God’s Time, Not Our Time

Our time is not God’s time!

Back in the mid 90’s I started a Non Profit support group to help families whose children had died. It was called Mission TLC (treasuring our lost children) and I would help with counseling, annual memorial services, and in hospital visits, as a child was dying.

This was all before Social Media, so it was literally “boots on the ground”, in person work. I saw every type of death imaginable, from cancer and other illnesses, to accidents and suicide.

Suicide was the one that got me though. I had a lot of judgement about suicide because my grandmother had committed suicide when I was 8 years old, and it made a tremendous impact on me emotionally. I “knew” that it was wrong ! 

Then I had a week…. What a week…. A week of 3 suicides, and I was supposed to help these parents. 

One of the situations that pushed me to my limits was a 16 years old girl who had hung herself in the garage. There were no signs that she was depressed, or had any issues at all. She was a cheerleader, popular, had good grades, and had just bought her prom dress, yet her dad came home from work and opened the garage to find his baby girl hanging there.

The worst part was that, because they were Catholic, their priest wouldn’t perform the burial, because he said it was an unforgivable sin. Not all priests believe this way, but theirs did.

I was shocked and my heart was broken, but I was also at a loss as to what to say to these parents. I had my own “suicide issues” and I needed God to really give me wisdom, peace, and understanding for this situation.

I spent days in prayer and study, just trying to make sense of what I should do.

I have a “top 5” list of doctrinal questions that I had to struggle with, and fight for answers to. This was one of those. I thought I knew what I knew, but I was completely wrong! 

I have a hard time admitting when I’m wrong too. I’m very stubborn like that. It’s only when God Himself shows me that I’m wrong, will I humble myself and repent. I’m definitely not a “follower of others”, when it comes to things like this. This is too important, as are the other issues in my “top 5”, to simply believe what someone else says I should believe. I had to do the work myself!

Then one day I heard the Lord speak to my heart and say, “If a day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is as a day, how can any man judge that the split second of death isn’t enough time for Me to reach my children?”

It was a Revelation to me. It brought me complete peace and confidence in my stance on this issue. 

Not only on this issue though, but on my understanding of how I should treat others who I might think “Don’t get it”, or who I think it’s my job to call out their sins. 

Our time is not His time! We may never see the fruits of sewing love into another person’s life, but He does. Even in the lives of our own children. I have no fear over their walk with God. They may turn from Him, and I may never see them return to Him, but it might not happen until the split second of death, and it’s between them and God, not them, ME, and God.

This is what true Faith looks like. It’s not our job to call out others. We only have to love our Heavenly Father, and because we love Him, and mature in Him, we love the “others” that He brings into our lives.

This Word to me, from my Father, has comforted more people over the last 2-3 decades than I can count. It has brought peace to the families of suicide, but also to those in fear of the lives that their loved ones are leading. They don’t have to carry that fear and worry. All they have to do is love them. 

Love doesn’t mean not having our own boundaries, and allowing them to harm us. Sometimes we have to actually cut loved ones out of our lives, at least for a season, because we have to give them over to God’s plan for their lives and the choices they are making.

We never stop loving them though, and we can do that without fear and worry for them.

My mom used to tell me, “You can pick your bottom. You can choose how low you’re going to go.” She was right. It was hard enough for me, doing it with God! I can’t imagine how hard it would be doing it without Him!

It is their choice though. It’s not my position, or right, to force them to see it my way. If anything, pushing them is probably pushing them further away, not only from you, but from God too!

It’s my prayer that this lesson will speak to the heart of someone who needs to know this. Whether it’s because of a suicide in your life, or if it’s the fear that someone that you love will not come to a place of knowing Jesus.

Our Father loves them more than we do, and He is capable of reaching them, even if it’s at the split second of death. I believe that everyone will be given the opportunity to KNOW the truth and choose.

In this day and age, truth is a subjective term. Nobody feels completely confident in what “the truth” is. However, there is a real “truth” and if someone is seeking it, when they see it, they will choose it.

I often tell people, “I can tell you (insert “the truth” or “why we exist”, etc) but I can’t Reveal it to you!” Only God can give revelation knowledge and so we have to have peace, and confidence that He will, in His time.