Following the Master's Plan - Stephanie Stratton

Standards. Convictions. Preferences. We all have them. If we are honest, God is not always clear as to where we should draw the lines. He gives us many guidelines, but His desire is for us to please Him of our own accord.  If we love God, we should want to do the most to please Him. Just like I want to dress/cook/clean/act in ways that would be honoring and pleasing to my husband. Why? Because I love him. That should be our mentality towards God. I won't be talking about these three life factors, but let me just quote a friend of mine concerning someone questioning her standards. “I'm pretty sure when I get to Heaven God is not going to be like, “Sally, your convictions were so strong that you wore skirts to bed. What's the matter with you? You looked like a fool!” Sarcastic, yes. But the truth is that we can never do too much right to please God. In these areas, I say seek to please God and draw lines somewhere.

So, we know the areas in which God does not give us strict guidelines. But what about the areas He does give specific instructions? Like fellowship with God, prayer, church attendance, tithing, soul winning, faithfulness, purity, godliness? Are these things important to us? In the last few years, I've had multiple conversations with people who told me that God would understand why they chose not to tithe to a local church, or go to church because we now have livestream (a great tool when there are no other options or because of sickness, but not a substitute for fellowship with other believers, Hebrews 10:25), or that soul winning wasn't something for them because they are shy, or that Bible reading and prayer is too time consuming and God would rather that they were doing something more “meaningful”, or that watching an R-rated movie was okay because it was with their spouse and they skipped all the bad parts, etc. These weren't people “of the world”. They were born again Christians. People in churches of like-faith. According to the Bible they are playing a dangerous game. Isaiah 33:31b says, “...for with their mouth they shew much love, but their heart goeth after their covetousness.” 

Isaiah 58:13b says, “...and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words:” We are surrounded by a culture of do things your way, follow your heart, and whatever floats your boat. And we've somehow transferred this thinking to the things of God. The idea that we can serve God however we see fit and He will be okay with it is just delusional. In Judges, God tells us of Micah. He stole from his mother and then returned the money to her; his mom then used the money he stole from her to build idols for his house. He proceeded to hire a Levite priest to be the priest for his household, and Micah proclaims God's blessing on his household because his priest is a Levite. I look at this story and shake my head. What is he thinking? Sure, he made sure his priest was a Levite... for idols! The second commandment clearly told him not to make any graven image. Micah was delusional. And it is delusional for us to think that we can serve God our way instead of His and still get His blessing.

How can we avoid serving God the way we see fit and not the way He has instructed or commanded? I truly believe it is found in Bible reading and prayer. Most Christians never open the Word of God outside of church. Most Christians don't talk to God in fellowship on any consistent basis. Pew Research surveyed about 35,000 people in 2014. Only 35% said they read their Bible at least once a week; 22% of those are Evangelical Protestants. And reports are that the numbers have lowered since 2019. But it shows that the lack of time with God is a lack in knowledge of how He wants us to serve Him. So are we searching the Scriptures as we read it for daily instruction from God? Or is it just another task we need to accomplish? Are we seeking God's voice when we pray? Or is prayer time just to ask His blessing on other's lives and the needs and wants of everyone we know? I believe that when we seek God in His Word and in fellowship with Him that we can't help but do things His way. 

God gives us clear instructions on how He wants things done. He gives us clear commandments He wants us to do. Are we giving into the worldly philosophy that He'll be okay if we do it our way? Are we fooling ourselves thinking that God blesses just our intentions? We should be proactively pursuing God and His Word so that we don't find ourselves or our children years down the road in a place where God is functionally out of the picture.