Letters of Hope

Dear Ones,

The Eternal, True and Living God – our Heavenly Father – created the entity called “Time” for a specific purpose, that He might bring into being a family of others like Himself – “in His image” – to whom He could show His matchless Grace, with whom He could share joyful fellowship, and upon whom He could bestow His infinite love and blessings.

“And we know that, for those who love God, all things are working together for good – for those, I mean, whom with deliberate purpose He has called.  For those whom He has known beforehand He has also predestined to bear the likeness of His Son, that He might be the eldest in a vast family of brothers.” (Rom. 8:28, 29 Weymouth)

He uses Time in order to work out His purposes.  For example, “when the FULNESS OF TIME was come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons…” The promise of a Redeemer was made right back in the Garden of Eden when the need for a Redeemer first became obvious.  But there was a specified Time ordained when that promise would be fulfilled.  (Gal. 4:4; Gen. 3:15)

It helps to remember that, from God’s viewpoint, “one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” God has set specific times for certain events in His economy.  There are “TIMES of refreshing” that come from the presence of the Lord.   Heaven is retaining the Lord Jesus until “the TIMES of the restitution of all things.” He has pre-appointed the TIMES of nations and the bounds of their habitation.  Paul’s letter to the Ephesians refers to a further plan of God to take place “in the dispensation of the FULNESS OF TIMES…”

(Ps. 90:4 & 2 Pet. 3:8; Acts 3:19, 21; 17:26; Eph. 1:9,10)

In our last letter we said that He holds OUR times in His hand.  God not only loves every one of His precious children, but He has a purpose for each one.  A literal translation of Jer. 29:11 says that He knows the purposes which He is planning for us, plans for peace, a future and a HOPE.

If the Almighty Creator “set lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years;” and if a human father has hopes and plans, and makes provision for his children; how much more does our Heavenly Father have desires, plans, and provisions for His children?   (Gen. 1:14)

And, again, since He knows the end from the beginning, and every intricacy of our beings, He knows just when to time every event.  This is expressed so beautifully by Annie Johnson Flint:-

God’s time is never wrong,
Never too fast nor too slow;
The planets move to its steady pace
As the centuries come and go.

Stars rise and set by that time,
The punctual comets come back
With never a second’s variance,
From the round of their viewless track.

Men space their years by the sun,
And reckon their months by the moon,
Which never arrive too late
And never depart too soon.

Let us set our clocks by God’s,
And order our lives by His ways,
And nothing can come and nothing can go
Too soon or too late in our day.

Annie Johnson Flint.

“And now, Lord, what do I wait for?  My HOPE is in YOU……

My soul, wait only upon God, for my expectation is from Him……

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits;  and in His Word do I HOPE.”

(Ps. 39:7;  62:5; 130:5)

“For the vision is yet for the APPOINTED TIME…

though it delays, wait for it, because it will surely come, it will not tarry.”

“But if we HOPE for what we do not see, then do we with patience wait for it.”

(Hab. 2:3; Rom. 8:25)

In Agape, Eulene

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