God's Initiative ... Not Ours

Extracted from Henry Blackaby's "Chosen to be God's Prophet"

The common people of this generation are not looking for professional religionists to find real answers. Professional religionists often are what turn the common person away from God. People want a deep, abiding, and real relationship with God. Yet on our own, within that relationship, every one of us can have down times and even question our calls. None of us will, at times, be immune from looking over our lives and questioning why nothing seems to be happening. We can become very self-centred. But when God chooses someone, He Himself will affirm the person before the eyes of all the people.

Would you rather try to endorse your own ministry before people or would you rather have God endorse and affirm you? You do not confirm your ministry, God does! If He does not, you are in trouble. You can launch a public-relations campaign so you will be more acceptable. However, seeking acceptance from the world is of no use to God. You do not have to announce you are going to have a big building program and then blame the people if it does not work. If God wants a building program, it will work. If you start something and it does not seem to go well, consider carefully that God, on purpose, may not be authenticating what you told the people - because it did not come from Him, but from your own head. You may have wanted to do something outstanding for God and forgot that God does not want that. He wants you to be available for Him, and more important, to be obedient to Him. God is looking for a person in whom He can entrust His leadership. They key is not what a person can do, but what God will do in and through a person's life.

We will not be looking so much at Samuel as at the God who called Samuel. We will examine what God does in a time of crisis. It is critical to understand that the time of Samuel's calling fell during the worst era in Israel's history. Four hundred years of the judges had brought them to this time. Sadly, it was a time very similar to our own as we also see what the Scripture says: "Everyone did what was right in his own eyes" (Judg. 21:25).

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A major part of the tragedy of this four-hundred-year period is that the leaders of the people of God never recognised that they were in a deep problem. They never recognized that they themselves were the problem. Godless thinking, especially by the leaders, out the people into four hundred years of spiritual bondage.

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