STEPPING INTO GOD'S TIMELINE: THE FAVOUR AND THE SEED - PART ONE

A teaching by Trevor Baker (based on a message given on 16 Jan 2009).

So many people struggle with the timings of God in their lives. But you don’t have to anymore. In Acts 17:26 it says “He determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.” Mark that down in your Bible, because that’s a rhema word, a now word for you. And in verse 27 it says that “God did this so that men would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him though He is not far from each one of us.”

God has determined something about your life and mine. He set a time out of His ability to speak into history, and determined a set a time when our lives would appear on the earth. God determined certain things about your life and mine. He knew what He was doing in putting us in the places where we now live.

God did this so that we might seek Him [Acts17:27]. He determined certain things for you and me, and we’re seeking to discover the things that He has for our lives. This is the great adventure of walking with God. He determines things and puts things into time frames so that we can discover them. He put things into geographical places so that we would discover what His heart, mind, and will are, so that we would begin to live that out.

When you get hold of the set time in your life, you will say “My time is in your hands [Ps31:15].” When you do so, you will realize you are in the right place at the right time, and that will bring such a rest into your life, because you’re no longer striving trying to find out! So many people struggle with the very fact of the timings of God in their lives.

King Saul struggled with the timings. He was told by the prophet Samuel to “wait until I come down to offer the evening sacrifice.” [1Sam10:8] That’s a timeline. He was also told to go down to Gilgal – the exact place where God was going to meet Him. But, he had to go through the whole experience again, and in the end, he ends up with nothing. Nothing! It’s all taken from him. Why? Because he couldn’t cope with having his heart revealed.

KNOWING THE SET TIMES

We need to know the set times [see 1Chron12:32]. As we came into this year, God told me that “in 09 we step onto God’s timeline.” Not ours, God’s timeline. We’re coming into a place where we know the set times, where God has determined certain things.

LEAP YEAR

When we moved into 2009, we moved into what is known as a leap time year. What happens in a leap time year is that the whole earth slows down and so what scientists had to do was hold back astronomical and atomic time. They had to hold it back, so that it all came into sync. I believe that this was a sign in the natural of what God is doing in the spiritual. He is causing us, in this season, to come onto His timeline, to sync up our lives with His timings.

I believe there is a synchronizing taking place. We heard a number of years ago, where heaven was being synchronized with the church. This was the whole thing with the Laodicean church [in Rev3], and the open door in heaven, but the door in the church was closed. And it wasn’t until Jesus had come, knocked on the door and said “If anyone hears My voice, opens to Me, I will come in.” And at that point, the door on earth synchronised with the open door of heaven. And then, there was an awesome presence of God in the church where it says in Revelation 4 “after this I looked and I saw the door standing open in heaven.” And so there was a synchronising of an open heaven and a place on the earth for heaven to access. That’s what I believe, the whole truth of the church being the house of God [Beth-El] is all about – where His dwelling place is with us.

HOLDING BACK TIME

Do you remember what happened in Joshua chapter 10, when Joshua was fighting a group of people and God held back the sun, held back time, so that it didn’t set, so that Joshua could get victory over his enemies? I believe we’re living in that kind of a time, where what we do in one year would have taken us ten years to do. You see, He can hold back time, so that we can fulfil it.

TRANSPORTED IN THE SPIRIT!

I was talking just awhile ago to a woman in India whose father was transported in the spirit about forty years ago. He was three miles away in his home and there was a woman down in another valley in the northeast of India who was at the point of death. And, she said “if this man would come down … I know that I will live.” The next thing, the man is knocking at the door! Now, he was three miles away. He goes into her house, prays for her and the woman is instantly and totally healed.

The man didn’t talk about this event for twenty years. And when he did start to speak about it, he said “I was praying at home, and all of a sudden, it was like my feet began to walk on nails and I found this intense prickling in my feet.” He said “it was like I was walking on thorns, and the next thing I was at this person’s house, three miles away!” After the event, he couldn’t speak for six months, totally dumb for six months, because what it had actually done to him.

And I’ve said to God, “God, I’d love to be transported around.” And I know there are people who are transported in the spirit regularly. But I don’t know whether I’m ready for that type of experience. Being transported in the spirit is simply moving onto God’s timeline. And God can hold things back, He just puts him down in front of the woman, holds time back, and what could take hours to get there He just puts him there, in the Spirit, and in the natural.

We are going to move into those types of experiences when God causes time to be held back so that we can fulfil everything that He wants us to do.

HEZEKIAH - ADDING TIME

In Isaiah chapter 26 King Hezekiah was told by God through the prophet Isaiah to put his house in order because he was going to die. And what did Hezekiah do? He set his face towards the Lord, he sought the Lord. And as he did so, Isaiah was outside the court, and God said to Isaiah “Turn around, go back in and tell him, I’m adding years to his life.” But God, You just said that he’s going to die. “No, go and tell him.” I believe that God created those set of circumstances for Hezekiah and he responded by seeking God. He cried out to God, and God then said to Isaiah “Now go back in because I’ve seen what type of man he is.”

