momentum

Right initiative

Twelve hours. That was all the time I had to make up my mind to begin on a job I had already accepted. The issue was whether it was the right job for me. For instruction, I searched within me for what the great icons did at their own critical junctures. That journey of discovery showed a common trait among them.

David showed up when the great Samuel acting on divine instruction requested that he should be called in from the field where he was tending sheep. Not a great job considering that all his brothers needn’t be summoned from the field. It seems as if he was doing a task nobody wanted. Not only did David observe that his brothers’ abandonment of the family business (probably to hired hands) is not good he took action by staying behind.

Another set of brothers behaved normally but Joseph considered their lifestyle unacceptable and reported the same to their Dad. He had a different mindset but didn’t stop at that. So real was his different set of values and way of seeing the world to him that he acted based on it. When that didn’t pay off, since it got him into trouble which led to his enslavement, he should have changed his approach to life. Not Joseph, he went ahead to gladly take on steward roles as a slave and later prisoner-slave.

Most times we don’t choose what happens to us but Daniel like any other human being had the freedom to respond to his situation. He purposed in himself that the God of Israel is still God even in Babylon. That belief made him to take an action: refuse to eat idol food. He went ahead to take on various positions in the system of his day. He was special adviser to the government, top bureaucrat, chief analyst and an astounding statesman.

Each of their stories began when they acted in their own context. It didn’t matter what that context was – prosperity, bad job, sickness or happiness. Their histories began when God saw a reaction from within them to what was around them. They reflected what was inside by taking a right initiative in response to how they see and think. So, think all you will (and that’s important) but nothing changes until you make a move.

Maybe it’s not the right job for me but it gives me a context to act. Its what I do after that will count.


U 2
The same goes for you. What you do after this invitation I offer. On behalf of the Lord Jesus Christ, God’s son to whom he has given all that exists, I invite you to receive God’s gift of freedom to live to the full. That ONLY happens when you live in conscious relationship with Jesus – the giver of life. Start by saying, “I receive you, Jesus.”

posted by momentum @ 10:52 AM