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There are certain times during your life in the Spirit that you will not be able to move forward in a dynamic way unless you ask yourself some critical questions. Now, Sisters, this isn’t news to anyone that has been with us a while. Critical questions are those of which the answers advance you forward in the faith. They position you to tap into new blessings of abundance and spiritual growth. The reason why critical questions are so important is because they signal the heavens that you are ready for new answers and greater revelation, and this is an incredibly good place to be.
One of the best critical questions that any of us can ask is “What is God up to in my life?” This is a question that we should ask ourselves fairly regularly, because God has a continual desire to do something extraordinarily good in our lives, and He invites us to pursue Him preeminently and persistently for what exactly it is. In Matthew 7:7-8(NKJV), Jesus Christ has given us a precedent for the kind of persistence we ought to have. He said “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.” This is a very important verse for us. It is like a locomotive that carries us forward, but here’s something that we need to know about this locomotive, it needs two primary things to run, fuel and tracks.
This verse makes it very plain that God is willing to open up some things to us. Whether it is revelation, blessings, opportunities, or promotions; in Matthew 7:7-8, Jesus Christ makes it very clear that we, you and I, are the ones with the responsibility of doing the asking, seeking, and knocking. This is the fuel.
It is important to let this marinate with you a bit, because you really do have to identify whether or not you are a person that is ready to spiritually move forward, because if you are, you’ll have to do so on God’s terms; not your own.
Believe it or not, some people do not want to move forward, spiritually or in any other respect. They are not at all interested in progress. They are not concerned with achieving any goals and would like things to remain as they are. Maybe it is because they are too fearful to hope for more, or they have been very disappointed by someone or something in the past. Whatever the issue is, they have convinced themselves to be content with not having a real vision for the future. If you have an outlook like this one, and you want things to go back to simpler times, when you didn’t feel the pressure to keep up; you have only two choices, either be left behind or make up your mind to move forward.
In the heavens, nothing is at a standstill. There is constant and continual activity. Jesus Christ told us in Matthew 6:10 (NKJV) to pray to Heavenly Father and ask, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” God intends for things in the earth to mimic what is going on in heaven. There can be no mistake about this. For the Christian, this means that God wants to bring new and wondrous spiritual blessings into our lives, but we’re going to have to release the hold we’ve had on some of those old ways. We’ve got to let go of things that we’ve clung to in the past, and as you might imagine, one of the things that we’ll have to release is complacency.
For the Christian, complacency is not an option. It is a condition that exists when we are too satisfied and comfortable to motivate ourselves to seek higher heights. It is what happens when we become too consumed with the cares of this world, and we neglect to ask, seek, and knock until we are confident that we know God’s vision for our lives.
Complacency is a lack of hunger to know God’s Will. It causes us to miss the mark and we don’t even know it, and it can also become a curse that the enemy tries to land on the people of God. Deuteronomy 28:29 (NLT) tells us, “You will grope around in broad daylight like a blind person groping in the darkness, but you will not find your way. You will be oppressed and robbed continually, and no one will come to save you.” Think about a person that has 20/20 eyesight, but is groping around in the plain of day like someone that is blind. They have the ability to see, but behaves as if they do not. They’re grabbing at anything because they don’t have a sense of purpose or destiny. This is what complacency can do to someone that isn’t connecting with God’s vision.
As Christian people, we receive our vision from God. It comes baked in our DNA. This is the tracks of the locomotive verse that Jesus Christ taught us in Matthew 7:7-8. God wants to drive us out of complacency so that we stay continually invigorated in the Spirit. The way that He does this is by giving us a vision for our lives. God has excellent plans for us, and we need to believe it with every fiber of our beings. We will often attempt to muster faith for many things, but unless we have faith in this one central thing, we miss out.
Proverbs 29:18 (KJV) tells us, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” You and I have the responsibility to ask, seek, and knock. The critical question is what should we be asking, seeking, and knocking about? The answer is God’s vision, of course. He predestined us before the foundation of the world. He knows exactly what we ought to be doing in order to fulfil our purpose and be as happy as He desires us to be. So there can be no question about it, you and I must establish a desire to execute God’s vision in our lives. If we’re not interested in what God is doing, we’re like people stumbling around in the dark.
The way to step out of complacency is to step into what Heavenly Father has going on. Don’t miss this uber important part of your faith. This is the thing that keeps us from getting left back. It keeps us fresh and in pace with our purpose. The train will not leave the station without this desire and hunger in our hearts and minds.
As we look around with sometimes confusion and angst about what we see happening, some of us feel pressure and fear, because everything seems to be moving so fast. We need to remember that we have the privilege to pray to an all-powerful, all-knowing, Creator of All, Infinitely Holy, Limitless God. There is no blessing He cannot extend, nothing He cannot do. So as His people, we should never want to remain stagnant or go back to the past, because our Heavenly Father is doing so many amazing things for us and in us today. If you don’t see it; ask, seek, and knock until you do.■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
” Don’t Forget This Area of Your Faith” written by Reverend Fran Mack, edited by Kim Times for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2016. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! SMS is dedicated to inspiring and encouraging Christian Women through the Word of God.
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