9 Second Jesus

It only takes 9 seconds. 

9 seconds for us to lose patience. 
9 seconds for us to refresh that page that hasn’t loaded. 
9 seconds for us to tune out of a conversation before our mind begins wandering.

Studies have shown that this is how impatient we are today as humans; that if we sit behind a traffic light for 9 seconds, or if the light turns green and the car in front of us hasn’t zoomed past the intersection in 9 seconds, or if we are waiting at the Starbucks drive-thru and they haven’t acknowledged us within 9 seconds–we become impatient, frustrated, and our stress levels rise. 

In today’s world, we don’t really see the number 9 as having any significance and we really don’t give it a second thought. But I want to point out a few things that have happened over the past 2,000 years that reference this numerical significance, and maybe it can bring to light some importance of this specific number for us.

• The number 9 is used 49 times in Scripture. This number is often used to convey the meaning of completeness in a divine way, or to mean finality. 
  
• Christ died at the 9th hour of his day to be our way of salvation and become the Lamb.
  
• Yom Kippur, which is one of the only annual feast days of worship that requires believers to fast, begins at sunset on the 9th day of the seventh Hebrew month. 
  
• When we look at the fruits of the spirit, we see that there are 9 of them: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, and self-control.
  
• When we look at the upholding of kings, we see that Hoshea reigned for 9 years, and was the last king of Israel before the kingdom fell to the Assyrians. 
  Jerusalem’s temple was destroyed on the day ‘Ab 9’ in the Hebrew calendar. The second temple, the temple of Herod, was burned to the ground on this same exact day by the Romans. 
  
• A Roman Centurion named Cornelius had a vision to contact the apostle Peter, which would lead to Cornelius eventually being baptized and becoming the first Gentile convert to Christianity. This happened on the 9th hour of that day. 
  
• The first battle of kings that we read about in Genesis 14: 1–2 is between a confederation of four kings who battled against five other kings, for a total of 9 kings. 

There are so many more instances than this, as I mentioned we have 49. Maybe I should do our first Podcast next week on the other 42 points. We should bring them out and relish in every 9 that the Lord has given us! But for right now I just wanted to give you a little peek into the significance of this number. Do we think it’s a coincidence that it has such a powerful and complete meaning in Biblical times, but yet in today’s world it’s a signal for giving up, for running to emotions in the heat of the moment, and often an excuse for treating others wrongly. Sometimes, we don’t even give God more than 9 seconds of our day. We glance at the devotionals but we are too busy to read them. We rush through a prayer simply stating, “You know what I need Lord, but I am too tired to even say it.” 

What if Jesus only gave us 9 seconds?
 
9 seconds before he passed us by. 
9 seconds before he closed his arms to us. 
9 seconds before he stopped loving us.
 
I don’t know about you, but I am grateful for a Lord that gives us unlimited attention, presence, and time. He sits with us. He listens to us. He guides us. If he only gave us 9 seconds of his time how would we feel his comfort, speak one single sentence to him, or know where he is sending us? I am so grateful he always gives us more than 9 seconds–so shouldn’t we do the same for God and for others?

9 doesn’t seem like a big number. In our day-to-day it usually isn’t. But imagine what Jesus can and has done in just 9 seconds. Would we want to waste that? Would we want to miss that? Will we be so busy trying to get to our next destination or onto the next task that we let those 9 powerful seconds drift away without grasping onto every little morsel of goodness and healing and progress that God may be doing through them? I sure don’t want to, and I hope you don’t either. In these trying times where we have so much job loss, so much sickness and death, so much discrimination and hurt, so many people losing their homes or wondering where their next meal will come from, it has only made our broken world more shattered. 

The last instance of 9 that I want to leave you with is something I hope will bring a little bit of peace to our chaotic circumstances and our crumbling global epidemics. In Psalm 9:9, the Bible tells us, “All who are oppressed may come to you as a shelter in the time of trouble, a perfect hiding place” (TPT). We need to come to Jesus–we need to give him those 9 seconds and so many beyond. What is he trying to do through you or for you that you are rushing past and pushing him out of the way of so that you can get on to your next thing? Give him those seconds…count to 9…surrender…and let God use that time to do something you maybe could have never imagined.

*NOTE: The number ‘9’ is used in this article in numerical form for emphasis and visual representation. Proper use would spell the word out, I realize that, but the significance is for us to grasp this number visually and so I have used it in its natural form for this express purpose. Just a disclaimer for those who may attempt to reach out to me regarding my numerical usage. 😉