Eph 697ff, 859, 910 9/25/88
A. Definition.
1. Timing is one of the most important factors in life. Timing is defined as the selection of the best time or the speed for doing something in order to achieve the desired effect with maximum results.
a. In the theatre, timing is an act of adjusting the tempo of the various parts of a production or performance to achieve maximum effect.
b. In sports, timing is the control of the speed of the stroke or the blow in order to reach the proper moment for maximum effectiveness. In sports, timing is everything.
c. So whether in sports, life in general, drama and theatre, public speaking, romance, or anything else in life, timing is one of the most important things in life.
2. For the Church Age believer, timing is a matter of synchronization with the protocol plan of God. Therefore, our timing is very different from the moment we believe in Jesus Christ. First we must learn the protocol plan of God, and thereafter we must utilize it.
3. Good or bad timing is a matter of the utilization of the problem solving devices of the protocol plan of God; i.e., rebound, the faith-rest drill, the filling of the Holy Spirit, grace orientation, doctrinal orientation, personal love for God, impersonal love for all mankind, sharing the happiness of God, a personal sense of destiny, and occupation with Christ.
4. The function of the believer in the protocol plan of God requires the virtue function of timing. Timing is a part of the virtue of the protocol plan of God.
5. Good decisions from a position of strength cause the believer to be in synchronization with God’s plan, purpose, and will for his life.
6. Bad decisions from a position of weakness cause the believer to be out of sync with the protocol plan of God for the Church Age.
a. Bad decisions from a position of weakness keep the believer out of timing during his entire Christian life, so that he never catches on as to what it’s all about, and he’s a loser until the day he dies.
b. At some time or another, all of us make bad decisions in life. But in the protocol plan of God, you can make good decisions from a position of strength. Every time we make a decision that is contrary to some principle found in the Word of God, contrary to the mechanics of the protocol plan of God, then we are out of sync with God’s plan.
c. Once a believer is out of sync with God’s plan, there is no timing in the world that will work, no such thing as good luck, and no way he will ever have a happy life. He won’t have tranquility or happiness because he is a believer out of sync with God’s plan. There is nothing in the world more obnoxious than a born-again believer out of sync with the protocol plan of God.
7. Every detail of life is involved in timing, such as being in the right place at the right time.
8. Timing is a problem when incompetent people are promoted, because although they are in the right place at the right time, they are not qualified for the function that goes with the promotion. They will ruin their lives by their lack of capacity. Others who are better qualified are sometimes passed over simply because they were not in the right place at the right time.
9. What often passes for luck or good fortune is merely a matter of timing in life. Human timing may be related to luck, but God’s timing is related to doctrine. There’s not one ounce of luck in God’s plan.
10. In God’s plan for your life, bad timing is a matter of being out of fellowship, pulling the pin of the grenade, being out of the will of God, having the wrong priorities, making the wrong decisions, and all of this because of ignorance of the plan of God. Above all, bad timing is lost opportunity under the equal privilege and equal opportunity of God’s plan.
11. Indifference, apathy, rejection, or antagonism toward Bible doctrine causes the believer to be out of sync with the protocol plan of God. You cannot synchronize with God’s plan, will, and purpose for your life in a state of ignorance of the mystery doctrine of the Church Age.
12. God is perfect; therefore, only God’s timing is perfect. Any other timing in history has problems connected with it. Timing is a problem. But because God’s timing is perfect, it’s the only timing for the believer. To get into synchronization with God’s plan, purpose, and will for your life requires mastering, understanding, perception, and metabolization of Bible doctrine.
13. Believers are imperfect. Therefore, the timing of the believer is imperfect unless he is in the will of God. Otherwise, the timing of the believer is related to his flaws, failures, successes, and distractions through the arrogance complex. Therefore, timing becomes a very serious problem for anyone who is not consistently positive toward Bible doctrine.
B. The principle of timing can be reduced to the simplest of terms.
1. Bad timing is arrogance in life. Bad timing is manifested by the various functions of the arrogance complex: jealousy is a sin but also bad timing; implacability is the basis for many sins and is bad timing; self- pity is an emotional sin and bad timing. To the extent that you feel sorry for yourself, you are always out of sync with the plan of God. So if it’s related to the arrogance complex and becomes the motivation in your life, it is always bad timing. Inordinate ambition and inordinate competition is always a matter of bad timing.
2. Good timing is based upon gate #3 of the divine dynasphere. It is humility, objectivity, teachability, resulting in consistent perception, metabolization, and application of doctrine.
3. Timing in the Christian life is the issue of doing the will of God rather than doing your own will. This is the same as the problem of arrogance versus humility.
4. If God doesn’t promote you, you are not promoted. This is taught under the principle of timing related to arrogance or humility in 1 Pet 5:5- 6, “`God makes war against the arrogant, but He gives grace to the humble’ [Prov 3:34]. Therefore, humble yourselves under the powerful hand of God, that He may promote you at the proper time.”
a. Whether your timing is good or bad is based upon the fact that God makes war against the arrogant, but gives grace to the humble.
b. “To humble yourself under the powerful hand of God” means that, through the perception, metabolization, and application of the mystery doctrine of the Church Age, you are under God’s timing rather than your own timing. When you have a chance to seek revenge, you do not do so. When you are wronged and treated in injustice, you do not fight back, but leave everything to God’s timing. This becomes a fantastic principle in application.
c. Promotion under God’s plan and God’s grace is always in the proper time. Therefore, if God doesn’t promote you, you are not promoted.
d. There is a wrong time for promotion, and there is a proper time for promotion. While we may think we know all about it, in reality only God knows the right and the wrong time.
