Moving from “doing” to “responding”

Each week my friend and mentor Stephen Manley releases a “Jesus Pusher” blog and this week was especially rich. As a Christian my life is not to be one of “doing” but one of “responding.” May you live a life of response, surrender, abiding, and dependency – every moment of every day. Read more about Stephen Manley and his ministry.

I am a Jesus pusher!!! Then He said to them “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19). As you know, the Word of God is very strong concerning the focus on being rather than on doing.  The New Covenant is dramatically different from the Old Covenant.  The Old Testament was a focus on law accomplished through the resource and discipline of each individual.  However, Jeremiah prophecies of a new day, “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. . .  I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God and they shall be My people,” (Jeremiah 31:31, 33).

Instead of the outside law of God condemning me when I fail, it is to be a motivation within me.  Jesus fulfilled the law (Matthew 5:17).  He indwells us through His Spirit; He is the resource by which the law is accomplished!  The will of God is not that which I do, but it is a response to the flow of the Spirit of Jesus within my life!  Obviously this does not mean there is no action of doing.  It is a change from my self-action to my responding to the resource of the Spirit.  The New Covenant produces more doing than under the Old Covenant.  The Spirit of Jesus sources me. I have moved from “doing” to “responding.”  I am a Jesus pusher!!!