Esse quam videri: "To be, rather than to appear"

In the course of life, there are individuals who, because they haven’t heard specifically from Jesus regarding what their next steps should be, they automatically make the decision themselves based on where they feel they can make the best impact. 

This principle (if you could call it that) is not only unbiblical, it’s lazy and based solely on results. 

Many times through Scripture, if people had followed this principle of impact, they would have been outside of the timing of God.  For example, let’s consider Jesus Christ.  He gets baptized to fulfill the Scriptures and then the Spirit leads Him where?  The wilderness?  Wait, that makes no sense at all.  You are God manifest in the flesh and have just been baptized.  Go into the harvest and impact your world!  Some of us would have said even more as a way of expressing our lack of understanding at how this could be the will of God. 

God is more concerning about relationship than impact.  In my relationship with my wife (which is supposed to model our relationship with our heavenly Father), what would mean more to my wife?

1. Listening to her desires and then going and getting 12 red roses in a nice vase as a “just because” present?

OR

2. Listen to her desire for flowers and then renting a flower truck to dump 1,693 red roses around her vehicle?

Before you answer which one, think carefully.  Wouldn’t there be more impact if I went with option #2?  I mean, if she likes flowers then “by-golly miss molly” let’s give her some!  Yeah, option 2 may make a bigger “splash”, but it wouldn’t be what she wanted.  Because of our relationship, I find out what she specifically likes and then do my best to fulfill that and more.

Likewise, the Lord may have plans for you that are way beyond what may be thinking.  But if you are not in the right place at the right time, then you may miss it.

Still not convinced?  Look at Acts 8.  Philip the evangelist was seeing great results within the Samaritan community.  Things were going great and he was impacting a lot of people.  Then comes Acts 8 and verse 26:

“Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road-the desert road-that goes from Jerusalem to Gaza.”

Are you noticing a trend here?  People (and Jesus) are either impacting or have the potential of impacting large quantities of people and the Holy Spirit pulls them into another direction.  In this scenario with Philip, he gets pulled into the desert to reach a single man: the Ethiopian eunuch.

As you seek after God for your family, your ministry, your career, your community, or your calling, don’t get sucked into this ridiculous concept of focusing on “impact”.  Have enough faith that God knows what He’s doing and trust His plan for your life.

Servant of a wicked cool God,

Matt Legere