the scholar and the lamb :: by Kevin Adams

Service By Design

Faith statements:
These are the faith statements that I carry with me. I don't have the scripture # written next to them, I just know they are the words of Christ. They give us the ability to pray with confidence! These words tell us that whatever we ask for in his name (to glorify Him), it will be given to us. If we are humble and have given him our entire heart, he will speak very clearly to us. What better question than for the clay to ask the potter: “what do you want me to be for you?” In fact, I would argue that it is really the only question He wants to be asked by us. But even if you disagree, you have to agree that He wants us to ask in confidence as if it were already done.
If we can do that, I’m convinced He will reveal to us our abilities and special place in his kingdom. He wants us to know! Why else would he tell us to ask? Just ask it! and trust! Go as if it’s already done!

FYI: As you read through this you will see several names that if you did not know the people, it wouldn’t make much sense as to why they are mentioned. This quick note serves as a key to explain who these people are and why they are relevant to the document below.
1. Chad: a brother in Christ who recently gave up a high profile CFO position with a large medical partnership in Nashville, to pursue his dream of becoming a portrait painter. He really took a leap of faith giving up almost everything so that he could do what God made him to do. He sold his large home and expensive cars and moved his family to more humble surroundings and began studio work as a fine artist.
2. Jay: a brother in Christ who has a very respectable position in a big 3 accounting firm, and also has a talent for playing music. He is unsure of his pursuit of this accounting career in which next step is partnership. He is a great banjo player and I don’t know for sure that this is what he feels compelled to do, but it’s a great example of how we tend to ignore obscure things in the name of practicality.
3. Fred: this is a fictitious character (although similar to a friend I have) that was written about simply to show how we (church people) view people and judge their Christian walk only by what we see at the church building on Sunday.

Questions:
Are you a Tortoise or a Hare? Everyone who knows the story wants to be the tortoise, but to me it is simply a story about a teacher and student. We must ultimately be one before the other. The hare gave in to abandon confident that he was the fastest....and he was, but he learned from the experience that speed wasn’t the most important thing. We need to be the hare before we can become a tortoise. Maybe we need to give God that confidence first so he can finally teach us to be like HIM the tortoise. In other words don't ignore the importance of just being a hare first. Go ….in abandon and learn from God. I think we automatically try first to be like the tortoise but become weary from the pace, and lose hope because we can't see the eventual Victory.

Why would God hide his intention for us? How would Jesus answer this? I believe he has answered it over and over in scripture, But I think the gist of it boils down to this.......... We are made in his likeness and in that we are all different, parts of the Body.....each with his own gift. That gift already exists within us (unhidden). See 1st Corinthians. He has a specific intention, and if he does, it cannot serve him to hide it from us. The problem is not God hiding anything, but rather a self inflicted blindness.

If we agree that God does have a specific purpose for each of us, how do we specifically begin to listen for God’s answer to the question?

Start by asking this: What is your passion? What brings you Joy, specifically? Why does this produce Joy in you when you do it, or think about it? How can this be applied to serving Him? Is it playing music? Is it teaching? Is it working in the yard? Is it writing? Is it talking with people one on one? Is it caring for animals? Is it this or that? The question is endless. What would you say in response if you knew no one would laugh or criticize your answer? Or if you took all practicality, financial concern and other inhibiting issues out of it, really show abandon, and just answer the question? ……maybe be the hare?

Funny thing happens to us when we do this along with prayer.............God speaks! He opens a door to a room we always knew was there but never paid attention. That room houses our engine, our power station. Some call it the the 90% of our brain that never gets used. What an amazing place to discover. Its walls have your life story and instructions for why you exist, who you are here to help. The words glow in colors you just can’t ignore, and when you begin to follow the path that perfectly fits your feet, you become unstoppable! When you begin to function in the capacity that God created you, two things happen: You enjoy it to your core, and you can serve in God in the most powerful, beautiful way…..your way…..the way he made you to do!

This counts for everything except banjo playing…just kidding. Actually it’s a good example. Playing the Banjo to entertain people on a voluntary basis with the message of Christ woven in would be cool. I believe if this was truly what God had in mind for Jay, and he were to step out on the water, God would supernaturally intervene and give him the opportunity for this to become a way for him to serve. Nothing is impossible with God! He gave us a mind that can achieve anything if we simply believe it. God used the least likely candidates to promote his kingdom. The first shall be last, the last shall be first.

