I’ve been reading this book of late. I was intrigued by the title and this dude has written some stuff I respected in the past so I gave it a try.
The idea of the book is that we can hear from God and know clearly from His Word what we need to do and still NOT DO IT. There are a lot of reasons, but the reason (and premise) in this book is that our authority can often be hijacked by others with no more validation than that, they ‘don’t agree with what you’re doing.’
Often these mission hijackers will come on like some sort of prophet who has been given a, word from God for your life. Nevermind how clearly the Lord has already made things to you, their incite into YOUR life is more clear, more authoritative, or just plain better. So what do you do when this happens?
Shift gears because you’re intimidated?
Or stay the course that God has set before you?
Believe it or not, a lot of people will change course away form God’s will with hardly a second thought simply because they feel manipulated or intimidated. The book has some great insights on how to both recognize this destructive pattern in our lives and break it.
But what caught me has little to do with that. What really struck me was something in the book that was almost the opposite. It’s a short, 2 page section about understanding our own motives for why we do things. This is incredibly important because God often uses people to help correct us when we are off course. If we simply throw up the automatic, “I’m just doing what God told me to” than we can justify almost anything…not cool.
The author, John Bevere, relates a story of a time in his life when all his prayers were basically about asking God to help him do great and might things through him—basically, using God. One day God greatly convicted him of this and said, basically that the “anointing” is not automatic proof of really following God.
Ex. Judas cast out demons, healed the sick AND preached the gospel. He left his business to follow Christ…but where is Judas today?
Ex. 2 Jesus referred to the fact that MANY will stand before the Father one day offering their resume of great and mighty things they’ve done for the kingdom of God. But, He will cast them from His presence because, in spite of their impressive resume…they didn’t even know God!
In other words, they lived for their own glory instead of giving the glory to God. They used God instead of allowing themselves to be used by God for the furtherance of His kingdom.
* The goal, friends, of the high calling of God is not power, authority, popularity, influence, or any other self serving ambition. The goal is to get to know God intimately and love Him deeply.
All that other stuff is just fringe benefits.
Something to think about.
A self checkup worth taking…often.