Do Something...Anything!

“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”  

 

Oft attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, this quote exemplifies the activistic nature of passionate leaders: sometimes you just need to do something. Anything.  

It’s hard to steer a car when it’s not moving.

This doesn’t sound very spiritual, but often people just want to see their church or organization doing something meaningful.

In the fifteenth chapter of the book of Acts, Paul and Barnabas are spending time in Antioch teaching and training when Paul suggests that they go back through all the areas where they had planted churches on their first mission trip and see how they were doing. There’s no indication that this was a heavenly-inspired plan; it seems as if out-of-the-blue Paul simply thought it would be a good idea to check up on their previous work, almost like a “do something/anything” moment.

A practical idea and perhaps even dispassionately presented.

It turns out that he and Barnabas have a serious disagreement about whether to take a team member who had deserted them during their last trip. Tempers flare and they part company with Barnabas essentially heading south and Paul trekking north. It doesn’t sound like a God-infused harmonious missional launch.

But it’s later on this trip that Paul has a dramatic vision during the night that would take him much further than his original plan, all the way to Greece. It was eventually an exhausting but incredibly fruitful trip. Had not Paul actively wondered about his previous work and some possible follow-up, this extended reach of the Kingdom of God might have never happened at that time. Sometimes it’s best to simply do something that furthers the generalized plan of God.

Incidentally, it’s really difficult to make a wrong or even stupid decision in the Kingdom of God if your heart is aimed at heaven with a desire to please God. He has the ability to redeem every decision; it’s much less about geography than “heart ownership.”

I once heard Steven Manuel describe it like this: Suppose I go to my kid’s room at bedtime and am puzzled to find him standing on his head. And suppose I ask him, “What in the world are you doing?” and he responds by declaring he’s doing what he heard me tell him to do: “Go stand on your head.” Steven then smiles and says, “No, I asked you to ‘go to bed’, not ‘stand on your head’,” and finds himself secretly thrilled at the idea that his son did what he thought his father asked. A heart of obedience is what the Father wants, the simple desire to please him.

Obedience trumps clarity every time.

Is it time your organization did something/anything new? 

Dave Workman | The Elemental Group

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