by Pastor James Lee

Phillips Brooks, a preacher in Boston during the 1800s, more famously known for writing the Christmas hymn “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and for personally introducing Helen Keller to both Christianity and a woman named Anne Sullivan, was well-known for his cool, calm demeanor. So it was very surprising to his friends, when one day, they found him uncharacteristically pacing up and down the floor of his church office like a caged lion. One of his concerned friends asked him, “What’s troubling you, Dr. Brooks?” He abruptly responded, “The trouble, the trouble, is that I am in a hurry, but God isn’t!” Isn’t that, if honest, how we ourselves have felt and thought many times?

One writer poignantly describes and confronts us in those moments, “There are times when we feel as if heaven’s clock is off by a few days, months, or even years. God seems to be taking His time in answering that prayer, meeting that need, changing that circumstance or bringing justice. We sit in the waiting room unattended and anxious. When we feel this way, guess whose clock needs to be reset?”

Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 3:11, “He has made everything beautiful in its time.” And lately, as I’ve come to this present place in my own life, as I contemplate who I was before I came to Christ, as I meditate on His goodness and grace in allowing us to be a part of each other’s lives, in such a time as this, as a part of His holy and perfect purposes, I’m filled with such overwhelming thanksgiving in all who Christ is for us!

Our eternal Lord is always on time, always in control, always working even in our waiting, sitting upon His throne forever, standing beyond time, yet nevertheless, paying the closest attention to us in it, so that our lives are sovereignly and securely in His hands, as David affectionately expressed in Psalm 31:15, “My times are in Your hand.” So is my life, so is yours, so is His church. We believe it, but often functionally we don’t.

1. His Goodness Displayed in Our Past: Let Us See That He Has Made Everything Beautiful in His Time – What We Now Are in Christ Is Incomparably Amazing in Relation to Who We Once Were

Sitting as I read the Bible, spending time with the Lord, in a period of past pain and depression, I remember the providence of sun rays pouring through like happy lasers into my room, and a gentle breeze wafting through my window. I was pouring over His promises, remembering His faithfulness, His great salvation, yet anxious and wondering when and how God would answer my prayers and lift me out of darkness. He did, in His time, in ways that I didn’t anticipate. I’m grateful for the ways He has humbled me, and corrected me, and shaped me, and held me, and loved me. I can see what a wonderful life He has given me, an adorable wife, precious children, privileged responsibility in a precious church family. But most of all, through the perspective of the cross, that I’ve been forgiven, reconciled, adopted, saved from His wrath, and made an altogether new creation. Anything beyond my salvation is sheer grace! I am what I am by the grace of God, and by it, I can have full courage like Paul confessed in Philippians 1:20, “according to my earnest expectation and hope, that I shall not be put to shame in anything, but that with all boldness, Christ shall even now, as always, be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.” And even though there is so much to work on, lots of remaining filth in my heart, He has already done the miraculous and merciful for me, in Christ! I can’t ask for more than that, and I can’t be absolutely thrilled and joyful. God has explicitly revealed His perfect wisdom. Consider just a few examples:

• Galatians 4:4 “But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son.”
• Ephesians 2:1-7, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

I got my own Bible, and how many people over millennia could ever claim that? And I have several! God took this shy backward Gentile kid, voted shyest student in his school, and amazingly I’m able to stand in front of more than two people and say more than a few syllables. I think about godly friends, timely interventions, answered prayers, His help in trial and temptation, sanctifying experiences, rich encouragements, people saved, and numerous places where I’ve seen the Lord do the humanly impossible. I know we’re looking forward to more as individuals and as churches, in more than one way. I know we’re looking forward to being absent from the body and present with the Lord. But there is so very much, to now see that He has already done, fulfilled, accomplished, set apart, enabled, called, preserved, used, protected, and blessed! We would and are greatly amiss to fail to acknowledge, appreciate, and announce that, to His glory!

2. God’s Goodness Displayed in Our Present: Let Us Trust He Is Making Everything Beautiful in His Time – What We Do for God in Ministry is Infinitely Inferior to What He is Doing in Us for Himself

God’s sanctifying work doesn’t always feel pleasant in the moment, but we can consider it all joy for the fruit and the result and the praise it brings in our lives and to others. God’s hand is not always apparent to our perception, so that we waver in faith. But God glorifies Himself and sovereignly draws us to Himself and causes all things to work together for good to His people. Meditate on such truths as these:

• James 1:2-4, “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”
• Romans 5:3-5, “And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”
• 1 Timothy 1:16, “Yet for this reason I found mercy, so that in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might demonstrate His perfect patience as an example for those who would believe in Him for eternal life.”
• 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”

Life and spiritual growth might not work according to our timing and wishes, but the One who has perfect wisdom is right now accomplishing in us over time what we could never plan or do for ourselves. We tend to see what is not happening than what is being done. The “little” things add up: character testing, faith, endurance, equipping, prayer, loving others, trusting God, our labor in the Lord, they are never in vain. He’s working now. It took Moses 40 years before God used him, really his entire lifetime. We have to be patient. We have to be faithful. We have to be thankful for what He has already done and is now doing… even if we in our finiteness and fallenness fail to presently see and understand what He’s accomplishing! To do less is to dishonor Him! Not only has He made beautiful, He is, right now, presently making beautiful!

3. God’s Goodness Displayed in Our Future: Let Us Rejoice That He Will Make Everything Beautiful in His Time – What He Is Doing in Us Today is Preparing Us for More Glorious Things Through Us Tomorrow

Dwelling on His work, His promises, and their meaning for us and others:

• John 9:2-3, “And His disciples asked Him, saying, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was in order that the works of God might be displayed in him.”
• 2 Corinthians 4:5-7, “For we do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your bond-servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves.”
• Philippians 1:6, “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.”
• 2 Timothy 4:6-8, “For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.”
• Revelation 21:5, “And He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” And He said, “Write, for these words are faithful and true.“
• 1 John 3:2, “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we shall be. We know that, when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him just as He is.”
• 1 Peter 2:9, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.”

God is not in a hurry, He knows what He is doing in us and for us. God is God, and we are not. He deserves our trust and requires our patience! He’s orchestrating and actively at work in our lives, regardless of whether we know how or where. When Abraham’s servant was on the road for weeks to search for Isaac’s wife, she came at the exact time he arrived at a well. When Joseph and Mary were compelled to go back to Bethlehem due to the census under Caesar Augustus, Jesus was born at the right time and right place as prophesied according to marvelously verifiable providence!

The Lord, our Lord, sovereignly has made, is making, and will surely make all things beautiful for His people in His time! May we trust in the Lord with all our heart and not lean on our own understanding, but living obediently and affectionately by faith, “Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18)