5. God promotes only those believers who are in sync with the protocol plan of God. To be in sync with the protocol plan of God, the believer must learn the mystery doctrine of the Church Age under the principle of post- salvation epistemological rehabilitation. Good timing in the Christian life is a matter of the execution of the protocol plan of God through the perception, metabolization, and application of doctrine, the utilization of the invisible assets, and the function of the problem solving devices.
6. God promotes the doctrinal believer, because through synchronization with the protocol plan of God, the doctrinal believer advances to spiritual maturity where he glorifies God as a winner and an invisible hero.
7. As a result of spiritual self-esteem and cognitive self-assurance from metabolized doctrine, the believer learns to rely on God for good timing, which is the fulfillment of His protocol plan.
a. Our timing is always going to be off as Christians. God’s timing is always right.
b. Timing has to do with everything in life. If your timing is off in any area, you will have a problem. Because life without doctrine is inevitably a life of bad timing. You may call it bad luck, be filled with self-pity, or resent others.
c. But remember that you are related to Jesus Christ forever and ever. As a believer, the only timing that counts for you is God’s timing. Any other timing is absolutely off base.
d. So if you are an ambitious Christian and arrogant, your timing will always be off until the protocol plan of God becomes the most important factor in your life.
8. Grace orientation relies on God for good and right timing. Enforced and genuine humility is the basis for grace orientation. God promotes the humble, which means that enforced and genuine humility leaves the matter of timing in the Lord’s hands, and avoids inordinate ambition and competition among believers or other people in general.
9. Wrong timing in life can put you out of sync with God’s protocol plan.
10. Wrong timing in dying can be out of sync with God’s will, plan, and purpose for your life. This can be done in one of two ways, either by making bad decisions which shorten your life or by suicide.
a. Such a believer is out of sync with God’s plan. He doesn’t hurt God in any way, but he hurts himself in that God had a marvelous and wonderful plan for his life, yet he intruded with his own volition and committed suicide.
b. Committing suicide is merely an illustration of wrong timing. It is a condition whereby the individual has lost track of reality, and his timing is so completely off that the believer in desperation simply takes his own life.
c. Christian suicide does not imply loss of eternal salvation. It simply means that the believer who commits suicide is out of sync with God’s plan, for he has superimposed his will in arrogance over the will of God. He’s a loser in time, but he has not lost his salvation.
C. Timing applies to Christians.
1. In our study of problems and solutions, we will limit this study of timing to success or failure to execute God’s plan, purpose, and will for your life.
2. Again, timing may be defined as selecting for maximum effect the precise moment for beginning or doing something.
3. Timing is related to human experience. Eccl 3:1-8 teaches the general principle about timing.
4. Verse 1, “There is an appointed time for everything. There is a time for every event under heaven.” This means that your life can be in perfect timing and perfect sync. Such a life is one of great happiness and blessing.
5. Verse 2, “There is a time to be born, and there is a time to die. There is a time to plant, and there is a time to plow.”
a. This verse mentions birth, because there is no life in the womb. Timing begins at birth, not in the womb.
b. Regardless of the circumstances and events that surround your birth, God gave you life at that moment, so that was the right time for you to be born. You did nothing wrong at that moment; your timing was perfect then! Of course, you had nothing to say about it. You did not choose your parents; you did not choose your birthday; your volition wasn’t involved at all. God created soul life and imputed it to your soul at your birth. That was the right time for you to be born.
c. So if you have any complaints about your parents or your birth, your timing is off! Don’t say you were born too late or too early. God starts everyone in the world off at the right time. God gave you a perfect start!
d. So when you complain about anything related to your birth or your environment, or parents, or home, you are blaspheming God. You are saying God’s timing is off, but God’s timing is never off. Anyone who resents his parents or his early environment, no matter how bad or how good it was, it totally out of sync with life. This is where you first begin to get off track. Psychology encourages this type of thinking. But every time you use your environment as an excuse for your bad habits, you are so far out of line that you are disoriented to life!
e. All your bad habits and timing can only be corrected by believing in Christ. Then you are born again, and that gives you another chance. The moment you believed in Jesus Christ as your Savior was good timing. At salvation you start all over in the matter of timing.
f. Of course, just because you receive salvation plus forty additional blessings doesn’t mean you will be happy. Kids can get everything at Christmas and be miserable. You won’t be happy with what God has provided until you learn the doctrine and the plan, and get into God’s timing. Until then you’re out of sync. If you neglect Bible doctrine, you’re out of God’s timing until the day you die.
g. Likewise, you have no control over when you die apart from taking your own life. When you are born and when you die is a matter of God’s judgment. We’re all on God’s timetable regarding when we are born and when we die. We will die in the manner and at the time that God selects. God cannot be wrong! Only our perception of what’s happening can be wrong.
h. People are often bitter, upset, and disturbed because of the way someone they love dies, putting themselves out of God’s timing for the rest of their lives, as if somehow everything in life is unfair to them.
i. There is a lot of unfairness in the world, but the minute you react, you’re out of God’s timing. Excuses are never solutions to problems.
j. Look at all the people who complain about their birth, their parents, their home, their environment, and their circumstances now. This is a bad decision and puts you in wrong timing.
k. People are always pushing to get into some situation, into or out of marriage, to succeed, to do this and that. People have become very pushy. Becoming very pushy is a sign of being on your own timing. Your wrong timing as a believer will destroy you and make you miserable in life.
l. Planting and plowing describe an agricultural economy. In our day, “there is a right time to invest, and there is a right time to reap from that investment.” There is always a right time in business, in the stock market, to buy property, to get into your own business, etc.
m. In effect, this verse says that whatever you do in life by way of making a living, there’s a right time and a wrong time. If it’s God’s timing, then you’re alright.
n. An unbeliever with some wisdom also recognizes right timing and wrong timing.
o. So you were born at the right time and you will die at the right time because those are God’s decisions. But now you must make decisions in life.
p. Knowing when to plant and when to plow is a matter of understanding the soil, the weather, what crops you’re trying to produce. So in effect, this is saying that timing in life is a matter of knowing what you want to do in life, what business you want to be involved in, what you want to do to make money to sustain yourself.
