Battles of Liberation: Me vs. Time
By michael | May 9, 2008
Last week we began to fight the battles of liberation that are inevitable for our Exodus. We looked last week at the battles we need to fight with God in order to put our trust in Him. Today we begin to look at the battle we must fight against time. Now many of us go through our days in a constant struggle against time in order to meet deadlines, make appointments and things of that nature. For this battle however we will need to see time in a much broader scope. Today we do battle with the concept of time in general and how it can affect our worship and our life.
So why fight the battle of time then? There are at least two reasons, the first of which is that we need to see that time is temporary. I’m not speaking in the sense that we have less time with every passing moment; I’m speaking in that time itself is only temporary. Many of us view time as something that will keep going forever, but that is just not the case. Time itself is not infinite. A second only lasts one second, a minute one minute, and a year only one year. Time is simply a unit of measurement much like a mile or a gallon. Our perspective should be eternity. Eternity is outside of time, it can’t be measured. Eternity simply is. There is no past, present and future in eternity only right now. The Bible says that God has placed “eternity in the hearts of men.” (Ecc 3:11) We should have a perspective of eternity not a perspective of time.
The second reason to fight the battle against time is so we can see that time is relative. We think time is static but science has proved what theologians have been saying all along. Time is not constant. Theologians have debated time and its relationship to God for hundreds of years and the only logical conclusion is that God is not affected by time because time is not constant. Now this gets us to a place intellectually where it literally takes an “Einstein” to grasp this concept. But it has been proven that time is not constant it is affected by things like speed and gravity. For instance if you left Earth in a spaceship traveling at the speed of light, time would slow down for you so much that if you returned from trip after one year of time for you over 1300 years would have passed for the people on Earth. Time is relative and forces much bigger than us can slow it down or speed it up.
You may ask what does that have to do with anything. Well just keep those thoughts in the back of your head for a moment and we will come back to them. For now, we need to view this battle against time as a battle for our worship. In Exodus 4:29-31, Moses has arrived back in Egypt and with his brother Aaron have began the process of fulfilling God’s call to liberate the people of Israel. Moses and Aaron perform the signs for the elders of
You see, worship is an eternal concept and when it is aroused in us it produces conflict with time. A biblical example of this would be when David was bringing the ark back to
It is interesting that Moses’ first request to Pharaoh was for a three day break from work for the people to go and worship. (Ex 5:1,3) But where worship can be aroused and lose concept of time, worship can also be suppressed because of time. Pharaoh does not know God; in fact he fancies himself a God and wants the Israelites to not waste time with worship. The strength of our bondage is evidenced by our denial of worship. Sometimes it is an outside force that keeps us from worship, but sometimes we deny ourselves opportunity to worship. For every time I have seen someone worship with all abandon, I have seen even more people get right up to the edge of worship and all of sudden get real busy thus their perceived lack of time kills their process of salvation.
Now at this point I need to make a distinction for us. Although you need to make time for worship, worship is not in essence a matter of time. This battle against time isn’t an issue of missing church; it is an issue of the heart. This battle is about your concept of time and understanding that when it comes to your liberation what is at stake is your heart and your ability to worship God. You can not worship an eternal God with temporal mindset that is to say by focusing all your attention and activity on things that will not last. You can not live a life in time with a mindset that time is fixed and constant which is to say that you race through life always trying to beat the clock. Neither is this a message about missing church because worship is a lifestyle. I have seen people in devoted to church serve the temporary and not the eternal. This is an issue of renewal of the mind. This is an issue of how you think about time and the dangers of the wrong mentality toward it.
So they say that time will heal all wounds, but there are some negative effects of time as well. The first effect of a temporal mindset is that it causes us to serve what is temporary. Pharaoh was viewed as a God, yet his rule was only temporary. The people of
The second negative effect of time is it causes us to become victims of our own responsibility. In Exodus 5:8 and 17, Pharaoh accuses the people of being lazy as their chief reason to want to go and worship. It is entirely possible to be held hostage by our own agendas. We pile up thing after thing in our schedules and don’t allow ourselves a reprieve for worship. Whether these agendas are a product of work or leisure isn’t the point, the point is the effect of our increase labor. When we leave ourselves no breathing room what will it do to us when the inevitable occurs? Those events in life that shake our core – cancer, a car accident, a lost job – these things will come whether we want them or not and when our lives are so crowded we can’t deal with them effectively. We even begin to blame God for them. In Exodus 5:19-21 it plays out that because the work of the Israelites was increased it meant that God was not with them or going to rescue them. This, of course, is not the case. The problem is when you don’t make room for God in the good; you won’t be able to see him in the bad. When your heart is only full of the temporary the soul suffers for it.