Another voice that clouds our hearing, is that of satan, whom we have complete power over, but most times forget. He says “why try? You can’t make a living doing that”. We automatically dismiss our God given ability rather than satan’s silky voice. He deceives us by telling us that practical thought goes hand in hand with God’s plan for us. I can think of no better example than that of Chad Boyd. He is a personal testimony to why this is NOT true. Consider the lilies, they do not toil or spin, he feeds the birds.....don't worry, he will feed us if we are in earnest in our goal of serving HIM. Besides, it’s not always through our career that we are meant to serve. (We will revisit this idea).

In contrast, we are not locked into serving in the church building either. God wants every part of us.........which simply means we need to blur the lines.....take God out of the bathroom. Take the walls out of your spiritual house. Praise God! It is obvious that some of the people we see at church are doing God's work....like the pulpit minister. There are others that we don't see, like (Fred Smith) who have a small presence in the building on Sunday, yet he has God all over him when he volunteers physical therapy to kids at the children's home. We must consider the beam in our own eye. Do not judge, but only by the fruit. Fred produces as much fruit for God as the minister. We just don’t see it in the building on Sunday. We have to stop focusing on what happens at church building. If we focused on what Jesus did at the church building, we wouldn’t know much about Him. The Pharisees focused on what happens at the church building.

Let’s separate the church from the building for a moment. What is Church? The scripture teaches us that the church is basically two things....it mentions the church as the body and the churches (ie. in Asia). What this means is that the one church is the universal body of believers and that each church is a local expression of that body. It is Satan that wants separation, not God. The only evidence that we have in scripture allowing the separation of churches is because of distance. They were divided by cities. There was a church for every city and it was simply a matter of Logistics. And even when Paul mentions it being in the home, he never says that it wasn't the particular church (congregation) for that city. Satan wants separation. He wants us separated from our brothers, from our spouses, from unbelievers who need us, from other denominations etc. We have great power in unity and Satan hates it! The longer we look at the church building as the place to serve rather than the body of believers, we continue to keep God in the bathroom.

I can vividly remember Kyle Bills (elder) talking about mother Teresa when she died about 6 years ago. He said "Listen, that lady gave her heart and every possession she had to help sick people in the Name of Christ! If she doesn’t make it to heaven, I’m not sure any of us are going”. That’s a powerful statement for an elder to make. Who cares if she was catholic and maybe sprinkled? She gave her heart to the Lord!!! I wonder if she cared that we act like a bunch of Pharisees. No, I’m sure she overlooked our flaws as we should hers (I’m guessing she had very few).

ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.......All. The Blood covers us completely. That means all who believe and given their sin sick soul to him are saved. Check out mother Teresa's fruit. I digress: the point is that we are all here to serve Him, and it is satan who keeps us separated so that we can't listen properly to what God is saying to us.

Back to the thought about separating our career from our natural God given tendency: It may not be through our career that we serve. However, Satan finds this rational the rule rather than the exception. He finds yet another way to keep us and our time separated from God. We spend most of our waking hours on our career and family. It may be illogical in many cases to consider our talent a career staple, but God is not logical or practical......ie. “the first shall be last”. I’m sure Peter had to double check his sanity as he considered that he was REALLY being asked to step out on the water.

Another tool widely used by Satan is when he causes us to question every breath we take. Maybe my talent could be used in my career, but I can’t afford a radical change like Chad Boyd made! Huh! Sometimes radical is the only way to make you commit. Listening to Satan fosters our fear and gets us to believe just the opposite of what needs to occur. It may not be that we need to make a change to the degree that Chad did. It may very well be that we need to re-focus on how we look at our current position or job. For instance, I used to go round and round about being a sales guy. I used to complain to Holly how much I hated what I did, and how I wanted to change careers....maybe do something less stressful like rent paddle boats for a living (kidding). Even though I was making great money and had a great family, I wasn’t satisfied and felt misled. After getting sick of hearing about it, my wife said “Kevin, it’s what you do! It's what you’re good at doing.”

