Being Proactive vs. Reactive for God
A parable was once told of a Building Contractor who hired a carpenter. The carpenter seemed to have a good resume. He had a truck and all the right tools and in talking with him he could tell he had experience. Monday morning came and the carpenter didn't show up for work! The same happened Tuesday, and the rest of the week. When Friday came the carpenter arrived for his paycheck. The contractor asked him; "Why should I pay you when you never showed up for work?" The carpenter replied; "Oh didn't you see that nice garage I built for you down at your lower property? I went to your supply house and bought on your account all the materials and look here's a picture of it and as you will see it's a very nice garage! The contractor shocked said; "I never asked you to build me a garage!" Then the carpenter replied; " I know but I built it just for you with all my heart and as you can see it's a very nice garage!" As you can imagine the contractor sent the carpenter away looking for another job.
As ridiculous as this story sounds that's the way many of us Christians are consistently doing things for God and not with Him. To do things with the Lord requires that we live close to Him. It requires that we discipline ourselves to prioritize our spiritual lives. It requires us to seek His heart with all of our hearts and press though to discover His will on matters involving decisions in our lives that He knows are important. When we truly make Him Lord of our lives the religious practices of doing things for God begin to die off and the delight of doing things with God begin to bear abundant good eternal fruit! No more are we building garages for the Master Carpenter that He never asked us to build.
What I think is just totally awesome is that God often chooses to include little ole us to work with Him in these processes and to change the world around us forever. 1st Corinthians 3:9 (a) KJV teaches us that "We are co-laborers together with Him."
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One of the most exciting things about serving God is to understand that He knows the future! The Omniscient God we serve knows what is going to happen before it happens and as it has been said; "Nothing surprises God!" He uses everything that happens in some way, to accomplish His goals.
God being God, over and over again in scripture seems to work within the confines of human nature to avert something from happening by doing something else. He is also omnipotent, meaning He is all-powerful and could just use His power to take care of something if He chose to do that. However we see He is most profoundly a gentle Heavenly Father who cares so much for His people that He works in the affairs of mankind one little step at a time to accomplish His purposes.
As we fully surrender our lives to Christ we find that He begins to lead us as we study His word to serve him in very affectionate ways, which are unique to the gifts and talents He has given us. Because He knows the end from the beginning he most often uses us to sow seeds in the lives of those around us that grow to bear good fruit for His Kingdom and fruit that remains.
As a God called Revivalist I have noticed some things though the years. One of those things is that with most Christians if we backslide, we don't backslide off into the world of deep sin. We backslide into religious practice! We become lukewarm in our passion for Jesus and we continue to attend church and learn how to just go through the motions. We stop seeking God on a regular basis, become slack in our Bible studies and only turn back to God wholeheartedly when some crisis arises in our lives. Most Christians in this place resist revival in the very same way sinners resist coming to Christ in the first place. In a way they are in the same place with hardened hearts.
Have you ever wondered why we as the church are often reactive to our society rather than pro-active? Why is it that we are often chasing the news? Yes, frequently we care so much about the tragedies going on around us that we want to help those who have suffered calamity or loss. That indeed is a noble and very Christ like thing to do. But think about this for a minute. Because we serve an all knowing and all seeing God wouldn't it be awesome if we lived so close to Him that we could be part of His plan to avert some of the tragedies that happen around us? The old saying that goes; "and ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," is so true.
Because of my many years in Youth Ministry several of the articles I have written have been around reaching the loner teens of our society. One of the ladies in our church has heard God say to her heart to reach out to bullied students. Wouldn't it be an awesome thing if we could just hear God saying; "get busy reaching out with my love and avert or prevent more senseless acts of violence?"
You see we will never know until Heaven, the things in life that were averted because something proactive and led by God's Spirit was done. We are only sadly confronted with the devastating realities where nothing effective was ever done.
Rise up children of God to seek Him with all of your hearts. Find out what you are called to do and do it with all of your heart soul mind and strength. Ephesians 5:16 NIV says; "making the most of every opportunity for the days are evil.