6. Verse 3, “There is a time to kill, and a time to heal; there is time to tear down, and there is a time to build.”
a. Violence can be right timing or it can be wrong timing. For example, in the laws of divine establishment, capital punishment is the way that crime is controlled. As a result of following this principle, the Jews didn’t need jails.
b. So a “time to kill” refers not only to capital punishment for criminals, but also to the fact that when you serve your country in the military, you should kill the enemy, for that is your job. You are not a murderer; it is honorable to kill in war, not dishonorable.
c. If you kill when it’s time to heal, you’re a murderer.
d. To tear down and to build is your right of making your own decisions compatible with your own financial status. It’s no one else’s business if you tear down your house and build another. What other people do may not be your timing, but you cannot be critical of the timing of other people!
e. Timing is something that belongs to you by the grace of God. But other people’s timing does not belong to you! The exception is marriage.
7. Verse 4, “There is a time to weep, and a time to laugh; there is time to mourn, and a time to dance.”
a. This teaches that recreation is permissible.
b. You never confuse the time to weep and the time to laugh, because once you are in sync with God’s plan, you know when it’s time for each. In other words, there’s a certain part of life when it’s time for weeping and mourning. There’s a certain part of life when it’s time for laughing and dancing. If your timing is right, you will enjoy the laughter and dance, and you will have calm, peace, and tranquility while you are weeping and while you are mourning. 8. Verse 5, “There is a time to throw stones, and a time to gather stones; there is a time to embrace, and there is a time to refrain.”
a. “To throw stones” means to weed out stones to clear the land. To gather stones means to gather natural materials to construct shelter.
b. Very few people seem to understand the time to embrace and the time to refrain from it. In marriage, they want either all of one or the other, depending upon how many years they’ve been married.
c. This is saying that life isn’t just sex and physiological things, but many very wonderful things. Some people have yet to discover that they have a soul, ready to be fed with thought and many interesting things. When you lust your way through life and then reach the point where it is time to refrain, you seek drugs or alcohol to get your kicks and are again being out of sync. People who live their life with the constant desire to please self never understand this principle of timing.
d. The time to refrain from embracing means you give your soul an opportunity for other things that will be wonderful in your life.
9. Verse 6, “There is a time to search, and there is a time to give up as lost; there is a time to keep things, and a time to throw away things.”
a. In the days when this was written, people may have lost a very valuable animal on the farm. They search and search for it, but the search cannot go on and on so that you begin to neglect normal functions in life. So there is a time to give up as lost, because you must get to other things in life.
b. Keeping and throwing away has to do with moving. Also, as you age, you begin to realize that many of the things you possess which you previously placed so high on your scale of values are absolutely meaningless. None of these things really helps you or gives you great happiness. It doesn’t change your life or prepare you for death or adversity. It won’t even make any difference in your social life.
c. Generally in middle life, everyone accumulates and their scale of values goes wacko! Instead of getting with doctrine, they accumulate things they want. This means their timing is bad because their scale of values is wrong.
10. Verse 7, “There is a time to tear apart, and there is a time to mend; there is a time to be silent, and a time to speak.”
a. It is inevitable that under certain circumstances as a believer growing in grace, you will have to forget about some friends who are not compatible with your stand and who become a distraction. So you no longer see them.
b. “A time to mend” means that in your enthusiasm, you will be completely and totally out of line in cutting off some people, e.g., your parents who don’t seem to go along with what you’re doing. But there’s a time to mend with them.
c. When a woman is angry, she often becomes silent, whereas she normally gabs all the time. That silence is not normal.
d. It’s very important to understanding the timing of when to speak and when to be silent in social life. You have to listen to what other people say. Don’t do all the talking yourself. Find out what other people think and learn about other people. So you have to be able to talk and should, but you also have to be able to listen. Today, there are not too many good listeners. There are a lot of good talkers, but they concentrate only on what they are saying, and they cannot switch and concentrate on what others are saying.
11. Verse 8, “There is a time to love, and a time to hate [reject]; there is a time for war, and there is a time for peace.”
a. Hating doesn’t mean the Bible is condoning sin. This refers to hating principles that are wrong, e.g., the evil of communism. Hatred is used in the sense of rejection. This refers to hating that which is antagonistic to God’s will, plan and purpose, and Bible doctrine.
b. Jesus said “there will be wars and rumors of wars until I come.” Beware of people who say, “`Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.”
c. The way to stop war is to be strong and prepared.
d. The more weakness you show, the sooner you go to war.
e. There will always be wars until the Second Advent of Christ. You can’t stop wars by being weak. The closest you will ever come to stopping wars is by always being prepared for them.
12. Conclusion.
a. Mankind is imperfect; therefore, man’s timing is imperfect.
b. God is perfect; therefore, God’s timing is perfect.
c. Since mankind is imperfect, he must depend on God for perfect timing in life. This is one of the blessings of executing the God’s plan.
D. Waiting for God’s Timing.
1. The problem of timing is man’s failure to do the right thing at the right time. For example, when he hears the Gospel, believing in Christ; or waiting for the right woman or right man to get married; or avoiding inordinate ambition and waiting for God to promote you.
a. People simply don’t wait for that anymore. No one seems to be waiting for God and God’s timing. People are too busy making their own decisions, trying to create their own timing, and trying to fulfill their ambitions. (Whether their ambitions are good or not is not the issue.) God’s plan is being bypassed by most believers.
b. Inordinate ambition and competition cause people to desire and lust for things, to seek happiness in the wrong way, and as a result their timing is always off. There’s always something people want: success, promotion, sex, marriage, travel, or doing things that are contradictory. They’re constantly in a flux of bad timing.
c. When times get bad, bad timing destroys you! And times are going to get very bad. If you enter a disaster period of history when you are in bad timing, you are not prepared for disaster.
d. You are either using the ten problem solving devices or you are using your own problem solving devices. If you are using your own problem solving devices as a believer, it will be a rough road ahead.
