God makes promises in scripture. Take His promise to Abraham to make of him a great nation, this promise was unconditional. In point of fact, when we examine the promises of God, they are all fairly unilateral – God does the work, provides the blessing, etc. – and we simply accept it. God’s promise to Abraham was not contingent on how many wives Abraham had, or would have. It was not contingent on how old Abraham was at the time, or how old he would be when this promise was actually fulfilled. His promise did not rely on how often Abraham slept with Sarah his wife. Abraham believed and perhaps hoped that the fulfillment of God’s promise would come soon. So he attempted to “help” God by entering into a new sexual relationship with Hagar, Sarah’s slave. She did conceive. Abraham thought, this was it, the fulfillment of God’s promise. But not so. And now the tension between the first wife and new wife became so great, He would lose his young son, as Hagar and Ishmael fled into the wilderness. The blessing of God remained on Ishmael despite his unconventional origination, but God was not looking for Hagar’s help in this matter.
When it would take a miracle to conceive, Abraham and Sarah did have their promised son. God wanted for Abraham to know, it was not luck, it was not mere coincidence, it was not the natural result of a man being with his wife. He wanted Abraham to know this son would be from Him - a gift from God. He did not need Abraham’s help in this matter. In point of fact, Abraham’s blessing extended to Ishmael and he too became a great nation. But peace between the descendants of Ishmael and those of Isaac would appear to be forever elusive. In his efforts to help God fulfill His promise, Abraham inadvertently created generations of war between brothers who have very different views of how to honor the God of Abraham.
God promised Jacob that he would lead in his household despite being the younger twin. Had Jacob simply waited on the Lord perhaps the story of enmity between he and his brother may never have existed. But instead, Jacob and his mother, took matters into their own hands, deceived his father, stole the blessing, and brought extraordinary strife between brothers once again. Jacob would have to flee his father’s tent to escape the wrath of his brother. Leadership would elude Jacob for decades, his life would be hard working for his uncle Laban. As he deceived his father, so he too would be deceived by his uncle. All of this pain, from Jacob’s desperate efforts to claim the promise of God, himself, through the means he had available.
Neither Jacob nor Abraham was “serving” God when they attempted to help Him see His promises fulfilled. Serving God would imply that God had asked them to take a specific action and they were only complying with the request of the Lord. God did not ask either of them to do what they did. They initiated the action. They did it themselves. In addition, note the complete absence of seeking the counsel of the Lord before they pursued their attempts at helping. They did not ask God if it was His will for what they would do. They did not ask even if it was OK. They kept God out of what they did. Human effort to make up for Divine inaction in the timeframes humans believe are critical. These were two patriarchs of our faith, but it was precisely a lack of faith that led to these impatient actions. Both would learn from them. Both men’s faith would increase over time from the pain of consequences that would come from what they did. Scripture does not record their actions as an example of what we should do in these cases. In fact it is just the opposite of this. God does not need our “help”, and yet His promises are always fulfilled.
Perhaps the hardest lesson taught in scripture is “be still and know that I am God”. “Still” is not something most of us are comfortable with for any length of time. We long to see our “needs” fulfilled in short order. We wish to maintain a measure of control of the process. The land God promised to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob would not remain unoccupied while their descendants sought refuge in Egypt. Over 400 years the tribes of Jacob, now Israel, would descend from honored guests, to despised slaves. The Pharaoh’s would utilize the wealth Joseph and his God were responsible for bringing to their nation on themselves. They would take the credit for it, and claim divinity in their bloodlines. They would go so far as to execute the first born children in Israel to “keep the numbers down” lest there be a rebellion in the near future. Moses alone would escape that slaughter. The promise of a deliverer would be fulfilled, but only when it would take a miracle, only when God alone could break the power of the Pharaoh. Moses was more inclined to run from the responsibility that to initiate his own actions to begin it; and so Moses served God, following God’s leadership not running ahead of it. Moses relayed the will of God. He did not try to define it. Moses waited for God to use His power. And the power of the Lord freed His people.
But on their way back to the land of promise the children of Israel wanted to “help” God take back their land. God offered to send in wasps, to drive the current inhabitants out of the way of His people. This offer was rejected by the Israelites. Imagine how much death could have been avoided if they had simply listened to God. Cities, homes, fields, crops, would have been left undestroyed, without the stain of blood. The peoples driven from this land would be alive afterwards to wonder why this God would take such an interest in His people to perform this great work for them. The fame of the God of Israel would have grown yet again, by those whose personal testimony was one of wasps driving them out of the way of His people. Instead they would be driven into the ground by the bloodlust of those who claimed to follow God. In the process, many of the house of Israel would also fall. They would not succeed in driving out all the inhabitants. Those that remained, remained enemies, always looking for an opportunity to make the lives of the invaders worse. False gods and promiscuous sexual worship of those idols would enter the house of Israel. The resulting births would create new temple prostitutes if they were girls, and human sacrifice or slaves if they were boys. This evil would bring a cycle of invasion, repentance, and temporary reform. But because the servants of other gods remained in the area, the cycle would repeat again and again; all of this because the children of Israel wanted to “help”. They wanted to feel like they “earned it”.
And are we any different today? Our salvation from evil is a free gift from Christ, yet we cling to the illusion that He must need a partner in this effort. We hold on to the idea that our works, our actions, our faith, our motives must somehow play a role in our own redemption. We too want desperately to feel like in some small way, we have earned it, we deserve it. We twist texts on forgiveness to imply that we deserve forgiveness because we forgave another. Instead of accepting the personal freedom and liberation from bad feelings that comes with truly releasing another in forgiveness for a wrong they have done to us; we instead make forgiveness a conditional act.
We apply texts that advocate actions, to the actions we wish to take. But like Jacob or Abraham, we do not actually take the time to seek the counsel of the Lord as to His will in the matter. We quote scriptures to ourselves, and then leave Him out of it. We initiate our own actions but in His name. Carry placards in front of abortion clinics, or simply sneer at homosexuals we see out in public, or politely tolerate those of a different race until we are able to escape their company. None of these actions reflect the love our Lord feels for His children. But many are too common in Christian circles. Actions we initiate on our own, in an effort to help God in His work of saving souls. But God does need our “help”. He needs our service. Our service defined in actions of love to those same souls we look down upon.
More to the point, God does not need my “help” in saving me. He needs me to let Him save me, and instead only focus on serving Him. Service implies a relationship where I do nothing to lead. I am not the co-leader, the co-pilot, the co-anything. I am the servant. Servants are told what to do, they do not choose for themselves. Servants are directed by their Lord where to go, what to say, and what to do. A servant is humble. A servant is pliable. A servant can be taught. And in our case, we are the willing servants of Christ, so we are able to fully trust that our Lord would not ever steer us wrong. Service steeped in love becomes my aspiration. Allowing God to control what I think, what I want, and therefore what I do – is the basis of accepting His gift to me that I will never deserve. It is the “I” that must be crucified if Christ is ever to be reflected in me. It is “self” that is the enemy of our God. He never looks inward at Himself to make Himself feel better. Instead He is always focused on us, the object of His love. He is always doing for us, longing for us, whispering to us, and faithfully fulfilling His promises to us. Our God has no concept of “self”. That is something we know, because we have embraced evil.
Let us learn that service requires we let God lead. Let us take our plans, and our intentions to God, and ask for His counsel BEFORE we proceed. Let us wait on His response and not try to rush His promises or see them fulfilled with our “help”. Let us change the world by reflecting His love to all we encounter, and leave the process of the cleansing of sin up to the only God who can do it in me, or in others. This is the hallmark of a servant of Christ.
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