Lastly, when we live according to the temporary we pay attention to all the wrong things. In Exodus 5:9, Pharaoh commands the Hebrew workload to be increased so they will not be distracted by the lies of Moses. How many times have we made the same mistake? We have such an abundance of our lives dedicated to the temporal things that we can’t pay attention to the things that matter. The number one answer to why we don’t pray, or read the Bible, or miss the fellowship with other believers is time. Isn’t it interesting how time always seems to conflict with the things that are eternal but there is always time for the things that are temporary? We have such a hard time to commit ourselves to eternal things because eternal things have no concept of time. Think about how much time it takes to be kind. Think about how much time it takes to be patient. Think about how much time it takes to love. Think about how much time you have to devote to living a life of peace. And those are just 4 of the 9 fruit of the spirit.
So we come to our own exodus. And in order to move out of liberation we need to embrace the relativity of time. There are three things we need to be aware of in order to make this principle a reality in our lives. The first one is that we need to serve what is eternal. In Ecclesiastes 2, the writer undertakes an approach to life that denies him nothing, yet at the end he comes to the conclusion that it was all meaningless. When your approach to life is that time is fixed then everything has an expiration date. You have to have it all right now. The problem with this approach is that time moves to fast for you and you can’t keep up no matter how fast you go. We especially see this with technology because as soon as you buy a new computer its already outdated.
So what does it take to slow down? So if time is relative and it is not fixed then how can we slow down time? Easy, invest yourself in the things that are eternal and time will slow down because you are not chasing after things with a shelf life, i.e. you are not chasing the wind. You will find you have more time for the things that matter and less concern for the things that don’t. Have you ever noticed that God seems to never be in a hurry? Ever asked your self why? Could it be that it is because he is invested in eternal things and eternal things have no shelf life? This plays out especially in your own salvation. God is gentle with your transformation. He knows he’s dealing with things eternal so he can afford to be deliberate. So the question is then, what are you willing to let expire? What is the shelf-life of the important things of your life?
The second thing we need to be aware of is that if we want to speed up the deliverance process than perhaps we need to slow down life. God allowed the work of the Hebrew people to be increased because he wanted to amplify in their hearts the need for deliverance. Remember time is relative and powers that are bigger than us can speed it up or slow it down. Have you ever spent an hour or two wrapped up in worship or even a whole day and come out of feeling like time was suspended? On the contrary how many days have we wasted being busy where we accomplished absolutely nothing? The fact of the matter is that every moment spent in worship in effect is time slowed down and we can savor every second of it. Every moment spent doing things that are temporal in nature, time seems to speed up and we never have enough of it.
Many of us want God to free us from something but are not willing to slow down life to the point where God can work in us. We think of it as adding something else to our schedule, but in reality because time slows down when we focus on God it ends up being time we never miss. Don’t ask me how it works, I just know it works. It doesn’t matter how much I have to do when I take the time to slow down and focus on God whether it be a few minutes during the day or an entire weekend at a worship conference time seems to slow down. When I come out of it instead of feeling behind schedule and rushing I actually feel relaxed and my work is more efficient. When we bank time in our relationship with God it is just like anything else stored up in him, it becomes multiplied and given back to us. I find it easier to add things to my schedule when I am consistently focused on the things that are eternal.
The third thing we need to know about the relativity of time when it comes to our spirituality is that we need to pay attention to the right things. Of all your life’s precious memories how many of them are about the times where you were the busiest? Is each day of your life distinct and full of its own wonder or do all your days run together and get muddled up because they are focused so much on things that do not matter? God would have us not live according to time, but according to eternity. Jesus said not to worry about tomorrow instead to consider the birds and the flowers. Easy for him to say. How easy is it for us to do? This isn’t a philosophy that would have you go through life irresponsibly; it is one that would have you focus on the things that matter most which just happen to be the things that don’t play the rules of time. 2 Peter 3:1-15 sums this section up beautifully. In talking about the return of the Lord, Peter says that God is not playing by the rules of time. He says that if the Lord continues to tarry then view his patience as part of your salvation process. He says that because time could end tomorrow we are to focus on living holy lives. He even suggests that we can speed up the coming of the Lord by living our lives in such ways. Again time is relative and those that are of the Spirit operate outside of it.
