Do

There is a critical moment when the Lord speaks to us and we respond to His message.  Either we do what He tells us to do or we don't and our reaction is critical to a wide-ranging spectrum or circumstances rooted in real time.  The Hebrews had an evening to decide what they were going to do about the command to enter the Promised Land and they choose to balk at it.  Paul in a split second, as he stood before Festus the Roman governor, demanded that his case be heard before the court in Rome, knowing already that the Lord wanted him in Rome.  It goes the other way also.  When the Lord demands we stop doing something, our decision there can have dramatic and long lasting ramifications.  Was there not a point when the Lord's word warned David the King to stop gazing at Bathsheba as she was bathing and even later to not send for her, knowing full well she was married?  Did Job's friends never feel a  tinge of guilt as they berated Job for imagined sins when they were sent to him only to comfort him?  There is a parenthesis of time when we can be God's or not.  Imagine what could have been if the great city of Nineveh had maintained its allegiance to God when Jonah proclaimed the coming judgment.  There might have been two centers of outreach to the world through which the Lord's word would have been declared.  You have critical moments when what you do will make all the difference in how God is perceived and received by those about you.  Do not ask God to help you do what He has directed.  He won't.  You must act in the strength He has already given you.  A plant must break through the ground for the stem to be strong enough to survive the forces it will face as it extends itself.  A butterfly will only have wings of sufficient strength if it tears through the cocoon on its own.  You are strong enough to do what the Spirit has told you to do.  For your own sake and for the good of countless others, you must do it.

Hear, O Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your fathers, promised you.  Deuteronomy 6: 3 NIV