Week 13: John 12:26

"If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him."

John 12:26

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE!  A little late I know...but Christ is still risen, so technically every day is Easter!  I hope you all had a blessed time moving on the promise from last week.  I want to take a quick moment before I get into the new promise to remind everyone of the old promises.  Not trying to be a jerk or anything...it's more of a reminder because I have really struggled with it.  The point of moving on these promises is so that it makes changes in us permanently.

I realized this a few weeks ago, but I have not been doing very well at abiding in Christ the way I did when those were the promises we were moving on.  So just a friendly reminder...don't stop moving on the old promises!  Keep abiding, keep humbling, keep meditating, keep finding people to pray with.

Now on to the new promise!  I read a book a few years ago called Experiencing God by Henry and Richard Blackaby.  The book completely changed my life...I would highly suggest giving it a read if you haven't yet. 

One of the things they talked about in the book was how we approach going about God's work in our lives.  So many people, and I am one of them, constantly pray that God send them a task.  The Blackabys offered a new way to look at it, and John 12:26 mimics that.  Instead of praying that God send a laundry list of tasks for us to accomplish, we should instead pray that He reveal where He is already working in our lives.

This isn't to say that God doesn't or won't give us to-do lists.  I'm not suggesting that God doesn't give us specific tasks and ask us to follow Him to go accomplish what He has set out to do.  That's the first part of Jesus' promise here, "If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me."  Many times we miss the second part though, and I believe that is what the Blackabys were trying to point out.  "where I am, there My servant will be also."  So it's not just about being specifically sent out by God.  Every single day we wake up and put our feet to the ground, God is sending us out.  When we don't have something specific from Him it doesn't mean we get the day off from being a Christian.

God is going to use YOU!  That is what this promise is all about.  God wants you to follow Him.  Jesus is asking you to be where He is.  If He's not telling you to go somewhere, then ask Him where He is currently working in your life.  There may be a co-worker whose heart He has been "tenderizing" to receive the Gospel.  If you're waiting for Jesus to lead you somewhere else, you'll miss the fact that He's working right in front of you.

So focus on serving Jesus this week.  Listen to Him.  If He tells you to follow Him somewhere, then go!  MOVE!  If He tells you to sit still and rest in Him, then stay!  DON'T MOVE!  If He doesn't tell you to move or stay, then ask Him where He is currently moving in your life.  Ask Him to show you where He is and get there.

When you do, He promises that His Father, our Father, will honor us!  It doesn't get better than that!  Ok, enough reading...get moving!