Finally I would say, and it would take a whole other teaching to really communicate it, don’t be legalistic. These are principles they are not steps. Following steps can get you right back into the mindset you are trying to get out of. These are principles for life; learn to apply them to your situation. Six days you shall work the bible says. How are you spending your seventh day? This attitude toward time is a posture of the heart it is not one of behavior modification. In order to master time one must focus on the master of time and the eternal things.
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Battles of Liberation: Me vs. God
By michael | May 2, 2008
Over the past four weeks we have been getting ourselves ready for an exodus. We have been talking about leaving
We start the first battle in an unlikely place and perhaps against an unlikely foe, God himself. We don’t realize how important this battle is in the grand scheme of things and many of us that have tried to fight the fight of liberation before have failed because we don’t fight this battle against God first. So why is God the first battle that is necessary for our liberation? I submit at least two answers that we will spend our time discussing. The first answer is that we need to realize that God is not our enemy. Many people go through life at odds with God or even the concept of God much to their own dismay. When we realize that God is on our side and allow him to be himself then it makes the process so much easier. The second reason is that we need to establish a relationship with God that is based on trust. Its one thing to be neutral towards God, it is another to put your trust in God. Once we trusting in God for our deliverance we begin to work with Him and not against what He is doing in our lives.
Our first example of this battle playing out is in Exodus 4:1-14. Now, in light of our discussion, there are some obvious things we may omit when it comes to an expository look on these scriptures, but I would like for us to maybe consider some things about Exodus that we have not regularly thought of. So where we may look at this at passage and consider Moses’ objections to follow God in light of his own inexperience or inabilities, I would like to look at them in light of Moses trying to gain trust in God and God perhaps trying to “pick a fight” with Moses.
The first interaction is in Exodus 4:1-2. Moses queries God about the possibility that he will get all the way over there and the people will reject him. After all, at this point in Moses’ life he has pretty much played his cards all wrong. He was royalty and now he’s a shepherd. He is a fugitive of the law and an outcast among his own people. Perhaps Moses feels like he’s set up for failure, maybe the eventual butt of a cosmic joke. So he asks God, “What if?” God responds with a question of his own. “What is that in your hand?” Now here is where I say God may be picking a fight with Moses. God knows what’s in Moses’ hand, a stick. Don’t you hate these kinds of questions when God asks them? Perhaps God is giving Moses a chance to ask God about what God has given him and not just in terms of what possessions he has but in the larger sense about the hand God dealt him in life.
See for Moses and for many of us perhaps our big hang up with God is how our life is playing out compared to the lives of those around us. How many times have we wondered what life would be like if we had “those” things, or lived on “that” side of the street? How many times have we wondered about why God is so unconcerned with our position in life? How many times have we fallen into the trap of thinking that God doesn’t want us to succeed or be happy? Maybe God is giving Moses a chance to air some grievances here.
The second interaction is in Exodus 4:10-11. Moses is concerned about his speech impediment. How does God respond? Again, he responds with another question, “Moses, who gave man his mouth?” Is God trying to pick a fight again? After all, he knows the answer and maybe Moses is painfully aware of the answer himself after all he has endured all the things that come along with a physical disability for 80 years. Perhaps the fight here is over how God has made us. This raises questions beyond what physical disabilities we may or may not have and into the realm of whom our parents might be, into the realm of being born the wrong race in the wrong country, into the realm of homosexuality and are you born that way or nurtured that way. Perhaps God is giving Moses the opportunity to air some grievances on this matter as well.
Now when you get into some of these questions it can do one of two things. One, you can really embrace the opportunity to wrestle with God or two; you can simply continue to repress those thoughts and questions and walk away. In Exodus
So let us do this, let us ask the difficult questions to God and let’s just all put our cards on the table. We begin with the book of Job. Aside from its poetry and prose the premise of the book is quite frank and bewildering. Essentially the book is about a wager between God and Satan and whether or not Job’s faith is strong enough to endure unimaginable suffering. We have a tendency to over spiritualize suffering sometimes which can lead to some misconceptions about it. The main way we do this is that we always need a reason for suffering.