2. If God doesn’t promote you, you’re not promoted. This doesn’t just refer to a job promotion or success, but refers to the whole realm of your life. Promotion refers to getting the right man or right woman in marriage, to avoid the temptations of leading with your lust instead of with doctrine.
3. Waiting for God’s promotion means faithfulness in the little things so that God can prepare you for the big things. But there are a lot of people who are highly unstable because of their lust pattern, their ambition, their frustrations. Such people are faithless in taking in Bible doctrine consistently, in learning and applying the problem solving devices. Therefore, they are not qualified to deal categorically with the five major problems.
a. Waiting for God’s promotion must be done in faithfulness, not deviating, running off, or becoming unstable. It means not allowing what you lack in your status quo to become the basis for making wrong decisions from a position of weakness and functioning under your timing rather than God’s timing.
b. You have a choice: God has a perfect plan for your life. You have an imperfect plan for your life. You should wait, like Abraham did, when he set aside his authority and let Lot choose the land he wanted, Abraham would go in the other direction.
(1) Lot lusted for and chose the beautiful Pentapolis plain, which today is under the Dead Sea. Lot was land hungry, just as you have some hunger in your soul.
(2) Homosexuality is simply man substituting his timing for God’s timing, man putting his lusts before God’s plan. Lot’s legalistic, self-righteous reaction to all the homosexuality put him out of timing with God’s plan, and Lot never got back into God’s timing.
(3) Lot’s wife turned out to be one of the greatest nags in history. She ended up as a pillar of salt. She complained while Sodom and Gomorrah were being destroyed by God. She was so taken with her own timing that she couldn’t leave town without complaining. In her last bad decision, she looked back and became a mound of salt in one second simply because of bad timing.
(4) Abraham went on to fantastic things, because Abraham knew that by letting Lot choose, he couldn’t lose because he was in God’s hands. In God’s hands, Abraham never faltered.
c. So waiting for God’s timing means faithfulness in the little things. You not only have to have the right priorities, but you have to have faithfulness. You cannot bounce here and there and be faithful. God will prepare you for the big things if you are faithful in the little things.
4. Waiting for God’s promotion means the daily perception of doctrine, hard work, the avoidance of arrogance, an organized life, right priorities, never permitting personal ambition, personal lusts, or personal desires to outstrip the protocol plan of God for your life.
5. The Church Age with the protocol plan of God is classified as the “dispensation of the fullness of times” in Eph 1:10. The Church Age runs coterminously with the times of the Gentiles, in which only Gentile nations can function as client nations to God. It is a dispensation of fullness. It is a time when God’s timing for the individual believer is far greater, with far more rewards and blessings than has ever existed before in history.
6. Under God’s timing, Israel failed to utilize the spiritual resources provided for them. Five Jewish client nations failed, so that not until the Second Advent will there be a Jewish client nation. Their bad timing destroyed them.
7. Timing is everything in life. It’s even possible to die before your time under one other condition besides suicide. Eccl 7:17, “Do not be excessively wicked, and do not be a fool. Why should you die before your time?”
a. “Excessive wickedness” relates the arrogance complex to the emotional sins.
b. This implies that since God is responsible for the time, manner, and place of our death, that He always takes fools first.
c. So there are two ways to die before God’s timing: to be excessively wicked, and to become a fool.
8. There is God’s timing for you in both life and death. To be out of sync with God’s timing is the greatest disaster you will ever face in this life. You may be impressed with pain, rejection, etc;, but nothing in life is more important than God’s timing and being in sync with God’s plan.
9. Judging or maligning other believers is bad timing. 1 Cor 4:5, “Therefore, do not judge anything before the appointed time of judgment, but wait until the Lord comes [Rapture], who will bring to light the things hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s right lobes. At that time, each believer will receive his praise from God.”
a. Remember that Paul was rejected by the Corinthians as their right pastor. He gives all the reasons for this rejection, and shows them where their timing was bad.
b. Wrong timing is always related to wrong motivation. Wrong motivation is one cause; lust is another cause.
c. If you are oriented to God’s timing, there is no sense in judging, gossiping about, maligning, or being critical of other believers. God will deal with them, and there is a right time for it: either now in the Supreme Court of Heaven, or after the Rapture at the Judgment Seat of Christ, when our Lord will evaluate the individual believer.
d. Therefore, until the Lord evaluates, any time that you malign or judge or run down some other believer, you are out of God’s timing and functioning under your own.
e. When you are wronged, if you retaliate and seek revenge, you cut off any function from the Supreme Court of Heaven. But if you put it in the Lord’s hands and do not retaliate, then the Supreme Court of Heaven functions, but under God’s timing.
f. God’s timing is perfect. Therefore, God will handle the case perfectly and magnificently. First of all, God knows all the facts. Secondly, God knows what will hurt the guilty party the most. Thirdly, God therefore judges under God’s timing which is far greater than anything we could muster.
10. In the execution of the protocol plan of God, the believer is commanded to purchase time. Eph 5:16, “Redeeming the time because the days are evil.”
a. Redemption means to purchase. In this case, you purchase time by your perception and metabolization of doctrine, from which comes application and wisdom, from which comes timing and the purchase of it.
b. You purchase time by learning the mechanics of the protocol plan of God, by understanding and utilizing your portfolio of invisible assets, by knowing the problem solving devices and using them, and by being faithful in the little things. In God’s timing, faithfulness in the little things must precede faithfulness in the big things.
