“When the apostles were with Jesus, they kept asking Him, “Lord, has the time come for You to free Israel and restore our kingdom?” He replied, “The Father alone has the authority to set those dates and times, and they are not for you to know. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be My witnesses, telling people about Me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:6-8).

The Bible is filled with Words of Wisdom, Knowledge, Prophecy, Truth, etc. But how does a believer in Jesus know when a Word from God’s Word is speaking directly to them? Do you just flip open the Bible and point to a Scripture and say this must be from God?

Jesus tells us in John 10 that His sheep (Christians) know His voice. He also taught us in John 14 that He would not leave us comfortless, but would pray to the Father, and He would send us the Spirit of Truth. Since the Father has given us the Holy Spirit, we must trust in Him and not lean on own understanding; the Lord doesn’t expect us to figure out the next step in our faith walk on our own. If you just randomly open your Bible and hope to hit the correct Word for the day, or you place a fleece before the Lord for confirmation to a prayer that you prayed, there’s a better way.

We not only need a Word from God to help us navigate life in a fallen world, but we must understand that He only gives us direction in the hour that it is needed. If we should be moved by impulse, we could be casting the seed of God’s Word before its time and could risk it falling onto sterile ground or producing no fruit.

Let’s suppose that you’re having an issue with a co-worker, and you’ve asked the Lord to reveal wisdom to you from His Word. If the co-worker doesn’t understand you or your faith, then there’s a good chance that they will persecute you. If this is the case, then we want God to move quickly to alleviate the problem with the co-worker. Have you noticed that Christians tend to become anxious for God to move quickly on their behalf when they’re faced with serious or difficult issues? This is why the Lord will only release “A Word in season” to those who are weary. It isn’t based on the difficulty of our situation, but on the degree of our weariness. Hasn’t the Lord promised us in 1 Corinthians 10 that He wouldn’t allow us to be tempted beyond what we’re able to bear?

In our verses for today’s Word, the disciples asked Jesus if He was going to restore the kingdom back to Israel at that time. Jesus told them,”It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority.” When I have heard ministers teach on these verses in Acts 1, they tend to stop where it says, “In His own authority,” but Jesus didn’t stop there; He proceeded to teach us the ways of God concerning the “timing” of the Father. He said, “You shall receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses of Me in all the region and ultimately the world.”

In other words, Jesus was telling them that it would happen, but not the way they thought it might. The kingdom will be restored when the Holy Spirit comes upon His people, and they move under the power or the authority of the Kingdom of God to fulfill God’s will in the season that He has predetermined. So if you’re looking to God for a Word of wisdom, knowledge, etc., then you must be willing to wait for the timing to be right. That way, His will will be accomplished and not ours. It’s not that God doesn’t care about what we’re going through. It’s that He has a different perspective from His vantage point than we do; our view is generally from the temporal (flesh) view point, and His view is always from an eternal view.

This can help us understand why God will sometimes wait to answer our prayers when we find ourselves in fiery trials. There’s another reason why He will wait before releasing a Word of direction, and that is so He can see if we will wait on “His” timing, or if we will be moved by our carnal (impulsive) nature. Submit to God and resist the temptation to act on impulse; wait until you know that God has spoken a “Word in season” before you act. As a minister, I wait on God to speak to me before I speak to the congregation or to you in a devotional. He knows what we need before we ask, but we must be willing to wait on God’s ways and resist our own ways.  —submitted by Asa Dockery, US