God Has Concealed His Times And Ways

By David J. Stewart

Proverbs 25:2, “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.”

       I recently read a fascinating Scripture in Ecclesiastes 3:11, “He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.” The word “world” means something totally different than what it seems. The Hebrew word is olam olam and means “concealed, that is, vanishing point.” Ecclesiastes 3:11 literally means that God has His own beautiful time for everything, but He has concealed those times from us, so that we cannot know the beginning nor the end. In other words, God's time is not our time. God has a right to be clandestine.

The Bible says that God deliberately led the Israelites into the horrible desert Wilderness, so that He could test them and reward them in the end if they kept His Commandments...

Deuteronomy 8:14-16, “Then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the LORD thy God, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage; Who led thee through that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought, where there was no water; who brought thee forth water out of the rock of flint; Who fed thee in the wilderness with manna, which thy fathers knew not, that he might humble thee, and that he might prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end.”

Unfortunately they DIDN'T keep God's Commandments and many of them died in the Wilderness in unbelief and went to Hell (Hebrews 4:2). God tested Job in similar, but noticeably different ways. Job kept God's Commandments and the Lord greatly blessed Job in the end. Many Christians have been fed to hungry lions throughout history, or boiled in human-sized frying pans with hot oil. We don't know God's will. Our part is to pray for God's will to be done. Our part is to trust and obey, for there is no other way, to be happy in Jesus, than to trust and obey.

We cannot figure out God's time and plan for our life...

Ecclesiastes 8:17, “Then I beheld all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun: because though a man labour to seek it out, yet he shall not find it; yea further; though a wise man think to know it, yet shall he not be able to find it.”

You may pray for life to get better, but things will get worse; yet God knows what He is doing. You may serve the Lord faithfully and think God will bless you with financial blessing, but then you lose your job and home. Often, nothing in life will ever make sense; but if you are a Christian who trusts God, then you know that the Bible teaches for us to pray and trust the Lord, Who has promised to direct our paths if we acknowledge Him in all our ways (Proverbs 3:5-7).

We all need to learn as Christians that God's timing is often not our timing, nor His ways our ways. Isaiah 55:8-9, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” God can take the lemons in our life and make lemonade.

The important thing is to not gauge our life upon circumstances; but rather, walk with God (the Lord), pray about everything, abide in the Scriptures, do good, depart from evil, keep sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ, allow the Holy Spirit to live the Christian life through us. If we love God and love our neighbor as our self, then everything will fall into place (Matthew 22:37-40).

When everything seemed to be going wrong in the Book of Esther, God's Spirit was working behind the scenes. The important thing is that we use the spiritual weapons mentioned in Ephesians 6:12-18. The biggest mistake we can make as Christians is not to pray because we don't see visible results to our prayers. God works in unseen ways, to rest out faith. It is standard procedure for God to work in ways unseen. We find evidence of this in Romans 1:20, where God says His eternal power and Godhead are INVISIBLE, yet clearly seen by the things which are made. We can see the spiritual battle in this world between good and evil. So let us pray and trust God to work behind the scenes.

Proverbs 25:2, “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.”


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