Too Busy to Obey

And Esau seeing that the daughters of Canaan pleased not Isaac his father; (Genesis 28:8)

I want Esau to teach us to avoid being too busy ‘serving’ God to do what pleases Him.

You see, Esau as the firstborn was expected to know the beatings of his father’s heart. Yet we notice that he only was the expert of Isaac’s culinary tastes. I have argued elsewhere that the birthright was a spiritual asset and that Esau lost it long before he sold it to his brother for pottage.

Yet this verse points clearest to his problem.

Imagine a son marries two wives and has no idea that they are a grief to his parents! Yet from the previous chapter he must have been living in the same neighborhood with his parents for him to be tasked with preparing venison for Isaac.

The long and short of what I am saying is that Esau was so preoccupied with trying to satisfy Isaac’s stomach with pottage that he had no capacity to connect with his heart’s desires.

Imagine that it took his father warning his brother against Canaanite women to realize that his wives were a grief to his parents! And he had two of them.

Is Esau’s story alien to our experience or does it come too close to home many times?

How many people look for money and lose the family they took all the time looking for money for? How many ministers get swallowed by the ministering that they have no time to listen to God? How many of us are so absorbed in things that we forget relationships that make life livable? How many die of hunger looking for food to feed generations?

We can be too busy to connect with the purpose for which we are busy. I know you may feel offended if I call it childish. But let me tell you why I say so.

Have you parents ever sent a child to the shop? Do you remember being sent by your parents, especially when there was something else you would rather have been doing?

The child is so eager to run to the shop that he takes the money and listens to your order revving to go, wondering why old people take so long to give simple instructions. They then fly to the shop. Only to realize that they have in their eagerness to obey forgotten what they were sent to buy, or even buy something else. And many times the shop may be not very near.

For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. (Romans 10:2)

Do we see that in our faith and churches?

Why do we start projects that abort before they complete? Why do we start relationships that break yet they were headed to marriage? Why do we commit to support a course yet become weary midway?

We become passionate and believe that our passion will overthrow every obstacle. Many times we believe, or at least behave as if God will be swayed by our zeal. We even treat those not showing our kind of passion as backsliders when they want logical answers for our passion. We even dismiss those seeking to know where our conviction for the same is from as we think that even prayer is subject to our passion.

I have made enemies when I asked church leaders whether they had prayed about a course they were taking their church to. Yet they feared to come back to me when their project flopped. I have been rebuked a few times when I stood for an unpopular position when the whole team thought otherwise because I knew what God had spoken about it but couldn’t persuade anybody because they were following a zeal lacking in spiritual knowledge.

I remember an incident where a church pleaded to own a follow up mission we were planning but sadly decided to change almost everything about it. It became clear to me that I couldn’t have gone under those terms as God’s word to me was clear concerning my involvement in that harvest field.

I therefore respectfully communicated my withdrawal from the team and the reasons for doing so. I also offered to give those who would go any support they would need. And I remember sending the pastors personal e-mail to communicate as they are for the most part only available after long appointment setting.

Interestingly, an older person who was nowhere near that planning came to read for me (Swahili for scolding) for insubordination to the pastors. I chose to be gracious instead of asking him how he came across the information he was using. Ultimately, the whole thing flopped.

They were ready and willing to pump a lot of money in a project they had no capacity for as it would have given them a lot of visibility. Like Esau, they did not want to know what it was that God wanted, thinking that mission is simply that, a mission. And we were foolish enough to entrust our vision with people without first knowing their spiritual capacity, just because they had a lot of money, the only resource we felt we did not have enough of as it would have cost loads of the same. I just wish we had asked them to give us money and entrust us with the vision and training of those they would have wanted to accompany us.

I remember once deciding to go for a hurried completely dry fast because I got a break from a troublous environment for a short time. That is when I discovered the importance of planning instead of operating on impulse and passion as I was not able to go far. I was simply not prepared and so had no capacity to sustain my decision.

Solomon was too busy building that he failed to see his heart slipping from a right relationship to the God he was building for. Peter was busy following Jesus that he was unable to notice himself denying Him. And we must not forget that Ahimaaz was so intent on taking the message to David that he forgot to ask what the message was. And of course Saul was too busy being a good general that he forgot God who had issued the orders.

We could in looking for Jesus fail to notice Him when He makes an appearance. Like we see in Matthew 25, Jesus is not talking about the heathen but people who knew Him wondering why they did not recognize Him when they ministered or failed to minister to Him. It will not be surprising that some of those being sent to hell will be leaders of huge and mammoth church systems that for the running of the structure missed the visitation.

It is just recently that I realized that Jesus was not talking about general hospitality in that passage (Matthew 25).

He had been talking about persecution, about the whole world going against His followers. That is the context at which people will be hungry and thirsty, sick and in prison, for following Christ.

They will be those who for their faith are hungry and thirsty because they have been chased from home or have had everything they owned confiscated. They have lost jobs because they have refused to follow worldly standards or refused to grab like their peers. Others have been called outside ‘normal’ and so have no support whatsoever. They are sick because they have been ‘buffeted’ for their faith, or for living according to its dictates. And they are in prison because believing in Christ is a crime to the rulers of this world, even of the church.

God’s people must connect to these people. Otherwise they have lost connection to the Head, even Christ.

That Moslem who for believing in Christ is on the run because they must kill him and his whole family needs a safe haven for his faith to grow.  That tycoon’s child who got saved and has to hide lest he be taken captive and retaught to serve mammon also needs a safe haven. And that cultist or witch who discovered how perverted the systems are and decided to follow Christ must be protected from the demonic barbs and curses they are unceasingly throwing in his direction, and of course the real attempts on his life because they fear his exposing their secrets.

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. (Matthew 25:40)

Being sensitive to the leading of the Spirit will help us not to miss the visitation, and the reward.

But we can be too busy for that. Those visitations will be too discreet for the busy and active believer to connect God with them.

We must like Elijah develop a lifestyle of being desperate for accurate directions from God to run away from the drama that life is constantly releasing. We must be discriminating enough to realize that even acts of God (wind, earthquake, fire) are not necessarily His voice for us. We must tune our spiritual ears to hear that still small voice (or the voice of a gentle stillness) amidst all that noise.

Only then will we be able to walk in the Spirit as the Bible instructs us.

We must watch against being too busy serving God to not only know what He requires of us, but especially to know who He is. Else we could very easily become too familiar with Him, treating Him like one of our buddies. Then of course He will show up as who He is, or allow us to take that familiarity to hell.

The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. (John 3:8)

Unlike what most teachers say, the Spirit does not use thunder to guide. He is not dramatic in His guidance.

Yet His voice is clear to the one who seeks to walk in obedience. To the one who, like Paul, daily asks Him, ‘What will Thou have me do?’

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: (John 10:27)

Only goats are too preoccupied with their issues to know what the shepherd is saying. No wonder He says that their father is the devil however much they think and confess that God is their father.