“He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.” Ecclesiastes 3:11

You might be like me and a bit frustrated with His timing or wrestling with “He has made everything beautiful in its time” and knowing everything in your life currently couldn’t be described as beautiful, so when will it be? Sometimes, it’s hard to imagine that God can see my life from the beginning through eternity when I only see it in this one dimension. No matter how long I’ve walked with the Lord, His timing can be a mystery.

Just look at the life of Joseph; the Lord gives him dreams and shows him he will be a man of influence and that his family will bow down to him. Then, those dreams are followed by years and years of pain, suffering, and mistreatment. Does that mean the prophetic dreams were false? No. But how many times have you been given a word from The Lord that doesn’t come to pass immediately? As a matter of fact, things start happening in the opposite direction of the word.

How quickly we want to say the word wasn’t from The Lord and disregard it instead of holding onto the word and enduring to see “He has made everything beautiful in its time.”

Joseph was given those dreams as a teenager; at that point in his life, he didn’t possess the inner framework that he would need to sustain the level of influence God had chosen for him. So, God takes him through various trials and tests that build strength, integrity, and faith in him. If you read through the story of Joseph, no matter what bad situation he was in, God turned it into an opportunity and a blessing for him every time.

God caused Joseph to rise to the top with every negative situation and experience success. That’s what happens when we trust God with the timing when we release the control of our calendar to Him.  

He served in Potapher’s house, but instead of just being another servant, he did his job with excellence and was put in charge of running the entire house. But then he was falsely accused of a crime he didn’t commit and thrown in prison. But God used Joseph to arise as a leader within the prison and he was appointed to administrate the entire prison.

The Lord saw Joseph from the beginning through eternity. He knew the days of influence ahead for him, and He placed him where he would grow in understanding and experience for the future.

Think about your life and the promises The Lord has given you. Can you identify being in situations or places you wouldn’t have chosen for yourself and might even have seemed like a derailment to your promise? But now you can see what was being built within you during that situation, shaping you for the promise He had coming.

After fifteen years of process, Joseph was appointed a leader over all of Egypt. Pharoah appoints him governor, the second in command. He helped save a nation. After fifteen years of process, The Lord fulfilled His promise to Joseph.

Avoid the temptation to look at what isn’t happening and determine God changed his mind. God speaks promises to give us hope for what is to come, but it’s up to us to remain faithful to Him. The process can look like hard work, rejection, promotion, disappointment, frustration, and even delays, but He is building something great within us.

We will see the promise after the process.

Don’t diminish where you are serving right now; don’t despise where He has placed you; all of it is building an excellent infrastructure within you that can withstand adversity and trials. The Lord sets prosperity within adversity.

A few years into planting our church, we had up-fit our second building and moved in. We had been in that building for less than a year and found out it was the future site of a hotel, and we would need to relocate. I remember thinking all the money, work, and energy had been wasted on that building, all for what? God didn’t see it that way. His objective is always our growth and proximity to Him during the process. 

It was a long season of delays, disappointments, loss, and personal growth. Sometimes, you recognize your growth once you’re on the other side. During three years, we up-fitted two buildings, moved three times, and spent eighteen months at the Marriott doing set-up/tear-down every Sunday as we were looking for a new building.

Those years were some of the most brutal years of my life, the most challenging years in my marriage, and I wasn’t sure I even wanted to lead a church anymore. I learned not to make a life-altering decision when you’re in a worst-case scenario. 

Did God change His mind and decide he didn’t want Center City Church downtown? No, He remained the same. But He sees the beginning to the end and knows what needs to be developed within me. Eventually, miles down the road, I can step inside when He opens the door to the following promise over my life. But it doesn’t end there, all because I did the work and allowed Him to develop me through the process; I get to step through the door and stay in the room. We must have a long view of our lives. We’ve all heard the term overnight success, but I don’t believe in it. Unless we’ve allowed God to construct the framework within us to support the mantle He has for us, the overnight success turns into a one-hit wonder; here today and gone tomorrow.

Joseph could have become so frustrated and angry with circumstances and setbacks that his offense was too great to move forward at any time along the journey. First, his own family sold him into slavery and then he was thrown in jail on false accusations; we can understand how he could have been offended. But we know that had he harbored offense, he would have never been appointed leader over all of Egypt; he could have gotten stuck in the process and never recovered.  

Wherever you are in your process, recommit yourself to see it through and recognize the opportunity before you; keep moving forward. Things will change in just a little while, and you’ll be watching the new day dawn. He makes all things beautiful in His time.