Conviction and Compulsion – Part 2

I've had enough of trying to force myself to do things when I have no conviction in my heart about it - even if those things are written in the Bible. Just because the Bible says that we are Christ's witnesses - it does not mean that we have to sign-up for every evangelistic outreach that the church organises.

I suppose that the "just do it" message irritates certain people into making an effort to seek after the truth, rather than provoking them to do things without God's anointing and blessing. Otherwise, we can constantly use the excuse of, "Well I'm just not called to do that.

If God wants me to do something, then He will have to give me a sign, or talk to me about it. But even then, even when I know what is right, I cannot act upon it if I do not have peace and a desire from within my heart. Until that happens - I'm not going to do anything.

The Bible tells us that we have to seek God - not wait for God to seek after us. Although in truth, it is always God who takes the first steps in seeking after us.

Apostle Paul prayed that the church at Colossi would have patience and all longsuffering with joy. The fact that Paul prayed for those attributes and did not tell them to "just do" things or to "just have" those attributes, indicates to me that he knew they could not muster what it takes, in order to take on challenges. It alerts me to the fact that those attributes are from God.

If an attribute is an aspect of the divine nature, then it is something that sheer willpower alone cannot attain; the divine nature is something that man receives from God. That is the reason why we have to pray for those things.

I believe that most people have been conditioned to know through experience that if that conviction is just not there, then everything else you need to see it through will not be there either: patient endurance, peace, joy, wisdom and so forth. This leads some people to become very tentative about almost everything that they propose to do.

Then there are other people who hardly think twice about what they do, they are confident and spontaneous in everything they do, because they have become conditioned to believe that everything they do will be successful. Even when these confident people get something wrong, they usually learn that such an occurrence is typically a one-off and they can afford to take the chance.

So, there are broadly two kinds of people in this world: the first kind is the positive, confident type who does things spontaneously; then there are the second type of people are fearful, negative and tentative about anything they do.