Do It!

In a publication that my husband regularly receives, I recently saw the title of an article that caught my attention.  It stated, Find What God Wants You to Do and Do It!  Sometimes I think we have a vague concept in our hearts of what God wants us to do, but we don’t take the time to “get down to business” with God to find out the details of His plan.  I believe if you are a child of God, He has a definite plan for your life.  Each of us has a ministry to fulfill, even if it is not a public “standing on the platform” ministry.  Every day, there are people that our lives touch, and each encounter is an opportunity to minister.

As we study the Word of God, we discover things that all of God’s children are commanded to do.  Jesus tells us, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.  This is the first and great commandment.  And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-40).  When we fulfill the law of love, we will be living the kind of life that God requires.

For the specifics of how God wants us to live out His commands, it is imperative that we have regular communion with Him.  Many of us have prayer lives that consist of spending a few minutes each day asking God to meet our needs.  But the Christian life is about relationship, and the way we have relationship is by having communion—talking with one another.  Just as a husband and wife must have good communication to have a healthy marriage, so a child of God must have good communication with the Father in order to live a healthy spiritual life.  Of course, communication is a two-way street.  We are not to be doing all the talking when we pray.  There also needs to be a time of listening.  We do this by reading God’s Word and asking Him to speak specifically to us through it, and also by being quiet before the Lord.  In the Old Testament, Elijah heard the Lord’s still small voice giving him instructions concerning what he was to do. (I Kings 19:12-18)

Once we hear from God concerning His plan for us, the next step is to do what He says.  So many times I have failed to take the step of obedience, sometimes because I was not willing to submit to His plan and make the commitment that was required.  Other times, I did not follow through simply because of fear.

Fear causes us to feel that we don’t have the ability to do what we’re being asked to do.  But each one of us received natural gifts at birth, and God can use these for His purposes.  In addition to our natural abilities, after we accept Christ, God gives us spiritual gifts that help us to go beyond what we could do without His help.

We live in desperate times, and there are many hurting people who need God’s touch in their lives.  We can be His hands reaching out to them.  We are to follow Jesus’ example in Luke 2:49 and “be about our Father’s business.”  Let’s do it!