Miracles Take Time

Wrestling with Time…

Time is something that we all wrestle with, and it seems as if time is the enemy in our lives. We have deadlines, time constraints, and we are constantly racing against time so we can feel like we are living our lives and not "wasting time." We live our lives by watches, clocks, and timers.

Our world is marked by time, but God is not. God does not rush around making sure all His miracles and plans happen.

Consider this thought…

From the time of Adam and Eve, it was anywhere from 4-6 thousand years for Jesus to be born, and we have been waiting almost 2000 years for Jesus to return.

Consider this passage in Luke 8:40-56…

Both of these stories have to do with time:

1. The woman had been bleeding for 12 years.
2. The girl was 12 years old.
3. When the woman touched Jesus in verse 44, it says “immediately” her bleeding stopped.

Jesus took the Time…

Notice what Jesus does in this story with the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years. After the woman touched him, she was healed; there was nothing more that was needed. The woman was healed, everybody could have gone on their own way, because Jesus after all was in a hurry to go and heal the little girl.

Yet he stopped, and asked “who touched me?” The woman was already healed, Jesus knew who touched him, so why would Jesus take the time to do this?

Jesus needed to make a connection with this woman, for him to tell her that her faith had healed her, for him to recognize her public healing, and that she was no longer an outcast because of her illness. Jesus needed to acknowledge her and her faith. Jesus took the time to minister to this woman fully, and not just heal her physically, but heal her emotionally.

Timing for the Girl’s Miracle…

However, in the space of time that it took for the woman to be healed, another person who was supposed to be healed, died. Someone else seemed to get in the way of the Synagogue ruler’s miracle.

I wonder if he thought, “Why is Jesus stopping to ask who touched him, when there is a crowd of people around him? Everybody is touching him. Doesn’t he know that my daughter is dying.

And then the blow: a servant comes out to tell them that the daughter is dead.

Yet that’s not the end of the story. What looked to be a hopeless situation, God miraculously restored.

12 Years…

·         There is a reason why Luke indicates the girl’s age as being the same length of time that the woman had been sick

·         There is a reason why Jesus was delayed in getting to the sick little girl.

·         There is a reason why the thing that delayed Jesus from coming was a miracle 12 years in the making for somebody else.

We often look at the things that seem to prevent our miracle from happening rather than see what God is trying to do in our lives. Yet God moves in ways that go against our concept of time; God has a time schedule that transcends ours.

Miracles always take time. While miracles may seem to be instantaneous, they may have been days, weeks, months, or even years in process, and it is in the process that God changes our lives inwardly while we wait for the outward miracle….