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One big cause of stress, anxiety, bondage and sickness among Christians is confusion regarding the work we are to do versus the results we are to get. By wasting time focusing on the results or lack thereof, instead of focusing on the work itself, we set ourselves up for stress, worry, headaches and heartaches of all kinds.
The world teaches man that he is responsible for the results he is to obtain: Success in life, including lots of money, a rewarding, prestigious job, successful marriage, dynamic family, respectability, etc. But this is impossible as it regards the things of God, simply because we are not God.
Matthew 6:31-33 Therefore take no thought (don’t be full of stress and anxiety); saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or With what shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knows that you have need of all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought (don’t be full of stress and anxiety about) tomorrow; for tomorrow shall take thought (be full of stress and anxiety about) the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
When you decide that you’d like to grow your own apples, you never become responsible for producing the fruit. You get a book about growing your own apple trees, or look up that information online, and then you do what you can do to the best of your ability: buying seeds, planting them in the best way in good soil, keeping them and the plant which springs up watered, and you leave the growing up to God.
If I were to become responsible for producing the apples, what might it look like? I’d dig a hole, stick a big pole or 2×4 in the hole and refill it with dirt. There, now I have a piece of wood I can attach other pieces of wood and then apples to. So I screw, nail and staple pieces of wood at all angles to that piece of wood sticking out of the ground, and finally I staple apples all around and voila! the best results I can obtain by my own efforts! God didn’t have a thing to do with it! (Well, yes He did, because He produced the apples I ended up stapling to my apple tree!).
It seems a foolish analogy, but this is exactly why there is so much stress and worry and anxiety and bondage and sickness in people’s lives …. they are trying to obtain the results that only God can produce. In the above verse, God sets us straight. Let anxiety about tomorrow be tomorrow’s anxiety (and tomorrow never comes!). You do what you can do in seeking He who can produce good results, and leave the actual results up to God.
I understand this is an alien way of thinking to the Western mind, but this is the life God has called us to; therefore, it must be possible to be lived!
Here’s another analogy. Let’s say I’m a carpenter, and I decide I want to build a home for my best friend and his family because I love them so much. I want them to have a home of their own where they can raise happy, healthy kids and grow old together. I can build the house, but by no effort of my own can I produce that happy, healthy family.
I Corinthians 3:6 I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.
So one day you’re sitting in a church service, and the preacher is teaching about how we need to become more loving. Or more peaceful, or joyful, or more kind. Ever heard a teaching like that? What that well-intentioned preacher is perhaps teaching is that we should be trying to obtain, by our own efforts, the results that only God can produce in our lives. Is it any wonder so many Christians live defeated lives? They’re ignoring the work they can do in favor of trying to produce the results that they can in no way do!
Galatians 5:22,23 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance; regarding such things there is no law.
There is no effort which would be required by any law, rule, principle or guideline that can produce any of this fruit in our lives. Only the Spirit of God can produce the fruit. So where is our effort to be directed? Into walking by the spirit that produces the fruit, of course! And “to walk by” means to walk in. We walk in the spirit of God, meaning wherever that spirit goes, we go with it. In order to stay in it, we have to go where it goes, believe what it teaches us, follow the “laws” it writes in our hearts. (We can not depart from it simply because our Pastor is telling us something different). The result of walking in the spirit of God is the fruit specified above!
How would you like to be more steady and focused in your life? Wiser? Hear more from God? Know God’s heart more? Become more understanding of the why’s and wherefore’s of life? Become clearer on God’s expectations of and for you? Know what you’re going to be able to do before you’re able to do it? Grow more able to handle whatever comes your way? More victorious over all your life’s challenges and problems? How would you like to feel like there is no limit to what is possible for your life? Nothing too big to overcome, no Godly desire that can not be achieved?
Stop trying to get the results, and focus on the effort or work that is required of you!
Ephesians 1:15-19a Wherefore I also, after I heard of your believing in the Lord Jesus and love unto all the saints (you are walking in that which has been given you, sharing it with others), Cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers: That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the intimate knowing (epiknosko) of him; the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, and what (is) the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, And what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe…..
Understand clearly what work you can do, staying clear of trying to produce the results in your life that only God can produce. In the above verses, the work a man can do is to walk in the faith that he has, seeing its benefits in more and more areas of his life, and then becoming more willing to share what he has of value with others. That is the work you can do. The rest of what is described in the above verses is up to God.
Philippians 2:13 For it is God who works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.
Does this sound like God wants you to produce spiritual results in your own life? By your own efforts? No! God gives something to you. Now you 1) enjoy it; and 2) share it with others. Now God gives you more. Now you 1) enjoy it; and 2) share it with others. Now God gives you more. Now you …. well, you get the picture.
Until you enjoy (use, are influenced by, walk in the truth of, are thankful for) what God has given you, and then share what is in you of God with others, as His spirit leads, there will be no spiritual fruit being produced in your life.
I was once speaking to a full time minister, who felt that it was the will of God for his ministry to spread to China, but that it was not God’s will that he himself go; rather, that someone involved in his ministry should go. The time was fast approaching where a decision would have to be made as to who would go as a representative of this man’s ministry, yet he had not been able to find the right person, and this was causing a lot of stress in his life and thinking. I looked at him and said, “If it is God’s idea that someone else go, then wouldn’t it be God’s responsibility to supply that someone? Why are you acting like the burden is on your shoulders to get the results God has said He wants?” And then I quoted the above verse from Philippians. He was “stopped in his tracks” as he looked at me, and all the stress and burden just melted away (it was a beautiful thing to see), and he exclaimed, “Of course, it’s up to God to bring to pass His will for my life!”
Hebrews 4:11 Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.(the example of Israel, who would not enter into the Promised Land originally because they did not believe God would give it to them without their own efforts, resulting in them being a nomadic tribe for 40 years).
Here it talks about us working. But is it the effort to produce the results of rest? No.
Hebrews 4:10 For he that is entered into His rest, he also has ceased from his own works, as God did from His.
The labor God requires of us is the effort to stop trying to achieve the results which only He, God, can produce in our lives.
Hebrews 4:1, 2 Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into His rest, any of you should seem to come short of it. For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them; but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.
The labor God requires of us is the effort to accept by believing what God has promised we shall have (which only comes about by revelation). To receive it, enjoy it and share its benefit with others.
So what has God promised you? I’m not speaking generally here. Specifically, what has God promised you? What has He told you, by the revelation of His holy spirit, that He has done for you, given you, worked in you, given you the ability to do? What Has He promised you He will do for you, give you, provide for you? I encourage you to simply accept what He has promised you as being a done deal in and for your life. And then, as you start seeing its fulfillment in your life, share the benefit you receive with others. Leave the rest up to God.
II Corinthians 9:10 Now He that ministers seed to the sower both minister bread for your food, and multiply your seed sown, and increase the fruits of your righteousness;
II Corinthians 9:8, 11 And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work; Being enriched in every thing to all bountifulness, which causes through us thanksgiving to God.
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Other related studies:
What was The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?
The Law vs. Faith
What EXACTLYGod wants from you.
The Law of God
The Illusion of Control
