THE OTHER SIDE OF PREPARATION

Leviticus 9:7-10:20; Mark 4:26-5:20; Psalm 37:30-40; Proverbs 10:6-7

“Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu put coals of fire in their incense burners and sprinkled incense over them. In this way, they disobeyed the Lord by burning before him the wrong kind of fire, different than he had commanded.  So fire blazed forth from the Lord’s presence and burned them up, and they died there before the Lord.  Then Moses said to Aaron, “This is what the Lord meant when he said, ‘I will display my holiness through those who come near me.
 I will display my glory before all the people.’”

Aaron remained silent.”

“With a shriek, he screamed, ‘Why are you interfering with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? In the name of God, I beg you, don’t torture me!’ For Jesus had already said to the spirit, ‘Come out of the man, you evil spirit.’ … And the crowd began pleading with Jesus to go away and leave them alone.’”

“The godly offer good counsel; they teach right from wrong.
 They have made God’s law their own, so they will never slip from his path.”

There is, obviously, another side to preparation: we have to be willing to accept and follow wise counsel – to the letter.  The problem with this is seen a lot, especially in church.  Someone gets genuine inspiration, others catch the vision, and things go great for a while.  Then, people start to engraft their own ideas onto God’s (“Let’s just improve things a little bit, Lord.”),… and are shocked when things fall apart.  It is so hard to see when we start to hijack the Spirit’s work for ourselves and/or our own glory.  It’s an easy trap to fall into, though, and we need to be aware of and sensitive to it.  Just ask Aaron’s sons.  Even the best motives can be corrupted and corrosive if they are not from God.

Then, there’s the “addressee refuses” response.  “Great idea, God, but I’ll pass.  It sounds painful, too much like work.  Besides, I like me; may not be perfect, but I am comfortable….”  Godly preparation can do nothing with us if our hearts are hard.  We have to be part of the process.  We have to want to be prepared, and we have to accept and act out our preparation.

I wonder why the townspeople asked Jesus to leave after he healed the demoniac.  Were they nuts?  Who wouldn’t have been lining up to have their demons cast out? After all, we all have one kind or another.  Uh,… maybe I wouldn’t.  Seems like the guy underwent a pretty radical change.  I’m OK with Jesus smoothing off my rough edges, but changing my essence?  Hey, that’s all I know of who I am!

So it comes down to this: whose vision for our lives will we accept?  Go with Christ and – it’s a given! – there’s gonna be some serious upheaval.  No doubt, He’ll ask us to go to some real unfamiliar places and do some uncomfortable things.  Maybe we don’t want to.  But who ever said what we want to do is what we should do?  Only a very unwise creation would ever presume to tell its Creator how it should be made or used….