In the Old Testament Jesus acted as the Angel of the Lord, who in Exodus three met with Moses. Some people see Him as Jesus meek and mild, full of love, which is true, but this is not His only characteristic. If a person has to deal with people, you need to be clever. When people need to be persuaded to do or buy something, man displays much ingenuity, since we take after God. We are created in the image of a clever God.
“And they (the elders of Israel) will listen to your voice, and you and the elders of Israel shall go to the king of Egypt and say to him, ‘The LORD, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us; and now, please let us go a three days' journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the LORD our God (Exodus 3:18).’”
The Lord worked here with a plan. He knew Pharaoh’s heart and therefore first had to cleverly prepare him for what was coming. As you read further in this chapter, you’ll see that the Lord knew Pharaoh wouldn’t comply and that He already had the next few steps in place.
In your ministry to the Lord, the Lord also knows the difficulties. He has a strategy in place for you. If people changed easily, the whole world would have been saved and delivered by now. We also have a very cunning enemy to outsmart. Therefore, in order to get people to follow the Lord we have to be very clever along with the Lord. Many examples in the Bible prove God’s ingenuity e.g. the way He got Joseph into Pharaoh’s confidence so the Israelites could be looked after. Every Christian is called into their sphere of influence to work with the Holy Spirit to accomplish His purposes. The Holy Spirit only needs an open-minded instrument through whom He can work His clever skills. As an instrument of the Holy Spirit we need to realise that the Lord is sovereign. He employs tactics that we would sometimes doubt and even consider ungodly, due to our frame of reference of the Lord being only meek and mild.
A certain man was very much against his wife serving the Lord. One Sunday, while she went to church, he decided to prove from the Bible that what she believed in was fantasy. When she got home, he had the Bible on his lap, weeping. He had gotten saved. Wasn’t the Holy Spirit clever?
A pastor we know used to be a boxer before he got saved. As a pastor he once encountered continuous domestic abuse in one of his flock’s families. When he got a call for help from this woman one night whilst her husband was beating her, he got in the car and drove over to her house. A holy anger filled his heart and he floored the man with one whack, sat on top of him and shared the gospel with him. The man got saved.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD (Isaiah 55:8).”
Now, don’t go hitting everybody (smile), but be open for how the Lord wants to work, comply with His ways and you’ll be successful.
Lord, help me to be receptive to your methods.
If you benefited from this, why don’t you link it to your Facebook or Twitter to make it available to your friends? You can also use the e-mail link to pass it on.
No comments:
Post a Comment