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I Think I want that Thingamabob Part 2
Power your Plan
In the last blog we discussed self-control. There is power in your self-control even though when we first start controlling our lives it feels like we are powerless. Matthew 5:37 tells us that anything other than self-control is from the devil. Self-control is born from being able to say “yes” when appropriate and “no” when that is appropriate. We must learn to control the impulses we have, so when God speaks to us revealing our direction, we are not controlled by the world. We must be committed to following Jesus, steadfast at the cause and patient when it looks so far away. The power that sets your self-control on fire for that thingamabob depends highly on your planning skills. A goal is one thing but the plan can make or break a goal. Our God is not just about us being there He is about how we get there as well.
Picture your desire (God’s will for you) as a mansion on a hill. God has given you a picture of what that looks like. For me, it is the Hope Devoted, Life Skills Center for Women. For you, it could be the book He wants you to write, a house big enough to be hospitable, a ministry at your church or whatever thingamabob God wants you to have. Picture that at the top of the hill with nothing but trees between you and it. The only way there is a dirt road designed just for you. You get on your ATV and go praying for a safe journey. The Almighty has empowered you with His tenacious voltage (ATV) and He is lighting your way with it. As you continue you realize the road behind you has been paved. You are making it easier for others to follow the same road. What you cannot see, for the trees, is the monstrous ditches coming up on both sides of your dirt road, the absence of filling stations and the washouts. Your ATV has enough power to get through each of these but you must hold onto it.
Your Plan is your Power
The Almighty’s tenacious voltage (ATV) is your power to get to your mansion. His vision for you is what you are striving for. It is that mansion on the top of the hill you want bad. For you to reach that mansion you MUST hold fast to the ATV. There are going to be seasons of cold and seasons of hot while you are driving on the dirt road. Hold fast, for you will reap the benefits if you do not give up.
To hold fast to the ATV you must know your God. His voltage can only be felt when you are in constant contact with Him. If you do not know Him you will not feel His voltage. His voltage can be found in the Word of God. You read it. You know it. You ponder it. You understand it. You do it. You feel it. That is the order in which the voltage travels. You have this Powerful generator inside you to use but it needs fuel. The Word of God is your fuel for this generator. The less time you tap into this filling station the shorter the distance you will be able to travel. The more you more you fill the further you can go. This picture is the same for every Christian and the fuel source is also the same. Let us plan our travel down this dirty road.
Plan Your Ditch Dwelling
You are driving on the dirt road comfortably with no obstacles. You can see your desire at the top of the hill but you are still miles away. You know if you hold fast to your ATV you can make it in no time. You hit a pot hole in the road, lose control and fall straight into the ditch. You try to push your ATV up the side of the ditch but don’t have enough strength. You decide to get onto your ATV and drive through the ditch. The weeds, the soupy water and the mud are slowing you down to a snail’s pace. What a nightmare? There are snakes, frogs, cattails, green goo and scanky smelling fogs along the way. You are deep in the valley.
Did your plan include ditch dwelling? There is a reason you are in the ditch. We ditch dwell to build strength. The mansion we have been given by God has to be built by us. It has to be defended by us. The Israelites spent forty years wondering in the dessert until the second generation built up enough strength to do what God has told them to do. When it was time to go into their promised land God told Joshua three times in Joshua 1:1-9 to be strong and have courage. God will keep us in the ditch until we build the character traits He needs us to have to be able to build our ministry and defend the position we have in our ministry. Our plan for what will happen while ditch dwelling has to be implemented while on the road because our overall plan is hard to see when we are in the ditch. Planning to gain enough strength to hang on to the ATV tightly while in the ditch will ensure we exit from the ditch each time.
Plan the Power Loss
You have finally exited the ditch. Your strength is gaining so maybe the next ditch won’t be so deep or so long. The road is being paved again behind you and all is well in your world. You lose sight of it. Where did it go? Your mansion, it’s gone. You have lost the power needed to stay on the road. You put your foot on the brake to stop. You look around. There are no filling stations anywhere. The filling stations are your lifeline to traveling. They consist of Christian teachings, Christian friends, and your self-help books. They are all gone. You are all alone.
