Often in our Christian experience we become spiritually satisfied in only receiving His many blessings and gifts. We become satisfied in “doing” the works of ministering, for God. We believe somehow that God is pleased with us when we use our gifts and blessings to help others, (and He is), but not give Him our personal time in prayer, His Word and to the Holy Spirit. We stop short of His higher purpose for us. Many people tell us, we do not have the time to spend with God because we are too busy in life, we are ministering all the time and family or work pressures, or church takes up the rest of our time.
Some of us get caught up in spiritual pride or that the ministering we do for others, fills a need in our own hearts. It makes us feel good about ourselves or that we are really doing something special for the Lord. Some of us feel useless because we do very little ministering to people or we do not know what our gifts are or what we should be doing for the Lord. If any of this sounds like you, please take heart. All of us have fallen into these traps in our walk with God at one time or another and there is no condemnation. It’s a normal part of our spiritual maturing process. Why we do what we do or our motivation is everything in His Kingdom.
There is a much higher purpose that our God has divinely designed for us than to just “do” ministry for Him. So whether you are caught up in the trap of just “doing” or you are doing little for God, there is great news for you today. I want you to think about this for a minute. If all you do is to minister to others or to do little ministering, but rarely give God any of your personal time, what is motivating you? Why do you do what you do? If you are continually giving your time to many others but have little time for God Himself, what are you really giving others? If you are not allowing God to pour Himself into you in personal communion with Him, what then do you have to truly give to others? This is a serious question. If you are doing little personal ministry and not giving God any of your personal time, what do you have to sustain you in everyday normal life?
The answer is simple. You cannot give what you have not received. You may be giving others or yourself “your” best, but if your power and peace did not come from God Himself, are you really giving His best? Yes, we can continually give out from the gifts He has so graciously given us and it will bless others, but still be a mess ourselves. That is not what God has planned for you, it is not His best. I don’t want Him to say to me, depart from me, I never knew you. You were created to bring Him pleasure. He desires to bring us into a vital, loving, living, holy, fruitful, abundant, vibrant, in His manifest presence daily, life. Isn’t that what we all want? Yes! Because He Himself placed that desire deep within each one of us. So what keeps us from that kind of life?
We do not have to remain in this lower level of identity with Jesus one day longer. Instead, as we “respond” to our spiritual hunger, no matter how little it may seem, and ask the Lord to draw us every closer, we will be introduced by the Holy Spirit to the Person of Jesus, who gave us those gifts and blessings. As we “fellowship” with Jesus, He will gently correct, (chasten) us in order to lead us beyond our initial experience in which we had become content with just receiving “things” from Him.
Having this deeper relationship with Jesus, through His Spirit within us, is as “easy as breathing air” because that is what we were created to do. We make it hard, but it doesn’t have to be. When we ask, “draw us” by faith, and believe and do not doubt in our hearts, you can “rest” assured, Holy Spirit is doing the drawing. Don’t listen to the lying voices that tell you, you are not worthy or you have failed and will always fail, or anything like that. Simply breath Him in with your little child like faith.
As we become one with Him, we will become the expression of His life in the earth and will build up others supernaturally. His very life, nature and Spirit will naturally flow out from us to others, as the result of communing with Him. We will move past self-centered Christianity, my works make me feel good about myself, and His blessings are all I need mentality, into a deep love for Him, as a real Person. Our motivation for everything will flow out of a great desire to just be with Him at all times. Nothing else will matter. We will learn to “abide” with Him continually.
You too will say ” I am my Beloved’s and His desire is toward me”. S of S 7:10. Now her love has become an outgoing love (agape) with no expectancy of return. The Lord has become her “all in all” and she has entered into an abiding oneness in Him, in which she shares in His love that reaches out to the world, truly able to give “Him”, in His fullness to others, just like Jesus gave the Father on earth. In undivided submission, devotion and rest, she has reached the place in her spiritual growth where she is able to move “with” Him in ministry to the needs of others or abide alone with Him in intimate communion.
Suddenly, all the pain and loss she has had to endure to become His Bride has faded into nothingness. The pain and loss, of the many trials and tribulations of daily life, that we allowed and recognized as gifts from God, to lead us into death to self, now pales in comparison to living in the glory of His manifest presence, as a daily lifestyle. Heb. 10:35-36, Do not therefore fling away your fearless confidence, for it carries a great and glorious compensation of reward. For you have need of steadfast patience and endurance, so that you may perform and fully accomplish the will of God, and thus receive and carry away and enjoy to the full, what is promised.