That very statement was God knocking thumping me in the head!
Shut up, stop trying to run away from the reason I made you! I began to believe that God really did give me a talent for his kingdom. It caused a battle with my ego because I knew I didn’t want to keep doing it. God then allowed me to be broken financially and said do not stop selling! Stop selling for money! And I did, and now I’m still selling the same product but also selling GOD. My Joy, My God…… Praise you for this!. I sat still and listened and He showed me that I need to keep selling, but now for Him.

As a result he gave me my own new company with a business plan written around him. There is now not a day that goes by when I don't pray with clients who are hurting. It’s amazing! My first goal is not to sell my wares, but rather to use the client’s business need to get in bringing God into the corporate environment. In the last two years I have stopped saying to people I will pray for you. Instead I say lets pray about it Now. I have had so many clients breakdown and cry saying how much they needed it. I can be a pulpit minister of sorts (outside the building) to these hurting people. I’m not worrying about getting their business, but rather seeking what their pain is, and just praying with them. It’s earth shattering! And I will tell you for sure that God is blessing us and honoring our work. My philosophy has changed from “I need to this client so I can improve my status”, or saying “we should be careful talking about Christ at this particular client so as not to offend” to a philosophy of “If God wants us in a particular client, there’s not a person on earth that can stop us from having that client, and if God doesn't want us in a particular client, no matter how hard we try we will never have them”. It has taken all the worldly stress out of selling. God is selling for me. He has shown me how to "consider the lilies". It’s amazing how many clients are being handed to us now. Bottom line: re-focus on current career.

My calling was different than Chad Boyd CFO gone fine artist. My change was no less radical, just not so visibly radical. It was to simply change my way of looking at my career. God showed me how it would become my calling, or a means to my calling. We both stepped out on the water. Praise God....Glory to Him.

Let’s back up and look at some scripture: Exodus 31:1-5 " Gist....I have chosen Bezalel to be a craftsman for the temple design. God made this guy for a purpose. Mathew 25:29 Gist....”Use well what you've been given and you will have it in abundance”. Mathew 26. Judas betrayal ...Christ said "do what you've come to do" Judas had purpose, granted it was for evil, but without purpose Christ would not have been given over. It’s simply a proof of God assigning purpose. Jesus obviously had a purpose. I believe Jesus knew his purpose because of his faith not necessarily his devine nature. A lot of people would argue this with me, but I believe the great value of what He did comes from the fact that he was a man. He knew in all respects what we struggle with, and as that man, he made a choice to still face the crucifixion and separation from God by taking the weight of all the world’s sin onto his shoulders. I believe that Christ could have at any moment backed out of the whole thing, but because he chose (stay with me here) as a man, to do God's will, we have salvation.

The scripture clearly tells us he made choices as a faithful man to set an example for us. Mathew 26:53-54 "Don’t you realize I could've asked my father for thousands of angels?" He had a choice. He made the decision not to take advantage of His divine power. He could have called upon an Army of angels to rescue him, but rather he as a man who knew temptation chose the more difficult path. The path of allowing his own divine power to be set aside, allowing the people to deal with him as they would a man (not a God).
Mathew 26:64 reiterates who he was. "Yes it is as you say" He was honest about who he was, but he still chose not to use who he was (divine nature) to remove himself from the persecution. Rather, he walked through this as though he were a mere man……and used his faith in the Father (but as a man, an immensely faithful man.)
In other words, he gave us a brilliant example of the kind of faith that we can have, because we, are created in His own image.

Let’s look deeper into this: We know that Christ was tempted by Satan on the mountain. Well, Satan tried to get Christ to call on his divine power to remedy the current physical state he was in. He also appealed to his potential greed and trust in the Father. I believe the point of illustrating this particular day of temptation, is to show us that Christ was being appealed to by Satan to use His divine power. “You shall not tempt the Lord thy God” This was a ploy to get Jesus (a man who was God) to forget that he was a man and just go with the easy thing (to use His divine power).

He didn’t fall for it. He dealt with Satan as a man should deal with Satan, giving us a perfect example of how to do it. Doesn’t it make sense that the creator of the universe could have blasted Satan off the mountain with one breath from his nostrils? Yet he withstood temptation and chose to deal with this situation from a man’s perspective and as the man that he was. He encountered the depth of temptation as a fleshly being, and to use the tool that a mere man would have available to him (faith). Although……. it must have been much harder for Him, because he knew how easy it would have been to sweep Satan away by using His divine strength.
Once more……….Christ refused to use his divinity to control the situation which would have been easy for him. Instead this passage teaches us that Christ turned Satan down as a faithful man. He used faith! and so can we.

