God of Now
Have you ever heard the expression God is a God of now? With so many reasons to love our amazing God, do I dare say one of my favorite reasons is knowing He is the God on Now! This means God is existing in the Eternal Present Tense, He’s not an “I was” or a “will be,” but rather in Hebrew it says, “God is.” When we hold onto this truth, we realize that God’s love for us is NOW, His purpose for us is NOW, and His breakthroughs for us are NOW.
I know my last blog was about this tax collector named Zacchaeus who climbed a tree in order to get a better look of this man Jesus. In this blog I want to talk about the aftermath, when Jesus ordered Zacchaeus to come down. It’s important we look at the words Jesus used, he said, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today” (Luke 19:5). The key word is “today.” Jesus didn’t want to meet with Zacchaeus the following day or on his next visit through town, he wanted to meet with Zacchaeus in that present moment. Jesus like God, or Jesus the Son of God, or Jesus, God in the flesh; however you want to word it, also was about the NOW. Jesus knew Zacchaeus needed a breakthrough and he wasn’t going to make him wait for it.
The next part of the story is my favorite. It seems kind of abrupt how all of a sudden Zacchaeus stands up and says, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount” (Luke 19:8). But this verse is yet another indicator of how God is the God of Now. You see a lot of times we think it’s going to take months or years for God to change someone or even change ourselves, but our God of Now doesn’t need months or years for transformation. In fact it’s pretty clear that Zacchaeus received a breakthrough that entailed full transformation in the time span of one day! While everyone was still gossiping about Jesus going to the house of a sinner, Zacchaeus was already a new man.
You see what a beautiful thing it is to have a God of Now. We don’t need to wait for tomorrow to receive a breakthrough, transformation, or even love. God is right here, right now, willing to give us what we need. This mentality we have that it’s going to take forever to be forgiven or accepted by God needs to dissolve, because our God is now. Just like it took Zacchaeus one encounter with Jesus, all it takes for us is one encounter to never be the same again.