Your Time is Now

I have been noticing a pattern with the people around me. It started with the men. One by one, I heard them venting about their jobs, asking around if anyone else is hiring so that they can get out of the pit of stress they are in. I hear their wives, longing to see their husbands more, desperate for help with the children and their home.

This job searching started coming up so much in every conversation that I began to wonder if there was something in the air.

“That’s just what happens at this age.” a friend told me. But this wasn’t confined to any age or even any specific career. The reasons for wanting change also varied.

Then there was a shift. As the changes started to actually take place, as these people made the move to finally experience change, it became more than just about their jobs; it became about their passions.

One by one, I watched those around me take that plunge into what their hearts had been dreaming of for years.

People began making and releasing music. Corporate employees switched to self-employed professions. Artists declined jobs that no longer matched their skills and in turn, achieved proper work and recognition.

Now it wasn’t just the men.

Women were launching podcasts. Others were stepping away from the speed and chaos of work life into the calm and simplicity of homesteading. Books were being published. Businesses were being opened.

Even teenagers and children were expressing their art into the world!

Gifts were no longer being hidden. People were living their true lives, and it seemed God was honoring that.

What was happening? What is happening?

Rewind

In church one Sunday, the worship team played the song “Alabaster Heart” by Bethel Music. One particular lyric stood out, “You’re a lifetime worth of worship, and that’s only just the start.”

I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Wow, we have all of eternity ahead of us to worship! What a joy that this is only just the beginning!

Still, I couldn’t shake that one line: “only just the start.”

What do they mean this is only just the start? Did God not have us already in mind since the beginning of Creation? Where were we that whole time between then and now?

Then it hit me. In the grand scheme of time, out of the thousands of years before our existence and for eternity after, He chose to place us right here, right now.

He held onto us since before the day of creation, then finally said at the moment of our conception, “Your time is NOW.”

Perhaps that is the awakening that I have begun seeing all around me. Maybe God is stirring up within us what we needed to see all along, that He has a purpose for us, that He planned for us to be on this earth at this particular moment in all of time to do something oh so special in His plan.

Now Faith

That Sunday, life was spoken into this current generation of youth. As always, it was such a beautiful event that you didn’t even want to leave service.

To be at the “start” of something, we think of the young, our prime, our early beginnings.

I looked around at all of the teenagers and children praising and jumping and waving flags to the King of Kings. Yet mixed within them, I couldn’t help but notice the age range. Babies ran through the young adults. The middle aged were dancing. The old were raising their hands to heaven.

I realized then that God’s message of “your time is now” was not just for the youth.

Going back to the song, there was no specification on which age was only just the start. We weren’t here before, and we have a lifetime of worship ahead of us. Therefore, our entire span of life on earth is the start. Regardless of age, our time is now.

Our start begins the day our lives begin and remains the start until the day we die.

We don’t know our length of time on earth. God has given each one of us maybe so many decades to be here – again, having chosen (out of all of time!) for our designated span of life to be right now.

So whether you’re seventeen or seventy, your time is now AND this is only just the beginning!

What Is Your Worship?

So how about you? What are the God-given passions and dreams that are arising within you? Are you allowing them to see the light of day?

Know that this is more than, “You only live once; do what makes you happy!” No, far from it! This is James 4, “Your life is a mist; is it worship to the Lord?”

That career you’re in, whether you’re wanting out or living the dream, does it reflect Him? Your hobbies and lifestyle, what do those minutes produce?

This time we live may seem multi-faceted – the 9-5, the house chores, our families and friends, and then separately, our “God time” – but really, every face should point back to Him, and nothing should be apart from Him.

I won’t say you only have this one chance at life. Instead, I will say He has created you with great detail, equipped you with all you need, and dedicated this time on earth specially for you.

Live the life He has called you to live. Step into the gifts He has given you, whether it be picking up that instrument, opening up that business, dusting off your old camera, or finalizing the novel that has been a draft for so long.

Your time of worship is now!