Deeper still………….I would even argue that all of the miracles Christ did were as a man displaying the power of faith, rather than a his divine potency. You see, we always look at Christ as this Glowing powerful divine entity that had no trouble thwarting evil or performing great feats, and we rationalize and compromise our own faith. We say “well he was the Christ, He was God, not a problem for him. I could never be like him....you know, moving mountains and all. But it’s wrong, we can be. I would argue that Christ healed the sick with faith and not divine power, he multiplied the loaves and the fish not with his own ability ....which he had, but rather as a man who had intense faith. If this is not the case, if he used his own divine power because it would have certainly been easy, doesn't it devalue his faith in much the same way that Satan tried to do on the mountain. No! He did these things the hard way by choice because he wanted to show that Faith can do anything.

If this is not true, then why did he make the faith statements and talk about having the faith of a mustard seed? Some say he was talking to his own apostles and he wanted to show them that because of his divine appointment they were granted these things (if only they would believe). Perhaps, but I doubt that the Bible was written for the apostles. No it was written for all of us and those statements apply to us as well. After all, the apostles were not divine, they were men....flesh just like us. He simply used them as examples to prove that the first shall be last and that Christ like faith was an incomprehensible power that we (like the apostles) are capable of achieving.

The message is for us, and therein rests the significance of the word. Besides, if he only meant it for them, why should we bother? And wouldn't it get back to the disgraceful view that Christ fell to temptation by using his own glowing power to do these things, and he simply spread it around to a few key players for the sake of keeping us from fighting Satan in the way that he did? A sort of hush money for the apostles?.... No way! Christ was completely humble, he came on a mule and carried no armor. He didn't call thousands of angels. He in humility did these things as a man who was 24 /7 faithful and anointed by the Holy Spirit (something we can have as well).

How much more value can we gain from his faith than from his divine abilities? You see…….? I’m not saying that we can ever get to his level, but I think he wants us to try. I think our prayers are the channel and that we can grow endlessly in faith until we can do Amazing things (including find out how to serve through our talent). It is Satan again that tells us Christ was simply a divine being that could do anything. Satan wants us to rationalize and minimalize the power of faith by saying “Good grief, Christ was God, No problem for him. He just looked like a man, but he didn’t need faith. Faith is the hope of things unseen, He was God…..He could see everything and therefore needed no real faith. So, don’t kid yourself folks, you can’t be faithful and Christ was just telling big fish stories.”

Please don’t misunderstand. We know he could do anything by either divine power or not, but again as proven earlier and backed by scripture, he had a choice…..Freewill. He chose to do it as a man….as an example for us. He humbled himself and became a servant. He was a man , tempted as a man, equipped by choice with only the tools of a man (Faith). Satan would argue that He really kept the magic wand under his tunic.

How does this tie back into knowing what he wants from us and how we seek his calling? Well, as Christ did, we also have a choice. We have the ability to let God do it. It’s even easier for us, because we don’t have to struggle with knowing we are God, as Christ did. We know that we can simply “ASK SEEK KNOCK”. That’s it! Sit still and listen, but at the same time step out on the water knowing he will guide us. How can we think that God who loves us would give us a snake if we ask for an egg? How?

Now, before we can tune in to God’s beautiful voice, we have to get rid of the things that separate us: sin, rebellion, guilt. We have to believe it was paid…….over and done. God sees us through the Blood. He cannot see our failures, weaknesses etc. when we have the protection of the Blood (a gift he gave us freely). Remember, “it is not me, but Christ that lives in me”.
“ALL have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God”. Christ died and arouse for all sins past present and future. This means to me that it’s over! I may sin tomorrow….I will sin tomorrow, but because I know he paid it all…I don’t have to live with the guilt that uncle screw tape (Satan) feeds me. Because it has been paid, I am loyal and in love with God….just as we love our children who continually disobey us as they grow. Once they are born to us, no matter what they do, they are always our children.

