God’s Hope for Your Heart from John 7
SOMETIMES JESUS WORKS IN SECRET
[Jesus said] “You go up to the feast. I am not going up to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come.” After saying this, He remained in Galilee. But after His brothers had gone up to the feast, then He also went up, not publicly but in private. The Jews were looking for Him at the feast, and saying, “Where is He?” (John 7:8-11)
Have you ever found yourself asking, “Where is God?”
To His brothers and sisters, Jesus had been behaving rather oddly for someone who was supposed to be a public speaker. They told Him that He should go make Himself known to the crowd, start building a name for Himself, get some good publicity, but Jesus had refused.
Now, however, He goes up to the feast without telling anyone! Here He is, being sneaky, showing up quietly then standing up publicly in the middle of the occasion later on (verse 14). Why?
Because Jesus knows details that we don’t.
He had told His siblings flat-out, “My time has not yet fully come,” basically letting them know that there is a proper order to things that depends on lots of factors that they don’t know about, but that He does. He refused to follow their timetable because His timetable is always the better option in the big picture, and He’s the only one who can see the big picture. Then, when the time was right, He took action at last.
He does the same thing in our lives as well.
Maybe you’re wondering “Where is God?” in your situation. Maybe you look back at a time of pain and question where He was then. Maybe you look ahead to something that brings anxiousness and wonder if He’ll be there for you in your hour of need.
Don’t let your senses take priority over your spirit. Don’t let your feelings take over your faith.
God is not absent or uninterested. He has not abandoned you. He has not left you to fend for yourself. In fact, it’s just the opposite. He is working out the details that you don’t know about, smoothing out the situations you can’t see, and when the time is right, He will take action at last.
May you trust Him today, and as you remember that His ways are higher than yours, may you find hope in this truth: sometimes Jesus works in secret.
-Pastor Phillip
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