It Is Not Our Place to Know "When"

Read: Acts 1:1-14

“It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.” (v.7)

We want to know “when”. We are eager to lay hold of God’s timeline. “When are you going to come again?” “When are you going to ‘fix’ my situation?” “When are you going to change my spouse’s heart… or heal my son… or tell me what it is you have in store for me to do next?” We want to know “when”. The disciples were eager to know the answers in the same way that we are, and Jesus’ response demonstrates a very important truth for us as God’s people: We don’t need to know. In fact, we CAN’T know… at least not in the way that we want to. “It is not for us to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.” We like to think that it would help us… make us more effective… encourage us… but the truth is that it wouldn’t really help.

God is giving and has given us everything we need to carry out the powerful ministry he is calling his C/church to! We might think we need to know the timing of it all, but that would just distract us. We couldn’t carry the weight of knowing. We are on a “need to know” basis… and we simply do not need to know! What is it that we DO need to know? That God is faithful to fulfill his promises… and he has fulfilled the promise of giving us his Spirit. What else do we need to know? That we will be witnesses for the Kingdom of God to the ends of the earth and doing so will require a POWER that we do not have apart from the Spirit! What does this ministry look like? Well, there is part of it that MUST look different than the ministry of the disciples beforehand… otherwise they could have been dismissed immediately to go back to doing what they were doing. I think that this newly expanded ministry is a greater frequency of occurrences than what was happening before as well as a growing number of those participating in the work of the Lord. To participate in this increased frequency and scope, the people of God would need a power greater than their own flesh… it would require the indwelling presence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus seems as concerned with answering the “what” and the “how” as he does the when. The disciples may have been thinking, “when does God pull the lever and put an end to this mess and usher us all into the good life?” Jesus seems to say, “we are just getting started! you are focused on the wrong thing. You are looking forward to the end… I am here launching a new beginning!” I am sure that those Christ followers gathered in the city were as eager as anyone to be rid of their Roman oppressors… and to get revenge! Jesus tells them, in a sense, it is not for you to have your mind focused on revenge, you are to be focused on being “witnesses”!

How do we calibrate our hearts and minds this way? How do we free ourselves from a fixation on the “when”…our attempts to dabble in God’s timing… and give ourselves fully to the exciting, fulfilling, powerful, and crucial work of being witnesses for the Kingdom of God? It must be enough for us just to know it IS going to happen someday! “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling placeof God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people,and God himself will be with them as their God.He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (cf. Rev. 21:3-4) It is not wrong to long for this day… to look forward to it… but it must never become a distraction from the here and now. God is doing something NOW. He is doing something in the midst of his people at this very moment. God has given us power in and through His Spirit, so that we need not worry about when it will all come to an end. We might feel like the end is upon… even right now in 2020… yet it doesn’t really matter. It is not for us to know. What is for us to know? : God keeps his promises, we are sealed with his spirit, there is work yet to be done in this world, we cannot stand with our hands in our pockets staring at the sky, we have been baptized with power, we must speak with the words the Spirit gives us, and this witness of the Kingdom of God will echo through our neighborhoods, cities, states, countries, continents, and the world. The time for us to stop speculating about the end has come. Let God sort out what he has set in his authority! Dive fully into what he has before you… trusting the future to him. Let go of your hunger for revenge, or eagerness to see “others get theirs”. Trade that in for an eager expectation of being brought into participation with God as you bear witness of his Kingdom. Love you guys. - JDP