Initiative or Obedience

With the "double whammy" of school starting and their cousins returning to USA/Australia, I hope it wouldn't be too much of a culture shock for R1 & R2. We got them to do some homework today to try to get their minds off the last few weeks of fun and games. On my end, it also means getting back to the daily rhythm of work, family, QT (Quiet Time with the Lord) and training - with work and family to juggle, there is simply no room for procastination when it comes to QT and triathlon training. I either jump into it, or the day just flies away somehow.


So let's jump straight into Genesis chapters 12-18 (which is 2 days in my chronological bible reading plan from http://www.bibleinayear.org/). This is a very interesting passage about how God called Abram to be Abraham (i.e. "father of many", Genesis 17:5) , and how the ancestors of the Jews and the Arabic nations (i.e. Isaac and Ishmael respectively) came about. As I read these chapters, I am reminded of the very real issue of balancing initiative versus obedience - i.e. just where is the balance between using our initiative (i.e using the faculties of our minds that the Lord blessed us with) and waiting/obeying upon Him.

There are at least 3 examples in these chapters that speak of the danger of "running before the Lord":

1. Chapter 12 - Abraham (then Abram) travelled to Egypt to escape the famine in Canaan. God told Abram to go to Canaan, and to his credit he went. But when there was a famine in the land, verse 10 seems to suggest that Abraham took the initiative to go to Egypt - there is no record of God telling Abraham to go there. Abraham even went as far as to tell his wife to pretend to be his sister, so that the Egyptians would not kill him to take her away from him. This sounds very much to me like a hare-brained idea that progressively got worst as Abraham veered away from God's will for him to travel to and live in Canaan. In this case, God protected Abraham and blessed him despite his mis-steps, but it must have been a stressful time for Abraham, Sarah and even the Egyptians (who were struck with plague thanks to Abraham's lies).
2. Chapter 13 - Lot chooses to stay near Sodom. There soon came a time when Abraham and Lot's possessions got so big that they could not stay together. Abraham asked Lot (his nephew) to pick where he wanted to live, and Lot "lifted his eyes and saw all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere" (Genesis 13:10). He used his initiative and choose the best land for his flocks, and pitched his tent near Sodom, even though "the men of Sodom were exceedingly wicked and sinful against the LORD" (Genesis 13:13). Well, we all know what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah, and Lot lost everything when God destroyed that area.
3. Chapter 16 - Sarah (then Sarai), Abraham's wife, asked him to sleep with her maid (Hagar) so that they may have an heir. God had promised Abraham that He would give the land to Abraham's descendants (Genesis 12:7), but 10 years later, Abraham and Sarah was still childless. I can appreciate that in their eagerness to see God's promise fulfilled, they decided to take their own intiative and have an heir through Hagar the maid. Seems the logical thing to do right? God has promised to bless their descendants, but they were still unable to conceive and getting past child-bearing age, so maybe God wants them to conceive through other means? They didn't exactly have IVF then, so they decided to do the next best thing, which apparently was not as much a taboo then as it is now. Turns out this was not quite how God wanted to create the Israelite nation, so instead Abramham fathered Ishmael, the ancestor of the Abrabic nations - the very same nations that are in so much conflict with the nation of Israel (offspring of Isaac, Abraham and Sarah's son) even until today.

This is something that I struggle with just about constantly. When do I take initiative and when do I be still and wait upon Him? E.g. do I apply for other roles/jobs, so do I wait upon Him? I have heard of many testimonials of a good job or promotion landing on the laps of Christians. Am I running ahead of Him by trying to get back into the job market? On the other hand, God has given us our minds and expect us to renew our minds as part of His miracle of Savation. So surely He would want us to use our minds rather than to always just sit and wait?

Perhaps what I need to do is to (1) always check my intentions (i.e. why am I even looking around for another role/job to begin with? Is this for selfish reasons or is this in line with His purpose for me at work?), and (2) remember that He is always in charge (despite our occasional follies). "Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the LORD's purpose that prevails." (Proverbs 19:21, NIV)

PRAISE GOD!