By Andy Schafer
As we have been working to get this ministry off the ground I have spent a lot of time in prayer. God has been stretching my faith and allowing me to go through some pretty uncertain times! I have to admit that there have been days when I wondered if I really did hear God’s voice calling me to open this Teen Center!
The beauty of God’s will is that it is going to happen. For every doubt I’ve experienced over the past several months He’s given me several confirmations that this is His will! This morning as I was praying, He allowed me to have a pretty powerful realization that has blown my mind! I wanted to share it with you.
We are in the beginning stages of raising the money for the down payment on the buildings and it has been slow going! I found out yesterday that we have been given a deadline of May 1st to have financing in place or the purchase agreement we made will no longer be binding. I was praying this morning and asking God to guide me as we try to raise these funds. As I sat there praying I knew in my head that God is already taking care of it. However, it hit me like a ton of bricks that God is outside of time and that from His perspective, He isn’t going to take care of it, He is taking care of it right now!
I try to walk in faith that God is guiding me. I think we can all agree that faith is a pretty tough thing to grow and no matter how hard we try, doubts will creep in sometimes! I realized this morning though, that God is working in all of time simultaneously! As I sit here writing this, He is working in future me to help some teenager through a tough time, He is working in 5 year old me as I kneel and ask Him to be my savior, He is working in 23 year old me as I ask Tammy out for our first date and He is welcoming me home as I reach the end of my time here on earth. And here’s the kicker, He is doing all those things RIGHT NOW! He doesn’t need to plan ahead for things because all of time is laid out before Him and he is working in all of it at once. Everything that has ever happened or ever will happen is happening right now for God! God doesn’t exist in time, time exists in God!
So when we are struggling with our faith, all we need to remember is that at the very moment we are on our knees asking God for help, He has already helped us. We just need to wait for the flow of time that we live in to bring us to the place where we can see what He has already done!
This has given me a different outlook. Faith is a little easier when we realize that when we ask something of God, He has already taken action before we ever think of asking! He sees the steps that led us to make the request as well as what comes of the request and nothing is going to be able to stop Him from doing His will!
