past – we are going to make it through this together.” My first thought was, “So that was what I was looking for in a bottle of Budweiser all these years.”
God’s Timing is Perfect – Whatever Season We’re In. You and I may not like the season we’re in. We all want to live in a perpetual summer. We want to always be loaded down with fruit. We want all the flowers to be in bloom, all the doors to be open, all the blessings to come our way. But one thing is certain, God will not be rushed. And without a willingness to wait in faith, we will become frustrated with God and many of us will become disillusioned and say, “Christian faith doesn’t work.”
God never promises that the only season we’ll find ourselves in is spring or summer. During our autumns and winters, we wait. But we wait on God not like people who are trapped in jail, just counting the days for our release. We wait in faith! We wait in hope for a new day to dawn! We wait with the kind of waiting that Isaiah talked about in Isaiah 40:30-31:
Isaiah 40:30–31 (NIV)
30 Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall;
31 but those who hope in the LORD
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.
God will not be rushed. And this is especially true regarding things about ourselves that we don’t like, things we’d like to change. We are so impatient with our own spiritual growth and our own spiritual maturity. Sometimes we get a glimpse of ourselves and we don’t like what we see. We pray, “God, change me.” I hope you pray that often, “God, change me.” We spend years pounding certain habits into our lives, certain ways of relating, certain character qualities, certain ways of thinking, and then we want God to instantly deliver us from those things.
That’s not the way spiritual growth and spiritual change most often happens. Most change happens slowly. That’s why I’ve taught over and over again, “left foot, right foot, left foot.” That’s the way God mostly works in our lives – step by step, day after day, in season and out of season, year after year. God will not be rushed. But God’s timing is perfect!