11. Col 4:5, “Walk with wisdom toward outsiders [unbelievers], redeeming [purchasing] the time.”
a. To walk with wisdom means to apply doctrine to experience. Epignosis doctrine becomes wisdom when applied to experience. Walking in wisdom refers to your time in spiritual self-esteem, spiritual autonomy, and spiritual maturity.
b. To walk with wisdom toward unbelievers means: do not be influenced by the ambitions and desires of unbelievers. Unbelievers get pushy, want things in a hurry, want shortcuts to success and bypass virtue, want what they want right now, and there is no tomorrow. The believer picks up on this when he does not understand the protocol plan of God.
E. Good Timing and Bad Timing.
1. Bad timing on the part of believers is any generation when Christians reject Bible doctrine with the result that they accept false teaching from false teachers. 2 Tim 4:3, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but desiring to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves false teachers on the basis of their own lusts [desires, decisions].”
a. Notice what you attitude should be toward sound doctrine? You have to endure it! It will make you grind your teeth, react, feel terrible and inadequate, and all the things it is designed to do so that you will rely on the Lord instead of on your own resources.
b. We are in a negative generation today when people will not endure sound doctrine. Today doctrine is not the issue; the issue is to satisfy one’s own desires. This negative volition will destroy any nation.
c. The tickling of the ear is a synonym for emotional stimulation from false doctrine. Emotional stimulation replaces the teaching of Bible doctrine.
2. Good timing is related to our prayer life. Heb 4:16, “Therefore, let us with confidence come to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
a. “Grace to help in time of need” is bringing yourself back under God’s timing rather than your own. This is done by coming to the throne of grace with confidence, which means understanding doctrine and its application.
b. When the time of need comes, there is the necessity for prayer. But the prayer must be directed toward the grace policy of God so that we will have “grace to help in time of need.”
3. Bad timing is seen in the neglect of Bible doctrine. Heb 5:12, “For because of the time [elapse of time since salvation], you ought to be teachers, but you have need again that someone teach you the elementary categories of doctrine from God. Therefore, you have become believers who need milk and not solid food.”
a. In other words, you have been saved long enough to know enough doctrine to teach others (e.g. children). (Paul is illustrating, not requiring that all believers become pastor-teachers.) But now you must relearn the basics.
b. The issue is the elapse of time. Since you first became a believer, you have since reverted to your own timing. Therefore, everything has gone wrong. You have eternal life, but you’re in a total state of confusion.
c. When believers have been saved for a long time and yet still need basics, they are under bad timing.
4. Good timing is important after salvation. James 4:14, “You do not know what your life will be like tomorrow, for you are just like a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.”
a. Believers on their own timing are a vapor, here today and gone tomorrow. They have eternal life, but nothing to show for the fantastic assets provided for them by God, as their politeuma privileges.
b. Our time on earth is very short, for in the light of eternity time is just a drop in the bucket. But while we are here, we have the opportunity to operate under good timing related to the perception of Bible doctrine.
c. As a believer, your life only has significance as it is related to the mystery doctrine of the Church Age and the problem solving devices. Your life is only a vapor trail, a streak across the sky that disappears quickly, and if it has any significance, it is because it is related to Bible doctrine.
5. Good timing is fulfilling God’s plan, purpose, and will for your life. 1 Pet 4:2, “So as to live the rest of the time in the flesh, no longer for the lusts of mankind but for the will of God.” The will of God is God’s timing; the lust of the flesh is your timing.
6. There are two categories of timing in the protocol plan of God.
a. Good timing is the believer’s life which is synchronized with the will, plan, and purpose of God.
b. Bad timing is the believer’s life out of sync with God’s will, plan, and purpose for his life because of fragmentation.
7. Until the believer’s life is synchronized with the protocol plan of God through the consistent function of post-salvation epistemological rehabilitation, timing will always be a serious and destructive problem. It will wipe you out, starting with poise in your frontal lobes, and going into every area of your life until there is nothing left but the misery of functioning in the reactions related to arrogance.
8. But you cannot be in sync with what you do not understand. When you apply nothing to something, you always get nothing.
9. There are three phases to God’s plan.
a. Phase 1 is salvation through personal faith in Jesus Christ.
b. Phase 2 is post-salvation experience on earth, including living and dying.
c. Phase 3 is the Church Age believer in heaven under two different circumstances. Through God’s perfect timing, the believer who dies goes into heaven in an interim body, absent from the body and face to face with the Lord. Also through God’s perfect timing, the believer is in heaven in a resurrection body at the Rapture of the Church.
10. 2 Cor 5:8, “Now we have confidence, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home [face to face] with the Lord.” This is an expression of understanding timing.
11. Timing then is a subject which is related to phase two of God’s protocol plan. It will be one of your greatest problems. Someday at the Judgment Seat of Christ, you will see every place where you went astray by bad timing. Bad timing is your decisions, the attempts to fulfill your lusts, your arrogant ambitions, your desires; never waiting, no faithfulness, hopping from here to there.
12. All momentum in the protocol plan of God for the Church Age is based upon good timing, which starts with the filling of the Holy Spirit and residence, function, and momentum inside the divine dynasphere, consistent perception of the mystery doctrine of the Church Age, resulting in cognitive self-confidence. That’s when you start to make decisions related to God’s timing, like the decision that Abraham made when he told Lot to choose what he wanted; Abraham would go in a different direction. Abraham spoke in cognitive self-confidence, tantamount to spiritual self-esteem.
13. Spiritual adulthood is the point where God’s timing supersedes the believer’s timing, as in Rom 8:28. “For we know that to those who love God, He [God] works together all things for good, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” There is the summary of your life: His purpose!
