Relative to the date of this post, we are just a few days from 2024. This is a good time to think back and to look ahead. I hope you are looking forward to this new year and all the potential it holds for you. Whatever this current year has been to you, you want to move forward from that point and not backwards.
So, let’s talk about timing and blessings. God’s timing and realizing your New Year goals go hand in hand. You may find what I am about to say unsettling, but here goes: Merely having God on your side is no guarantee that you will achieve your New Year goals. To realize success, you must be willing to cooperate with God’s timing and His way of doing things. If you don’t, it’s highly likely that success will not be yours.
In the early years of my ministry, some young ministers I knew became anxious to get out there and start pastoring their first church. But they were not properly equipped for that yet. Some of them were not happy with their respective senior pastor because he would not release them to be ordained and fully credentialed at their request.
Those church leaders were not trying to hold the young aspiring ministers back. On the contrary, they understood the importance of proper timing. To them, the young ministers were not quite ready for what they wanted to do. Similarly, God has a time and season for every purpose regarding us:
“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”
Ecclesiastes 3:10, KJV
God Knows the Best Time
Perhaps for some of your New Year goals, you have already established dates by which you want to accomplish them. For instance, you want your ministry to grow to this size by …, or you want to realize a financial turnaround by…, etc.
But please understand that God’s timing and His way of doing things can trump your self-imposed deadlines. We must be careful to not allow the enemy to frustrate us when things are not happening according to our schedule. God’s perspective on when to act on our behalf is far better than ours.
Anyway, what does the fact that things are not happening according to our schedule have to do with anything? That’s certainly not the metric as to whether or not God is working on our behalf.
Yes, it’s tough waiting on the Lord. It can be downright agonizing. But our refusal to wait on Him is a recipe for failure to reach our goals in life. I believe that will be the very reason some believers will not realize their New Year goals for 2024.
“You have need of patience, that, after you have done the will of God, you might receive the promise” (Heb. 10:36). According to this verse, sometimes the problem is not that we have not positioned ourselves to receive from God. Rather, that we fail to patiently wait on the Lord.
I am excited about the upcoming New Year. It is my prayer that you have great expectations for 2024 as well. May God bless you with much success to achieve your New Year goals. Be careful to not run ahead of God. Don’t cast off your faith because God seems to be silent. Only He perfectly knows when the time is right for you.
Copyright © 2023 by Frank King. All rights reserved.