If your fuel is from people this will be a rude awakening. The fuel used to power ourselves cannot be people it has to be the Word of God and His revelation for our life. If we rely on people to tell us what to do and how to get to our mansion we will spend much time in the ditch and on the wrong road. God has revealed to us the dirt road that WILL get us to His mansion. The power of the vision God gave us can fade. We will not be able to see it nor tap into it as easily as we could when we first saw it. The long passage of time and ditch dwelling can cause this to happen. If we don’t plan to refuel ourselves with the Word of God we will lose our connection to the constant power source. Staying plugged into the Word of God has to be part of our plan on the road to our mansion.
Plan to Portage
You are out of the ditch and have your mansion in sight again. You put the ATV in drive to travel. You are aware of the ditches and of the chance still remains to run out of gas. You are building strength and keeping fuel in your generator. Then you see it, water over the road. The road is washed out and there is no way for you to continue unless you lift your ATV onto your shoulders to wade through it. The water is rushing so fast at times you have to stand still because moving will push you off the path. Sometimes, it gets higher than your mouth and it takes all your strength to jump up for a breath. You are drowning.
The world is one weight on our shoulders and to lift the will of God up there too is enough to make us feel like we are drowning. Sometimes, the will for God for our lives feels like a burden to us. The dirt road looks good to us compared to this washed out road covered with rushing waters. We compare the burden of carrying the world on our shoulder with carrying God’s plan for us too. There is no comparison. God’s plan for us is self-sufficient. He planned it for us and He will bring it into fruition. He is filling in ditches, revealing the fuel and parting waters for us to get to that mansion. We don’t have to pick up the ATV it is already on the other side waiting for us.
The Power in the Plan
There is no work we can do to get us closer to our mansion before God wants us there. The mansion we see at the top of the hill is the desire God has for our life. It is not our desire or someone else’s desire for us. The Almighty’s tenacious voltage is our power to get there. The road is being paved to our mansion. To pave a road it first has to be made level and graveled. Ditches need to be dug and rest stops with filling stations added. Drains need to be placed in low lying areas to avoid wash outs. The fulfillment of His plan for your life is what paves the road behind us. Others may travel on our paved road for a time but they have their own dirt road to travel, their own ditches to get out of and their own water to wade through on the way to their own mansion. The generator used by us is not the same one used by others. The dirt road we travel is designed specifically for the windy, hilly path to our mansion. It is designed to make sure that by the time we begin building our mansion it is built on a sturdy foundation. The foundation must be on the Rock, Jesus Christ. The path that is being paved must always lead people to Jesus. We are preparing the way to Jesus, for many people, by obeying God’s will for our life.
We need not wonder why God tells us where we are going but doesn’t show us the whole sorted path. Learning to believe Him and trust Him will always put us on the path of teaching others to do the same. If you want that thingamabob, you shall have it.
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I Think I Want that Thingamabob Part 1
Power Your Self-control
I think I might want that thingamabob. I think I deserve that thingamabob. That thingamabob can be anything from money to what money can buy. It can be better money management skills to better character traits. It can be a child to a marriage. That thingamabob is what occupies your mind and your works. It is where you place all your time and your money. How bad do you want this thing? Do you want it bad enough to work for it? Do you want it bad enough to wait for it? Do you want it bad enough to give up something for it? How bad do you want it?
Everyone has desires of grandeur at one time or another. Desires of grandeur is good but we prove ourselves worthy of grandeur by the mundane, by the everyday, by the simplistic works we do. God’s Word tells us, He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much (Luke 16:10). It is our daily mundane desires that get us to the grand desires. Without the mundane grand is not grand. There are those who are born into grand who never develop the skills for the mundane until they become homeless. There are those who are homeless who never develop the skills for the grand until they win the lottery. These folks may never develop the skills. It might be ingrained in us to be rich or it might be ingrained in us to be poor. Either way there are thingamabobs we want and if we are to get them we need to learn to go after them. There are two skills we definitely need if we are to acquire that thing and we will need two blogs to cover them. The first is self-control and the second is the plan. Both of these take commitment, steadfastness and patience.
