Caution?

Topic: Caution? { Fresh Fire 17th June, 2016}

“During the eighth year of his reign, while he was still young, Josiah began to seek the God of his ancestor David. Then in the twelfth year he began to purify Judah and Jerusalem, destroying all the pagan shrines, the Asherah poles, and the carved idols…” 2 Chro.34:3

A time must come when you have to set aside your caution so that you can make progress. So what is the solution to logical caution? The solution to logical caution is actually logic itself. An example in Scripture is the story of the four lepers in Samaria.  “Now there were four men with leprosy sitting at the entrance of the city gates. “Why should we sit here waiting to die?” they asked each other. “We will starve if we stay here, but with the famine in the city, we will starve if we go back there. So we might as well go out and surrender to the Aramean army. If they let us live, so much the better. But if they kill us, we would have died anyway.” 2 Kings 7:3-4. So they went into the enemy camp and God rewarded them.

What is the solution to systemized caution? Courage is the solution to systemized caution. Let me explain with this illustration. A certain woman always would cut up her sausages before frying. So one day her daughter who was tired of eating cut up sausages decided to find out why her mother always cut them up as opposed to leaving them whole. And her mother’s response was, short of calling her a rebellious little brat, “this is how my great grandmother did it, this is how my grandmother did it, this is how my own mother does it”. This is how we do it in our family.

Then one-day grandma came visiting and the daughter summoned up courage and asked grandma, why they cut up sausages instead of frying them whole. And grandma said, in those days our frying pans were very small so we had to cut the sausages in order to fit them into the pan. But now we have bigger frying pans, said the girl, so why are we still cutting the sausages?

There are many things in church that are just being done because that is how it has always been done. In God’s Favourite House, we are changing everything. We are not interested in a dogmatic system; we are more interested in a solution that gives glory to Jesus. I know people would get uncomfortable but if it brings glory to Jesus then that is what we will do. You need courage.

Prayer: Lord, help me not to disguise my logic and fear as caution but by the Holy Spirit consistently operate from a place of courage, in Jesus Name.