Final part of a three-part series. Read part one & part two.
There’s nothing more automatic than driving home from a familiar location. You know all the turns to make as well as the shortcuts that even Google Maps doesn’t know. But when you venture to a place you have never been before, you are helpless without directions. You ever turn down the music so you can concentrate on what the GPS is saying to you?! So you can see the turn you have to make coming up? That’s what you call true focus and dependency!
Often times the greatest hindrance of being used by God is familiarity. When we become familiar with Him and how He works, we inadvertently put Him in a box. We mistake the same outcomes and formulas with a move of God. Before we know it, we know how to minister and be “used by God” apart from God Himself. We start valuing performance rather than creating space for Him to move as He pleases. Soon being used by God is like driving home from a familiar location.
Our greatest ministry will always flow out of a deep intimacy with Christ. Click To Tweet
However, did you know that most car accidents happen within a 25 mile radius of people’s homes? In the same way, when we operate out of familiarity, we are headed for trouble. Our greatest ministry will always flow out of a deep intimacy with Christ. Yet familiarity is counterfeit intimacy. Familiarity and putting God in a box is the quickest way to turn a movement of God into a monument. It’s been said that every revival was birthed by God, but every revival was killed by man. I’m not against growing in your abilities and confidence. I’m not against wisdom and discernment. But whenever we say this is the only way (whichever “way” that may be), we have put a limit on an infinite God.
Familiarity is counterfeit intimacy. Click To Tweet
God, stretch us beyond what we know and what we have experienced. We don’t want to become so familiar, that we are no longer dependent on you. Make us sensitive to Your leading and courageous enough to do what You say do! God use us like never before.
Amen.