NOTE: For realities 1-4 (Knowing God’s Will parts 1-8), please read earlier posts.
What is your initial reaction when you know you’ve heard from God, but it doesn’t make sense? It’s beyond your capacity to do? It’s not in the area of you giftedness, strength, or comfort zone?
Read Reality 5:
“The first thing you do after you hear God’s voice is critical…what you do next reveals what you believe about God.” (Henry Blackaby) At this point you have to make a decision. Blackaby calls this a “crisis of belief.” Do you believe God can accomplish His will in and through you, or not?
You have 2 options: obey or disobey. Waiting to obey is still disobedience. If we choose not to obey, we may not experience God’s presence and purpose worked out in our life the way others do when they immediately obey God.
God-sized tasks assigned to us take faith. If you can already see the entire plan that YOU are able to do, it’s probably not faith! But we have the Holy Spirit to help us see what is not apparent.
Our disobedience affects others. See Dr. Blackaby’s question:
When others see our lives of obedience to follow God’s directive even when it appears impossible, they see our faith…what we say we believe about God.
Faith moves you to action. Take the first step He has already shown you, or He may choose not to reveal a second step! Only God can accomplish the task as He works through human vessels. Otherwise we do it in our own power which can lead to our own glory rather than the Lord’s.
Read Jeremiah 32:26-27 to clear up doubts about God’s ability to accomplish His amazing work through us:
When we read Hebrews 11, we read about faithful men and women who trusted God without knowing how He would accomplish His purpose through them. They gave their lives, imperfect as they were, without always seeing the fulfillment of what God said He would do. But they believed God. For them it was enough.
Read Blackaby’s quote that describes them, and should also describe us:
The parting of the Red Sea is just one example of this in scripture. It wasn’t until the priests, under Joshua’s God-given direction, stuck their toes in the water that dry land began to appear. Check out Joshua 3 to see a crisis of belief and the faith and action taken to obey God’s first “step” directive they took.
Watch next week for final thoughts regarding Reality 5.