He goes before we know…

God ALREADY has an appointed time and day for everything that He wants to do.

We must trust the process.

He knew the ending all the way from the very beginning, in reverse if you will.

We just don’t see it yet, therefore maybe we’re having a hard time believing it. Truth is, we want to have it all figured out now. That’s why faith is so vital and why child like faith is a must. How can a child trust his or her father’s guidance if they don’t believe their parent is the most trustworthy and safest place they know? They can’t. Although earthly fathers fail us here, God can’t. God won’t. He says as a mother comforts her child, so I WILL comfort you. He didn’t say we won’t feel pain, as children must in order to experience life in order to grow. A good parent always does what they feel best and wants only what’s best for a child. How much more does God want for His own? He created you and me. A parent can’t even see it all. God knows and sees all and what all is ahead. He goes before we know and maps it all out. He knew us way before we even existed, and long before we knew ourselves. His ways and thoughts are so far higher than ours or that we can even imagine. It’s all-ready prepared (the way). Therefore it’s already and all ready.

We read in Habbakuk 2:3 that the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; IT WILL SURELY COME; IT WILL NOT DELAY. (We just have to wait.)

God is not a man that He should lie or son man that He should change His mind. He is GOD. If He said it, He’ll do it. If He has already planned something out, it is so. But that doesn’t mean that we’ll see it out, find it or see it - unless we’re walking by His Spirits lead. We miss things that are so all the time. Yet, it’s (whatever He has planned) already for an appointed and appropriate day, time and season. He works all things for the good of them that love Him and are called according to His purpose, not those who are pretending to be. He said if you love Him to keep His commands. It goes hand in hand. Believers believe and obey. Pretenders pretend and doesn’t come from the heart, and God knows that. A good man steps are ordered by the Lord!

Vision is important to God and He tells us that without vision we simply perish. Do you know what perish means? We are literally wasting away and wasting our life away with no eternal greater purpose. If we don’t seek God for where we’re going, then we’re already going the wrong way. Man has many many many plans but in the end, it’s always God’s that stand. If we don’t seek His will and strategically plan to walk that way, then we won’t. Without vision and seeking God for what He wants for our lives and future, then we cast off restraint. If we don’t have something to go toward, then where are we going? We do whatever we want to and miss His will. The word tells us to seek Him with our whole hearts and then… we’ll find Him. In that order.

God desires to give you vision and says He’s got good plans for your life, BUT unless YOU seek to find it, then you won’t. The promises are for every and anyone but will only happen for those who seek to please God. He doesn’t bless disobedience. We were created for Him and by Him. Simply it comes down to that! We are His and made by His design, but we are in or we’re out! We alone choose.

I’m reading in Haggai 2 and that’s what spurred this blog. Bear with me, I’ll get there. A verse in Haggai which I’ll share in a few, stood out to me like never before and is interesting to me. It made me think of the verse above that the vision speaks of the end. The appointment time and date! Suddenlies are always in the making. Joseph had a God given vision when he was young and still had a great life. Then suddenly it wasn’t so great anymore an he then had to hang onto that vision, when he had no other hope to believe but that! God often gives us visions and glimpses into the future because He already knows what’s coming but plans to work it all out for our good. If we believe God then we have to believe that’s what He does and that’s Who He is.

Joseph was sold out by his very own and betrayed by his own blood/brothers! Yet, BUT GOD. That’s not how his story ended! It doesn’t have to be your ending either. In the end we know that end God helped Joseph to forgot his pain and received and exceedingly abundantly blessing for sure. Just as God had showed him in the beginning, and so It was. If you haven’t saw yours yet, it just means you’re not there, but He is. It doesn’t mean it won’t happen because it will if God said so! It’s already happened in His eyes and what will be has already to Him. Nothing takes God by surprise.

Joseph’s ending was better than how it began even though that part was good. If we can only imagine…. It happened just as it should have and the betrayal was part of the plan. Just as it was for Judas to sell Jesus out so He could save you. Joseph said it best after all was said and done at the end of the matter: “you meant it for my harm BUT GOD meant it for my good AND……. The saving of MANY.” That’s what God does in our sorrows. He trades them. We must not forget that part. No matter how long it’s been, how much of your life you think you’ve wasted or time spent, your test can be a testimony - not only for you but to help many. One soul at a time or thousands at a time. Each and every soul matters and that’s why God allowed Joseph to endure. He just saw it after and looking back, what God already saw all along! Eternity matters. Your life matters! One soul and one step at a time.

Just as God wanted to save the Jews life when there was a plot to destroy them all, He wanted to save Esther’s life too.

Listen to this, Joseph endured 13 years in a place he didn’t belong, yet he was right where he belonged. Just like Esther, “positioned for such a time as this.” A set up so intricately designed and planned by God when you didn’t even know or see…. Something man could never do or pull off. His ways and thoughts are sooooo much higher….

You may think the betrayal was in vain but if you trust God and choose to see it, God will use that too. It’s all part of your story and His glory, so don’t be embittered and embodied and eat up by it. He can use even the bad and the mistakes you’ve made. God can’t lie. He showed Joseph the vision when he was young and He meant it as telling him it would happen! And It did. He was a man when he received the promise and promotion but a boy when He was shown It. We don’t see that he ever opted out of trusting God or His faithfulness. If so, someone else may have taken his place to fulfill the vision to save Gods people. Same with Esther. She was told they’d be saved but she’d perish so she rose up in faith against all odds. Maybe Joseph got off track or doubted a time or two, who knows but God. The Word tells us that he that endures till the end, shall be saved! Joseph endured.