F. Illustration: Joseph, Gen 37ff. (See Eph lessons 699-705.)
1. When we are not in God’s timing, then the problems of life multiply and we cannot cope.
2. God’s plan for your life means God’s timing must be followed. God is perfect; His timing is perfect. Because God has a perfect plan for your life, you can destroy God’s plan by interdicting with your own timing. You can do this by ignoring or rejecting Bible doctrine. 3. If you are out of sync with God’s plan, you are guaranteed a life of misery. Arrogance means being out of God’s timing for your life. Any mental attitude sin is a sign of being out of sync with God’s plan and timing.
4. The pit was God’s timing for Joseph, which he failed to recognize. As he sat in the pit, he rejected or ignored the doctrine contained in the dreams (i.e., that he would rule over his family).
5. Gen 42:21 says that Joseph had “distress of soul” and “pleaded with” his brothers. All he had to do was use the faith-rest drill and claim the plan of God rationale. Joseph had a chance to use many problem solving devices and prepare for future greatness; e.g., personal love for God, the faith-rest drill, doctrinal orientation. 6. Under the principle of God’s timing, you must always go one step at a time. God’s plan includes the fact you will have both great blessing and adversity. Yet every time you switch to your timing, you set back God’s perfect plan for your life.
7. There are certain circumstances under which God’s plan for our lives cannot be fulfilled. Therefore in His perfect timing, God removes us from those circumstances, and it is always very difficult at first (e.g., Joseph in the pit).
8. Our timing can only make us miserable and terminate in disaster. In the protocol plan of God, there is a destiny for each of us and perfect timing to reach that destiny one step at a time. Often God’s timing includes disaster. Only God’s timing linked with God’s Word and God’s plan can bring us happiness and blessing in this life.
9. Under God’s timing, He works all things together for good. Judah sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites instead of the Midianites, but along the way to Egypt the Ishmaelites sold Joseph to the Midianites as God had intended. God’s promotions always come through God’s timing. God’s timing is designed to promote God’s people.
10. You will never be promoted until you master and use your portfolio of invisible assets and your problem solving devices. God will only promote you on His timing and by His Word. Joseph is not ready for promotion yet. Joseph is totally helpless as a slave, and will continue to be a slave until he is promoted to the second highest office in the land.
11. God put Joseph in slavery so that his limitations would not be an issue during his training in the “University of Slavery.” Slavery is the perfect training ground for this man of destiny. Slavery brings about enforced and genuine humility. God’s plan is never hindered by slavery but advanced by slavery; e.g., the Jewish race and Joseph.
12. There is no substitute for God’s timing in the life of the believer. God has a destiny for every Church Age believer, and this destiny can only be fulfilled through execution of the protocol plan of God. This plan cannot be executed apart from perception and metabolization of the mystery doctrine of the Church Age.
13. God overrules man’s bad timing with His own good timing.
a. Jacob’s promotion of Joseph was bad timing, but God’s timing overruled: God’s timing put Joseph in the pit and separated him from Jacob.
b. Hatred and jealousy of Joseph’s brothers was bad timing, but God’s timing overruled: they sold Joseph into slavery.
c. Judah suggested selling Joseph into slavery. That was bad timing, but God’s timing overruled. For slavery was the training ground for the greatest man of his age. Joseph’s greatness was based on what he learned from doctrine in the circumstances of slavery. As a slave, Joseph was totally subject to God’s timing.
d. The arrival of the caravan was God’s timing.
e. The brothers sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites which was bad timing, but God overruled, so that the Ishmaelites sold Joseph to the Midianites in the same caravan.
f. The Midianites sold Joseph to Potiphar in Egypt, which was bad timing. But God overruled with His timing which led to a slave becoming the prime minister of Egypt.
14. Circumstances do not provide prosperity; God provides prosperity, Gen 39:2-6. Joseph was totally prosperous while a slave.
a. You can be wealthy, rich, have your right man or right woman, have all your desires, be successful, and yet not be prosperous.
b. Prosperity is from the Lord, and the circumstances of your life make no difference. Prosperity is not from wealth, marriage, sex life, success, etc.; it is from the Lord.
c. Joseph had a change of circumstances, but not a change in the dynamics of God’s timing and grace support. You can lose your freedom or a loved one and still have prosperity.
d. God will make the circumstances of slavery a double source of prosperity for Joseph: adversity for accelerated growth, and prosperity for blessing.
e. Joseph learned in slavery that circumstances do not make happiness; only God can provide happiness and prosperity. Only God can make your life meaningful and give you a sense of destiny that goes with spiritual self-esteem. It isn’t where you are (circumstances), but Who you know (God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, and God the Holy Spirit).
f. When the believer attains spiritual self-esteem, a change of circumstances does not imply a change in the function of God’s grace policy. God can bless you in one geographical area as much as in another geographical area.
15. Passing a test once is not passing the test, Gen 39:7-10. Just because you resisted a temptation once doesn’t mean much. You must be stable enough for God’s timing.
a. Temptation must be resisted many times under the principle of dependence on God’s timing. Timing is a problem when it’s your timing. Timing is never a problem when it’s God’s timing.
b. Fornication is man’s bad timing. Waiting for God to provide your right woman is confidence in God’s timing. This is a part of having a personal sense of destiny.
16. When God puts you in a certain set of circumstances, it is for your blessing and His glory. The world is filled with acts of injustice; only the grace of God and God’s timing is protection against it, Gen 39:11-18.
a. People who hate you because you are a believer are always willing to believe any lie about you.
b. You will be a victim of the lies of others, but you are not to defend yourself. Those who want to believe it will do so no matter how you defend yourself. You never become great by defending yourself; that is man’s timing, not God’s timing. Self-vindication is arrogance.
c. The innocent never run and the guilty never stop running.
