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God’s Job Descriptions
By arnelle | September 1, 2009
A friend prayed that God would show us our job descriptions, and it really stuck with me. The first thing that occurred to me was that every one of them—if we really got God’s job descriptions—would be impossible. The first three words of every believer’s job description would be “Do the impossible.” From then on, the details would vary.
Many of us have our job descriptions mixed up with God’s job description. Jesus taught us to ask God to provide our daily bread, so that’s God’s job, right? But how much worry and effort do we put in making sure that we can earn enough, save enough, invest enough to guarantee we can always provide our own daily bread? This “meddling” steals time and strength from other duties that are on our job descriptions.
It is on God’s job description to forgive us our trespasses, but with a little rationalization (It wasn’t really that bad . . .I know some other Christians who are doing a lot worse. . .I didn’t really mean it; I was just having a bad day. . .besides they really had it coming. . .), we can usually forgive ourselves our own trespasses without bothering Him. Meanwhile, the things on our own job description . . . .
How about judging the faults of another? “To his own master he stands or falls,” God says. Lord, help us remember that’s on Your job list and nowhere on ours. So what IS on ours? Here are a few for starters:
1. Rejoice always. Would “most of the time” be OK? No, always.
2. In everything give thanks. Everything?! Everything. Every GOOD thing? Everything.
3. Do all things without murmuring and disputing. ALL things?! (God sure goes in for the absolutes, doesn’t He?)
4. Pray . . . . Oh, we do! . . . without ceasing. Oh. We don’t.
You and we are partnering together to reach the unreached peoples of the world. God has told us to go into all the world. Check. To preach the gospel. Check. To make disciples. . Check. To teach them His commandments. Check. And, by the way, He says, as you go, be sure to heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons and raise the dead. Check, check, check, and . . . .REALITY CHECK! ! Those things are impossible, God! Check.
Why does God put the easy stuff on His job description and the hard stuff on ours? He gets the “daily bread” ones so we won’t waste our lives worrying about them. He’s got the future completely under control. He wants us to trust Him.
He assigns the hard things to us (they don’t look that hard to Him) so we will have to cling desperately to Him to get the job done. He wants us to trust Him.
Today is the very day that the Lord Himself has made; it is full of exciting possibilities. But I challenge each of us to review our job description today so the Holy Spirit can point out all of the even-more-exciting impossibilities. He wants us to trust Him!
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