KAIROS TIME

Yesterday I was prompted to look through the messages I read in the past month with the occurrence of 'now is the time, your time has come, kairos, God-ordained moment, right now'. Essentially these are messages that speak of God's timing. God has spoken about this to me in Feb but He seems to be reiterating it again. Hence it must be of certain importance. And so, I again googled 'when God says you are in kairos time' to glean nuggets of truth. Here are the highlights of what I found.

Kairos speaks more of specific, God-ordained times throughout history, sometimes called the "right time" or "appointed season". Kairos is God's dimension—one not marked by the past, the present, or the future. It was a perfect moment. John the Baptist said in Mark 1:15 that the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Kairos moments then—and now—allow us to get a glimpse of the "other side." We peek around the corner at eternity. We actually glimpse how God works.

As the omniscient, omnipresent Deity, God is not bound by the confines of space or time. That's why He flows into our existence when we least expect Him. When we ask for something right away, it might not always come. Or when we don't ask at all and He shows up. It can be frustrating, "with the Lord one day is as a thousand years." It can also be surprising "a thousand years as one day." We should always live our days looking for those moments, those inexplicable times when His will and his way intersect with our daily walks. 

Kairos connotes the idea of an opportunity or suitable time for an action to take place. It is a time when things come to a 'head', requiring decisive actions. It is a time for harvest, a time for rewards, an appointed time to be born, a time when certain events will take place etc. It denotes a unique time in which something special is about to happen.

The term kairos refers to a way of perceiving time as a series of important or significant events or moments. Some Christians have referred to this kind of time as “God’s time” or “sacred time". In God’s time, some times are more important than others, and there are windows of opportunity that open and close and we need to be aware of the movement of kairos time or else we may miss out on something big God wants to do in our lives and in the lives of others.

Kairos is the "fullness of time," God’s time zone. Kairos time conveys notions of unboundness, of fluidity, of God’s purposes intersecting and overruling this finite world of chronological time. Kairos thus conveys a more exciting concept than simple chronos. Kairos refers to specially selected periods of divine determination. It operates within human time but mainly as the focus of the fulfillment of God’s ultimate purposes.

God created time, and in his sovereign kairos time he interacts and enters into chronos time according to his perfect will. This is one reason life with God is so exciting—we are not predetermined, the future is open to us and we are open to it. Kairos thus conveys expectation and excitement, times of decision. Kairos is pregnant time, the time of possibility – moments in our day, our week, our month, our year or our lifetime that define us. It is a crossroads. It has the ripe opportunity to make you bitter or better. It is a teachable moment. It is the right or opportune moment. They are rarely neutral and always leave an impact on us.

From a ministry perspective, kairos is the time of God’s activity, the time where we sense God may be trying to get our attention, where we anticipate He may be up to something and it would be wise for us to pay attention in this suspended time and place. Kairos moments are a string of moments that possess possibility – clarity brought on often by pain, uncertainty or crisis. They force us to be absolutely present: to ourselves, to God and to the experience of reality that we’re facing.