Missing Divine Opportunities
My Dear Friends,
Because so many Christians don’t know God intimately, we often fail to grasp that obedience to God operates within appointed seasons. Both Testaments bear witness to this truth, yet we remain blind to its implications.
While reading John 11, I was struck by Christ’s decision to remain where He was for two days after hearing of Lazarus’s illness. At first, this puzzled me. Then, one day, the Spirit drew my attention to verses 9–10: “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Anyone who walks in the daytime will not stumble, for they see by this world’s light. It is when a person walks at night that they stumble, for they have no light.“
Here, Christ reveals a principle far deeper than timing. He is teaching that obedience must be aligned with the light of God’s will—within the window He appoints. To walk in His light is to move when and how He directs; to delay is to drift into darkness. Scripture demonstrates this again in Numbers 14. When the Israelites refused God’s call to enter the Promised Land, He pronounced judgment: forty years in the wilderness. Only then did they summon the courage to obey—but it was too late. Moses warned, “Why are you disobeying the Lord’s command? This will not succeed! … The Lord is not with you.” Once the divine window closed, their outward obedience was, in fact, a form of rebellion.
Obedience, then, is never about what we decide to do for God. It is always about responding to what He asks and when He asks it. This is why abiding in Him and walking in the Spirit are not optional—they are the only way to discern His invitations in the moment they come. Often His call disrupts our comfort and dismantles our carefully laid plans. Many times, we don’t even realize He has opened a door for us until it has closed.
I have learned this through personal experience in my earlier walk with Him. When God has clearly revealed His will and is waiting for my obedience, yet I am still gathering the courage to act, I feel His expectation acutely. As we remain in fellowship with Him, the Holy Spirit provides gentle guidance, making us aware of His patient waiting. In these moments of hesitation, a profound inner awareness emerges—it feels like a profound silence settles in—a withdrawal of the nearness I have come to treasure. This absence presses on my soul to respond in obedience to His clearly communicated will. Interestingly, I can still decline to obey. As I obey, the oneness between us that is my spiritual lifeline is restored.
This year, God initiated an intensive season of integrating Christ’s character into my faith—a process He indicated was necessary because my foundational faith had become well-rooted. During this period, He impressed this principle upon me with remarkable clarity through an unexpected experience. While bedridden with illness, I maintained a practice of answering only my son’s calls.
However, God prompted me to answer an incoming call from someone else. Before this person had finished speaking, the Lord revealed to me what was transpiring and instructed me to respond immediately. Having received all the information necessary to act, I experienced an unprecedented boldness and protective urgency regarding my relationship with God. There was something profoundly sacred about this moment that brought deep joy to my spirit.
Afterward, I asked God about the source of this boldness and courage I had previously lacked when dealing with this individual. He revealed that He had provided the boldness and showed me that what I was experiencing flowed directly from His work of adding His character to my faith to safeguard my relationship with Him. He then showed me in that moment, what I experienced was something of Christ’s perfect obedience—the same unwavering sense of purpose He expressed in John 9:4: ‘I must do the works of him who sent me.
Through this experience, I gained a profound understanding of what Christ felt as He operated from this mindset more than two thousand years ago. The most remarkable aspect was how time itself seemed irrelevant—two thousand years collapsed into what felt like yesterday, creating an immediate spiritual bridge between His experience and mine. While some might classify this as an ‘extraordinary spiritual moment,’ God revealed that this represents the normal flow of Christian life as He intends it—one where every opportunity for obedience is recognized as sacred and every moment of His presence is treasured as precious.
Sometimes, the moments of obedience God presents to us are seemingly small in scope. I recall an instance when I was with a group of believers, and the Spirit directed me to ask one individual whether the gospel had been shared with a family member whom we all knew was in urgent spiritual need. This person’s response was deeply troubling, made more so because I was simultaneously experiencing God’s own grief over the situation.
