prayerfully consider? Whatever.

The New Testament writers tell us that God never "leaves or forsakes" us, no matter what life circumstance we may be going through. I know I've been through a few storms that have made that difficult to believe and I know others who have had the same experience or are having a similar experience right now spiritually speaking. So I've been thinking about it for a while and I keep thinking about the people that didn't recognize Jesus after His resurrection, more specifically three instances that have stuck in my mind. I wanted to share my thoughts on the first instance today...I'll post about the other two in the days to come.

1. Peter went back to fishing. (John 21:1-11) To be fair, none of the other disciples recognized Jesus either. I don't believe that it was because Jesus had put on some spiritual mask or something that prevented them from recognizing Him. I think it's just as simple as they were out on the water and He was standing at the sea shore and they just couldn't recognize Him from how far out they were. These guys had all seen amazing things while they were with Jesus for 3 years and here they were just hanging out, fishing because they really didn't have anything better to do. I can't help but think they were probably just apathetic because they didn't have any specific direction. I think too many of us don't realize that God is right here with us, wanting to speak into our lives, to give us purpose and direction...but we're too apathetic to do anything about it, so we just go back to doing whatever it was we were doing before.

I'm probably coming at this from this perspective because of a book I've been reading by Erwin McMannus. In it, he talks about a friend of his who graduated from seminary and was prayerfully considering which option to take of all the job opportunities that his education had afforded him. His friend was talking about how he kept waiting for God to give him the "green light" so he wouldn't fall out of the will of God and offend His sovereignty. McMannus makes a great counter to his friends position. He simply asks him why he thinks he would offend the sovereignty of God? Did Hitler or Stalin affect the sovereignty of God with any of the choices they made? Of course not. God is still God. So, if someone with such evil motivations as that couldn't hurt God's sovereignty why do we think that we might do that by simply following our hearts if we have a genuine and living relationship with God?

A more simple way to put it is this. We already have the green light, just go. Augustine said it best when he said "Love, then do what you please." How often have we missed opportunities because we were sitting on our butts "prayerfully considering" something. What does that even mean? If we have a relationship with God through Christ then we shouldn't have to have a prayer meeting every time something comes up that we want to do. If God doesn't want us to do it, He'll stop us. I can't help but think when someone tells me they'll have to prayerfully consider something for two weeks that they probably need to learn how to pray first. I understand using wisdom and not rushing into things, but if we have failed it hasn't been on that side of the fence...

Jesus
simply
said
GO.

peace,
glo