I’m not arguing for predestination or once saved - always saved. I’m simply saying that God will never desert us. He will always hold on to us. We can chose to walk away from him (by choice) but he is always right there to take us back. A million steps off course….. but always one step back into his arms. If we have faith that He already paid the price, nothing we do (with the spirit of repentance) will be ever held against us. And so without a repentant heart, a renewed heart, we can have no faith and thus …..no salvation. It all ties back together. Once saved…..? maybe that is oversimplifying it for our feeble minds. No, I would rather look at it as a gift that I don’t want to argue myself a way out of. God is too paradoxical for us to understand in our condition (the seed of Adam), so why try? Let’s just trust Him and GO! Forget the guilt and worry. Love him. Put on Christ. Let him make a spiritual change in us. When we are baptized we make the pledge of a good conscience. God is faithful to us by reminding us through that conscience…..not through guilt, but by LOVE. (parent and child).

Psalm 32:1-11 Gist: “oh what joy for those whose rebellion is forgiven”
Psalm 32:8 “ I will guide you along the best pathway for your life”

We have a purpose.
That purpose is to serve God .
We serve God best when we have Joy.
We can only find Joy when we serve him in the way he made us to serve.
So really, we cannot serve God at all unless we know what he designed us to do. because we are not fully equipped, like a car that won’t run because the spark plug is missing.

Maybe it’s like skydiving: It first takes faith that the nylon sheet will somehow bring us safely to earth before we can step out of the plane. First we jump, then the shoot opens, then our faith grows, then we can begin to stop worrying and looking at the beautiful sunset sky and landscape below. Once we have confidence, we forget the method and begin to enjoy the fruit. Jesus gave us a perfect example of jumping first (being the hare, the student) and then what happens, then the eyes of our heart are opened. He did this in all the miracles he performed as a man who was divine but chose to use faith rather than hat tricks. Just think, if only one thing he did failed, He would have been discredited immediately. He did these things through faith first, in front of many potential discreditors. It took much more courage for Him to allow His father to do these things when all along he knew he could have called thousands of angels himself….knowing the repercussion of even one failure. He jumped….as a lesson for us to do the same. It is only then that we see what’s in store, what he has planned for our divine design.

Here is another divisive tool Satan uses to keep us locked into our struggle:
Doing what others think we should be doing. Back to the example given of the pulpit minister compared to Fred Smith: Some may see Fred at church and make mental notes that he kind of just comes and goes. As intelligent but half hearted Christians, we are far to smart to discredit him on the basis of what we see, instead we make deeply personal mental notes to ourselves and build a case against him in our hearts. We say out loud: “that guy seems nice”, but we poke holes in his character that may subtly manifest themselves in ways that that seem painless. For example: We may not actively seek a friendship with him, we may not quite smile at him the way we would at the pulpit minister. Or, we may make assumptions that he doesn’t seem interested in being a part of the family. Or if we find out that he works in a night club, we wonder deep down (not publicly) but way down inside, how he can reconcile that job with his faith. And then we trip over the truth just after he has decided to stop attending what he perceives to be an unfriendly congregation.

The truth is, he is a paramedic assigned to the night club on contract basis because there are some many fights, overdoses, drunk drivers etc. Or that he is there as a bouncer because God has him witnessing to a certain struggling soul, or even worse, that he is also an alcoholic that needs our hugs and not judgment. The point of this is that we do not know Fred or his walk because he is in the game room and we are all locked up in the bathroom with God and the minister. We must consider the plank in our own eye and Let God out of the bathroom. These scenarios are hypothetical and the names are for dramatic purposes only.

The point is that we as Christians project on people what we think they should be. The real problem arises when this guy actually stays in the congregation and we pressure him into staying a CFO instead of becoming the artist that God made him to be. We say……. “Well, you know you still have to think of your kids and the cost of their schooling, you still have to make the house note, you know we have many missions that need your support….and on and on and on. Again we are far too smart to do this directly, but we do it under the skin and muscle, in the heart. A half smile, An “I’ll keep you in my prayers”, and “let me know if we can help in any way” and then a funny glance towards our spouse.
When instead we should be looking him in the eye and saying “I love you brother, tell me about how God has affected your life”. “What are you facing?” “Let’s fast and pray about it together”.

