2. Doing what God expects of us

As I already said in the previous blog, sometimes the Lord calls us to do something and the choice to obey is up to us. I am not simply talking about big life changing things. It could also be something small. You see most of the time the Lord tests us with small tasks and if He sees that He can trust us with the small things He will give us a bigger task the following time. For example my son's nursery school teacher regularly lends some of her books to us for my son to page through in the afternoons after school. Now if we didn't look after these books or worse yet never returned those books to her, do you think she will lend it to us again? I don't think so. In the same way the Lord tests our faithfulness with small tasks first, before the bigger ones follow. Now let me give you an example from my life where the Lord gave me a small task to do and I didn't obey immediately.

In my second year of working I listened to a song from one of my gospel CD's. It was a different version from 'Amazing Grace' and I loved it. Every time I listened to it in the car I would start moving around and singing along. Now I must say I did a bit of dancing at that time and every time the song came on I envisioned doing a dance on that song and I had a very strong feeling in my heart that the Lord wanted me to perform a dance on that song in front of our church. Every time I brushed off the feeling, as our church was very big and they only allowed the best of the best to perform anything there. Yet the feeling remained. No matter what I did, I couldn't brush it off. It went on like this for months and after a while I must admit that the feeling did begin to fade. Almost a year after first feeling that I should do a dance on that song I truly started to feel guilty. The voice had faded, but I convinced myself that the Lord was very disappointed in me because I didn't listen. So I decided to take the step and work out a dance. Now I was a coward and didn't want to do the dance on my own, so I asked three of my friends to join me. They agreed and in our three by four meter kitchen we practiced the dance (it was a very difficult task in such a small space I might add!).

But finally we were ready.  I bought matching tops for us and I approached the church and asked them if we could come to perform the dance for them. I told them how the Lord heavily laid it on my heart. They said that they would need to preview it first. The following week in between all four of our work schedules we managed to go and show them the dance. They didn't say much, thanked us for coming, said they would phone us and left. I was a bit disappointed, but brushed it off and decided to phone them a little bit later myself. That same Sunday in church after the sermon, a lady came to the front and performed a dance on exactly the same version of 'Amazing Grace'. Not even by a different singer, it was exactly the same song. I couldn't believe it. I went green with jealousy and thought that it should have been me on the stage! I even went so far as to think that our dance and choreography was much better than hers. Immediately the Lord stopped my evil trail of thought and said: 'I did ask you more than a year ago to come and perform the dance. You were hesitant and waited far too long. I had to get someone else.' I went cold. He is right. I took way too long to respond. I actually just organized the dance to clear my conscience, as the Lord's voice has long stopped calling. Even worse I was not only late, but I didn't have the guts to do it alone, even though the Lord asked me to.

Now I am not saying that that one dance would have changed my life if I had listened to His calling or that someone magically would have seen me and offered me some kind of a life changing opportunity. But what I do know is that that would have been nice to perform in front of the congregation in honor of His Name and I know today that it was a test to see if I would be obedient. I truly believe that the Lord would use you (and me) more and more for His Kingdom and His Name if you would be obedient to His calling. And the benefit to heeding His call? Peace in your life that you are doing what you are placed here on earth to do. The void in your life would be filled with the glory of the Lord, the void that no material blessing can ever fulfill. You will be happy. Are you ready to listen?

In the next few blogs I will discuss some of the familiar biblical characters and how the Lord used them.

May your ears be open to hear Him call. May you spend enough time with Him to hear His heart beat. May you know what He wants you to do with your life. Amen.

 

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