I believe there are people like King Hezekiah who could have lives extended just because of a response to something that God brings to them. And then what does God say to Hezekiah? “Now to prove that this is Me,” He says “I want you to ask Me a sign.” And he wouldn’t ask Him a sign, so God said “I’m going to give you a sign.” And the sign was this. “I’m going to cause the sun to go backwards 10 steps.” That would be around about ten hours. That’s what they’re talking about. I believe that God can hold time up in order that we fill it. I also believe that as a sign, He can move time back. Why? Because He’s God!

2009 - A YEAR OF COMPLETION

I believe that 2009 is a year of completion. It is a year of completion in terms of fruitfulness, and in terms of birthing things. It’s that gestation period where we birth things. In Galatians 4:4, it says “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman.” I believe this year, we’re moving into fullness of time. This is going to be a year of fullness of time when God says the birthing process has begun and now you’re going to come and begin to hold the prophetic seed that I placed in you. And what was the seed? Jesus.

“When the fullness of time had come,” that pinpointed time, that crowning moment. When I saw our two girls being born, the midwives said “now, this is the crowning moment, just as the crown of the head began to appear.”

We’re in a time when that type of moment will happen when the Lord will crown our years with His goodness, and we will move into a whole new place. God doesn’t just want you to keep your prophetic words on bits of paper, tapes, CDs or DVDs, He wants us to see these words fulfilled.

How many of you are holding the baby, the prophetic baby, in your hands? We need to realize our prophetic destiny. When you have a prophetic word like I do that God is opening up the nations, and there’s favour on you for the four nations of the United Kingdom, I mean I don’t want to keep saying “God, I’m just going to keep praying into this, thank You God for the word, it’s a great word.” I want to start to see it happen! I want to begin to live the reality of the prophetic. You know God says that “My Word [ the word that goes out of my mouth], will not return to Me void but it will accomplish that to which I sent it [Isa55:11].”

I believe we need to start moving into that place where it begins to actually come into being. You know the seed of His word begins to be birthed both in us and through us, like new ministries. How many of you reading this God has prophesied a ministry that you are going to fulfil that is still in the incubation period? Don’t you think it’s time for it to be over? And I’m not saying we get something premature.

A YEAR OF BIRTHING AND FRUITFULNESS

I do feel that this is a year of birthing and becoming fruitful. Some people get hold of the seed and want to see their seed grow. They’re so concerned with the seed, (and we should be), but there’s a desire that whatever happens, they’re going to bring this thing into being. And so what they do, they bring it forth either prematurely or, they don’t bring it forth at all! In a seed, there is always the ability to reproduce itself. So whatever word God says to you - it is seed. And whatever word He plants into the earth, is being planted into people. I’m not talking about the natural ground, as the earth is us - the sons of the Kingdom [see Lk8:4-15]. We’re the ones who’ve had the word planted in us. And so that seed then, the word that He puts in us, has the ability to reproduce itself.

Now, the exciting thing about this is that we have the ability to pass on an inheritance, which comes from the seed that He’s given to us. And so the seed that He gives us, we birth that and then with the birthing of it, we have created another seed, etc. We want to see that seed come alive and grow in others.

And so as Bill Johnson says, the church has been in a place where we keep going back to ground zero, starting from scratch. But I believe God is raising up men and women today, who are producing seed and birthing things. They are also passing that on to the next generation who in turn pass it on to the next, so that we see our children’s children being fruitful. We see the fruit of the prophetic word and the fruit of that in other people. I feel that this is what we’re moving into in these days.

AARON’S ROD – ACCELERATED GROWTH!

Let’s look at Aaron’s rod. What does this mean? God speeding up things, accelerated growth. The rod budded, blossomed and bore fruit in a twelve hour period. They put it the tabernacle of meeting before the Testimony one night, and in the morning they got up, it had already budded and yielded ripe almonds [Num17:8]. God can make you like Aaron’s rod so that you bud faster than normal and produce fruit, because the timeline you’re on has sped up.

Don’t you think that God could do that? Speed things up, speed the timeline up. He held it back so that they get victory, He made it go back as a sign (to Hezekiah) and now He speeds things up, in order to establish who it was that carried authority, all of it in regard to time.

CONCLUDING PRAYER

Father I ask that there would be a shift in the Spirit as we come onto God’s timeline. Father, we want to step onto that timeline. And as we do, I’m asking that You would birth the prophetic word in people, that their lives would be fruitful and that they would take the seed of their fruitfulness and see it reproduced in others, in Jesus name, Amen.

In Part 2 of this teaching series find out more about favour, why you need it, and how it can transform your life and those around you.

Trevor Baker carries a Spirit of Revival. Through his preaching and prophetic gifting he equips men and women to fulfill their destiny and calling in God, so that through signs and wonders we may gather in the harvest from the nations of the world.

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