Busy doing something for God? In the eternal scheme of things it all may amount to nothing.
From the very beginning of
our Christian life together, my wife and I learned that God wanted us to live all of our lives in obedience to Him in all things.
Obedience implies that we could know the will of God for the present moment. We began to listen for His voice and found that
He spoke to us and directed our lives.
One day, as I was out walking, He said to me, “Without Me you can do nothing.”
I replied, “But Lord, look at all the things I have done in my life without you.” And He replied, “Yes, my son, and they all
amounted to nothing.”
He showed me that the good stuff, the bad stuff, and all the other stuff I did, much of it “for God,” amounted
to nothing. It had no value to Him and it had no reality in the Kingdom. Why was it of no value? Because it was “my stuff”
and often “other stuff” but not “His stuff.”
A bit later in my life I found the same message in the New Testament in His teaching
on the True Vine in John 15, Here, Jesus tells His disciple, “... apart from me you can do nothing.”
In John 20:21
Jesus tells His disciples that in the same way that His Father has sent him, so he also is sending them. How did the Father
send the Son? Jesus said that He was only doing what His father is doing and only saying what his father is saying (present
tense here). Jesus walked in perfect obedience to His Father always. This is the standard for the Christian walk.
If then
without him you can do nothing, consider that within Him (with Him and In Him) you can do all things. In Phi 4:13, the
Apostle Paul says, “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.” The Greek word for “through” here is “e?”- en - meaning
in or by - and the Greek word “strengthens” is “e?d??aµ??” - endunamoo, to empower. We get our word dynamite from
the same word. A better translation then, would be “I can do all things in (by) Him who empowers me.”
We are called to
seek His guidance, to hear His voice, and to walk in obedience by His power in His timing. That is doing all things with Him,
in Him, by His power. This is doing what the Father is doing.
Consider this situation. One Monday morning God says to Bob
Faithful, “Please speak my words to the person under the chestnut tree by the bridge in the park.” “Got it, Lord,” he replies,
and hops into his car and drives the 15 minutes to the park, runs to the bridge and finds the chestnut tree. There is no one
there! Guidance just doesn’t work I guess. What happened? Bob did not wait for the Spirit. God’s timing
was 2:00 p.m. on Thursday. Taking the guidance of God, and then making it your own and doing it in your own strength and timing
is not the will of God for your life. It is nothingness.
In John 10:27--28 it says “My sheep hear My voice,
and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give to them eternal life, and they shall never perish; and no one will snatch
them out of My hand.”
Good news. We can hear His voice, we can walk in obedience by His power and in His timing. That is
doing all things with Him, in Him, and by Him . . . and that amounts to something.
© W A Larson
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