Timing

 God has a plan, and it’s a good one.  He has set a path before me (and you) and has developed an entire game plan.  He sees the past, the future, and He sees the now.  He knows where it is going and He knows exactly how long it’s going to take to get there.

A man's steps are established by the LORD, and He takes pleasure in his way. (Psalms 37:23) 

It is my nature to resist God’s plan—it just is.  I don’t like His timing.  When things feed good, I want them to last forever.  When things feel bad, I want—I really want—for them to end as quickly as possible.  In fact, I would like them to end even before it’s possible.  After all, God is omnipotent—he owns all the power—so he could end the hard seasons in the blink of an eye, couldn’t he?  If I beg, pray, and complain enough, wouldn’t God be willing to end that painful season for me?

God’s timing is not my timing.  That has proven obvious more times than I can enumerate.  But I still struggle to trust His timing.  I’ll do everything I can do to usurp it and make the timing my own, especially in the hard seasons.  I seek to end every difficult thing.

But God’s timing is not my timing. 

Timing wins life, and it also loses life.

Patience has never been a strength for me.  In some ways, my lack of patience, I think, was what made me a popular fighter to watch.  I had a tendency to push the fight harder than it should have been pushed.  I was offended by the idea of letting a fight go to decision.  My persistence won me many fights.  It also lost me many fights.  Because fighting is all about timing.

Timing wins fights, but timing also loses fights.

It was probably the best takedown I had ever executed.  I had managed to press him to the cage and secure the single-leg.  He defended and I switched effortlessly to the high-crotch, lifting to  elevate him off the ground  almost higher than the top of the cage wall, just like my coach had trained me.  I heard the roar of the crowd as I redirected my energy, driving him hard to the floor.  The cage floor thumped like a drum as we crashed with our combined weight.  We landed hard, but he was savvy.  He didn’t stay on his back.  He immediately turned to his belly and began building to his hands and knees. 

There I saw the opportunity—the opportunity for the D’arce choke.  The D’arce choke was my favorite submission and it would be poetic to end this fight with my favorite finishing move.  So I launched it into place, clasping my hands in hope of ending the fight in that moment.  But he was strong, and I had not secured the position.  I rushed it.  He had cut 30 more pounds than I had to make weight.  He was bigger and stronger than me.  He simply stood up to his feet, shaking off my submission attempt and restarting the fight as if my takedown had never happened.

For every activity there is a right time and procedure, even though man's troubles are heavy on him.  (Ecclesiastes 8:6)

God has a decided advantage over me.  He can see everywhere I can go.  He is not bound by time or space.  He sees and knows everything about my past.  He knows my every success and my every failure.  He knows every time I came close and every time I almost lost.  But He is staring at me in the place I am right now, seeing the difficult season I find myself in—arguably, the difficult moment I put myself in—and knowing the person I will be on the other side of it.  He doesn’t want to end that season, because He knows every way this season will benefit me.

Dear friends, don't let this one thing escape you: With the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.  (2 Peter 3:8)

He had been grabbing hold of my shorts—an illegal technique.  We clinched and I managed to gain superior body position enough to initiate a double-leg.  He tried to sprawl, but I had gotten deep into the technique and was just about to turn the corner, so he had grabbed the material of my shorts with both hands to keep my hips away.

The referee saw it.  He intervened, separating the two of us and warning my opponent that the next time he grabbed my shorts it would cost him a point.

My coach began yelling at me from the corner, so I turned to face him.  “Joel,” he yelled, “he knows he can’t wrestle with you.  He’s coming with the overhand right.”

And my coach was right. 

The moment the referee stepped back, my opponent fired a monstrous overhand right punch at my chin.  I was ready—that’s a benefit of listening.  With a short slipping movement, I shifted my weight slightly to the left and the punch grazed just past my right ear.  I crashed forward and my momentum, combined with the off-balancing of his missed punch, landed me the seamless takedown into full-mount.

God’s timing is really hard, and sometimes (a lot of times) it feels like it takes forever.  I’m not sure if there’s a statute of limitations or a moratorium as to how long I have to remain in this exceedingly uncomfortable—or downright painful—moment.

LORD, how long will You forget me? Forever? How long will You hide Your face from me?  How long will I store up anxious concerns within me, agony in my mind every day? How long will my enemy dominate me?  Consider me and answer, LORD my God. Restore brightness to my eyes; otherwise, I will sleep in death. (Psalms 13:1-3)

Even while I am crying out to God for relief He is machinating an entire plan for my future, a better future than my present.  He has mesmerized my past into my present so that he can build it into a future so beautiful I couldn’t even begin to imagine it.  God hasn’t forgotten me.  He is remembering me so intently that I cannot escape his benefit.