But it’s often too late, and Chad or Fred or Jay or whomever needs support, ends up getting mixed messages and self fulfilling prophecy inflicted upon their life. They say to themselves “You know, I’d love to make the change in my life, but I just can’t afford to, or, I may miss a future opportunity with a bigger firm, or I’m doing this for my spouse, or I can’t really tell if it’s God’s talking to me or just Satan, or wouldn’t it be very selfish for me to do what I really love?”. I would argue that this is almost blasphemous. Isn’t it even more selfish to play the martyr role so we can hold it over others in the form of resentment or worse, manic depression, divorce etc…you get the point.

So what do we do ? First we stop listening to what men say and focus only on what God says. Listening to a wise brother is a good thing, but in regard to your design and talent for God’s service, listening to men would have to be an exception and not the rule. God must reveal this to you on a deeply personal level. Most men cannot answer this for one another….the exception being a spouse, or extremely close Christian friend. Listen first to God and then only men who agree with Him. Also remember that God will never contradict himself, and his answer will be in tune with his word. Leaving your wife does not apply as a way to serve God through design.

Let’s look again at Christ as our example on how to listen and who to listen to on the subject of God and men. Christ listened first and always to God the Father and only men if they agreed. Keep in mind we are not talking about listening as the ability to hear and understand (Christ heard and understood many who disagreed with God), but rather listening as defined by following another’s advice or instruction. (God first and then men, if they agreed with God.)
“Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesars”

Another similar struggle with this listening differentiation: “How do I know when it’s God or Satan speaking to me? How do I hear God in spite of what men say?
Christ listened to His father, and he could because he had no sin. Sin separates us from God. You can’t hear God over the noise of sin. Christ had the advantage because he was sin free, but he was sin free by choice….the same choice we have. When we give it ALL to God….even that little self perpetuating thing that we know God will forgive us for (ignoring the neighbor who never stops talking, etc.) We fill our ears with selfishness. The opinions of men and Satan appear to be our best friend.
I propose that God would not allow Satan to speak to us in a way that we fail to see it as a lie, if we have truly given Him all of us…..all of it….ALL. I believe this because it falls right into the category of God dealing with us where we are. Scripture tells us clearly that God will not allow us to be tempted beyond that which we can endure. We always need to be able hear Satan speaking, however we just need to know that its him. The problem is that we love the sound of his voice when selfish motives are involved. His voice is music to our ears. Selfish motives……no matter how small the portion, cloud our ability to hear the great I AM.

God describes himself as “I AM” That has to be the loudest two words ever uttered! If we can’t hear it, we are in some form of separation with semi plugged or completely plugged ears. (Read Psalms 73:21-28).
It’s an interesting thought, but I believe it’s possible to only hear part of God’s answer to us under certain circumstances. I believe this happens when we look at the big picture for the good of Him, but maybe there is still something small we hold onto out of selfishness most often unknown on a conscious level. It always results in me asking: “Now why didn’t God give me a clear answer?” and the answer is that I have not completely given Him my All.

God allows us to know what sin is, and tells us how we should handle it from start to finish. Yet he allows us to maintain our area of freewill. I believe he deals with us where we are. He will not allow us to be tempted beyond that which we can endure. This indicates that He maintains control over our freewill’s capacity for destructiveness. He will not allow something to be placed in front of us that we would not have the ability to overcome. It’s Kind of like watching your son with a bag of powdered doughnuts on a Saturday morning. Perhaps there’s just one doughnut left. He has complete Freewill to eat that doughnut, even though you have told him it he shouldn’t. He may rationalize about it, and then eat it. But, he also may choose not to eat it because its crushed or stale or he wants to please you (his dad). After all it’s only one doughnut….right? To him it may seem like more. However, if the bag was full, he may disregard that desire to please you because they are so attractive and there are so many. “Dad probably wouldn’t notice that one or two were gone /eaten. But, you know your child well enough to know what you could give him where he has a fair chance to refuse
(without stifling his freewill) You have allowed his freewill to be complete, but reduced his capacity for freewill’s destructiveness.

If you are very faithful, that capacity may be wide, if you are weak, the area is very slim. The point is that we have a choice….Always. It would be worthless without it. Whether your threshold is 8 feet wide and mine is 2 inches, we always have a choice. We always have that glorious moment after the sin seed has been planted to turn away. Its tough, but we know in our heart, and mostly go ahead and sin.

