A couple of weeks ago , I attended a meeting of Church Planting Missionaries from around the US and Canada. Leading the Bible study on our last day was Henry and Richard Blackaby. This time with them brought back memories because it was Henry who led the Bible study for my missionary group when I first became a missionary with the then Home Mission Board.
The one thing that stuck out to me as I listened to Dr. Blackaby speak was that his message was the same as it was back in 1988. GOD IS AT WORK AND HE INVITES US TO JOIN HIM.
So often we forget that God is on a mission in the world to redeem His creation back to a relationship with Him. It is almost like when we accept Christ and we decide to join Him in His work, we tell God to sit back, I got this now. I will do it and you can watch. Richard Blackaby shared a good example of this mentality of taking over for God. Richard shared about a church who was struggling to find a way to reach their community. This church began to pray and earnestly seek God on how to do this. As they prayed God began to reveal to them to host a community picnic and invite their neighbors to come. God began to reveal to people what they needed to do to resource the event. The result was God blessed and people were reached for the Kingdom.
Guess what this church did the following year? That's right. They did another picnic. This time though they did not pray as much. The following year, they did the same and with less prayer. It seems that their success in their method made them forget about God.
It seems that all of us forget this. We want to follow God. We see Him work in one way and we decide that is the way He always works and we adopt that way and stick with it. We cannot keep thinking that God works the same way each time and every time. It seems that once God has revealed and blessed a way to work for Him, that we seem to then tell Him to step back and let us do it.
As we look at scripture, God did not work the same way twice. As we begin to fall back or depend on our own mindsets, methods and patterns of success, we rob ourselves of seeing a working of God. See God is at work and He wants to work through us. The question is: Are we letting our past success and our methods keep us from being in tune to what God wants to do?
Success is remaining alert in prayer, and God will share His heart and purpose with you.
The one thing that stuck out to me as I listened to Dr. Blackaby speak was that his message was the same as it was back in 1988. GOD IS AT WORK AND HE INVITES US TO JOIN HIM.
So often we forget that God is on a mission in the world to redeem His creation back to a relationship with Him. It is almost like when we accept Christ and we decide to join Him in His work, we tell God to sit back, I got this now. I will do it and you can watch. Richard Blackaby shared a good example of this mentality of taking over for God. Richard shared about a church who was struggling to find a way to reach their community. This church began to pray and earnestly seek God on how to do this. As they prayed God began to reveal to them to host a community picnic and invite their neighbors to come. God began to reveal to people what they needed to do to resource the event. The result was God blessed and people were reached for the Kingdom.
Guess what this church did the following year? That's right. They did another picnic. This time though they did not pray as much. The following year, they did the same and with less prayer. It seems that their success in their method made them forget about God.
It seems that all of us forget this. We want to follow God. We see Him work in one way and we decide that is the way He always works and we adopt that way and stick with it. We cannot keep thinking that God works the same way each time and every time. It seems that once God has revealed and blessed a way to work for Him, that we seem to then tell Him to step back and let us do it.
As we look at scripture, God did not work the same way twice. As we begin to fall back or depend on our own mindsets, methods and patterns of success, we rob ourselves of seeing a working of God. See God is at work and He wants to work through us. The question is: Are we letting our past success and our methods keep us from being in tune to what God wants to do?
Success is remaining alert in prayer, and God will share His heart and purpose with you.
Lewis, a good lesson, yet again.
ReplyDeleteWe miss ya'll too. Say, why don't ya come down for a visit? :)