STOP doing BIG THINGS for God.

I am a dreamer. I love to think up crazy, impossible, wild goals or adventures with people I am around. Many dreams come and go that often don’t seem too far out of the realm of possibility and they get me excited for what could maybe become my future reality. In being in constant community on the race, the conversation of the future seems to arise more than it may to the average person. Here I come across a phrase that has come out of my mouth countless times before, but has begun to sit poorly with me when I hear it. 

Phrases that carry a tone similar to:

“I want to do big things for the Kingdom”
“I just pray that the Lord uses me for big things in my life”
“I am scared I won’t do anything big with my life”

I do believe that the majority of people I hear this from have a genuine heart posture. We can easily want to do ‘big things’ simply for doing sake though. Possibly, this can be out of fear of not amounting, or desiring to be a ‘good christian’ to those taking on unthinkable things for the kingdom. Some people have done really amazing things that have brought revivals or gone into unreached people groups, and those are big. I am not discounting the works of those who have come before myself that lived as leaders, evangelists, and kingdom bringers in their lifetimes. They were, and still are today, very necessary in the body and their lives encourage my pursuit.

Through all the accolades of Christians and stories that I’ve read, one thing about each monumental person of faith stands out…their obedience to their call. Obedience is our faith with feet. Because our God is exactly who He says He is, we move, we obey, we go wherever. May we all know that when we ask for more faith it comes in a form of more surrender, and with surrender, God commands more obedience. We surrender our identities, strip down our pride, walk in obscurity, desire solely His kingdom to come, His will to be done, and for Him to receive all glory. We go because we have become His beloved.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes in regard to obedience of the believer, saying:

“Only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes.” 

He continues, 

“The truth is that so long as we hold both sides of the proposition together they contain nothing inconsistent with right belief, but as soon as one is divorced from the other, it is bound to prove a stumbling block. “Only those who believe obey” is what we say to that part of a believer’s soul which obeys, and “only those who obey believe” is what we say to that part of the soul of the obedient which believes. If the first half of the proposition stands alone, the believer is exposed to the danger of cheap grace, which is another word for damnation. If the second half stands alone, the believer is exposed to the danger of salvation through works, which is also another word for damnation.”

With pursuit of human praise and a lack of laid down lives, we cannot do big things for the Kingdom of God. We deceive ourselves thinking we are building His kingdom while it takes on the hideous form of creating a kingdom of our self. The Lord was showing me the kingdom that I had built. An illegitimate kingdom, one with two kings. He said to me, “Don’t paint your self built kingdom with the blood shed by the King on Calvary.” How much of our lives are built upon self and then, because we are ‘Christians’, we find some sad way of trying to give Him glory, treating Him as an afterthought?

Let your obedience be the ‘big thing’ for our Father. That obedience might lead you to be a neighbor that shares Jesus with those near your home and ushers you out of your way to bring His kingdom in your area. Also, that same obedience might prompt you to move you and your family overseas to the middle of somewhere that is unsafe to be a Christian openly. Obedience is obedience and we need to find in ourselves if we are willing to trust and obey for any step or leap He brings us into. Your obedience might look like a small laid down life to your community, but let your big obedience sometimes look like small movements in life…none of it matters to man, only to God. Obedience is the biggest thing we can do in the kingdom of God. 

14 What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? 17 So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. 18 But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. (James 2)