Good Ideas

Ideas

How many times have you said, “Well, it seemed a good idea at the time.”?  Your brilliant idea didn’t work out the way it was supposed to and you were left, quite frankly, with egg all over your face. I know – we’ve all done it at least once, frequently more often. Been there, seen it, done it, worn out the tee shirt. Oh well – back to the drawing board.

Hang on a minute. What if God was behind it and you just made a small but significant mistake – like timing? So often I think we hear from God and rush headlong into whatever He is calling us to do. Trouble is that we often hear the first bit and are so taken with it that we stop listening to the next bit and miss out on whatever He had for us.

So often we see in scripture the stories of Gods man of the moment who only gets it half right and the consequences are sometimes pretty dire. Like Moses when he struck the rock three times – he was only supposed to strike it once – it cost him his entry into the Promised Land. Or when Elisha told King Joash to strike the ground and he did so three times when he should have done so at least six times – it cost him his kingdom in the end.

I suppose the moral of these events, and their consequences, is that we should always enquire further to ensure we have the full instruction. If God says to do something, we should ask how many times? Or if he says to give something, we should ask how much? The answers we receive may well test our trust and faithfulness. There are many stories of good folk who have worked hard for something, often for years, only to have the Lord tell them to give it away. When they did so the Lord blessed them mightily, but when they ‘refused’, He took all the anointing and enjoyment away from them for a while.

Maybe the price we pay is not as devastating as it was for the historical characters from the Bible, but nevertheless, the cost is high. This is the test of our faithfulness, our integrity, our humility, or just our pride.

I wonder how you and I might fare in such circumstances?