Accomplishing Everything, Doing Nothing

Did you ever notice that God has a way of doing things that makes you feel completely helpless and dumb? It seems that whenever I look at my life and think about the way that things should or could work out, God does it completely different. Then, when I look back at the situation, I realize how elegant God's solution was, and how ham-handed mine was.

I think so many times I try to "help" God. He will whisper a secret about something that he is going to do to my heart, and then I will try to do everything that I can to make it happen - usually mucking it up as badly as Abraham with the whole Ishmael situation. I guess I feel that I have to "earn" His greatness, or repay Him in some way. I know, I'm messed up.

Take for example this last week. God spoke to my heart and told me that He was going to do something great in my life that week. I thought "Cool, well, if you are going to do that, I will fast to grow closer to You." Sounds like a good idea, right? I started fasting, and about midday, God spoke to my heart again and said: "You don't have to do this."

I answered "What?"

He said "You don't have to do this. This week is about me showing my greatness, not about you earning it." I was completely humbled, because, I once again found myself trying to make myself worthy of His grace - thinking I could somehow become good enough to earn His favor. He was reminding me that I couldn't. I stopped fasting, because I had the wrong motives and just said: "God, I believe you."

The week ended with my business picking up two big new accounts, $10,000 from an unexpected source and someone interested in one of the houses that I have had on the market for over a year. All without me doing anything.