Out of TIME?

You need to be on TIME!   There is only so much TIME!   TIME is of the essence!  All in good TIME!   I am completely out of TIME!  I wish I had more TIME!

TIME!  We speak about it so frequently, but at the same TIME, don’t realize how often the word TIME crosses our lips!

Is it possible for His ever expanding Eternal Kingdom to exist in a belief system that has it’s focus on this thing we call TIME?

God is just waiting to “stretch out” in anyone who is ready to leave this land of appearances, with all of it’s limitations, and step into eternity IN Him!  But before that can happen, we have to see this place called TIME as the arch enemy of ALL we desire IN Him as the Eternal One who lives IN us!

Now a man named Lazarus was sick.  He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.  So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.”  When He heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death.  No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.”

Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. Yet when He heard that Lazarus was sick, He stayed where he was for two more days.

“Lord, the one you love is sick!”  (John 11:3)

And He stayed where He was for two more days?

“Lord, “Martha said to Jesus, “if you would have been here, my brother would not have died!

That’s right Martha, but aren’t you the same one who was stressing about the TIME needed for all of the preparation to be done?   All the while your sister Mary chose the greater part, to take her appointed Resting place at the feet of Eternity!

After three days they found Him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.  Everyone who heard Him was amazed at His understanding and His answers. When His parents saw Him, they were astonished.  His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this?  Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.”  “Why were you searching for me?”  “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?”  But they did not understand what He was saying to them. (Luke 2:46-50)

It was when I was concerned about being late for an important meeting where God interrupted my thoughts of being late.  I kept repeating one word in the conversation I was having with myself.  And then I heard His still small voice simply say, I Am that I AM!  This was all I needed to pull me…Out of TIME and into the reality of where I truly live!  IN Him IN Eternity!

We are so concerned with this word TIME that often TIME it is the subject of our conversation.  TIME for this, not enough TIME for this, right on TIME, losing TIME…and this same scenario plays out in every one of our lives in some way similar to this.   And it seems to be all of the TIME!

We wonder why stress is killing us and why most diseases, psychological, and emotional problems are like a plague in this day and age, and even in the church?

Even though we have been given free access to Him as citizens of His Kingdom,  it seems like we choose instead to subject ourselves to this thing called TIME! And our modern day version of American Christianity looks very similar to our everyday lives, as most of what we call ministry is focused on events IN TIME!

TIME is earthly, Eternity is Spiritual!  TIME is pressure, Eternity is Rest!  TIME is stressing, Eternity is Resting!  And God would have it that some “must” enter into His Rest! (Hebrews 4:6)

I am learning, in the same way that the new wine cannot be contained by old wine skins, neither can the eternal One who lives IN us be contained IN TIME.  We need to know we CANNOT serve and worship both TIME and eternity!  We will either love one and hate the other, or cling to the one and despise the other! (Mathew 6:24)

These two are at enmity with one another!   That which is born of the flesh is flesh , and what is born of the Spirit is Spirit!

Jesus had a conversation with one of the top spiritual leaders in Jerusalem, this is a revised version of how their discussion may have went:

“Nicodemus, you must be born again!”  Huh?  “Jesus, what are you talking about?”  How can I enter back into my mothers womb a second TIME?  No Nicodemus, you were born of blood and water, a natural birth, but NOW you need to step out of TIME and be born of The Spirit! IN My Kingdom there is no TIME, in My Kingdom you are translated from this limited domain of darkness into The Kingdom of the Eternal!  Nicodemus, you MUST be Born again! (John 3:1-21)

His earthly response caused Jesus to reply; “Nicodemus, here you are a great teacher of the Law in Israel, but you cannot even discern the elementary things of Life IN the Spirit!” (John 3:19)

TIME is the enemy of the Cross!   And at the same TIME, it is also the schoolmaster that opens us up to the truth of Eternity!  There is no TIME IN Him, for He has moved completely “Out of TIME!”

And unless we lose this consciousness of a God who is constrained by TIME, we will not be able to see Him as the Eternal One who has made TIME His footstool!

Where O death is thy sting? (I Corinthians 15:55)

The only “sting” death holds for us is still seeing life as having a beginning and an end!  TIME is what gives death it’s sting!  Nothing else!  For if there was not a beginning or end to death, it wouldn’t be called death, it would be called Eternity!