17. Humility and objectivity produce alertness, while emotion and arrogant subjectivity destroy professional ability, Gen 39:19-20. Beware of taking sides when two other people have a conflict between them. It is a trap that produces arrogance, hatred, implacability, etc. This is especially true when a husband and wife are having a fight.
18. Joseph is still in synchronization with God’s plan, yet he is put into the pit (prison) a second time. He is still in the right place at the right time. God’s timing requires that Joseph spend more time in a second pit. God’s timing is part of God’s promotion, Gen 39:20.
a. Until life’s circumstances bring you to a place of helplessness, you are never going to appreciate or begin to understand God’s grace. Man’s extremities become God’s opportunities.
b. Joseph has been wronged unfairly, yet he doesn’t complain or cry about it.
19. In Gen 39:21-23, the faithfulness of the Lord is demonstrated. Joseph prospers even though he is in jail. He has been given a new opportunity for spiritual acceleration. God is preparing him to be the greatest man in his era. The continued integrity of Joseph and his use of problem solving devices under the principle of suffering for blessing prepares him for his great future.
a. If God doesn’t promote you, you are not promoted. God’s timing in the circumstances of life must precede God’s promotion. You have to be on God’s timing before you can ever be promoted. God promotes one step at a time. Some of those steps take you to the pit. How you handle the pit determines your capacity for promotion.
b. Joseph has passed the people test of hatred, envy and jealousy from his own family.
c. He has passed the prosperity test in the palace of Potiphar.
d. He has passed the temptation test in the seductive advances of Potiphar’s wife.
e. He has passed the injustice test of being imprisoned as an innocent person.
f. Those who try to make life miserable for others only end up making life miserable for themselves. A person who spends their life trying to make someone else unhappy has no personal sense of destiny.
(1) Pettiness is a boomerang which returns to hurt the arrogant subject. Petty people are constantly destroying themselves by their own arrogance.
(2) Petty people who are in command break the rules to get even with someone under their command. Petty people use their rank for revenge and destroy any leadership potential they have. Pettiness and bullying in a position of leadership is not only the arrogance of subjectivity, but a total lack of grace orientation.
(3) Any time you have any position of leadership in the spiritual realm and you use that position to bully other people, this becomes a total loss of grace orientation.
g. Complaining in adversity is blasphemy against the plan and timing of God. God can make the most menial tasks in life a source of great happiness and blessing through the utilization of problem solving devices.
(1) You will never have happiness as long as you carry around in your soul subjective arrogance, bitterness, hatred, anger, or resentment of injustice.
(2) Enforced and genuine humility is an essential foundation for leadership and promotion in God’s plan. You will never find your destiny when you are in a state of reaction (which comes from any mental attitude sin). Enforced and genuine humility free the believer from arrogance, provide objectivity in all circumstances, and teachability.
h. Greatness is achieved under authority.
(1) Mt 23:11, “The greatest among you shall be your servant.” No one succeeds in life until he has been a servant, been under unfair authority. Greatness cannot exist unless you have been a servant.
(2) Mt 10:44, “Whoever wishes to be first among you must first be the slave of all.” The mental attitude of bitterness and the verbal expression of complaining is blasphemy against the timing of God.
(3) God only promotes those who take the form of a slave by becoming a servant to Bible doctrine, and by using the problem solving devices they learn to attain spiritual maturity.
(4) Mt 19:30, “But many who are first among you will be last, and the last will be first.” Cf. Matt 20:16.
i. It is your personal destiny under the protocol plan of God for the Church Age to be great. But greatness comes through being a slave, a servant to Bible doctrine. God trains us in humble circumstances, not in instant success. God’s destiny is never instant success for anyone. God brings you up in humble circumstances so that your limitations will not become an issue as you grow spiritually.
20. Because the unbeliever has no relationship with God through personal faith in Jesus Christ, he reacts to divine revelation by becoming irritable, depressed, dejected, and sad. Gen 40:6.
21. Gen 40:14. Joseph fails when he says, “Remember me.” He was out of sync with God’s plan and timing. Joseph could have been out of the prison in three days had he continued to trust in God. But by depending on the power, influence, and ability of man, he will be in prison two more years. He is depending on the influence of a man instead of depending upon God. He abandoned the problem solving devices he had depended on up until this point.
a. When the believer is out of synchronization with the plan and timing of God, he uses human viewpoint and adopts his own timing.
b. Neither Pharaoh or any other human being or system of power could get Joseph out of that jail. Only God could do it. Joseph will stay in jail until he learns this lesson.
c. When we get around to neglecting doctrine, we stop waiting on the Lord and turn to our own timing.
d. Ps 118:8-9, “It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man [politicians]. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in aristocrats.”
e. Isa 40:31, “Those who have confidence in the Lord will gain new strength; they will soar with pinions like eagles; they shall run and not get tired; they shall walk and not become weary.”
f. Jer 17:5-8, “Thus says the Lord, `Cursed is the man who puts his trust in mankind and makes flesh his source of strength; and whose right lobe turns away from the Lord.’”
g. Man’s timing is as imperfect as man is imperfect. But God’s timing is as perfect as God is perfect.
22. The discipline to Joseph is found in Gen 40:23. Joseph was totally forgotten by the chief of the cupbearers. It took Joseph two years to learn the lesson. This aristocrat had his job because of his excellent memory, yet God’s timing must take precedence. Once Joseph learned the lesson, he had eighty years of fantastic blessing.
a. Joseph relied on the memory of a man rather than the grace of God. Joseph must learn to depend on the Lord, and will continue to be effective only because he depends on God.
b. God’s timing is best because it does not depend on favors from man. Favors from man are unstable. God’s timing depends on God’s power, not man’s favors. Only God can promote the believer. You must learn to wait on God’s timing through your consistent perception and application of doctrine. God doesn’t use great leaders who depend on man, but great leaders who depend on Him.
