I once knew a lady who had tremendous faith. In fact, at one point she needed to move into a new house. I asked her if she had found one yet. She replied that she had not. When I asked her in what area she had been looking, she replied that she had not been looking at all. I said “I thought you had to be out of your house in two weeks?” She said that was correct. I asked her why she hadn’t been looking for a new place to live yet. Her reply: “I’m believing that God will send me a house. My faith is active on that. In fact, I’ve already packed all of my things and have it all by the front door so that when He opens the door, I’ll be ready to move in.”
Have you ever known someone like that? My next question to her was that if she had that kind of faith that God was going to drop a house in her lap why she didn’t have the faith to believe that He was going to pack her things and move them too. I don’t mean to sound demeaning, and I certainly don’t want to give the impression that God couldn’t have moved on her behalf and provided a house for her. I guess what stupefies me is the thought process that some have which creates a God that provides miracle after miracle without considering that He expects us to do some things for ourselves. I once knew of a man who didn’t believe that he had to work. God had promised in His Word that since He fed the birds and clothed the plants that he did not need to work to provide those things. God would provide them. He overlooked the scripture that addresses just that issue. 2 Thessalonians 3:10 says “If you don’t work, you don’t eat”. In other words, you have been given the means to provide for yourself and are expected to do so. That doesn’t mean that God has not promised to supply our needs if we are unable to provide for ourselves. It does mean that we are expected to do what we can with what we have.
I have known people who were put into a leadership position who were afraid to make decisions. They would pray about it and expect God to remove the lazy employee, or improve the performance of a poor employee or even to provide a good employee. What they didn’t realize is that God placed them in that position not so that He could do all of the work for them and make them look good, but so that they could do what He expected them to do and make God look good.
Consider the story of Joseph. This is a great example of how God works through us, and sometimes in spite of us. Joseph was a spoiled, fairly arrogant child by all accounts in the Bible. In fact, he was so annoying that his own brothers decided to sell him as a slave. In Egypt, he was purchased by a very prominent member of society. The Bible says that “The Lord was with Joseph so that he prospered, and he lived in the house of his Egyptian master. When his master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord gave him success in everything he did, Joseph found favor in his eyes and became his attendant.” ~Genesis 39:2-4. Notice that while it was God who did the blessing, it was Joseph who did the work. The Bible doesn’t just say that Joseph had success. It says that he had success in everything he did. Joseph worked. Joseph made decisions. Joseph did what he was supposed to do. He didn’t sit around and wait for God to do it for him. He allowed God to work through him. Eventually, Joseph became the 2nd most powerful man in Egypt. Was it because of God? Certainly. However, I believe that if Joseph had not done his job, the outcome of this story would have been very different.
In Genesis 41, Joseph is shown the meaning of a dream that Pharaoh had. There would be 7 years of agricultural overproduction followed by 7 years of famine. With this knowledge and the authority to do something about it, what did Joseph do? Some of us, if we were put in the same situation, would pray and ask God to provide for us without realizing that He already had. God is the one who gave Joseph the knowledge about the famine and put him in a position with the authority to act. Joseph didn’t sit around and wait for God to do something that God was expecting Joseph to do. God did His part. Now it was Joseph’s time to do his part. Joseph mobilized the entire country and saved part of the overage in agriculture. Then when the famine came, Egypt not only had enough food to provide for its own people, but people from all over the region came to get food. In the end, God’s plan was accomplished. Joseph was reunited with his family and not only Egypt, but people from all over the region, including the future nation of Israel, survived. Who gets the credit for this? God. Who did the work? Joseph.
There is also the story of Esther. Esther was a jewish girl who happened to be chosen to be the queen of Persia even though she was not Persian. During her time as queen, it came to her attention through her uncle Mordecai that there was a plot to kill all of the Jews. That would have meant that Esther and her family as well as thousands of Jews would have been killed. Did Esther pray that God would intervene and stop the plot? No. Mordecai told her “Who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?” In other words, God may have placed you in a position to be able to do something about this. Did they seek God’s help? They certainly did. They fasted and prayed for three days asking for God’s favor and wisdom for Esther. God placed Esther in a position to do something. Esther recognized that God had placed her there in order to do something. She didn’t wait for God to do something. She went before the king, even though it could have meant her death just to approach him without being called first. She stopped the slaughter of the Jews and the man who came up with the plot was killed instead.
Too often we look for a miracle because we don’t want to do the work. I like what a well-known speaker said recently. “Miracles don’t produce maturity”. Often, the miracle is that we are in a position to handle the situation in the first place. Consider Joseph again. He was sold as a slave and yet became the 2nd most powerful man in Egypt. A miracle? I think so. Esther was a Jew who was chosen to be the queen of a foreign nation. The miracle was that she was even considered for the position, much less that she was chosen. I believe that sometimes, we rely on God for things that He expects us to do. We pray over the kind of breakfast cereal God wants us to eat that morning. We pray and ask God to make us a great musician without spending time practicing. We ask God to handle that situation at work that He has placed us in a position to handle. I don’t want to give the impression that God is distant and that we don’t need to rely on Him even for everyday things sometimes. But sometimes what we need is wisdom to handle the situation, not God’s intervention to handle it for us.
Where has God placed you? You may be a Joseph who has been put in a position of power and leadership in spite of yourself and your situation. You may be like Esther, who recognized that she had been placed in a position of authority just so she could affect the lives of those around her. What is God expecting you to do?