Fear is the same way. “Fear has to do with torment!”  Why?  Because all fear is rooted and grounded IN TIME!  TIME and space,  it is all a part of the limited life!  How can we, who have the unlimited and eternal Alpha and Omega living IN us, continue to hold on to the very thing the trials and testing’s are meant to set us free from?  It is for freedom (from TIME) He set us free! True Freedom can only be eternal!  And we can’t mix the eternal with TIME any more than we can mix oil and water, or the unlimited new wine with the limitations of the old wineskin!

Jesus deliberately stayed away from Lazarus for two days, because TIME had to have it’s full work, it had to come to it’s end!  When Eternity finally spoke, TIME had no other choice than to “give up” Lazarus!  And in that moment his life as a citizen of TIME came to an abrupt end!  The only reason for Jesus seeming delay, was to show Mary, Martha, and Lazarus himself that TIME also had nothing IN Him!

In the same way, The Eternal One IN us has the POWER to call the things that are not as though they are, because all the limiting constraints of TIME have NOW vanished like a vapor, into the “I AM” of who we are IN Him!

We need to see the only way we can walk in knowing eternity as our only life, is to once and for all see Time as the arch enemy of ALL THINGS eternal!

Listen to the following response of this 12 year old boy to his parents:  “Why were you searching for me?”   “Didn’t you know I had to be IN my Father’s house?”

Why would you think for one minute you could find me any where else?   Don’t you know who…I AM?  IN Him is the only place I dwell!  It’s also there where I only do what I see my Father doing.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”   No, IN all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.   For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future (TIME), nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is IN Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35-29)

If we still believe in a life apart from Him, we have no other choice than to walk separated from Him!  TIME has been swallowed up in Eternity!  The law of sin and death which operates in the kingdom of TIME has been swallowed up by the Law of the Spirit of Life IN Christ Jesus!  And we are to no longer conformed to this world and it’s belief in TIME, but we are instead, transformed by the renewing of our mind!  And…we have the Mind of Christ! (I Corinthians 2:16)

Who has woe, who has strife, those who sample bowls of MIXED Wine! (Proverbs 23:29-30)

There is a stark difference between the New Wine and the mixed counterfeit!  Eternity and TIME do not mix!

We cannot serve TIME and eternity, it’s either one or the other!  Why else would the people in the Bible have faced all of the trials?

Joseph was put away and forgotten for 13 years!  Moses spent 40 years on the backside of the desert!  Abraham was waiting for the promise for 25 years!  David running from Saul for 10 plus years! The Prophet Jeremiah prophesied for 70 years to a people who would not listen!  And who knows how long Job’s trial lasted!  And the list goes on and on!

God always uses TIME as the schoolmaster in order to open us up to True Eternity!  True Eternity is NOW, not in some far off place called heaven.  We are as eternal as we will ever be right here and right NOW!

How about you…and me?  How long have we been saying to God…”How long, O Lord?”   Well Now we have our answer!

As long as we still dwell in the land of how long, how far, when, what, where, why, or how, we will get everything that a life limited by TIME is waiting to hand us!  But Now by His doing we are IN Christ Jesus!  And this is not of ourselves! (I Corinthians 1:30)

We have left TIME forever to become citizens of the New Country, wherein dwells the Eternal City, the city whose Builder and Maker is God! (Hebrews 11:10)

God has to let TIME have it’s perfect work IN us to bring us to the place where we finally say “enough!”  And the deeper we go IN Him, the more TIME is going to rear it’s ugly head!  It will always be trying to cause us to turn to the right or left to serve and worship it!

We have been released from the law, and included in that release was the new Freedom we have found IN Christ alone!  TIME is no longer our master, but our servant!

This is worked out practically is by simply abiding IN Him and seeing Him only IN all things!  IN His Rest, TIME has no power or authority!

The second we step back into TIME, the law of TIME, (also known as the law of sin and death) is there to welcome us in all of it’s forms and expressions!

Eternity is the only place Christ Lives, and apart from seeing Eternity NOW, we cannot see Him at all!

“But I trust IN you, O LORD; I say, “You are my God.”  My TIMES are IN your hands.” (Psalm 31:14)

Because the Life we live IN the “Now” is a life that moves us completely…Out of TIME!