23. Joseph’s promotion, Gen 41. If God doesn’t promote you, you aren’t promoted. God promotes on His timing. God promotes one step at a time. It begins with faithfulness in the little things, and becomes faithfulness in the big things.
a. Only the prepared believer can understand the doctrine of the Word of God and apply it to a crisis. Only God’s man in God’s timing can meet and solve the crisis.
b. Joseph had prepared for thirteen years to represent our Lord before the king of Egypt and handle the crisis of Pharaoh’s dream. He had a personal sense of destiny.
c. By the time you understand your portfolio of invisible assets, your problem solving devices, your escrow blessings, and the uniqueness of the Church Age, it is inevitable that you will have a personal sense of destiny. Once you understand you have problem solving devices, then you must operate on God’s timing and not your own.
d. During the last two years, Joseph has learned not to take credit for his ability but to give credit to God, Gen 41:16,28. Joseph knows that he stands before Pharaoh as a part of God’s timing. You’ll never get ahead as a Christian by patronizing and flattering others for your promotion.
e. Joseph combines grace orientation with the faith-rest drill plus confidence from doctrinal orientation to God’s plan. He is in spiritual self-esteem because he doesn’t feel threatened by these circumstances (how to interpret the dream).
f. Joseph will answer Pharaoh and interpret his dreams; but he will never do it from his own self-confidence, his own self-righteousness, or his own self-vindication.
g. Only God can prepare a person for his niche in life. God prepares in many ways, but always there is preparation through the categories of suffering for blessing. From self-induced misery we learn our mistakes, from divine discipline we learn from God’s punishment, but in suffering for blessing we learn from the application of Bible doctrine.
h. No one is truly great without enforced and genuine humility. No one is truly great unless he deals in truth, God’s truth. Joseph gives Pharaoh the interpretation of the dreams, and then gives him the practical application: put someone wise in charge.
i. Joseph did not ask for one thing for himself. He is on God’s timing. He did not even ask Pharaoh for his freedom, or complain about Potiphar’s injustice. You don’t ask for favors when you help someone.
j. Joseph is promoted by Pharaoh to the prime minister of Egypt, a position higher than Potiphar or the chief of the cupbearers. He is put in charge of everything in Egypt. He is second only to Pharaoh. He is given a new name (meaning “God speaks, He lives”) and a wife, Joseph’s right woman. His right woman was selected by God, not by Joseph. This was God’s timing. As a part of his prosperity Joseph will be given work that he enjoys.
24. Joseph through God’s timing has been prepared and led by God into his niche, so that God can execute His plan, Gen 41:46ff.
a. Very few nations ever prepare for economic disaster, because most nations that have economic disaster are under the third or forth cycle of discipline. But a prepared man can stand in the gap and deliver the nation.
b. When God blesses and God promotes, the disasters, tragedies, and heartaches of life are all blotted out. So great is the blessing from God that the bad times are completely forgotten.
25. When believers neglect doctrine, they become losers. Losers function on their own timing. Believers who are losers never change their flaws and their failures. In Gen 50:15-26, Joseph’s brothers had not changed, nor learned a thing from all that happened to Joseph. Joseph was the greatest illustration of God’s timing they could ever have, yet they never learned a thing from the doctrine right before their eyes.
a. When believers look at life from the human viewpoint, they impugn the motives of others. They think Joseph will bear a grudge against them and seek revenge.
b. They judged Joseph by assigning to him their own flaws, sins, motivations, and weaknesses. Instead of looking into the mirror of the Word of God, they are looking into the mirror of their own lives. We often reveal our own flaws and weaknesses by the way we judge other people. For we impute to others our motivation, our areas of weakness. Weak people measure others by their own sins and failures. Consequently, they never see nobility or grace in others.
26. The believer with a personal sense of destiny never reacts in bitterness nor seeks revenge. He remembers that “you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” A personal sense of destiny means that you live your life as unto the Lord. You forgive as Christ forgave.
a. Eph 4:32, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ Jesus has also forgiven you.”
b. The greatest illustration of the forgiveness of others is what our Lord did on the cross, bearing our sins that we might be forgiven by God the Father through faith in Christ.
c. Col 3:13, “Bearing one another, and forgiving each other. Whoever has a complaint against any one else, just as the Lord forgave you, so also you should forgive others.”
d. Rom 12:19, “Beloved, do not take your own revenge, but defer to the wrath of God. For it stands written, `Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’” 27. Once you attain spiritual maturity, living and dying are all a part of living, Gen 50:24-26. Dying is just as much a part of living, as illustrated by all of the doctrine Joseph learned in order to come to the point of personal love for God and impersonal love for man, and which he now applies to dying. a. In all matters of life and death, timing is important, Phil 1:21. The physical death of the believer is a matter of grace orientation and doctrinal orientation. Death is strictly God’s victory. The believer’s death and resurrection are a matter of the perfect timing of God. The person who dies well has had the ultimate blessing in life.
b. Joseph’s unburied body was the testimony to the Jews for 400 years of the importance of God’s timing and the faithfulness of God.
c. The coffin was a comfort to Israel by reminding them that just as God took care of Joseph in slavery, so He would take care of them in slavery. Cf. Heb 11:22.
d. This also reminded the Jews of the importance of using God’s problems solving devices.
e. In Ex 13:19, Joseph’s coffin lead the way out of Egypt when the Jews were freed from slavery. And it lead the Jews for forty years in the desert.
f. In Josh 24:32, Joseph’s bones were finally buried in Israel after the land had been conquered, 475 years after his death.
g. Joseph’s bones were also a memorial to the resurrection of believers. Like death, resurrection is a matter of God’s timing, and is always God’s victory because it is totally the work of God.
28. God has overlooked nothing for you. He has a perfect time for everything for you.
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© 1989, by R. B. Thieme, Jr. All rights reserved.
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