So his brothers said to him, "Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works you are doing. For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world." For not even his brothers believed in him.
Jesus said to them, "My time has not yet come, but your time is always here. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil. You go up to the feast. I am not going up to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come." John 7:3-8
I know that my motives to pray for healing often include a desire to be assured of the advancement of the Kingdom and of my good standing with the Healer. Compassion is in there as well, but sometimes in lesser proportions. I will continue to pray for healing, but I'm begging God to change my motives from self-assurance-seeking to true, compassionate love, pickled in a confidence in the loving, living God. I cannot change my motives myself, but I will submit them to the Father, who gives us the Spirit to will and to do. And I think He is changing them already.
In the end, their mis-motivations do not stop Jesus from going up to the feast and teaching on the coming of the Holy Spirit ('streams of living water'). Their sinful hearts did not change His plans, nor his heart, at all. He was simply working in His time and not theirs. Still He came, and still He brought the heat.
You can have my impatience, my plans, my fears. It's your time. Bring it, Lord.
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