As this individual defended why such an evangelistic responsibility should not fall to them and questioned why God would make such a request, the Lord was revealing to me His profound disappointment with this person’s resistance, which had persisted for years, even to a single, simple act of obedience according to His will. The issue was not that others couldn’t share the gospel; rather, God specifically desired this person to accept responsibility for one small act of faithful obedience.
I consistently find such situations challenging because I cannot openly declare, ‘God is speaking to me right now about this very matter.’ When alone with someone, these conversations are more manageable. However, navigating such moments in group settings becomes complex when seeking to avoid causing additional spiritual harm to someone who lacks spiritual discernment and remains unaware of their condition.
What proved even more disheartening was witnessing other Christians begin praying for this individual, asking God to allow them to share the gospel ‘only when they feel ready.’ These well-meaning believers had no understanding that they were essentially requesting God’s permission for this person to continue in disobedience—inadvertently asking Him to enable further sin rather than prompt immediate obedience to His clear leading.
The window of obedience is both holy and brief. When God opens it, He expects an immediate, wholehearted response. Miss it, and we step into spiritual darkness; embrace it, and we walk in the light of His eternal purposes. This is why spiritual sensitivity is not a luxury for the spiritually advanced—it is an absolute necessity for anyone who desires to live in harmony with Him. The alternative is stumbling through life in spiritual darkness, attempting to serve God while missing His actual directions, trying to obey yesterday’s word while today’s opportunity slips away unnoticed.
While God is fully aware that this individual I mentioned above lacks spiritual sensitivity and understanding of their condition, this knowledge does not deter Him from persistently providing opportunities for correction and growth. His nature—characterized by perfect justice and holiness—compels Him to continue offering chances for spiritual restoration, regardless of the person’s level of awareness.
We observe this divine pattern clearly in Christ’s interactions with Judas. Jesus was fully cognizant that Judas remained oblivious to the gravity of his actions, yet He consistently provided subtle warnings and opportunities for repentance. Christ repeatedly indicated His awareness of Judas’s intentions, offering him multiple chances to reconsider his path. Even in the final moment when Jesus told Judas to proceed with his act of betrayal, Judas remained completely unaware of the spiritual significance of what was transpiring.
God’s commitment to providing opportunities for obedience and repentance is relentless. Years ago, I expressed to Him that such moments appeared futile given our spiritual blindness to His actions. He clarified that my observation missed the point—I had made it about the people involved when, in reality, it is about Him and His nature, not about our comprehension or lack thereof.
This divine persistence reveals a deeper truth about the tragedy of many believers: they mistake good intentions for actual obedience and religious activity for spiritual responsiveness. They serve God according to their own timing and comfort while remaining deaf to His present voice. However, Christ calls us to something far more intimate and immediate—a life so attuned to His Spirit that we recognize His slightest gesture and respond without hesitation, knowing that this is what it means to truly walk in His light.
Anything less than that, and we are only learning to sustain this blindness; the stages are always predictable.
Stage One: Spiritual blindness takes root in pride, comfort, and diminished expectations. It flourishes in environments where believers are never challenged to examine their hearts, confront their sin, or die to self daily.
Stage Two: In this atmosphere of unchallenged self-affirmation, spiritual ignorance masquerades as a state of peace. Without the Holy Spirit’s conviction piercing the heart, blindness remains undetected and unchallenged.
Stage Three: External religious activity becomes a substitute for internal spiritual reality. The believer engages in the forms of godliness while remaining fundamentally unchanged.
Stage Four: The Holy Spirit’s conviction becomes systematically resisted through busyness, rationalization, and outright defiance.
Stage Five: True grace, which empowers us to live a holy life, becomes perverted into license for continued disobedience.
Stage Six: Without trembling at God’s Word or maintaining appropriate reverence, there is no urgency to see rightly or live differently.
Reflection Question: Can you identify a time when you sensed God calling you to act or respond in a specific way, but you delayed or rationalized away that prompting—and what might you learn about spiritual sensitivity and immediate obedience from that experience?
May you recognize and respond to divine opportunities,
Eternal Bliss
