Come and Get It!

“The work of God is this:  to believe in the one he has sent.”  (John 6:29)  That’s it!  And…that’s Jesus.  And that’s too easy, we think. We need more to “do.”  Or we need some more appealing way to “be.”  And so we tend to either drape on religious trappings or absorb secular thinking so as to either purchase our “enough-ness” or to keep God at arm’s length by our busyness.  But neither will get us to the heart of the matter.

Our heavenly Father is GOOD, lavishly good.  Therefore, we can know He will always work toward that which brings healing, freedom, and life.

Christ has already won the battle.  Therefore, we have to make far less effort to wage a war against evil, and are to be about distributing the goods He has already gained by His blood.  We are to stand in the truth that the authority has all been given to Jesus.  We are to walk in a way where His presence, through our availability and responsiveness will be the avenues by which heaven comes to earth because we are the priests of our time to speak that blessing, and carry the treasures to the thirsty and hungry and broken and sick.  His government has already begun and it will never end.  We are the ones who go into the deserts and war-torn places in society and in individual hearts to bring that Good News.

There are all kinds of cultural trends that are highly advertised and heavily funded and by which the church is measured as “intolerant” any time we speak up about it.  But we must be careful to not get in the position where we are responding to society’s agenda in a defensive position instead of keeping our ears and hearts to the pulse of the Father, the truth of Jesus as Lord, and the Spirit’s movement to guide us to what’s been prepared for us to do, and moving forward in that. 

Do we believe?  Do we have any measure of courage to really do the things He invites us into, or have we settled for being nice people who attend church, who don’t steal, who don’t kill, who give our token amounts of money, but not our whole selves to His call? 

When will we dare to pause and see what He is saying about our priorities?  When will we dare to keep commandments because we believe in His wisdom and care? When will we give our tithes and offerings, because we believe He takes care of those He loves.  When will we risk responding to the nudge of the Spirit to pray for someone at an unexpected moment or help a stranger we meet because we trust His leading and perspective and dare to think that this might be the moment we will see a miracle happen before our eyes? 

Our work…our MAIN work is to BELIEVE.   And a heart that believes will regularly be called into action in the ways that God created that person for, the ways that that individual can uniquely reveal the identity of the Father.  It’s the greatest reason why we’re here, to love Him and to join in the family business of bringing hope because everything we need has already been purchased and is waiting for someone to come and get it.