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.
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