Day 284
Malachi 3:1 NIV
"See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the w before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come," says lhe Lord Almighty."
God spoke through the prophet, Malachi, informing the Israelites that He would come to them after a messenger prepared the way. Paul said in I Corinthians 3:6, "I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase." We cannot be looking for personal glory when we are serving the Lord. There may be times when the glory of God will show up after we have prepared the way and left the scene. Someone else who comes to the forefront may be recognized for the results, when they were simply participating in the harvest we have planted, or watered, or one we have both planted and watered.
We must realize that the glory belongs to God only. It is He who instigates the demonstration of His power. He moves on someone to plant. He urges someone to water. Then, He sends in someone to handle the increase. Sometimes the same person may experience every phase of the move of God, However, the results occur because of a move of God and not the work of a man.
Another thing we must learn from this is that God uses us to prepare the way for him, Therefore, it is important that we are habitually obedient to the leading of the Holy Spirit What we may perceive as an unimportant assignment may be a very important preparatory act for a move of God. The butler who told Pharaoh about Joseph interpreting his dream probably had no idea he was preparing the way to save Egypt and the surrounding areas from the starvation (Genesis 41). The four lepers who decided to walk into the enemy's camp to seek food had no idea they were preparing the way for the deliverance of the Israelites from starvation (II Kings 7). When Philip left a great revival in Samaria and followed the leading of the Holy Spirit into the desert, he had no idea he was preparing the way for the gospel to be spread into Ethiopia (Acts 8). We can find many examples of things people did that had fur greater significance than they could have imagined at the time.
It is important that we become consistently obedient to the Lord, regardless of how insignificant the action may seem. Let us not be glory seekers who only want to obey when it seems significant and we can be assured of being recognized for our actions, Let us also not be moved to speak up and claim glory for a move of God we helped prepare the way for. It is not important who is recognized, as long as God shows up and people praise and worship Him for what is done. We must seek God's approval and not man's, Our motives for serving the Lord should always be to bring glory to Him who alone is worthy.
I will learn to be consistently obedient to the leading of the Lord, never seeking the glory for what He does. I will not allow myself to be concerned with being recognized for my part. I will rejoice always in the fact that God is glorified, for that will be my aim. I am privileged to play a part, big or small, in what God wants to do in the earth.