Praise God, Shine FM, our local Christian radio station, has agreed to give away a few of my books on air and promote them with the giveaway! YESSS! Thank you, Lord.
Or rather, praise you Lord.
I believe this is his project. I’ve been given the privilege of working alongside of him, partnering with him as he shares the message of the kingdom with people through the book. He hasn’t done this for me, he’s done this for him. And for the people who need the message I’ve written about. I haven’t asked him to bless my little writing project; he’s invited me into his, and so I praise him for advancing the message through the radio station.
The thanks come in because he’s allowed me to cooperate with him on this. Cooperation is the point. God invites us to join him, to co-labor with him in this dark world. The point isn’t how much you pray, or fast, or share your faith, or serve, or speak in tongues, or prophesy, or whether you’ve bound this spirit or that spirit, or anything else.
The point is that God invites us to join him. We must respond. Sometimes that becomes a prayer. Other times, a seed planted. Or a hug. Or a pie for the neighbors. We get so locked into the spiritual hoopla, the measuring sticks. God’s just looking for humble partners.
Today I met with some people asking me to join in something God has asked them to do. An evangelism tool that’s working well in some places. At one point in the free lunch the guy asked me, “Are you willing to get your church to march around the borders of your community in a prayer walk?” It’s a reference to the Jericho thing from the Old Testament.
“See, that only happened once in the Bible and never happened again,” I replied. “I’ll lead my people to do what God wants us to do in concert with him.” Period. Nothing more, nothing less.
See how things become religious, expected, dead? The only reason Jericho worked and the walls came down is that they obeyed God, partnered with him in a unique circumstance. Yesterday’s faith becomes tomorrow’s religion the moment we try to repeat it.