Creation Of The World - Whether you hold a "Day-Age" view or a "Literal" view, etc, God gradually created and sculpted the world over time.
The Calling Of The Jews - Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Twelve tribes...
The Sending Of The Messiah - centuries passed before Jesus was incarnated.
Spreading Of The Gospel - gradually over centuries, we are seeing God's Purposes unfolding.
The more I think about it, the more all of life is like this. There is a development process to all things that have life, meaning, value, and purpose. The only things that are really made in an instance are material and expendable.
So this gradual revealing of God's purpose certainly has personal application to us as well. He wants our lives to have meaning, value, and purpose, and the only way to do that is through a gradual development via a daily relationship with Christ.
In fact, Charles Spurgeon, in his sermon delivered on the Sabbath Morning, January 7th, 1855, stated the following: "Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the Deity."
I think that God unfolds His purposes gradually, so that we can "continually investigate" His greatness...Allow me to draw a parallel from the outstanding Christian philosopher and theologian of the eleventh century, Saint Anselm, who coined the phrase, fides quaerens intellectum...translated to mean, “faith seeking understanding”...Perhaps God has so arranged life that our faith seeks an understanding, and then our understanding leads to a revealing...then purpose...
Faith --> Understanding --> Revealing --> Purpose
For Anselm, "faith seeking understanding" was “an active love of God seeking a deeper knowledge of God.” He believed that true faith is a love for God and a drive to act as God wills...Ultimately, our purpose is to become Christ-like...Jesus was everything God is, and He was everything that we were meant to be...so what happened was that sin entered the world, we became separated from God, and our image became distorted...man has been on a search for purpose ever since...a search for God through Christ...a desire beyond all desires in which C.S. Lewis beautifully summarized in the following quote:
"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy,
the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."
the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."
...God, through His gradual unfolding of meaning, value, and purpose, wants us to first have a "deeper knowledge" of Him...and a deeper understanding of Him...a desire to become Sanctified and Christ-like...so that when God unfolds our meaning, value, and purpose in life, we see Him as the architect, the composer, and the designer of it all.
