Wait Or Work? Or Both?

Christians often struggle with the tension between God's role & our role in God's work. The two extremes are the "work, work, work" people & the "let's just pray & wait on God" people. However, the danger with these extremes is that one leads us to believe that the kingdom of God is completely dependent upon our efforts & the other leads us to a kind of paralysis that's based on the idea that we don't have anything to offer God. While this is a tension that we'll always have to manage, we must actively stay away from these extremes. Instead we should listen to a simple parable that Jesus told in Mark 4:26-29.

In this parable Jesus says, "The Kingdom of God is like this..." In other words, this is how the Kingdom works, this is how God advances His Kingdom. In the parable Jesus uses a farming analogy. He talks about how the farmer takes care of his responsibilities. He prepares the ground, sows the seed, tends to it, but he can't really control the growth. The farmer works with the natural process of a seed growing into a plant that eventually bears fruit. Jesus ends the parable by saying when the grain is ripe, the farmer goes back out & harvests the crop.

In this little parable Jesus clearly tells us that the Kingdom of God grows in the context of a partnership. We have a part to play in partnership with God's power. It's clear in this parable that the farmer does what he can do & trusts that the natural process of growth will happen. Then when the grain is ripe, the farmer goes back out & does what he can do: he brings the harvest in. There's an important spiritual principle here about how God & God's people work together to advance His Kingdom.

"When We Do What We Can Do & Trust God To Do

What Only He Can Do, Amazing Things Happen."

Just like the farmer can't make the seed grow, we cannot make the Kingdom advance. However, we, like the farmer, can do what we can to create the right environment for God to move. We can break ground, prepare the ground, sow the Gospel into the lives of people around us, water the soil, & pay attention to opportunities to bring the harvest in. After all, Jesus told His disciples that the issue wasn't that there was no harvest; the real issue was that there weren't enough workers to bring in the harvest. We all have a part to play in God's Kingdom, & we all have the opportunity to partner with Christ as He builds His church & advances His Kingdom. The key is to do what we can do & then trust & wait on God to do what only He can do so that lives are changed forever.

Vision Invites Opposition

We talk a lot in church & leadership circles about discovering God's vision & pursuing it. However, we don't talk as much about what to do when opposition to that vision comes. It's totally understandable. After all, if people haven't been gripped by God's vision for their lives, reminding them that doing so invites resistance & opposition may very well insure they never embrace God's plan. However, failing to share this important truth & how to deal with it is just as crippling because if someone is energized by a vision from God for his life & then encounters heavy opposition to pursuing that vision, there's a pretty good chance the discouragement that comes with that will knock him off course, possibly to the point of never seeing what could have been become reality.

Vision invites opposition. It always does. Vision challenges the status quo, & there are always defenders of the status quo. That's where the "we've never done it that way before" crowd comes from, & that mindset is not just alive & well in church. They are in every area of your life. When parents decide to really begin to lead their children in a more godly way, you can bet their kids will push back because "we've never done that before". That same mindset exists at your job, in your family, in your friends, & to a degree in your own heart. You better believe that if you decide to get behind God's vision, you will face opposition. That's not up for debate, so what do you do when the opposition come?

Nehemiah 4 & 6 sheds some light on how to handle all kinds of opposition. Nehemiah & the people encountered constant opposition during their 52 day building project. Their enemies loved to try to intimidate them. They mocked them, ridiculed them, & spread rumors of a literal military attack on Jerusalem all in hopes of intimidating the people into simply walking off the job & giving up on the vision that God has called them to. They also tried to distract Nehemiah from his calling. On the surface, what they were asking Nehemiah to do didn't seem bad, but it would keep him from God's call. So how did Nehemiah lead the people to respond to this opposition. Nehemiah responded to the intimidation with prayer & preparation. When the intimidation began to take root in the hearts of the people, he redirected their attention away from the object of their fear to the object of their faith. He told them to "remember their God who is great & awesome." When faced with distractions that on the surface seemed to be good things, Nehemiah responded with focus on God's things. Over & over again, Nehemiah said, "I am doing a great work & cannot come down." Prayer, preparation, faith, & focus were key in responding to the opposition, & in every situation he reminded them of their God & the vision that God had given them to rebuild the wall & restore God's glory among the nations.

