Kingdom Work

Oswald Chambers, one of my favourite Christian authors said these words ‘It is a lot easier to work for God than it is to work with God’

There is a great difference between working for God and working with God. See, anybody can work for God. You can wake up one morning and decide to go and feed the hungry, clothe orphans, preach even. That is all up to you, your decision, your timing, your everything…for God. Working for God requires only your slight knowledge of Him.  

 Working with God, however, requires a great deal of faith and trust in Him. It requires a personal relationship with Him. When you are working with God, firstly, you need to be invited by Him. Secondly, you need to understand that everything is up to Him. What the work will be, when it will begin, where it will be done. None of that is up to you.

  

‘No enthusiasm will ever stand the strain that God puts on His worker. Only one thing will, that is a personal relationship with Him’- Oswald Chambers

Working with God, comes with a particular mission. It is never small, and it is never easy. If anything, being invited to work with God will lead to the most difficult season of your life.  After God invites you to join Him in His plan, His project, He will then begin to break you down, mold you and remove everything in your life that is not part of this plan. Not only will He do this, He will also block every attempt on your part to run ahead of Him, any attempt to start before His time. You see, God is excellent, so He requires His workers to be excellent in both life and character. If you are to do something extra-ordinary, you must become an extra-ordinary person. 

When God invites you to work with Him, He places boundaries around you. Those boundaries both protect and frustrate you. The protection comes in the sense that there are some things God will not allow the enemy to do to you, because of this assignment. There are people who are protected, not because they are important or perfect, but because of the critical role they were chosen (Yes, God chooses) to play in God’s plan

 The frustration comes in when you realize that there are also some things that God will not allow you to do, because of this assignment. You will not be allowed to do what everyone else is doing, you might insist on trying, but the spirit within you will not allow you to enjoy it. There are some people you will not be allowed to walk with and befriend. At the same time, since you are working with God, even your choice of life partner cannot be random and according to what you think you want. God will go as far as protecting you from yourself, lest your foolishness sabotages your assignment.

As human beings, we have a tendency of doing what we feel should be done. If God calls you to be the next Bill Gates, do not attempt to improve His calling by also trying to be the next Mother Theresa. It is imperative that you stay within the boundaries of your assignment, stay within the boundaries of the territory you have been given. 

It is a lot easier to do something that it is to sit back and trust God. We tend to mistake panic for inspiration. It is easier to work for God than to believe in and walk with Him. That is why there are so few workers with God and so many workers for God.

FEELNGS VS PURPOSE

There was a Facebook post quite recently, where someone stated that ‘There is absolutely no man that despises his wife and still be successful. You shall never find one’

In the debate that followed, the writer of this quote explained that if a man mistreats his wife, she will not pray for him and he will therefore not succeed.

Another said ‘Look at Donald Trump and realize that if he had the right attitude (towards his wife) he would be president’.

Good heavens! I’m not sure if I have the energy to break down everything that is wrong with this assumption, but I shall try.

First: Donald Trump is on his third wife and won the US elections against all odds.

Second: Who is it that determines a man’s success?

You see, God has a purpose for each person. There are some people who God created to play a part in the bigger picture of His plan. We all know that God’s purpose will stand regardless of anything.

During the debate, I mentioned that since we do not know Gods plan for anyone’s life, it is not our place to determine whether someone is successful or not. What if, God did not create Trump to be President of the United States? Would God have considered Trump a failure if he had lost the election? In Gods eyes, can you fail at something He never wanted you to do in the first place?

As far as material wealth is concerned, I think we can all agree that Donald Trump, being a billionaire is as successful as majority of men in the world would like to be. 

You see, as a woman, it would be comfortable and pleasing to believe that if my husband does not treat me well, he will not succeed in life. It’s a comfortable lie, but still, a lie. 

God cares about our feelings, He weeps when we weep, but He will not change His purpose for your husband just because you have cried many tears. His purpose will stand regardless of anything. Sure, on judgment day, your husband might end up going downwards to the fire, that also depends on whether he repents before judgment day or not.

There are some women, I know several of them actually, who continue to pray for their man’s success, even as they weep over his actions towards them. They pray out of love, and out of the knowledge that whatever God does to their husbands will also affect them and their children.

If your husband mistreats you and God decides to punish him by taking all his material wealth and his physical health, will you, as a wife, not suffer too? Will you not be homeless with him? If he is physically sick, will you not be spending your days taking care of him? No man is an island and I have been trying to figure out if there is a way God can punish a man in such a way that it does not affect those around him.

Then there’s the other side of the coin. If a man who despises his wife will not succeed, shouldn’t every man who loves and respects his wife, then be successful? If this situation is as simple as people would like it to be, it should work both ways, right?

I tend to disagree with people who generalize the things of God without looking deeper into the way God works. I am not denying that God will punish the cruel man in some way, that is His law and it is also His prerogative. We, as humans, do not get to dictate who God will punish, and how.

 It is important to our egos, our peace of mind, to believe that those who hurt us will not go unpunished, but …let’s not forget to make room for Gods purpose, Gods will and Gods prerogative.

In my opinion, our hurt feelings matter to God, but His overall purpose matters more. You will move on from the pain, God will give you the peace you need, and His purpose will go on as planned.

A little Discomfort

There are things about the way God works that makes people uncomfortable. Things we would never understand, things that are part of His nature but never discussed because doing so would make us question the very core of our understanding of who God is.

I had a discussion with a friend recently, about the death of someone we both knew. I suggested that knowing this person, there is a possibility that God allowed his death for the sake of those he was mistreating. My friend shut that idea down, saying that God is too kind to kill one person for the sake of another because He loves us all.

Here’s the thing though…God has done it before.

When the children of Israel finally managed to leave Egypt and Pharaoh and his soldiers went after them. God parted the red sea so that the children of Israel could cross but when Pharaoh and his soldiers continued to pursue, they drowned in the red sea. God killed all of those people for the sake of the children of Israel…did He not? He wanted the children of Israel to escape and move on to their promised land. Should we then say that God loves everyone except Pharaoh and his soldiers?

Let’s move on to 2^nd Kings Chapter 2 vs 23 and 24. The prophet Elisha is walking along the road to Bethel and some youths started mocking him. He turns around and pronounced a curse on them in the name of the Lord and two female bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.

To deny that this was an act of God is to deny the power of the name of the Lord. Are we then to say that God loved everyone except those 42 youths that were mauled by bears? 

I have a couple of real life examples that I have witnessed of this same type of situations, but I will not include them here because I know someone will accuse me of reading into things. I prefer to keep the examples biblical. 

We need to remember that God does not change. The same God who did all these things, is the same one we worship today. We tend to forget or ignore the parts of Gods character and actions that make us uncomfortable. We are a lot happier thinking that God is all love, all mercy, all forgiving, and has no wrath and no anger. We have created a God that suits our beliefs rather than accept the God that is, has always been and will always be.