You must warn each other every day, while it is still “today,” so that none of you will be deceived by sin and hardened against God. Hebrews 3:13 NLT
Following up on yesterdays post of loving your neighbor (go back and read that one if you haven’t before beginning this one), I want to kind of do a part 2 to the lesson.
Often we can talk about our motives, “Our motives were right!” We will say that our conscientiousness was pure, and our intensions were correct; but you and I know what really is behind what we call our ‘good’ motives. There is a deceitfulness in the human heart that defies our attempts to track it down, and we’ll never be able to do it. This is where the institutional Church has become such a confused thing, and such a tragedy; for the prevailing idea is that if you give yourself over to God He will take you and use you: “Bring over your humanity and consecrate it to the Lord. Consecrate your ‘old man’ to the Lord, and go out and serve the Lord, with that consecrated ‘old man’!” It is utterly contrary to the teaching of God’s Word. The result is that in the work of God all over the world you have people serving the Lord in the energy of the flesh, in the reasoning of the flesh, in the emotions of the flesh. Meet them, counter them, frustrate them, and you will meet something evil; you meet with a fight, a division, a schism, a scattering, and wholesale resignations.
Do you see the problem here? And the havoc the enemy can make in that which is called the church, because the people with the best intentions and purest motives have come to serve the Lord with all of their own intelligence, their own strength, and their own emotion? Is that what God has called us to? The only thing that will satisfy God in serving Him is His Son, His service, energy, life, and wisdom. Jesus has to be the governing, ruling reality in everything. It is not a matter of your impulses, BUT of His urgings and leadings BY the Holy Spirit; not your sitting down to reason out what would be ‘good’ to do for the Lord. It should ONLY be what He shows you to do NOTHING more. You and I must NOT bring over our old creation and give it to God, expecting God to use it. God begins with birth. The real church of the firstborn is something quite new, and it comes out of death. That death is the death of an old creation, and the resurrection is of something that is NOT the resuscitation of an old creation, but the resurrection of something wholly of God.
This calling, this life of Terminally Committed To Christ, is ONLY about moving and doing as instructed BY the Holy Spirit. We cannot be about our own ways, our old ways, our ‘good’ intentions. So what exactly is the Holy Spirit asking you to do? Specifically. What is the first step He is having you take? Can you do that without taking any further steps, especially if there is great success in that first step? Can you wait for Him to instruct you further? The issue in my life has often been running ahead of God, thinking I learned the lesson He wanted me to learn without ever reviewing it with Him or asking for further instructions on the lesson. And I then in the process I usually fall flat on my face. His response to me has often been, “Did you ask Me, or did you just presume?”
So stop …before running out to do the ‘good’ thing for God, and ask Him what He wants you to do. Wait. Be still… and listen. Usually you’ll just get a simple first step. Do that. Then ask Him for the second step, do that only. Repeat that sequence over and over. Remember the only real heavenly rewards written down in Gods Book of your life’s accounting will be your obedience to what He specifically asked you to do, not all your ‘good’ intentions.