The end results are not as important as how you got there.
God is looking for someone who will do things the way He says to do them. Instead of depending on your logic and what makes sense to your tiny brain, you’ve got to rely completely on Him.
A few years ago, I was let go from my full-time job with benefits, which opened the door for us to pursue Deep Rooted Church fully. As I was on my way out, they offered me unemployment. I took the packet they gave me home and thought about it.
Thanks to my wife and the Holy Spirit, I was reminded of something essential. This new season was a season of faith only. I was jobless, and Stephanie was jobless. We had no income. We could depend on the government to give us money (money they didn’t even have), or this could be the season of believing God for greater things. We decided it was better for us not to take unemployment and depend on God to supply all of our needs.
Would it have been wrong to take unemployment? For us, that answer is yes. We knew this was the perfect opportunity to trust Him fully. To depend on “what made sense” would be trusting in government aid. This further assured me that this decision was the right one. Now, the Lord has prospered us even more than He did before when we both had jobs. It’s awesome. And He has prospered the ministry 100-fold (no one can tell me that the 100-fold return is metaphorical. We are living proof).
That’s just a good example of trusting the Lord over your understanding in your own life. But I’ll also leave this passage of Scripture for you to read that shows an example of not trusting the Lord even if you would get the same results either way.
Asa was the King of Judah (2 southern tribes of Israel). He had faced battles and wars in times past and trusted God to get them out safely, and God provided when Asa followed His directions. These battles were with millions of people. Later in Asa’s life, the king of the Northern Tribes of Isreal, Baasha, came against him and fortified the walls of Judah, trapping people from coming in or out.
Instead of listening to the Lord’s instruction, King Asa bribes the king of Syria, Ben-Hadad, who has a treaty with King Baasha, to break their treaty. So Ben-Hadad helped King Asa, and King Baasha stopped building the walls.
The result was King Asa won, and his people were free. But the way he did it was wrong.
And at that time Hanani the seer came to Asa king of Judah, and said to him: “Because you have relied on the king of Syria, and have not relied on the Lord your God, therefore the army of the king of Syria has escaped from your hand. Were the Ethiopians and the Lubim not a huge army with very many chariots and horsemen? Yet, because you relied on the Lord, He delivered them into your hand. For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose hearts are loyal to Him. In this you have done foolishly; therefore from now on you shall have wars.” Then Asa was angry with the seer, and put him in prison, for he was enraged at him because of this. And Asa oppressed some of the people at that time. Note that the acts of Asa, first and last, are indeed written in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel. And in the thirty-ninth year of his reign, Asa became diseased in his feet, and his malady was severe; yet in his disease he did not seek the Lord, but the physicians (2 Chronicles 16:7-12).
Hanani, the seer, was telling King Asa that how he got his results didn’t matter if he didn’t rely on God. Before this instance, King Asa fought the Ethiopians and the Lubim, which outnumbered King Asa’s army ten to one. Yet because King Asa relied on God, they saw victory.
Let this serve as a great example. Sometimes it’s easier to trust and rely on God when we are back against the wall and have an impossible situation ahead of us. The moments where you have an opportunity to “think it through” are the moments that you need to be aware of.
This shows that it doesn’t matter if you get good results in whatever you do. It was wrong if it wasn’t the way God told you to do it. The Bible talks about how God’s Will is for us to prosper in our finances. But there are illegal ways to prosper in your finance. Some would say it doesn’t matter how they got the money as long as they have it. That’s wrong.
Trust that God’s way is always better, even if you have the brains to figure out your own plan. We could have trusted in common sense and taken the unemployment. But we decided to trust in God instead, and now we are making more than double what we made at our previous jobs. That’s how good God’s way is.
Live in the victory.
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