Responsibilities

Dear Worshipers,

We all have responsibilities. To our families, our spouses, our co-workers, our friends. To the gas and electric companies, our cell phone providers, our mortgages holders. To our commitments, our faith, our LORD. These responsibilities help shape our lives, giving us purpose, direction and inspiration. But they can also tie us down if we are not careful.

I recently heard one of our Alliance missionaries from Guinea recently comment about responsibilities. She said, in effect, God does not want us to be doing twenty things for Him because they are all good things. We need to pray and seek God's will about what he wants us to do, and then do those things. Sometimes we commit to too many good things and we are then constrained from doing the thing God puts on our hearts.

I have learned so many life lessons from my boys over the years. One comes to bear on this principal. They have responsibilities in the daily routine of our family. One of them is setting the table. One day one of them volunteered to do his brother's part. We were blessed to see that servanthood. A couple moments later he realized that doing that act of service was going to prohibit his doing something else he wanted to do. He found himself in a quandary and tried to wiggle out of his responsibility. We held him to it seizing that teachable moment to show him that you need to carefully consider the commitments you make. It was a lesson in self-denial as well, but my mind this was secondary.

How often do we as Christians to the same thing? Committing ourselves to a good cause before really considering the cost, or the Lord's will in it? Too often I fear. This mistake keeps us from being free to respond to the Lord. Some things are brief commitments, others are patterns of living that dominate our lives. Let us do everything we can to fulfill our responsibilities, and then carefully consider any future ones.

In that careful consideration, be certain not to be paralyzed from activity. Remember, you have made an eternal commitment to the Lord. To use the words of a song you should affirm, "I'm abandoned to the Captain of the mighty host of heaven, and I pledge Him my allegiance 'til the earth beholds His Kingdom." This is a shutting out of every other consideration, to keep yourself before God in this one thing, your utmost for His Highest.

Are you abandoned, or bound up? It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. (Galatians 5:1) Be free. Free in your abandon to Christ

In Christ,

Pastor Scott