I graduated from Belmont College in 1974, which later became Belmont University. I received a Bachelor of Science degree. I would not attempt a Bachelor of Arts degree because a year of foreign language was required. I barely got out of high school taking English and made no attempt at French or Latin. I’m not even sure Spanish was offered back then.
My BS major was Psychology with a minor in Business Administration. At the time, this seemed logical for my pursuit of becoming a pastor. A major in religion would require successfully taking both Greek and Hebrew, which are foreign languages, and I was still struggling with English.
All of that was a back story for a business phrase that has become a part of my vocabulary: ” On-Time Delivery.” Did I first hear that phrase in college? I no longer know. But since I began ordering things through the Internet, I have become accustomed to getting my orders when I was told to expect them. When an item was later than the promised date, I could feel the frustration building as my frequency of looking for the truck increased.
Never mind that I might have procrastinated in placing my order. A late delivery was an annoying delay in completing a task or the anticipated joyous fulfillment of an urgent, unnecessary desire. If the item was a gift, it was the shipper’s fault that the gift was late in getting in the hands of the intended beloved recipient.
My cognitive processor was wandering through my history when it came to me that God was an expert at “on-time delivery.” Quickly, it dawned on me that while that is true, He delivers on His “time,” not mine. That fact opens a new wonderland of insights into how God has worked in my life. While unsure, I assume He works similarly in every believer, even every human. Here is where my rehearsing of the past produced a new appreciation and realization of how He works in causing His Kingdom to come on earth.
For most of my life, when I got into a pickle of some kind, I would cry out to God to deliver me from my acidic circumstance. Most often, the pickle that was demanding my attention just got “pickelier.” It seems that way more often than not, my predicaments continued longer than they should have.
In my prayerful pleas, my moaning desperations, could He not hear how urgent my need was? Why, oh why, did He delay His “delivery” to me or His delivery of me?
I am not the fastest mouse in the maze, so it is just now, at this late stage of life, that I realize that most of the traumatic joy-sucking events of my life may not have been avoidable. However, the joy and peace-sucking of those events could have been avoided entirely or at least minimized. My disillusionment and confusion revealed an absence of preparation before the adverse events.
I cried out to God for delivery, and He replied, “I sent you what you needed four years ago. You did not open the packages. I have been sending your relief packages for years, but you never paid much attention because there was no crisis. Now that evil is upon you, you frantically ask me to remove the evil stealing your peace, joy, and security. I sent you all you need to overpower the evil. Build your house on the “rock” I am sending you, and your “house” will stand in the coming storm. Mindlessly, going through religious activities will not build the house you need for the catastrophic events coming your way.
“I am not with you to be your personal lifeguard. I am with you to prepare you to demonstrate how the Kingdom life is not overpowered or overwhelmed by life’s circumstances.”
If you are losing joy and peace in your circumstances, it is probably because you have lost, or not developed, the ability to see your ever-present Deliver. This is often called spiritual discernment. In my thinking, discernment is the ability to see beyond the emotional upheaval or pleasure of a period or event in my life to the activity of God working in and around me. Faith is the conclusion that even if I do not see God working, He is!
Peacetime preparation builds strong minds, and wartime battles build strong characters. Both are necessary to become an accurate “image of God. “
God is on time with His deliveries. The right time is before the needs arise. Jesus ends this “Sermon of the Mount” with a parable about house building. The building of our houses will always be followed by “the rains fell, the winds blew and beat against the house.” (Matthew 7:24-27) The stability of our building can be predicted by the location chosen and the builder’s skill. Jesus is the rock upon which we build a fulfilling life, and Jesus’ teachings are the building materials. But we decide on the location, and we provide the labor! The Holy Spirit is both the construction foreman and inspector.
Today, God is delivering what I will need to build into my worldview, Kingdom view, in preparation for the storms that are coming tomorrow.
Photo: A Delivery bike outside a grocery store near our hotel (The Classy Hotel) in Erbil, Iraq.
Baldwin Heirlooms 