Your Self-Control is Your Power
Our powerlessness comes from lacking self-control. Most of us are not wired for self-control. Our soul is corrupt unless we are conforming to the will of God. We are saved by God to do His good works and that is what we should control ourselves in doing. So, let’s just say for the sake of this blog that you are going after the will of God and not your own will because God will frustrate you on every turn if you are not. Nothing I say will make sense to you or work for you if God is against you. We are going to want that thingamabob for Jesus and His people.
I like to think of my power as electricity going from house to house. Our electrical power comes from Niagara Falls. One of the great wonders from God. Power goes from God to each of us like the electrical wires from Niagara Falls go to each house. Each one of us is an independent receiver of power in the whole from the Power House. Our body is wired with our individual desires from the Power House that feed the Body of Christ who is fed by Jesus which in turn feeds our body with new power again. We need to control this power lest our bill get to high.
Control Your Commitment
No matter what we want we must commit to having it. We are wired with God’s desires for us but He does not make our feet move. God has placed many desires in our heart. To have them we must commit all of our ways to the Lord and trust Him for Him to bring them to pass (Psalm 37:5). Wiring our self-control persistently toward this end will result in having it. If we committed to serving Jesus what we do will come to pass. This is a twofold process for us. We need commit to the works of Jesus and we need to commit our control to the works of Jesus. You know exactly what I am talking about. One day we want to lose control and serve self. Should we not control our commitment to Jesus it will commit to self. Then we will have to go through the process of rewiring it to commit to Jesus again. If this happens we need to be steadfast at rewiring quickly back to self-control.
Control Your Steadfastness
Controlling our steadfastness is not easy. We want to run all over the place and feed every house with our power. We need to control what we are setting our face too. There are good works and there are God works. Anyone can do good works but can everyone be steadfast at doing God works. If we could we would all be at the works of God rather than the works of self. It takes an infusion of power from the Power house Himself to be steadfast. Sometimes just touching the Wire will give us enough of a jolt to go back to being steadfast on our route but sometimes we need to be surrounded by an electrically charged fence to stay on path. Then, selfishly, we feel like we are imprisoned by this thing. It is sucking the life out of us with no noticeable fruit. The Source comes along and jolts us back to His reality and we control our desire to quit. We rewire our control to stay the course and are patient once again.
Control Your Patience
Along with self-control patience is one of the fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23). As much as we do not want to control ourselves we do not want to be patient with people or God. Controlling our patience means we are conceding to a power higher than ourselves. We are conceding to the timing of God. We are not standing still we are conceding the thing we desire is going to come from God anyway so we might as well wait for Him to bring it about. I have to tell you once you come to this conclusion it is freeing. We do not have to work at this desire we just need to prepare ourselves for when it comes. That does not mean we will not again become impatient because it is a desire from God and He throw electrical bolts at it once in a while to remind us what we are getting ready for. This just shows us how much He loves us. The Power source lives inside us and He is waiting patiently for us to be ready to go. When we are ready to go He allows us to go. Along with this long awaited go are new grander desires so we don’t think we have arrived. We can always do so much more, more than we can even think or desire (Ephesians 3:20).
The Power in Self-Control
If you haven’t received the message yet, here it is – there is more power in self-control than any other place. God teaches us about power by showing us His self-control. Jesus taught us about power through His self-control. He could have called down legends of angels to save Him but He did not (Matthew 26:53). He could have unleashed all manner of miracles but He did not (John 13:31). This same power lives in us and we are expected to tap into it especially when we are working for Jesus. Our work is supposed to draw people to the Father who supplies the Power. If you want that thingamabob you must have self-control in the area of commitment, steadfastness and patience but even that will not work if you do not have a plan. Next week we will look at planning that thingamabob you want.