The next time your faced with resistance to pursuing God's vision whether it's intimidation by those who don't want to see change or whether it's simply a distraction that will dilute your focus respond by focusing on the vision because...

"Opposition To God's Vision Is An Opportunity

To Rally Around God's Vision."

Intimidation is usually nothing more than a scare tactic designed get you & I to quit before we ever start. The way to respond is to simply "remember our God" & remember what it is He's called us to do, & then we must move forward with that vision. When opportunities come our way the question isn't whether they are good or bad but whether or not they help us see God's vision become a reality. Always go back to who you're God is, who He's calling you to be, & what He's calling to do. Rally around that in the face of opposition & God will grant you the grace & faith to stand & advance toward God's call on your life.

Your Place On The Wall

As we continue our series in Nehemiah at ZBC, we come to Chapter 3 where we see an important
shift. Chapters 1 & 2 are focused on Nehemiah & the vision that God gave him to go back to Jerusalem to rebuild the wall. However, in Chapter 3 the focus shifts dramatically away from Nehemiah & onto the people who got behind the vision & then got to work on the wall. The list of workers includes everyone from the priests & Levites, even the High Priest himself, to city officials, to perfume makers. The construction crew even included people who weren't from Jerusalem but who recognized that God was doing something, & they wanted to be a part of it.
Everyone on that wall may not have been qualified to work on the wall,
but they were willing, & that was what really mattered.
They understood this vital principle of following God.

"God Has Done A Great Work In His People; 

Now He Wants To Do A Great Work Through His People."

The vision God gave Nehemiah was too big for Nehemiah to complete on his own, & God wasn't going to magically start stacking stones around Jerusalem. Instead, God in His grace chooses to use His people to reflect His glory. Scripture is filled with examples of how God chooses to involve His people to reveal His glory to the world. Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Peter, & Paul are just a few examples of how God uses people to fulfill His plans. The problem is that sometimes we forget that God wants to use US. That's right, God wants to use you individually. He has a place for you on the wall. It's up to you to discover that place & then get to work. The work God wants to do through your local congregation is too big for any one person or small group to fulfill; it needs you on the wall. God's work needs all of us on that wall doing what we can to reflect & reveal God's glory through our lives to this world. 

Where is your place on the wall? God is going to reveal His glory; are you going to be a part of that?

Godly Vision Needs Godly Wisdom

Currently at ZBC, we are in a teaching series in the book of Nehemiah. In the series we're looking at the vision God gave Nehemiah not to simply rebuild the wall around Jerusalem but to restore God's glory among His people & the nations. The vision that Nehemiah had was undoubtedly from God, but in Nehemiah 2 we see Nehemiah also exercise godly wisdom as he pursued God's vision. We see that godly wisdom played out clearly in three ways:

1) Prayer
Nehemiah soaked this vision from God in prayer. Nehemiah 1 is almost completely a prayer. In Chapter 2 when Nehemiah has the chance to finally present his vision to the king. He paused to pray before speaking. We also see that he took 4 to 5 months to pray for God's guidance as he prepared to present this vision to the king.

2) Planning
Nehemiah didn't just pray however. He planned. He asked God to give him an opportunity to speak to the king & to give him favor with the king, but it was up to Nehemiah to be ready to present the vision & the plan that would help the vision become reality. Prayer & planning aren't in opposition. They work together. Prayer asks God to do what our planning cannot, but planning helps us to be ready to do what we can.

3) Perspective
Nehemiah prayed & planned, but when he arrived in Jerusalem, he took some time to get the proper perspective of conditions on the ground. His plan may have been great, but it had been put together without having actually seen the city, the wall, or the people. So Nehemiah didn't just march into Jerusalem as if he had all the answers. He took time to get a grip on reality before bringing his vision & plan to the people.

All of this teaches us an important principle:

"A Godly Vision Must Be Directly Connected To Godly Wisdom."

You may have a vision from God for where you want to lead your family, or where you want to go in your career, or how you want to handle your finances, but are you pursuing that godly vision with godly wisdom? Why is this so important? It's important because typically the shortest distance between where you are & where you want to be involves compromise, & what's important is not merely wanting to get to the fulfillment of that vision, it's also to honor God along the way of pursuing that vision. Pursue God's vision for your life, your family, your career, & your ministry with passion, but make sure that passion is guided by godly wisdom so that God is glorified in your life with every step along the way.