The Lord holds the times and the seasons, and He has placed each of us on this earth at this time for His purpose and pleasure. If we are going to be effective in the Kingdom of God and have satisfaction in life, we all need to be in tune with the Lord and understand His will for the season we are in. We are also called to steward our time well and use it wisely. We cannot earn more time, but we can squander it if we are not intentional with it.
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God spoke to Israelites in captivity through His prophet Jeremiah by giving them exhortation, instruction, and correction. The Lord told the people that His plans for them were not to harm them but to give them a hope and a future. The fruition of God’s plans were going to come through a process, and it required their obedience and cooperation. …
Then the Lord answered me and said:
“Write the vision
And make it plain on tablets,
That he may run who reads it.
For the vision is yet for an appointed time;
But at the end it will speak, and it will not lie.
Though it tarries, wait for it;
Because it will surely come,
It will not tarry.
“Behold the proud,
His soul is not upright in him;
But the just shall live by his faith. Habakkuk 2:1-4
In the above passage, the Lord told Habakkuk that the vision is for an appointed time. That meant that even though the Lord was giving him a vision, it did not mean that he were going to see its fruition right away. The different aspects of God’s purpose have to all come together before the fulfillment of the vision is seen. Also God’s vision is connected to God’s timing and the season in which it is to be fulfilled. The below passage is a good example of this.
And it shall come to pass afterward
That I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh;
Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
Your old men shall dream dreams,
Your young men shall see visions.
And also on My menservants and on My maidservants
I will pour out My Spirit in those days. Joel 2: 28-29
In the above passage, Joel prophesied about the baptism of the Holy Spirit and that God was going to pour out His spirit upon His people. Joel wrote this vision down in a period between (835-796 B.C.) He didn’t know when that was supposed to happen. It took about 800 years prior to the fulfillment of those prophesies! Joel and others could not have done anything to make this prophecy happen in their lifetime. They didn’t even know what it meant for the spirit of God to be poured out upon the people.
In Acts (1:4-8), when Jesus told His disciples to wait for the promise of the Holy Spirit in Jerusalem, the disciples were still thinking about the restoration of the Kingdom to Israel! They had no idea what Jesus meant to be empowered by the Holy Spirit! It wasn’t until they received the promised baptism of the Holy Spirit that their eyes were opened to that reality. They also recognized that the baptism of the Holy Spirit was the fulfillment of Joel’s prophesies from 800 years prior and what God had intended from them from long ago!
The truth is that we cannot manufacture the fulfillment of God’s vision. The Lord has an appointed time and He knows the right season! God’s vision had to come into fruition in parts. The baptism of the Holy Spirit was only needed after Jesus came to earth and accomplished God’s mission. Subsequently, the disciples needed the empowerment and the revelation of the Holy Spirit to become His witnesses in all the earth and proclaim the Good News of salvation! Hallelujah!
The Lord provides a vision for His people, so we can continue to look to Him and not get derailed. The vision allows us to perceive a preferred future where God does His work on the earth and sets things right. Sometimes the vision is for an individual person, but many times it is for His people. This allows them, in one accord, to push forward into God’s purposes and not grow weary.
I wonder how many people over the 800 years prayed about fulfillment of the Joel’s prophecy and God’s vision for His people!? Those individuals had no idea how the fulfillment of this vision was going to look like and whether they would see it in their lifetime!
We still have many other prophesies and visions that God wants to fulfill, and they will come at the appointed time. While we cannot make them happen, we can pray that God’s Kingdom would come and His will and His vision is done on earth as it is in heaven! Pray with your brothers and sisters in Christ for the shared vision that God has given you through His word or through a prophetic word to the body and stand together in faith for the fulfillment of God’s vision on the earth!
Image by Wokandapix from Pixabay
