I'm so excited for church in the morning! God has been speaking to me SO much lately.... hold, on... wait a minute... could it be that maybe I'm just listening more? Yeah, I said it... I haven't always been the best when it comes to letting God do a lot of talking. I'm completely a type A personality and I think I just wanted to tell God how it was going to be so that I still felt in control. I do believe that God has really removed a lot of the need for control in my life. I'm embracing the journey so much more instead of focusing on the agenda.
Last week, we had a guest speaker for the morning service. He made one statement that stuck in my mind all week. He said that God just needs us to make ourselves available to Him. Whoa! I spent the rest of the service thinking about how many times I have been so distracted with being busy and trying to make things happen on my own. How many times could God have worked greater things in my life if I had just made myself available?
Last night we watched a movie that continued to make me want to see what God had in store for me. A man who lived a life of drugs, crime, and alcohol accepts Christ as his Savior. He learns about going to Africa to help missionaries. While there, he goes to Sudan and sees all the children being taken by the rebels and using them for sex slavery, an army, and much more. The civil war going on there didn't hinder this man from making a change. He went home to the US and drew up plans for a church in his neighborhood and then plans for an orphanage near north Sudan. At this point, I'm thinking that the change in his heart was amazing enough and I was just happy with seeing that take place in his life. Oh what blessings would have been forfeited if I had been the one controlling this man's story.
He goes on to actually build the church and orphanage. A lot of times he worked without financial help other than his own family's money. He didn't sit on those plans that God gave him in the middle of the night. He got up and put them into action. While preaching at the church he founded one Sunday, he stated that God wasn't interested in your "good intentions". What a statement. But so true.
I want to encourage you to relinquish control of your story to God. Don't decide when it all ends for you or when you have done enough. Had this man stopped at just becoming a Christian, there would be thousands of children without shelter, food, education, and love. If you decide when you're done, you cut short the blessings and miracles that God can perform through you.
Furthermore, if you have visions from God, don't sit on them. Get up and get to work for the kingdom of God. Most of us don't accomplish what God wants us to do for His kingdom because we just won't get up. Some of us are just lazy. Some of us like to come up with a list of excuses. There is no limit to what my God can do! So why make excuses for why He can't do something? Make yourself available and see just what He can do through you!
The Bible tells us in James 2:17 that, "In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead." If we have faith of a vision to happen, but we aren't willing to work toward it, then that faith AND vision is dead.
What do you have a vision for in your life? Make yourself available to God to work that vision out until HIS end. Does He want you to go to another country? Get your passport ready! Does He want you to start a business? Draw up the business plan and put it into action! Does He want you to preach? Write a sermon! Does He want you to witness? Go talk to the lost!
Above all... DON'T stop when you think your vision has come to pass. DON'T cut God off before HE is done. He probably has a lot more in mind if we will just make ourselves ALWAYS available to Him.
Back to me and my listening skills for a moment. I have made myself much more available to God lately. Am I without problems? No. But I can see the glory of God in so much more lately. I have seen Him work things out in crazy awesome ways just because I was listening and didn't stop when the flesh in me thought I was done.
Don't stop when your flesh says you are done. Don't sit when your flesh says it can't be done. Get up and do more than just have good intentions for the kingdom of God!
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