Joseph Prince - This Year, God Will Put You At The Right Place, Right Time
This is an excerpt from: The Kairos Year Of Right Time, Right Place - Part 1
So, I believe that this is the rhema word that God has for us today. Are you ready for it? Amen, for this year, for this year, praise God. All right, let's go to Ecclesiastes 9:11. So, even as I say 9:11, you all think of we are the generation that saw 9/11. We passed 9/11, which is a very sad day, a tragic day for all of us. It changed the world, literally. But then in, America, their emergency number, number for help is also 9-1-1. The psalm of protection of all the entire book of Psalms, which psalm is the psalm of protection? Psalms 91. And Psalms 91 talks about protection 24/7, that the sun will not, it says the Lord will deliver you from the snare of the fowler, all right?
The Lord will protect you, be it in the morning or in the evening, amen, by day or by night. All kinds of affliction, whether the attack come from around you, from below you, you should tread upon the lion and the cobra. The young lion, serpent, you shall trample underfoot. All these are pictures of authority over the powers of darkness, amen. No evil will befall you. It ends up with saying, "With long life will I satisfy him and show him my salvation". But it begins with Psalms 91:1, verse 1, and you see what 911 there. And it says, what? "He who dwells in the sacred place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow". Shadow is the place of protection. In the Old Testament the shelter, the shadow means you are so close to someone, he protects you, his shadow covers you, amen.
So, the Bible says, "He who dwells", actually, the word dwell there in the Hebrew is the word sit down. If you learn to rest in his presence, his protection covers you, amen. So, here Ecclesiastes 9:11. "I returned". Now, Solomon is writing this by the Holy Spirit, the wisest man that ever lived besides Jesus, of course. "I returned and saw under the sun that... The race is not to the swift, Nor the battle to the strong, Nor bread to the wise, Nor riches to men of understanding, Nor favor to men of skill; But time and chance happen to them all". So, he's saying this. Guys, if the truth is known, I've observed this, and remember he asked God for wisdom and became the wisest man, right? And he says, "I've observed this. The race is not always to the swift".
The World Cup is not always to the better team, yeah? You might be for France, but I want you to know something. My team won, hallelujah, amen. Messi. Amen? It's not a matter of how old Messi is. The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, amen. "Nor bread to wise men, Nor riches to men of understanding, Nor favor to men of skill; But time and chance happen to them all". We have seen this time and time again, that people with less experience sometimes bump into someone, and, in the course of the conversation later on, "Come and work for me. Come over". We have so many testimonies like this in our church. Doesn't mean that the person has the most experience. Doesn't mean he's the strongest, the best, the wisest, that favor happens to him. But time and chance happen to them all, amen.
Now, the word time here, I'm gonna share with you some Hebrew. Today we're gonna learn some Hebrew, all right, and some Greek. And then another principle we'll learn, and all this gotta do with the theme of the year and what God's gonna do this year for you. We are also gonna learn about the first mention of any subject in the Bible. When the Bible mentions a subject for the first time in the Bible, it's always something significant, something, a truth we can draw from that will guide us in its interpretation for the rest of the Bible, all right? So, look for the first mention, amen. The first mention of, healing, for example, is Abraham, who lied about his wife. That's why his wife was found in the harem of a king, and he lied about it, and God appeared to the king in a dream and says, "You're a dead man. This is another man's wife". And he said, "I didn't know it. In my integrity, I thought, you know, she was the sister. That's what he said. 'This is my sister.'" And God says, "I know that you did not know it, so now restore the man his wife, for he's a prophet".
The man just lied, he called him a prophet. So, God saw Abraham righteous because of not earned righteousness, but imputed righteousness, which all of you, you have it. If you put your trust in Jesus Christ, God sees you righteous. You're facing this year as a righteous man, as a righteous woman, and all the blessings of the righteous is yours. It is not a righteousness that you have earned. It's not a righteousness that you deserved. It's a righteousness that has been given to you by grace, amen, and we receive it, praise the Lord, through Jesus Christ, hallelujah. So, time and chance happen to them all. The word here, time, in the Hebrew is the word eth. Say eth. That's how you pronounce it. Time is pronounced as eth. All right, just think of eth and you got it right, okay? Time and chance happens to them all. The word chance is pega, happened to them all. It's a special happening. It's a right happening. And the Hebrew word for happened there is qarah.
