Walking While The World Burns

While enduring the crucifixion of my “doing,” I cried out to the Lord, “Shall I walk with You while the world burns?”

Just because we observe a need, doesn’t mean that the Lord is calling us to fulfill it. I have learned the hard and humiliating lesson of seeing a need in the church and assuming that the Lord expected me to meet that need, when indeed He did not. We are not called to meet needs, we are called to know Christ, and the sooner we learn that lesson, the better. Knowing Christ far surpasses anything we may ever do for Him. 

To be sure, Christ will use us to meet certain needs in His Body, but it will be the simple outflow of His abiding presence within us as we focus on growing in knowledge and understanding of Him. We will be tempted to take up platforms, we will be encouraged to take up causes, we will be convinced that we are abiding in Christ, when really, we are simply abiding in Christ-like things and activities. We are very good at convincing ourselves that the bricks we hold in our hands are the living stones that build the Lord’s temple. 

I, too, have been a victim of my good ideas in Jesus’ name. Of pursuing noble causes and following the dangling carrot of meeting never-ending needs. Of busying myself, rather than allowing myself to be broken. Of building with bricks, instead of simply walking with the Lord. It has been a long and arduous route to understanding that the “good works prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” are the works of the Lord Who dwells within us. The only way to walk in those works, is to walk with the Lord. 

So if the Lord says walk, we walk. Even while the world burns.

(John 6:28,29 AMP) Then they asked Him, “What are we to do, so that we may habitually be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered, “This is the work of God: that you believe [adhere to, trust in, rely on, and have faith] in the One whom He has sent.”

(Matt 7:21-33) Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you workers of lawlessness!’

(Matt 22:37-39) Jesus replied: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.