But it wasn’t someone who else, it was Joseph. Maybe It’s you that’ll help save many by what you’re going through. What has God spoken to you or shown you that hasn’t come to pass? Have you Been Trusting and waiting like Joseph? He hand fed the very ones who betrayed him when in his power to harm them and he knew he could have. Yet he didn’t and it wasn’t in his heart to. God did something in his heart all those years of bondage that probably felt in vain. God is doing something in your hearts and in the hearts of His people if we let him. For as a man thinks in HIS HEART so he or she is. Josephs heart was for God. We see where his brothers hearts were early on, now not so much when they saw the position they were in and the one Joseph was now in. When Jesus was on the cross, we were on His mind!!!!

God opened doors for Joseph that no man could shut. JUST WHEN he felt forgotten and forsaken, and it looked like it never work out, it did! Set back after set back but all a set up in reverse! Remember !!! ??? He knew the end already from beginning to end, end to beginning. He gets the final say. He told Jeremiah that He knew the plans He has for him and it’s also the same for us. He reminded Jeremiah before He used him that He knew Him inside out, and would still use him anyway!!!!! He showed him who He was and who he was in Him. Look at the life of Jacob. That thing took some time but in the end, God did it! He got his name changed.

I’m hopeful that we’re all a work in progress if we wanna be. The lady with issue of blood sought for 12 years until suddenly one day at the appointed time she met Jesus! No doubt all those years allowed her to know Who her dependency was on and she appreciated it. He changed her life forever! Have you encountered God? How easily we should not forget. The lady of 18 years was bent over and suddenly straightens up. The man of 38 that decided he’d rise and never go back to feeling sorry for himself, which kept him down. It wasn’t wasted but worthy for in the waiting we often find our cause. The Israelites wondered around in circles for 40 years going no where fast. Then suddenly God gives them a way out. No matter if it’s been 3 days and you’re on day 4th with no glimpse of hope, or on day/year 41. No matter if you’re near your final breath, if there’s breath in body, God can change your heart and soul!

Back to Haggai - God was going to bless the people even though they couldn’t see it yet. We may have no proof but His word to stand on and that’s all we need. Just when it looked like all hope was lost but it’s this verse that stood out to me. This verse is a precursor to verse 19.

Verse 10 states this:

“On the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Haggai:”

GOD KNEW.

This is the verse that stood out to me!!! God knew the time. The day. The year. The exact second and situation it would happen and come to pass. He ALREADY had it ALL lined out. The pain, the beginning, the end and what they’d have to endure in the middle. All in order to reshape their wills, hearts and mind to get there!!!!! He did!

• “And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. 1 Peter 5:10”

  We can take comfort in that! Knowing that He is. He Who was and is and is to come. He cant forget what He promised you!

No coincidence. He’s waiting on you to see and come. Not only to the knowledge of the truth but to acknowledge and accept it.

• “The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts. And in this place I will give peace, declares the Lord of hosts.’” Haggai 2:9

The above verse takes us to verse 10 on the day and month and year when God would do what He said and we’ll end with this:

Verse 19 says “Is the seed yet in the barn? Indeed, the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, and the olive tree have yielded nothing. But from this day on I will bless you.”

I love that word “yet”. You don’t even see it yet or yet have any proof, yet faith is the substance of things we HOPE FOR and the evidence of what we do not see YET. But yet we believe it in our hearts to be true and behold it in our mind and vision. We trust that we’ll eventually hold it with out hand. May we know tha the true and worthy PROMISES of God, and we are invited to taste and see that God is good. Let’s get a vision and begin to envision it for ourselves. Let’s begin to call those things out that aren’t YET as though they are until we see them. Don’t relent. That’s why faith can do. (Romans 4:16-17 - God speaks things before they come into existence!)

You may not feel worthy of the cause or look the part. Maybe everything looks the opposite of what you’d hoped or planned, but I have two words: “BUT GOD.” God can do anything and He said that “I AM THAT I AM.” That’s all we need to know. We can know that it is all In His hands, not just some of it or the parts we don’t feel we have to or need to control. It’s all in His hands. He is worthy and He has the WHOLE WIDE world in the very palm of His hands (all and everything in it!) Amen. 🙏🏽

As it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. Romans 4:17

God alone quickens the dead and RESURRECTS dead things. He alone restores empty hopes and recreates hearts and minds as if the pain never existed. If He did it for Joseph, He can do it for you and me. Amen.

Your situation and life may look hopeless or over but it ain’t over yet! Better things ARE in store. Ahead is where its at and now is where faith is. Hope Is alive and blessed is the one who believes, for faith eyes to see and expectation to soar above the seemingly lifeless situation you may be in. Looks Can be deceiving. Trust what God can do.

Genesis 41

51 Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh. “For,” he said, “God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father's house.”52 The name of the second he called Ephraim, “For God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.”

53 The seven years of plenty that occurred in the land of Egypt came to an end,

Joseph prospered when it made no sense and when no one else did. Tables turned and new positions were set. I told you it was a set up. God brought dead things and hopeless situations back to life, and that gives me hope of life. God Did what He said He’d do in the end. Amen