Having retired from occupational ministry, looking back, I have so much for which I am extremely grateful to God. Despite my resistance in each stage of my ministry, God was patient with that resistance and remained with me while I finally surrendered my desire to His desire for my life. What He did through me, despite my foolishness, has been almost unbelievable. I feel dumbfounded and yet so privileged that at each stage, He exerted His faith, wisdom, power and truth through me in such a way His kingdom marched forward while I tried to fulfill my assigned position. There is no question in my mind that I did not accomplish what happened by my own strength. I was only a pawn in the hands of God. What a blessing it was to have been a small part of what He purposed to do. I suspect Jesus’ disciples experienced similar feelings as they passed out the loaves and fishes or participated in other God orchestrated deeds.
Nevertheless, I do have a few regrets. There were times I engaged in a few ministry activities I thought Christ would want me to do, but He did not necessarily instruct me to do. There is a fine line between doing what we think He would want us to do and doing what He prompts us to do. When we do what we think God wants us to do, when He has not told us to do it, we use our own strength to accomplish it, which puts our body, mind and emotions under unnecessary stress. When that happened, we presumptuously blame our stress on our ministry or serving.
We are not sure what prompted Judas to betray Jesus. His subsequent suicide may offer a clue as to why he had made that serious mistake that he interpreted to be irreversible. Judas would have been aware Mary had manipulated circumstances that would compel Jesus into turning water into wine. This is what launched Him into ministry. Despite the fact Jesus had repeatedly taught otherwise, all the disciples had the belief Jesus would set up an earthly kingdom. (Acts 1:6) So could it have been Judas thought he too needed to do something similar to what Mary had done and manipulate circumstances so Jesus would be pushed into taking His ministry to the next stage of ruling as King on this earth?
For reasons we can only speculate on, 1 Samuel 15 records how King Saul altered God’s command through Samuel to utterly destroy all the Amalekites had. For some reason, Saul got the idea of offering a praise sacrifice to God was what He wanted him to do. Therefore, Saul saved the best of sheep and oxen to offer as this great sacrifice to God. That is not all that much different from what Judas did. Saul, too, paid dearly for that presumptive act of disobedience. It is still a mystery to me why some who act presumptuously receive greater negative consequences than others who only put unnecessary stress on themselves. But that is part of God’s ways we will not understand until we enter Heaven.
As you consider your life, could it be you may have presumptively acted on what you only imagined God might want you to do? Such a presumption may amount to taking a mission trip, contributing money, protecting someone, or feeling guilty about something without God’s prompting. Your presumptive act may have hindered God from using the related pain to teach or train someone a critical life lesson?
Only by more diligently maintaining a close relationship with Christ can we avoid this mistake. When we are close to Him daily, we can more easily discern His desires for us and avoid the regrets of following our own way.