It Is Time

Have you ever wondered why most of the times your plans turn out to be a flop? It does not matter how meticulously your planning was, but you never reach the goal that you have set for yourself and your strategies that you have implement seemed to be right but at the end of the day, although it seemed right, it was wrong. It happened to me as well. I have two degrees. The first degree that I have is a Bachelor’s Degree in Business and Commerce specialising in Marketing and Management. Now after I received that degree I told myself that I will get myself a fantastic job and that I will make lots of money and that I will get work at a large company that will pay me a high income and so on. However, I was way wrong. No matter how many CV’s I sent out, I could just not get a job. I wondered why I went wrong. I doubted in my abilities and I figured that I was meant to end up in the streets or live with my parents forever. But as I looked back, I received one big reality check. That is the fact that I was never in step with the God of the nations. Being in step with the God of the nations will determine whether you are blessed and everything you do turns out to become a success or whether you fail at everything. That is what I want to talk to you about today.

If you have your Bibles with you, will you please turn to the book of Jeremiah in the Old Testament. I know that I don’t always start in the Old Testament, but sometimes when I read through it God speaks to me and when I read this verse, He really spoke to me. The passage that I am talking about is from Jeremiah 29:11 – 14 (NIV) and it says the following:

“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart. I will be found by you,’ declares the LORD, ‘and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,’ declares the LORD, ‘and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.’”

This passage from Jeremiah was aimed at the Israelites whom God had sent into exile due to their disobedience and their sinful nature. They have forgotten that God chose them to be His priestly tribe to draw the nations of the world back to Him. This passage was about promise and restoration. This spoke about the promise that God made that He would send His begotten Son Jesus to bring us back to Him by way of His atoning death on the cross.

However, to apply the this passage to the message that God has placed in my heart, is the fact that God loves us so much and because of that, He has already made plans for our futures and for us to find out what these plans are, you and I need to be totally in step with Him. The biggest plan of them all is the one that I have stated earlier, but He also has certain blessings that He personally placed in our lives. The only way we can receive it that we need to have a relationship with Him and we need to be in sync with His thought processes by means of opening our spiritual ears and eyes and to be sensitive to the voice of the Holy Spirit. Now, as the time went by and as I my walk with God became more precious to me, God started to teach me many things from His Word. However, based on the passage that we just read, there are three things that He made clear to me. These three things are:

• Being in Step with God means that we have to be still and know that He is God

• Being in Step with God means that we have to heed to His will over our lives

• Being in Step with God means that we have to surrender to Him completely.

I guarantee you that if we can write these three things on our hearts, then we will live an even more blessed life. We won’t live a blessed life because of the blessings. We will live a blessed life because we have the God of the nations on our side because He is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last. So, let us not leave it there and look at these three principles separately and see what the Bible has to say about each topic.

• Being in step with God means that we have to be still and know that He is God

Have you ever noticed that when we pray, we are the ones that all the talking and after we said Amen, that is the end of the conversation between us and God. It is as if this whole relationship with God is a one sided affair. But can I tell you something today? It is not. We tend to be so busy with worldly things that we just want to shoot up a five second prayer to God and that we don’t ever give Him a chance to speak. Just like your relationship with your child, your best friend, you parents, your spouse, etc. are two sided affairs, your relationship with God is also a two sided affair. Sometimes it is very necessary that we need to also keep quiet and let God speak into our lives.