WRITTEN IN THE STARS FOR SIGNS AND TIMES PART 2
Genesis 1:14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years.
Last week we spoke about the witness in the stars for signs, and today we are looking at the witness of the stars for times. When God proclaimed, "Let there be light," He initiated not only the existence of matter but also the unfolding of space and time itself. He had created an energy outside of his spiritual energy, the energy of light, the closest natural energy that can be compared and contrasted to his all-powerful Spiritual energy
Created light preceded the matter that was created to become the universe of galaxies of stars, and what lies between us and the stars is not just time and space, but an immense delay of emptiness and silence that stretches across time because sound cannot travel where there are no particles to transmit it. Time is limited by the speed of light, and space is also measured by that. One light-year is approximately 9.46 trillion kilometres. With a Hubble telescope we could see a protostar heat up and eventually ignite, and we would say it is a new star, but what we observe is in fact very very old.
What we see and touch in our immediate temporal world is a familiar instant, close and graspable reality, but the stars teach us about the waiting and silence of time delay and that becomes a parable concerning our faith, as we shall see.
The Bible describes God’s essential nature as two things; God is light and God is love.
The power of the energy of God’s light brought into being the material and temporal world of matter with its beauty of created order. But the power of God as light is also truth which speaks into our spirit, and the spiritual energy of God’s light is not limited to time and space – It is everywhere at the one time.
The power of the energy of God’s love brought into being the lifeblood of relational harmony and unity and goodness and blessing to all mankind through Jesus.
For God so loved the world that he sent his only Son… (John 3:16)
I have two questions.
Why do we experience the delay time of God’s instant presence with us when we know he is there within us?
Why do we experience an apparent distance between God and us even though we know he is closer than our own thoughts?
Regarding the delay time of presence - it does not take God time to get to us, nor does it take us time to get to God.
The delay occurs because it takes time for us to get away from our soul self, and into our true spiritual self in Christ. We have taught our soul to live in the immediate temporal world, which is always instant, close and graspable. But the stars teach us a parable about the waiting of delay time, and the delay time is the often reluctant yielding of our soul life to our faith-ready spirit life. Putting off our old soul self and being renewed in the mind of our spirit and putting on the New Creation spirit self. (Ephesians 4:20)
Regarding the apparent distance between us and God - Our soul self lives in self-consciousness, which makes us aware of our own insufficiency of falling short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). That makes a separation between us and God (Isaiah 59:2) but it does not make a separation between God and us – he is always close. He says I will have mercy upon your unrighteousness, and your iniquities I will remember no more! (Hebrews 10.16)
The Bible tells us to exchange our idea of our self as an unlovable self, for God’s idea of us as his deeply loved child (1John 3:20) who grows into his likeness because of his love for us. Our self-serving soul life should not be allowed to take the mastery over our true spiritual reality as partakers of the divine nature - ‘God with us’. Our choice to receive.
Sometimes the honest thing to say is ‘I find that hard to do - Please help me Lord’.
We can trust that God’s plans are unfolding in our lives even in the midst of our own doubts and mistakes and suffering and the attacks of darkness upon us.
David said in Psalm 139 ‘Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. How precious are your intentional thoughts about me, O God (rêa). They cannot be numbered! (Psalms 139:16)
So there is a book about each one of us with our name on it and there are special times of grace arranged by God that he has purposed for us - to receive as an act of his sovereign grace or to access by persistent faith (Romans 5:2). There are two kinds of times in the Bible –Chronos time – clock time, with its seconds and minutes and hours and years of ordinary day-to-day time, and Kairos time - special times of grace arranged by God that he has purposed for us. Jesus lived in both Chronos time and Kairos time like all of us. Not everything in the everyday clock time life of Jesus needs to be in the Bible because the Bible is not just a history book but a book of revelation and faith and purpose. And so it is with us - God’s book about us is not just a history book but a narrative of the eternal milestones of purpose and meaning that he has planned for our lives. How many milestone opportunities have we missed? There are things we can do. It is called REDEEMING THE TIME
Ephesians 5:15 See that you live diligently, redeeming (getting back) the time (Kairos) because the days are evil.
I believe that we are living in a time when God is restoring his Kairos occasions for us that we may have lost or neglected throughout the Chronos minutes and years of our busy everyday lives. But the Bible says that God restores those years (Joel 2:25) – not in clock time but the times of his Kairos purpose and meaning to us through the work of God’s grace through the Holy Spirit. This grace can abound sovereignly in special times of the outpouring of God’s Spirit as at Pentecost and at times of spiritual refreshing in sovereign moves of the Holy Spirit. But we can also access this grace through our faith (Romans 5:2) That is for all of us – all of humanity – his grace includes his forgiveness to us and the restoration of his eternal purposes for us. This is what brings a renewed connection with God and the healing of our souls.
We can’t get all our Chronos years back – they’re gone, but we can miraculously get the lost Kairos opportunities restored in a few Chronos weeks or months – and I’m seeing that happen in people in these times. The Apostle Paul saw one Kairos moment restore his entire past on the road to Damascus, and then he learned to manage living in both time frames in perfect harmony. God’s word from heaven shines upon us to unveil a life of fulfilment in God. It is time to let God begin to rewrite our narrative and we will have so much to be thankful for, living in a new spiritual energy not an old natural energy.
I have found the following pathway of redeeming the time helpful So note the Scriptural references. Every moment of chronos time is filled with something. But when we interrupt our busy clock time and ask God to awaken us to the present moment Kairos energy of loving partnership with him, we let God rewrite his eternal events back into our life. This waiting on God and waiting for God takes practice. Each moment of time belongs to God, and it is filled with his love for us – not because he just decided to do it because we turned up – no it is the very nature of God that his energy of love and light fills every moment of time.
We start to see by faith that the waiting time is not passive but active, being filled with the supernatural unseen activity of God, bringing his loving eternal purpose and meaning into ordinary daily things, even loss and suffering.
I find it helpful to pray in this way. ‘Thank you for your loving presence Lord, and the powerful work that you are doing on my behalf in the world of the unseen’
That kairos consciousness invites us into living in him through Christ living in us.
There are two delays - one is the delay of detachment from self-consciousness in our soul into our true spirit conscious self - this is what the ‘Healing of the Soul’ course is about, moving from the soul to the spirit - and the second delay is the delay of the eventual manifestation of Gods activity. We can bridge that first delay through faith and grace, but only God is in charge of the second delay of the manifestation of his activity. Paul speaks of having faith for God’s love to fill us and of how that brings the manifestation of God’s extravagant good will into our lives and glorifies His name in the earth.
Ephesians 3:17 that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
Only He who is able to manifest such exceedingly great goodness is in charge of how and when he does that – and we wait in that glorious hope, day by day, and moment to moment. We discussed redeeming the time and I said we could interrupt the clock time but it’s not about snatch and grab if we’ve got a couple of spare moments here and there.
No, it is setting aside time purposefully to practice the renewing of the spirit of the mind and learning to use the new operating system that God has spiritually equipped us with through the Holy Spirit, understanding God’s idea of who we are. And sometimes it can seem like a waste of time but it’s not. Our spirit will rise, as the Bible says They that wait upon the Lord will renew their strength, they will rise up with wings as eagles, they will run and not be weayl they will walk and not faint (Isaiah 40:31). Teach us Lord to wait.
We can put that into practice exchanging the soul life for the Spirit life, our time into God’s time, his energy into our effort. Amen.
Paul O’Sullivan - pauloss@icloud.com