Now, say qarah. So, just remember eth and qarah. Now, this is Old Testament. Your Old Testament is in Hebrew, okay, your new Testament is in Greek. We all read our Bibles in English for the most part, right, but the original language is in Old Testament it's Hebrew, in New Testament it's Greek. Just remember that, okay? All right, so now you look at time and chance happen to them all. We want this right timing to happen to us. We want this right happening to happen to us, because we know that finally the one who wins the race is not necessarily the fastest one. The one who wins the battle is not necessarily the strong one like David over Goliath. It's not a matter of favor goes to the one with skill or riches to men of understanding or wise men, right? But time, eth, and qarah, happened to them all. Okay, so what is this, what is this? It's gotta do with the theme of the year, okay? So now, sit back, watch.
The kairos year of right time, right place. Right time in the Hebrew is the worth eth. In the Greek eth is kairos. That's why it's the kairos year of right time, right place. Right place is qarah. And we're gonna study this, because it's very interesting, and, God will unveil to us. Even for your own life already you have seen this phenomena taking place in your life. I believe even recently you have seen yourself being at the right time at the right place. All of a sudden you meet an acquaintance or you meet an old friend and a door is opened to you. Or you invite an old classmate that you met, okay, lah, old, old one, eh? Okay, young one, all right, a young classmate you met, all right, who used to be in the same school 50 years ago, all right.
So, you invite him over to church, and I've heard this kind of testimony down through the years, and good things happen to these people, all because you had a chance encounter with them. Or is it really chance? Like, the word time and chance, it's unfortunate that English word used chance, but remember, it's not the English word that is the word that, tells the real meaning, but it is the Hebrew. What the Hebrew says is qarah, amen. Right time, right place. Qarah is gonna make things happen to you, right time, right place. So, the word eth first, let's study the word right timing, right timing. A lot of things depend on right timing.
So, can we, with our smart, with our intelligence, position ourself in such a way that things can happen for us and we are aware of the right timing? People try that all the time. You know, they want to get involved in an investment at the right time, or they want to be in a certain place at the right place, you know. They want to be in that position where they are ready to receive a benefit or a something, or even encounter their life partner. They want that to happen to them. But, friend, when you think about it, when you realize that it is beyond man's intellect, it's beyond man's, disposing of his affairs. It's not within man to put himself in the right place at the right time. Even averting tragedy, for example, no one can tell, all right, which plane might not make it.
You can be a guy who tops the MENSA Test, and your IQ is really high, doesn't really matter. You cannot control your right time and your right place. You need God. So, more than ever this year, we need the Lord. And not just the Lord, we need his grace. In what aspect to trust the Lord? His grace. Because, you see, if grace is unearned and undeserved favor, then the only way to frustrate grace is another word for favor from God. And grace is unearned, undeserved favor. The only way you can frustrate it is trying to earn it. Whether you are trying your best to earn it with your good behavior or whatever it is, "Now, Pastor Prince, are you saying that we don't have to have good behavior"? No, of course not. But you don't have good behavior to try to get close to God. You must realize that you are close to God. That's why your good behavior flows from that.
I met a brother recently, just last few days, and we're talking about prayer, and he was telling me about prayer and all that, and I told him this. "Try this. Try this approach, all right, and see what happens". Instead of praying and straining as if you are trying to draw close to God, God has really made it very easy for you to come to him, amen. In fact, the Bible says, "For those who are believers in Christ, he has placed you in his Son". That's why the phrase, we are in Christ Jesus. In Christ, in him, through him, amen. We are, forevermore God will see you always in Christ. When God sees you, God doesn't look at you with all your faults and shortcomings today. God looks at Jesus to see him as you. Hallelujah.
So, when you pray, how do you pray? You pray as if you are in Christ. And, honestly folks, let me just submit this to you. Sometimes we put the name of Jesus like this in prayer. We pray whatever we're gonna pray, say, "In Jesus' name". Now, I'm not against that, okay? But actually, the idea of, "Whatever you ask the Father in my name," is actually like, "As if I am praying it. And when you pray, you need to be aware your prayer carries the same values, the same power as if I am praying. If you pray like that, that's praying in my name, representing me just as I represent you". You follow what I'm saying so far? Does God answer Jesus' prayer? Yeah, amen, of course. And now your prayer is like Jesus' prayer. Praise the Lord. That's praying in his name.
Now, I didn't say you cannot punctuate it with "In Jesus' name". By all means, that's how the church for many years have been praying, but I think it's more than just that. It is actually knowing that is as if Jesus is praying. So, I told him this. "How about praying like this? Every time you say Father, instead of saying, 'Father,' like, so far away, just say, 'Father.' Know that you are very close". Now, watch what you say, because everything you say, he's hearing, and he will answer. You have very close access to the one with whom nothing is impossible. How about, put your prayer like that. Because, you know what? That's the truth. That's the truth, amen.