God will bring this about in His own time. He is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings, and the Lord of lords. (1 Timothy 6:15) 

It was one of those submission-only tournaments, and my bracket was small but tough.  I had submitted my first opponent.  My second opponent had also submitted his first opponent, and now we faced each other—the winner won the bracket and took gold.  He was a difficult opponent with an active guard.  We fought to a draw after a physical match and ended in a puddle of sweat. 

There had to be a winner, and, according to the rules, that required the we grapple each other again to break the tie.  We got to work and I immediately knew it was going to be hard.  He was exhausted, but so was I.  I somehow managed to pass his guard and found myself mounted on him with only a few seconds left to fight.  If this were a match where points mattered, I could hold out the last 30 seconds and end in dominant position ahead by points.  But this was a submission-only tournament and points didn’t matter—only submissions mattered.

I knew I had just seconds before this match ended and I knew I had to finish, so I had to take a risk.  I stuffed his arm and reversed myself, rolling myself from a dominant mounted position onto my back in a less-dominant guard position, but in a guard position that I had primed for a triangle choke.  I locked my legs for the choke and squeezed with a motivation I hoped would overcome my fatigue.  With four seconds left on the clock I finally got the tap.

Sometimes—maybe all the time—I wonder if God’s first point of business it to protect me from myself.  I’m really bad at timing.  I tend to compromise every good thing I have found.  It might be out of impatience, it might be out of complacency.  I have a proclivity for ruining whatever good thing God has built in my life.

I had never been good at the point system in grappling matches, but I knew that I was ahead on points.  I had dominated this match.  Early into the match I had hit a takedown, then quickly passed guard into side-control.  I had even moved to mount just to cushion my lead, but then moved back to side-control because that’s where I liked to fight.  With four minutes left in the match I started hunting for submissions.

Despite the relative ease by which I had established control his defense was solid.  I looked for armbars—straight and bent, alike.  I tried to set up a choke, as well.  But he was putting up a fight and refusing to give up the submission.  Theoretically, it didn’t matter.  I was way up on points and, if I finished the match in dominant position I was guaranteed the win.

But I struggle with patience.  I really wanted the finish.  I didn’t want to win on points.  I wanted to win by submission.  So I extended myself as I tried to trap an arm, allowing my elbow just a little past my center line.  Then I felt him bump his hips—Phantom D’arce.  He had used my own favorite choke against me, setting the tricky move up from an inferior position.

I felt him squeezing on the head-and-arm, his forearm biting into the thick musculature of my neck as I flexed my elbow away from my body—the only thing keeping the choke from finding my carotid arteries.  That was the true danger. 

My eyes desperately looked to the score table where the large round timer sat—just a little more than 20 seconds left in the fight.  Now I was working against the clock in a different way.  I was working to survive and hold out for just a few seconds until the match ended.  Now I needed to end the round on points.  It was the only way to win.

There are many times—most of the times—when I honestly have no idea what God is doing.  I find myself dwelling in place of hurt, anger, frustration, and confusion.  I am begging that God take this moment from me and resolve it.  Let it be done.  I’m ready for it to be over.

But God says it isn’t the right time.  We have more work to do and the season cannot pass.  Not quite yet.  There’s more to do before we move on. 

"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not My ways." This is the LORD's declaration.  "For as heaven is higher than earth, so My ways are higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9) 

God’s perspective is far above mine.  He sees my future, my present, and my past all at the same time.  He sees the version of myself that I can become if we use this moment—this season—to its fullest potential.  So He tells me that it’s not time to move through the season yet, because He sees something amazing on the other side of this moment.  But it’s not time to move on—we might miss the moment.

And that leaves me with limited responses.  I would say that it’s impossible to fight against God, but that would be wrong.  I can fight against God.  He’ll allow it.  God has always allowed His people to contend with Him.  So I can certainly choose to struggle against God.

Or I can choose to believe God.  I can trust Him, as hard as trust is for me (maybe that’s one of the things we’ll be learning about in this difficult season).  I can choose to take God at his word when he says to me…

“For I know the plans I have for you"—this is the LORD's declaration—"plans for your welfare, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.  You will call to Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.  You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. (Jeremiah 29:11-13) 

It’s in my nature to struggle against God.  It’s pretty much in my nature to struggle.  I like to fight, after all.  Maybe that’s one of the things I’m working to learn.

"Stop your fighting—and know that I am God, exalted among the nations, exalted on the earth." (Psalms 46:10)

Maybe I can learn to stop fighting—at least a little bit.  Maybe I can learn to expect beautiful things in God’s timing.  Maybe I can stop trying to push the fight and push the moment.  Maybe I can learn to be still.

Wait for the LORD; be strong and courageous. Wait for the LORD. (Psalms 27:14)