God cares for us more than what we do.
I said this to a few people the other day after hearing that a mutual friend of ours had decided to take a rest from something she’d passionately hoped to accomplish for the Kingdom. Our friend felt she needed to focus on something else and let the vision go, at least for the time being.
Death to the vision, even if temporary, is what happens when we become convinced God wants us to give something up that we thought He wanted us to do—or it’s an instance in that we didn’t succeed in what we’d felt strongly called to do—or when our mission or dream for God is stopped by circumstances beyond our control. This can be devastating and sap life from us. Really, death is the best way to describe it. Often a death to vision happens just before for a resurrection, but sometimes the experience is final, when we are forced to give up with no seeming resurrection sight—only time will tell in some cases.
I’ve experienced seasons in my life when I strived and worked hard to do something I felt God wanted me to do and then have it all come to unfulfilled dreams.
Many years ago, a friend told me: “God is concerned about you more than what you do for Him.” She meant to comfort me because I’d just received a rejection, which was unexpected news from an acquisitions editor—a month after my novel God in Sandals, about Jesus, had been accepted by a highly respected publishing house–I got a call saying they’d changed their minds.
At that moment, hearing my friend’s words that God cared more for me more than about what I did for Him, actually stung. I wanted my work and success for God to be equally important to Him as His love for me. My dashed hopes far outweighed the words of grace she’d given me. Since then I’ve come to appreciate the idea a little more, but I question why unfulfilled dreams are a part of Christian experience at all. And I think I have my answer.
Perhaps God was not the one to bring the disappointing news. Perhaps the decision that was made by the publisher was not what God wanted. I remember, at that time, God had whispered in my heart, that very thought. And that brought me comfort in the midst of pain. I actually felt He told me He felt the pain too.
What if the setbacks or the “death to a vision” is not from Him at all? I have heard too many teachings that we must “lay it all on the altar” and let go and trust God. What happens is that we walk away from it in our hearts and expectations, the opposite of faith.
I know there are times we must wait, but there are times we must rise up and chase after what we want more than before—to take what is ours. I need to stop feeling passive about the dreams God has given me. I’m done accepting defeat. I am finished thinking I’m not qualified to do something, or not good enough to succeed. With that said, I am looking for creative ways to accomplish impossible things that still reside deep within me because God has promised things to me. He does not give us a calling and then take it back. He’s promised as much in His Word—He honors His words to us.
Now, I see God smiling.
God wants us to do great things for Him—especially to do impossible things. Over and over God performs miracles on our behalf. And, our faith is what blesses Him the most, more than whatever it is we actually accomplish. This is true. But God cares more about what we care about and what we want to do for Him than we can imagine. The reason is because He deeply cares for us. He’s crazy about us and wants us to be happy and do things for Him. He’s designed the world to turn and He’s given us the world to possess.
God cares about what we do BECAUSE he cares for us so much.
On the other hand, if we think God cares about what we do in order to please Him—that is, if we are trying to win God’s favor by doing certain things for Him, this is false. God loves us unconditionally and particularly. We cannot do anything to change how much He loves us. So, in that sense, God cares more about us than what we do.
Let me quote Madeleine L’Engle, a very wise, creatively gifted woman who knew God intimately, knew His creative power and took hold of it (from Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith & Art):
“We are all asked to do more than we can do. Every hero and heroine of the Bible does more than he would have thought it possible to do, from Gideon to Esther to Mary. Jacob, one of my favorite characters, certainly wasn’t qualified. He was a liar and a cheat; and yet he was given the extraordinary vision of angels and archangels ascending and descending a ladder which reached from earth to heaven.
“In the first chapter of John’s Gospel, Nathanael is given a glimpse of what Jacob saw, or a promise of it, and he wasn’t qualified either. He was narrow-minded and unimaginative, and when Philip told him that Jesus of Nazareth was the one they sought, his rather cynical response was, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ And yet it was to Nathanael that Jesus promised the vision of angels and archangels ascending and descending upon the Son of man.”
If you think about it, God prefers to use the unqualified; it’s all over the Bible. Jesus chose twelve quite poor, uneducated men, the leaders of whom were fishermen for crying out loud, these were the ones to whom Jesus conferred His Kingdom at the outset. So much depended on them—what qualified them was that Jesus chose them, spent time with them, and He believed in them. Period.
David became a great king, not right away, but his destiny, what he would do for God, unfolded over his lifetime. I think what we need to realize is that one must be brave and humbly and faithfully accept what God puts in us to do. We must not draw back unless God says so (as in the friend I mentioned at the beginning). We must believe God will accomplish anything He wants to do through us, even if it takes a lifetime—and this, this is the faith that moves mountains. It is a decision to believe and act, even if it is a choice as small as a mustard seed, we can do miraculous things because God is with us and believes in us. This has nothing to do with being qualified and everything to do with God’s faithfulness to us—and His delight in us.
What I think is true is that God shares our disappointments and setbacks when our dreams are dashed or thwarted, when hope for our vision dies or darkens. He feels the pain, too. I believe what we do for God greatly matters to Him as much as we matter to Him, because He loves us so much. We are meant to do wonders and share in God’s amazing plans for our world.
I’ve been working on a new author website, although I’m having trouble with getting my domain name “MargaretMontreuil.com” transferred. However, you can view it by clicking on the link above to get to “Author’s Website”… would love to hear from you!