The Grace We've Been Given

I used to find myself wishing I’d been born in a different time. Especially in my younger years, when I was given to daydreaming, I would wish I’d been born during the time of Elijah, or David, or Samson. Even the time of Daniel didn’t seem so bad in spite of all the Babylonian unpleasantness. The power of God was evident in the men of God, and though the godless hated them they feared them even more. One need not guess at whether someone was a man of God during those days, one knew, offhand, because their lives mirrored their declarations, or in modern day parlance, they walked their talk.

I was an immigrant kid in a new country, with few friends and fewer hobbies. So, yeah, I guess I had reason to wish I’d been born in a different time.

Oddly enough I’ve run across many believers, who likewise wish they’d been born in a different time, a time less perverse, less jaded, less cold, less faithless, and less godless. If not for the grace we’ve been given, I would tend to agree with this desire of having been born in a different time, but we have, without doubt, been given the greatest of grace, and once we realize this beautiful truth we ought to be ever thankful to the Father for living in this time, even though the darkness continues to metastasize like an out of control cancer.

1 Peter 1:10-12, “Of this salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when He testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. To them it was revealed that, not to themselves, but to us they were ministering the things which now have been reported to you through those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent form heaven – things which angels desire to look into.”

While those of our time wish they had been born in the long lost past, those of the long lost past wished they had been born further along the river of human existence because they had only prophesied of that which we have access to. Via the unction of the Holy Spirit men prophesied of the grace that would come, and testified before hand of both the sufferings of Christ, and the glories that would follow.

Even in these verses we see the pattern emerging, that before the glory there is the suffering, and the suffering is most often a precursor or predecessor of the glory.

It is an odd thing to foresee something, to prophesy something by the unction of the Holy Spirit, that you yourself will not see come to pass with your own eyes. These men of whom Peter speaks did just that. They prophesied of the Christ, of the glory, of the great and wondrous day when the Son of God was to be born in a manger, and also of the day He would redeem mankind by His blood and through His sacrifice.

These men prophesied these things, and I often ask myself if in the last moments of their lives here on earth they wondered where the fulfillment of the words they were given was. It is a hard thing to speak a message of future happenings and not wonder when it will come to pass, or not read into what’s going on around you and deduce that perhaps this is the precursor to what has been shown.

This is why it is best to deliver the word you’ve been given, and not speculate. Speak the words that were spoken, and allow that God in His perfect time will see the fulfillment of the words He inspired you to speak. It doesn’t have to be in your generation, it doesn’t have to be in your lifetime, it doesn’t even have to be in your century. Unlike man, God is not a forgetful creature, but rather brings to fulfillment all He declares.

With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.