Time is the only thing only God can restore—and the one thing you need restoration

“I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.” Ecclesiastes 9:11

In my book, The Truth is Counterintuitive: Renew your mind and think like Jesus, I discuss this counterintuitive truth about life:

Those who win and accomplish much aren’t the fastest, strongest, or smartest; they simply manifest who they were made to be in their time, and they are prepared long before that.

Jesus cursed a fruitless fig tree that was not in season to die—revealing that God requires us to always be ready for our time of manifestation (kairos, καιρός) to come.

“Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.” 2 Timothy 4:2

While those who are considered unsuccessful, are either unfaithful in preparation—or their time simply never comes, because it has been locked or hijacked.

In this article:

• Miracle
• Time
• Time is the only thing only God can restore
• Your time is hijacked
• Your time is locked, even ticking backward
• Redeem the time
• Pearls for the wise: How to pray effectively

Miracle:

Nature does not need prayers for miracles.

When a young woman gets married, pregnancy is expected.
When she gets pregnant, a child is expected.

You might need prayers for the child to be born healthy and smoothly, but it’s not a “miracle.”

However, if the woman is a virgin, or if she has reached menopause or had her womb removed, then we are talking about a whole different dimension—from the natural to the supernatural.

A miracle is the manifestation of supernatural activity.

Time

Time is an earthly reality. God Himself is not confined or defined by time, but He operates from eternity.

Eternity is a different dimension that is not equal to “infinite time.”

Infinity has a beginning but no end.
Eternity has neither a beginning nor an end.

Only God is omnipresent and omniscient, and knows the end from the beginning—because “end” and “beginning” are both concepts of time.

Time is the only thing only God can restore

“So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten.
The crawling locust,
The consuming locust,
And the chewing locust,
My great army which I sent among you.”

Joel 2:25

If you think about it, miracles happen to solve time-generated problems.

Anything can be perfectly fine if only you can go back or forth in time. Sarah didn’t need a miracle to give birth to Issac if she were still young.

What a miracle does is: it targets precisely by moving time relevant to your problem back or forth, yet keeps the rest about you untouched.

God says to restore to you the years the locust has eaten—don’t you wonder why the “years,” and why not “the things”?

As far as I know, locusts eat stuff, not time.

In Revelation 7, monstrous locusts with men’s faces and women’s hair will come out of the bottomless pit to torment unrepentant men, who will beg for death, but death will be nowhere to be found.

Locusts are a biblical symbol of loss, curse, and judgment, and often they are even sent by God to judge the unrepentant and the disobedient.

So in the physical world, we think we lost our stuff—our house, spouse, car, job, health, relationship, promotion, business, or opportunity—

but the spiritual reality is this: we lost time.

All the things in this life on earth can be restored by people—your money can be returned with the help of your friends, your marriage can be healed by wise counselors, your missed opportunities can be given again by new bosses and partners—

except time.

Time is the only thing that only God can restore.

Your time is hijacked

If you have passed the age for certain milestones in life—leaving your father’s house, financial stability, marriage, children, rest and retirement—your time has been hijacked.

The world lied to you by saying it doesn’t matter how old you are for certain things. It does. Life is about seasons. When the due season comes and there is no harvest, there is always a reason.

God restores your time by making what can never happen naturally happen—when you’ve passed the age for certain milestones, you will still receive your blessings as He promised.

There was a man who was prophesied to have four children, yet decades later, his wife was close to menopause, and they still had only one child. Then one night, the Lord visited her, and suddenly she was pregnant with triplets.

All the good things you didn’t bother to pray for when you were twenty years old become your prayers every day for years—

Because you sensed delay, which is not a delay for a twenty-year-old. Your spirit knows that you’re not supposed to be where you are. Your spirit knows that if you don’t fight back now, you will stay stuck for another decade—never manifesting who God made you to be.

So you see, even what we pray for is determined by the time and season we are in.

Your time is locked, even ticking backward

If you feel that nothing grows in your life except your age, your time has been locked.

If you make money today only to pay for what was owed yesterday, your time is ticking backward.

So how can you expect to move forward and upward in life?

“The rich rule over the poor,
and the borrower becomes the lender’s slave.” —Proverbs 22:7

This proverb can feel irrelevant, because we are prone to justifying our folly.

Many people borrow money here and there as casually as if dining at different restaurants. Fools use money they do not have, and some people—who know better than that—borrow money for investment in education or business. Yet these people are likewise ignorant of the intense spiritual activity that takes place whenever borrowing happens in the physical realm.

You do not become a slave to your bank. You become a slave to the spirit of mammon. We do not wrestle against flesh and blood—everything physical in this world that blesses you or persecutes you has a spirit, even principalities, working behind the scenes.

Remember, Paul cast out a spirit of divination from a slave girl (Acts 16:16), which cut off her masters’ streams of income, and the whole city was thrown into turmoil.

When you become a slave to the spirit of mammon, you serve mammon—unwillingly and unknowingly. All your prayers become about money and finances.

You skip church because you need to work to pay your bills.
You don’t have time to read the Bible or serve your family because you need to pay your bills.
You don’t have time to work on your purpose because you need to pay your bills.

“You cannot serve God and mammon.” Matthew 6:24

And the counterintuitive truth behind that verse is: Satan is not God’s competitor for your attention, mammon is.

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Redeem the time

“Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” Ephesians 5:16

I do not understand this verse until I read Matthew 6:34 KJV: "Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."

No translation other than the KJV says that the day is “evil”—most render it as “trouble.”

Why is “evil” more ruminative? Because it hints at the spiritual reality behind physical life. Lost opportunities and withdrawn favor do not simply happen. They are first brewing in the spiritual realm.

If there were no evil, there would be no delay. If there were no delay, the appointed time—kairos (καιρός)—for you to manifest would not need to be redeemed.

The days are evil—for our enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

Satan doesn’t seek flesh to devour—he seeks destinies and kairos to devour, so that God’s chosen will never manifest.

He first seduces or deceives you into sin, so that your sin gives him a foothold and the legal right to hijack your blessings. Then he gives those blessings to his children and to those who involve themselves in the occult and ask Satan for stuff at the price of their own souls. Hence why:

“I have seen servants upon horses, and princes walking as servants upon the earth.” Ecclesiastes 10:7

Destinies are exchanged when time is devoured.

Pearls for the wise: How to pray effectively: