Day 23, March 19, 2007
Nehemiah 6:15-19
“…they recognized the work had been accomplished with the help of our God.” (6:16) In many ways, this really is the crux of the Christian life. God has never been interested in just doing a work. If he’d just wanted a son, he’d have chosen an 18 year old male and a 14 year old girl. Instead he makes a promise to a 75 year old man and 65 year old wife, and then they wait 25 years before finally achieving the promise: Isaac is born. Or perhaps he chooses a virgin: Jesus is born. Maybe he chooses the most vicious killer of Christians in the first century to become the spokesperson for Jesus throughout the Roman empire: Paul is born again.
With God it’s never just that He wants to do something – rather, He wants to do something that is explicable only by the reality of His power and involvement in our lives. The trouble is, if we’re always shooting for goals within our reach, always resorting to the strength of our own humanity and what is reasonable, we’ll actually fall short of that to which God is calling us. In Nehemiah’s case, the wall that had been in ruins for years was suddenly rebuilt, completely, in 52 days. Who does that? God.
Who challenges you to give more – and than provides for you as you step out in obedience? God.
Who calls you into ministries that are beyond your comfort zone – and then provides the strength, direction, and wisdom you need to carry out the calling? God
Who leads you into a corner where you cry out to God, and then shepherds you into the open spaces of healing and blessing? God. (see Psalm 107 for ample examples of this)
The tragedy is that many of us will settle for a life lived within the margins of our comfort zones and abilities. In that zone we’ll know neither the great agonies of brokenness and dependency, nor the great victories of God’s abundant provision. Instead, we’ll be stuck in the gray twilight of spiritual boredom, precisely because life was never intended to be lived on composition paper – wholly within the margins.
May you and I so live our lives with the abandon of faith that it will be said of us, and the Bethany Community: “this work has been accomplished with the help of God.”
Ask God to show you areas where you might be holding back from those steps of faith that will lead us into the uncharted waters of vital dependency, and ask God for the grace to follow Him into these new waters. Pray for your church leaders as well, that we will be guided by neither fear or presumption, but simply a willingness to follow Christ – even if He asks us to step out of the boat.
posted by Richard Dahlstrom @ 4:57 PM
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