When something important comes across the table, it’s easy to want to control it ourselves. Maybe an important work project comes to your team, and you think, “if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.” Like porcelain family heirlooms, important things require important care. Weighty responsibility requires strong shoulders to carry it.
“What would God have you do today?” This simple question holds an answer that comes with a weighty responsibility. The answer to this simple question could mean a difference in eternity for someone in your path. The answer could mean the difference between a road through the wilderness or a road to the promised land for you.
In Matthew 5, Jesus gives answers to the question, “Lord, what would you have me do today?”
The Sermon on the Mount provides what some call an impossible list of ethics for living. They give up on trying because the list is too hard. Still others believe that they can achieve the list via mechanisms of control. Indoctrinated by culture, they think that anything can be achieved if one just tries hard enough and believes in themself.
The truth lies somewhere in the middle: the list of ethics that Jesus offers in the Sermon on the Mount requires grace. One scholar suggests that the Sermon on the Mount is “not so much ethics of obedience as ethics of grace.” Another scholar offers that, “We miss the point if we see the Sermon on the Mount as nothing other than a series of far-reaching demands. The demands are there, certainly. But the love and the mercy of God are there, too.”*
Perhaps the question, “God, what would you have me do today,” should be reshaped. Perhaps we need to ask, “God, what have you given me the grace to do today?”
Today, take just one step.
Maybe today the one step God wants you to take is to let go of control in some area. Perhaps God wants you to invite His empowering grace for today. Maybe there are things that He wants you to do that you have given up on. Perhaps today you need to say, “yes” to Him again regarding that thing He asked you to do long ago.
Whatever the step, ask God to direct it. Invite Him to speak. He will.
Life is a long road. Walk it with Jesus. Take a step today… just one is fine.
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*Leon, Morris, The Gospel According to Matthew. Pillar New Testament Commentary (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1992), 92.