Among these reasons are that suffering is a punishment for sin even though Job’s suffering were not a result of that. What sins did a sexually abused 3 year old girl commit that would warrant a whole life of suffering because of that? Where is the justice of God there? We say that suffering is a way that God teaches us a lesson and all though Job learns some things through the experience this was not the reason for his suffering. So what can be said about the person who must live through cancer because God wants to teach them patience? What kind of God teaches lessons like that? We say that we suffer because of our choices and that our messy lives are our own fault well Job’s actions weren’t responsible for his suffering neither is the person born into the middle of Aid’s epidemic in
The second card that needs to be put on the table is that of God metaphors that fail. The problem with comparing God to something is that it will not always hold up. How is comparing God to a father going to help the person that was abused or abandoned by their own fathers? How is justifying a child that dies too soon to God wanting the best flowers for his own going to help a grieving parent? How is comparing God to a righteous judge hold up to the person who’s loved one’s killer being set free? This doesn’t even touch God as a co-pilot or some of the other ways we try to explain his nature. This isn’t to say we shouldn’t try, only to say that they will not always hold up and that we should be careful in the ways we champion them.
The third card we need to show is that there will eventually come a point in time where we need to forgive God. Think about it. What do you blame God for? Whether its justified to blame God or not isn’t the point, the point is that we blame him for stuff and if we blame him for stuff we need to forgive him for stuff. You may blame God for your bondage. If you blame God its going to create animosity towards him. For the same reason we are to forgive others that wrong us, we need to forgive God. What is it that you blame God for and how will you ever forgive him?
When we question God a funny thing begins to happen. Our questions become prayers. God loves our questions for this very reason. Our “why’s” transform us from passive participants in this relationship with him into active pursuers of Him. When we question God we see that the God that we thought was static and unchangeable is actually a fluid entity that loves to interact with us in conversation and genuine discourse. When we question God about God we allow him to defend himself. Have you ever asked someone a deep question about God and received an honest but shallow answer? When we come before God in open honesty about everything we see that God is not afraid of our questions or our accusations. Somehow this process allows God to be himself and reveal fully who he really is. Its our wrestling with him that brings revelation. In Job, as Job questions God openly and honestly he gets a full understanding of just who God really is. When God reveals himself worship is happening. Did you realize that questioning God is essential in worshipping Him? Be wary of anyone who would keep you from questioning God.
There is one caveat. Sometimes when we see who God really is it can make us very uncomfortable perhaps even frightened. Can you still trust him in light of that? Do you believe that as a fuller understanding of God is revealed to you that in those fears and moments of discomfort something else is taking place. What’s taking place is your formation and your liberation.
This brings us to our own exodus and the problem with faith, which is that you have to wrestle with God to get it. For many of us we lack faith because we don’t wrestle with God. We never ask the tough questions about ourselves or about God and if we do perhaps its because never ask God himself. You may say that you have asked God questions many times, but have you ever stuck around for answers or did you ask them rhetorically? Every step of faith for us no matter how big or how small requires a “crisis of belief.” That is to say we will have to determine just how much we trust God and have faith in who he is.
An example of this is found in Luke 22:39-44, many people would never think that Jesus would struggle with faith or wrestle with God but that’s exactly where he was in the
Hope does not come without problems either. Hope is a product of who you trust, not what you know. It was the trust that Jesus had in his father that brought him to the place of the cross. Jesus knew everything about God he needed to know, but for some reason this was not enough, it was trust in God that led to hope not knowledge about God. We don’t have to wrestle with God to know about him, but we have to wrestle with him in order to know him to the point where we trust him. Sometimes it’s the more we know that causes us to fear. Anyone who’s ever skipped going to the doctor knows what I’m talking about.
Again, scripture provides an example of this in John 20:10-18. Hope is on display because of an empty tomb. Mary has no knowledge of what is really happening but perhaps her hope is kicking in in full force. With tear soaked eyes she peers into an empty tomb and is able to see something that the two disciples missed…angels. Once again we see angels ministering to those who are in the bouts of wrestling. But perhaps it was because of her tears that she could see the angels. Perhaps because of her tears she was able to see Jesus. Perhaps because she wrestled with hope she was able to overcome and the result was an encounter with the living Christ. Have you ever seen God through your tears? Have you missed him because you were without tears? Will you fight the first battle of your liberation and come to terms with the fact that God is not your enemy and establish a relationship with him that is based on trust?
Battles of Liberation: Me vs. God mp3
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