It’s when we make that choice for Him while we are in our own fleshly battle that he can be heard most clearly. I assert that Satan can always be heard, but most often cannot be distinguished as the liar he truly is. Only through the ears of Christ can we confidently make that distinction. But God is never halfhearted or unclear….just our selfishly clouded judgment about what’s being said. Once we understand the distinction of how to hear the details of what the great I AM is saying, we can step out onto the water in spite of what others say….including Satan. Freedom from sin = unplugged ears.

Now the question is: How and why are we all different, when we know we were made in his image? We are described as a body. A body has may synergistic parts that act congruently with one another. We have a thumb and an elbow ….you get the picture. Why would God use this manner of describing our roles and relationships? I believe it is because again, he is showing us that we are STILL a product of divine imagery, a widget of divine manufacturing if you will. We have only a certain capacity to grasp this analogy, but never to its potential. Let’s look at what we can do with our tip of the ice berg knowledge about this. If I know I’m a thumb, I know that I can bend a certain way and it just feels good, it feels right to me. I’m not quite sure how I can be used, but somehow I get used a lot, mostly by being what God made me……a bending device….and perhaps pressing device as well.

Illustration:
“I’m not sure why I’m here (me -Mr. Thumb), but I have a really good relationship with Mr. Index. We just seem to hit it off most days. In fact, our best days are spent working together. I often pass by the other guys (Middle, Ring, and Pinky) especially when they get roped into our projects, but they just aren’t as good a friends as me and Dex. I do recognize that when the hourly tug o war contest happens at the office these guys really pull together……especially when one of us is on injured reserve. It’s pretty cool, but I’m still not sure why we’re here doing this. Oh well, at least I get to bend and press, and man does that satisfy my very tendons!”

Mr. Thumb is part of the body. He can best serve the body by doing so in a way that God made him. Actually, he can only serve (at all) in the way God made him. So he has already learned to do what seems right to his God given design. This is his gift or Bent…..pun pun.) What he still doesn’t recognize fully is that what he does is extremely necessary for the body (the cause)…. He just knows that it feels good. This is why we need to be careful writing things off in the name of selfishness. The reality is God wants us to do what feels right to us. Selfish or not, it serves God. Its kind of like saying we should stop breathing because it’s selfish. How many of us are breathing for God? No…..God designed us to breath and selfish or not we breath because it feels right and we must. Indulging your talent because it pleases you is not mutually exclusive of serving Him. Point being: if you breathe for yourself without dedicating each breath to serving God, How can you argue that something is selfish like your talent when you want to use it to serve Him.

Back to Thumb: He also recognizes that most chores he’s called to do requires help from his best friend and some other buddies….even the little guy on the end of the isle. He knows in part the good things that can be accomplished through following the design, but he fails to see to big picture. I can guarantee you if he knew just how important he was he would ask for a raise!! Little does he know that there is this massive attachment to him that would be deeply hurt if he were not able to do the thing he loves.
The emphasis in the illustration is that we are like the thumb and all his friends, and even his cousins which he has never met….Mr. Elbow and Mrs. Spine.
We are not only designed to do a certain thing, but also to work together with the entire body for the Good of that Body and its owner, Mr. Soul, who cannot be seen, but seems to be in control of everything. The thumb has blind faith (first because he has no eyes) (most importantly because he is content) that the soul will guide him in the way he should go……….. and just goes with it. The amazing things that are accomplished for Mr. Soul go mostly unseen by the parts, yet they find great satisfaction in their individual duties relying on faith that it will all work out for the soul.
Point being: Don’t overlook the unseen plan! You have great use in that plan. Remember the parable of the talents. Gist: “Use well what you have and more will be given”. Read Ephesians chapter 4 for more insight on making a change according to His plan.

This is my own thought process about the journey that we make to finding His special / individual plan for each of us. An illustration of just how we can walk on water for Him. “Just GO”....as He said to Peter.....”Come!” He left it up to Peter's faith. We don't have to work at it. He wants us to step first and he will do the work....including the emotional search and struggle. I'm no poet, but late at night he put this on my heart....I believe it was meant for me to remember...and perhaps others.

Posted by kevin at May 22, 2003 06:28 AM