God, do NOT bless my efforts!

How many times have we prayed and asked God to bless our efforts... well, no more!

We want God to look down from heaven, see what wonderful things we are doing for Him, and to bless what we are doing.

Today I was challenged to reconsider this common practise by my written mentor, Oswald Chambers, when he wrote: "Many a Christian worker has left Jesus Christ alone and gone into work from a sense of duty or from a sense of need arising out of his own particular dicernment."

This does not necessarily mean we are "sinning," but that WE are generating the spiritual activity ourselves. Though as we get busy and drift from God, sin certainly can result! Oswald referring to our Christian activity, "There is no sin in it, and no punishment attached to it; but when the soul realizes how he has hindered his understanding of Jesus Christ, and produced for himself perplexities and sorrows and difficulties, it is with shame and contrition he has to come back."

It sounded so spiritual, the old saying I latched onto as a kid: "God can't move a parked car." But in the end, this attitude of fast-paced service, diguised as a sense of urgency for the lost, is a deadly and unbiblical and has led many a sincere Christian worker to get going so fast and furious in their flurry of Christian work that they end up crashing due to a blind spot around a corner on the super service highway of spiritual achievement. What good is all your "work" if it takes you away from the very one you are supposedly serving so passionately?!? I know that I have been driven since a very young age to be "Busy for God" - and yet I am discovering that God is not in as big a hurry as I am.

God has been at work throughout the ages, and is quite capable of accomplishing His goals and purposes without me being all stressed out. I get so worked up over all that "needs to get done" when God says, "It's all done already, just walk with Me."

Mark chapter eleven, in the Message, records Jesus saying, "Embrace this God-life. Really embrace it, and nothing will be too much for you." When we are stressed, we are ahead of God. And He doesn't hurry to catch up to us, I believe He often stops, and waits for us to notice we are alone, and to come back to Him, and then He will continue on with us at His pace. Jesus continued, (in the Message) "That's why I urge you to pray for absolutely everyting, ranging from small to large. Include everything as you embrace this God-life, and you'll get God's everything."

Oswald writes, "...get into the habit of steadily referring everything back to Him; instead of this we make our common-sense decisions and ask God to bless them."

My challenge to myself first and foremost is this: Do not ask God to bless anything. If it is of God, it is already blessed! To ask God to bless it, is to hint that it may not be of Him to start with, even if it is a good thing.

Think about it, if God has asked you to do a thing, how silly to ask Him to also bless it! It may border on an insult to Him. And if He hasn't asked you to do it, why would you want His blessing on it?

Instead, ask God what He would have you do, and then pray for the courage and strength and persistance to see it through despite any obstacles or resistance you may encounter as you obey. Now there is a prayer God can answer!