Travelling Light in the Spirit of God
Don’t think you have to put on a fund-raising campaign before you start. You don’t need a lot of equipment. You are the equipment, and all you need to keep that going is three meals a day. Travel light.
~Matthew 10:9-10 (Msg [italics in original]).
God equips the called. It is right that God also calls the equipped, but in essence Jesus is encouraging us, first and foremost, to keep it simple in the above few verses.
Willing to Go? Like… Now?
Sometimes we think of ‘going’ as that sort of endeavor that sees us leaving the shores of home to minister in some foreign region. Sure, it means that but it also means a whole lot more besides that.
We get the call to ‘go’ every day. Down the street at the supermarket, for instance. We also hear the discernible voice of God – in many different ways; hardly ever audibly – to ‘go’ and help seasonal ventures continue or get off the ground. We enter and then we leave, thanked for a job well done.
The main thing is willingness; if we hesitate by readying ourselves even more, putting on supplies we think we’ll need, we may just miss our opportunity to serve right now with exactly what we have on us.
“By the Power Vested in Me”
We hardly ever reconcile the power of the Spirit to provide what we need, and more, as we venture out in faith. It really boils down to trust. Do we really trust God? Are we going right now without the trepidation that calls a caution to the going? Will that cause us to turn back prematurely? Is indecision to be our curse?
The power vested in God is an unlimited power that speaks well beyond our perception. It thunders above creation paving the way for us mere mortals doing the necessary bidding of God on God’s behalf.
Love is the ‘Equipment’
We are God’s most important equipment and we’re equipped never better than in love, for the minister of the Gospel is a lover of God’s people – all humanity – and hardly anything else is seriously warranted.
Love it is that can see above the visible though transitory thing. Love accepts, commends and encourages, and it is beyond getting hurt, for hurt is about fear. (We may get hurt. But it’s not love that propagates the hurt – it promotes healing.) Love, then, has taken its vows. It has done its preparatory heart work and it now goes – many times without theology degrees – in the name of peace to procure blessings for all in its contact.
So, as we go, going out in love, we find that God adds to us those things of true need, and God does it just in time. We can trust God for that. We will be found praising God one day for these very matters that have come to pass.
One final word… we just be sure we are called to this thing we’re about to plunge ourselves into. Only our hearts can confirm such a thing.
Copyright (c) 2010 S. J. Wickham.
Muhammad Aqib