Verity Christian Fellowship

Teacher I will follow you wherever you go

Matthew 8:18

There are always times when we are feeling full of the Holy Spirit and on fire for God. At those times we generally say ‘whatever you want God, Just let me know.’ But do we really mean it?

The truth is we are usually happy to do Gods will if we think it is in our comfort zone and will not cause us too much grief. But if it looks difficult and may cause us some discomfort either financially or in commitment of time or we think it is outside our talents we are not so sure.

But by limiting ourselves in this way we can prevent God really working in our lives. The Bible is full of stories of people who thought they were not up to the job but achieved great things when they actually stepped out of their comfort zone and tried. Moses and Gideon come immediately to mind. One thought he was not a public speaker and one thought he was not a warrior.

Jesus however does not look at the outward initial enthusiasm but at the heart. That is why in Matthew he responded in what seems a discouraging way to what was probably a genuine flush of enthusiasm by the scribe. He knew that when it came down to it the man’s head would not be able to meet the commitment his heart was jumping to.

The second man, a disciple, was perhaps being more honest and his head was telling him to get things sorted first before making the commitment. However Jesus knew he would always come up with excuses not to act but these were just that – excuses. When truly judging priorities they were not ultimately important.

The truth is we can always come up with excuses for not doing things. The second man thought of these straight away, Jesus knew the first man would think of them latter.

The point though is Jesus was there then. He would not be in the same place a week later. God gives us opportunities once. Each one is unique. He may give you other chances, but never exactly the same one twice. If there is an emergency or an opportunity we need to respond whilst the window is open. Once it is closed it is gone forever.

We need to properly asses each chance to make sure we are prepared to pay the price, but never underestimate Gods provision. We sometimes need to take a risk.

Some people never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. But don’t make excuses. Don’t be one of them.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 18th, 2010 at 10:39 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.