Getting Ready Time

As pressure hardens carbon into diamonds, so pressure sharpens our spiritual insight and perspective. To put the Kingdom in terms of the election there is always going to be an opposition. When we are being prepared for any Kingdom job we must expect to feel pressure to stop.

This happened to Jesus just after His baptism by John the Baptist. He went out into the desert for forty days to fast, pray, and prepare for His ministry years. As with most of us in similar circumstances Jesus was confronted with alternatives, ways to cheat that were supposed to achieve the same result. Three times He was presented with the lie and three times He pronounced the words “it is written”  with a response appropriate to the lie that was presented.

At the start of a new Kingdom endeavour we can usually experience some sort of opposition, different to Jesus but appropriate to us or the endeavour. I have found by experience that the bigger the potential difference and the closer to Father’s will the project is the harder and more personal the opposition is.

But hang about I am jumping around hoops that really are critical for it takes time to make a diamond out of coal, time and pressure.

Waiting ready or not

Sometimes, quite often it seems we get a hint of what is to come way before we are ready and, in fact, before the project is ready to start. We may think “now that is a good idea” or we might wonder why “someone isn’t doing that”. The reality may be that you have been volunteered but need training, may not be physically ready whether in the personal, financial or equipment sense. It may also be possible that the project ia not ready for what ministry that you see.

Fifteen years ago, some Christians volunteered to help serve and prepare food for a New York City AIDS hospice with a clientele primarily of homosexual men. Since the hospice was involved in the gay rights movement, its administrators were nervous about letting church volunteers inside their doors. They made the expectations clear: you can come and serve, but don't proselytize.

Today, Christians still come and serve food in the hospice. But they also come to help with something else, something that would have been unthinkable 15 years ago: a worship service.

Promise of God

When we really are ready to undertake the project that God has for us then we will be able to face up to the opposition that comes, and it will come, to try to force us to abandon the task. We have Father’s promise that He will never abandon us, if the pressure does get too much and we abandon the task it is because we fail to keep our focus on Him who leads us and supports us in the time of trouble. Thank you Daddy