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Can God Work Without You?

Well, the answer is a resounding yes!
He can!
God can do whatever He wants whenever He wants. He doesn’t need us or any thing to complete His being or His doing.
So, then, exactly what is the nature of the partnership we have been called into with God ever since creation in the accomplishment of His purposes?
Let me answer that with a story.
Rita’s uncle Oris used to farm nearly 400 acres of corn and soybean in central Iowa. He loved telling farmer’s jokes and told me the following joke, several times…
There was a farmer who bought a derelict farm. The fields were crusted over and covered with weeds. The fences were down. The barn roof had collapsed and the wrap-around porch had fallen off the farmhouse.
It took the farmer over a year, but the fields were freshly plowed and planted. The fences were repaired. A new roof was on the barn and the farmhouse porch was fixed and the house freshly painted.
It looked spectacular!
About that time a neighbor drove by who had watched the transformation, and saw the farmer under the hood of his tractor. He pulled into the gravel driveway, stuck his head out the window of his car and, wanting to sound appropriately spiritual, said to the farmer, “You and the Lord have sure done an amazing job with this farm!”
To which the farmer replied, “Yes… you should have seen it when He had it by Himself.”
I thought of that story when I read 1 Chronicles 21 this morning.
Israel is suffering a plague. It is the judgment of God for David’s sin of presumption; for taking a census of the fighting men in the land.
70,000 had already died as a result.
And just as the destroying angel was about to inflict judgment on Jerusalem, God says to him, “It is enough; now stay your hand.”
Well, that should have been enough, right?
Plague over, disaster averted, back to normal, right?
Wrong!
About that same time, God gives the prophet Gad a word for David to build an altar on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite… to present burnt offerings and peace offerings to the Lord.
All of which David does, sparing no personal effort or expense.
And the Lord “answered David with fire from heaven upon the altar of burnt offering. Then the Lord commanded the angel, and he put his sword back into its sheath.” (1 Chronicles 21:26-27)
Why wasn’t the plague averted back in verse 15, when God first told the angel to stay his hand of destruction?
Why wasn’t the word of the Lord in verse 15 enough?
Because God chooses to draw us into a partnership with Him in accomplishing His purposes… not because He needs us but precisely because He loves us. He created us for partnership with Him and there are certain things we must do if we are going to see His highest and best in our lives.
David had to buy a threshing floor, build an altar and offer sacrifices.
What has God asked you to do?
Do it with all your might.

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