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God's Way
versus
"My-Way" Highway
I am perusing the book, On mission with God: living God's purpose for His glory, by Henry T. Blackaby and Avery T. Willis. Blackaby is the author of the amazing Bible Study guide called, Experiencing God.
These are the Seven Realities taught in Experiencing God:
1) God is at work all the time.
2) He initiates a personal loving relationship with you.
3) He invites you to join Him in His work.
4) God speaks to you.
5) You experience a crisis of belief.
6) Crises of belief call for major adjustments in your life so you can relate to Him and His mission.
7) As you make the adjustments and obey Him, He moves you into the middle of His activity. You then are a part of God's mission.
We do not come to God saying, "What great thing can I do for You?" Instead, God comes to us and tells us what He is about to do and invites us to be a part of it. God's activity is not our agenda. God reveals what He is doing and invites the person to join Him. Blackaby and Willis state in their new book,
You may have thought you were saved just to go to heaven when you die, but God says,
"I saved you to be on mission with Me to redeem a broken world. I'm bringing you back to My original mission, where you will participate in My purpose of redeeming and reconciling a lost world to Me." As you follow Christ, the Master sets the direction and tells you where He is and where He is going. Where the Master is, the servant must be. The servant responds--not initiates."
*****
I remember as a young bride when I first came here to Knoxville, Tennessee, I had just graduated from graduate school in Atlanta, Georgia, married my hubby Tommy, and was ready to begin my work in my field of psychology. I did not understand it when God opened doors for me to go to work full time in working with families where incest had occurred. Who really makes that their life dream? I hadn't. It was quite an eye-opener for this new bride to see the tragedies unfolding in this world within the sacred walls of family, where children, through no fault of their own, are abused, often by their own parents, and in the most sacred human arena of their sexuality and their souls.
I remember soon thereafter going to a Career Prayer Breakfast at the large Presbyterian church we began attending… the prayer breakfast filled largely with men I might add. I'll never forget the shock I felt after an older man asked me what I was doing in my work and I told him of my new job and its responsibilities, and his ignorant and sexist remark was,
"Your husband shouldn't allow you to work in such garbage!!!"
It was another eye-opener for me that many who attend church actually can be so prejudiced and ignorant to God's ways yet are really quite proud of it! I really thought that serving this particular clientele to whom I had been called was probably just a rigorous training ground for me to learn how to do the most challenging of all the diagnoses, but I had no idea God would ultimately make this a specialty area in my lifetime counseling practice. Now I marvel at how many other "Christian" therapists refuse to work with this clientele (the concomitant diagnoses of "Borderline Personality Disorder" and/or "Dissociative Identity Disorder" can often be so grueling on the therapist due to the client's natural fear of trusting yet another authority figure, fearful that they may encounter yet even more harm into their war-torn lives; plus such clients often can be extremely self-destructive, often suicidal in their walking through the healing process of their former inhuman torment and abuse). Can these fellow Christian therapists not see that these precious souls are really the apples of God's eye? These victims do not ask for the resulting troubles to be brought into their lives, yet they are left to battle their way through them, help or no help.
So, yes, God chooses the mission for our lives; it is ours to obey or not to obey. May God continue to give me the strength to obey. And though it is one of the most "dangerous" of callings, I feel honored to have the privilege of working with some of the sweetest and humblest of souls. And God meets us all along the way. But, yes there are many crises and tests along such hallowed ground that none dare walk without the Savior close beside…
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