Hi all,
In Genesis 1:14
God made the lights (stars and planets) to shine through the water
atmosphere of the earth saying, "Let them be for signs, for seasons, for
days, for years...to give light upon the earth (v15)...and it was so."
This
was not the creation of light, which was described in 1:3 in the famous
words 'Let there be light', or more literally, 'Light. Be.'
The light of Genesis 1:14
is the recognition that physical light is God's creation made to serve
Him and His purposes, and is therefore now ordered to provide such to
the planet and its inhabitants. It is within these boundaries man's life
exists, and within which He asks us to walk with Him.
But I live in minutes and seconds!
God
moves in signs, seasons, days, years. The trouble is, we live in
minutes and seconds. We get upset if a 2 hour high definition movie
takes longer than mere seconds to load onto our electronic device. We
cook food by microwave in minutes. If we are in a drive-through lane at a
fast food restaurant more than 3 or 4 minutes we get agitated and
wonder what is taking so long with the car in front of us. We wonder as
we sit at a red light with no traffic around if we should run it, or
wait for it to turn green. We expect life to move in seconds, and we
therefore expect God to do the same as we try to make Him into our
image, rather than us into His.
But
He isn't moving. He moves in signs, seasons, days and years. Period.
Get used to it. With Him, slow down. Waaaayyyyy down. Learn to meet Him
in His seasons of your life. Pursue the seasons of God in your life. (My
book which details some of the early visitations with the Lord and my
angel is called, Pursuing the Seasons of God). If you want to walk with Him, learn to appreciate a slower pace, develop your own culture of solitude
as Abraham did when he stood under the stars at night contemplating the
things of God and communing with Him. The Father isn't into performance
based faith, He is into the process within the relationship.
The
season of spring in the northern hemisphere looks like winter when it
starts. But soon things begin to come alive, plants green, flowers
bloom, and the end of spring looks almost like summer - like baby
summer. The end of the spring looks very different from the start. Such
is our seasons of life in Christ. More on this later...
How
then do we then, who live in a world that runs faster than God, walk
with Him? How do we live in the physical world by minutes and seconds
while within us He is moving in signs, seasons, days and years?
Externally we live in minutes and seconds. Christ in us moves in signs,
seasons, days, and years.
What those Hebrew words of Genesis 1:14 mean
The word 'sign' is 'oth' in Hebrew, and is used when God puts a 'mark' (sign) on Cain in 4:15, and is used of the rainbow as a 'token' (sign) in 9:12.
One meaning would be the constellations, the zodiac - the original
meaning of the 12 signs shows the story of Messiah and redemption on the
earth. (I have a cd/mp3 series on this subject if interested), but if
you go back to the original star names and constellations, you'll find
the zodiac starts with Virgo the virgin giving birth to a son, all the
way to Gemini, originally a bride and groom not twins (twisted by the
Greeks), to the outpouring of the water of the Spirit in Aquarius to the
return of Christ and destruction of Draco the Dragon. As the Rabbi's
teach, Adam, Seth, and Enoch had perfect knowledge of the world and
understood how it all worked.
Another
application of 'sign' is that most basic; a marker for longer periods
of time - era, epoch, age. These are the longer stretches of time, sum
totals of many years, which gives us understanding that in God's mind,
there are larger divisions of how He deals with man. This is confirmed
in Ephesians 2:7 where we are told the Father God will "in the ages to come
He will continue to show the incomparable riches of His grace, in HIs
kindness towards us in Christ Jesus." The ages to come. Signs.
Spiritually
these larger ages of our short lives might be compared to the maybe 20
years a parent has with children in the home. It may be the celebration
of a 50th wedding anniversary or the retiring of a faithful employee
after 20, 30, or 40 years of employment at a company.
A
smaller unit of measuring time is 'seasons', and many seasons may make a
'sign' or age. Seasons here is both literally the seasons of the year,
and therefore seasons in our own lives - the length of time a child is
in diapers, the time where we are led to a particular church and then
God moves us on, the season where God deals with us about a particular
issue, and then He moves on to deal with us in another area.
Interestingly, as we've all experienced, Satan (that infamous
counterfeiter of the genuine) also tests us in seasons of time before
backing off for a more opportune time. As seen in Luke 4:13 with the temptation of Jesus: "And when the devil had finished all his temptations, he left Him for a season."
It
is interesting to note that next God mentions 'days and years'. Not
years and days, continuing the flow from larger spans of time to
shorter, but rather grouping 'days and years' together, with emphasis on
'days'. Of course many days comprise a year, but by mentioning days
first, it shows us God is emphasizing each day in our life as a focus
point.
The
scriptures are full of references to making this day, this morning,
count for the Lord. As a time to spend with Him, as a time understood as
if each day is a bowl that can contain only a certain amount of trouble
and worry, for tomorrow a new bowl is before us. Jesus said 'each day
has enough evil of its own' in Matthew 6:34 in His exhortation to deal with today while it is day - tomorrow will come soon enough.
In
the midst of his funeral dirge and mourning for the now destroyed city
of Jerusalem and the carrying away of many captives to Babylon, Jeremiah
yet said through his tears: "This I recall to my mind, therefore have I
hope. It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because His
compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul; therefore will I hope in Him." Lamentations 3:21-24
We need to recognize each age, each season, each day and year spiritually,
in our lives, and find God within. Each marker of time has a
purpose...but to learn how to find that purpose we have to understand
this: Before you were born again, you set your own seasons, but now we submit our seasons to Him. As Shakespeare said, 'therein lies the rub' (Hamlet). We want to govern our seasons, but so does God...
And we'll pick it up there next week, until then, blessings!
John Fenn
