Pentecost 5 When is the Right Time?

[HKHaugan]

Pentecost 5 When Is the Right Time?

I know you've heard the saying, “Timing is everything.” In fact timing can be both a help and a hindrance. We can use it as a means to get something accomplished properly or use it as an excuse not to do anything. In sports you are given specific times in which you play a game. In social, educational, and economic events you arrange items in the context of a calendar and a clock. In terms of living on this earth you organize a kind of time-line from birth to death with its obvious unknowns in mind. Everything we do is done with timing in mind. When you get right down to it our heart condition determines what we do. You either plow in or hesitate, approach with confidence or hesitate in fear. That's really it isn't it? So then, just what is the right time for any of it to take place and can we control the outcome?

Three obstacles face our hearts immediately when we ask this deeper question about our personal existence: the time we have to live, the choices we are faced with and the uncertainty they bring. Each of them are the unknowns we face in our every next moment. The heart is constantly processing the outcome. Put it like this: How do I want to be seen? Where do I want to end up? What am I relying on to get me there? What is the right way, the right time and the right means as I meet every next event, occasion, situation? We usually end up saying, “I hope I've got this right. I hope I can do the right thing. I hope it's the right time.”

What we are really getting at here is where our hearts are. It's a matter of fear versus faith. What am I basing my life on? When I use the word 'hope' I am immediately walking in either fear or faith. How we hope tells a lot about where our heart is. What we hope for does the same. Hope is a great reminder to ask these questions and get the answer. Every next moment depends on that. If your life is insecure, fear dogs your every next moment. When your heart is secure then your life is secure. That's because what you believe in is what you use to feel secure.

Paul speaks to this very issue when he says, “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom He has given us (Rom.5:1-5).” And note, this passage is the one that precedes the one we started with. So let's look at it again and apply it to our every next moment.

“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom.5:6-8).”

First, every next moment of our life is always the right moment, the right time, to make a forward looking decision because we have the Holy Spirit powering our faith in Jesus. He is our constant companion who never leaves us. And who says we are not all powerless in every next moment? It's an unknown moment, an unpredictable moment loaded with unpredictable circumstances. We will act in faith either to do nothing or do something. But will we have faith in Christ rather than ourselves at that point? This is exactly why Jesus came, died rose from the dead. It was to show that when we place our faith in Him, that faith is what carries us through every circumstance regardless of its nature.

Secondly, we are sinners and will always tend to make choices based on fear which is the evidence of sin. But when we make a choice with Christ in mind and trust Him in our heart we will be right when we step out in faith. He by faith rose from the dead, didn't He? What more could He do than give His life to prove it? He died for our every next moment and rose to make it eternally significant regardless of its worldly prominence, recognition by others or even how it affects others. He is in our every next moment.

Thirdly, sin makes us feel powerless. Now here is the amazing thing. When we feel powerless that's the right time to act in faith. While we were still sinners, that is broken images of God relying on ourselves alone, Christ chose to die for us, for each of us in our every next moment, knowing full well we would make choices based on fear in our alone moments. When we choose to die to the idea we are alone in those moments then we have taken our cross of faith and chosen to make that every next moment His moment. Timing is everything especially when Christ makes every next moment His timing. That's what makes every moment we feel powerless the right moment, the right time and wherever we are, the right place and with whomever we are, the right person. We are right because faith in Christ is being right, eternally right. Now we have a grip on Pentecost. We are a Pentecost people knowing every next moment is a Pentecost moment to step out in the power of faith.