Over the years I have read many articles regarding ‘If God called you to do it then He will equip you to do it’, or something along those lines. Now I wholeheartedly agree with this. If the Lord called you to a specific ministry, then He will equip you for that ministry. If He calls you to the mission field, He will equip you for the mission field. If God calls you to some new career endeavor, then by golly, He will surely equip you for that new endeavor!

There is also another school of thought regarding the Lord’s provision; ‘If God wants to do something then, He will be sure to provide for it’. Too many times, man wants to get his grubby little hands on what God wants to do in our lives-apart from our intervention. Yes, as born again believers, we are filled with God’s Holy Spirit within our own spiritual man. Yes, we have His presence dwelling within which enables us to partake of His divine nature and experience Heaven on Earth, if you will but, there are times when God wants to do something apart from us. For some reason, in our own self-righteous pride, we somehow think that if God is going to move, we need to be in there! Oh how typical of human thinking.

One of the aspects I want to touch on here, with regards to this subject, is ‘allowing God to handle the outcome’ or ‘limiting God because of how WE think things should go.’ Where I see this often, is with regards to spiritual things. Along this line, let’s look at a scripture in John 21:4-6:

4 At dawn Jesus was standing on the beach, but the disciples couldn’t see who he was. 5 He called out, “Fellows, have you caught any fish?” “No,” they replied. 6 Then he said, “Throw out your net on the right-hand side of the boat, and you’ll get some!” So they did, and they couldn’t haul in the net because there were so many fish in it. (NLT)

Now this scripture is very similar to when Jesus first encountered the disciple Peter yet, this experience takes place after His resurrection. We see the disciples unable to produce something in the natural-fish. We then see Jesus instructing them in a specific manner in which He intends to bless them. Then as the men carry it out, the supernatural move of God takes place resulting in a supernatural manifestation in the natural (This pattern is the way God works). Now in the natural, there is no way for their net to contain all the fish. In the same way, in the natural, we cannot contain or always plan for all that the Lord wants to do, supernaturally in and through our lives….but, we must trust Him because ‘If God wants to do something then, He will be sure to provide for it’.

So what happened in this instance? Let’s read further on in the story, down in verses 7-10:

7 Then the disciple Jesus loved said to Peter, “It’s the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his tunic (for he had stripped for work), jumped into the water, and headed to shore. 8 The others stayed with the boat and pulled the loaded net to the shore, for they were only about a hundred yards from shore. 9 When they got there, they found breakfast waiting for them—fish cooking over a charcoal fire, and some bread. 10 “Bring some of the fish you’ve just caught,” Jesus said. (NLT)

So now we have Jesus telling the disciples to bring in the fish they just caught. Well we just read where the disciples couldn’t even haul in the net due to the overwhelming amount of fish they had just caught. The Lord wants to bless us. He wants to bless our ministry. He wants to bless our endeavors. Now the catch to all of this is that He wants to bless those things that He is leading us to do. If we step out to do something, or pursue some career, or make some investment, or start some ministry, that is simply of our own doing, we may not have the blessing of the Lord. We also will not have His supernatural provision. With that comes His support, His anointing and manifestation through our work-for the outcome to be that beyond what we could do in ourselves.

So the first key is to hear from the Lord and be directed by the Holy Spirit. We see the disciples clearly directed by the Lord in this scriptural example. Another example would be the feeding of the 5,000 recorded in the Gospels. All those people, with so little food on hand. The Lord drew them by the thousands, and the Lord provided for them. He took care of the results and there was more than enough. Let’s read this last scripture to see how things worked out for Peter and the others in verse 11:

11 So Simon Peter went aboard and dragged the net to the shore. There were 153 large fish, and yet the net hadn’t torn. (NLT)

There were too many fish to bring aboard the boat. The verse here states that technically, the netting should have broken as the sheer number of fish they scored. But…it didn’t. It says, ‘and yet the net hadn’t torn.’ God instructed. God provided the blessing. God provided the provision for that blessing. Did you catch that? Let me repeat it, “God provided the provision for the blessing”. This is where I wanted to get to, the point I wanted to establish.

We don’t serve a dead God. We don’t just have religion. We don’t just do church. We aren’t just Christians. No, we serve a LIVING God. Our religion is based on restored relationship. We are the church. And our Christianity should be the outflow of God’s power through us and to all around us. Jesus provided all the fish those disciples could handle and He provided the supernatural means in the natural, to bring in the catch! Jesus said in Matthew 4:19, ‘Come and I will make you fishers of men.’ God instructs us to go out and catch the fish. God will provide the means to clean the fish! We need to stop trying to figure everything out that the Lord wants us to do. We need to not limit the Holy Spirit in His working with men because maybe we can’t figure out how something will work or in our own minds, we think we need to do this and that to facilitate the Holy Spirit.

We need to stop putting God in a box! We see over and over again in Scripture, Old Testament and New, where God would start something and provide for the results: The feeding of the five thousand; the ravens providing food for the prophet Elijah; Philip evangelizing the Ethiopian and then carrying Him away instantly; turning water in to wine at Cana; parting the Red Sea in the exodus of Israel from Egypt; the hauling in of the fish from the boat in the example above. Example after example in the Word of God. The same is with today. Don’t limit God by your own thinking. Trust the Word, do what it says and leave the results to God. He is big enough to handle his own results! It’s not us in charge trying to get God to do something the right way. No, it’s God in charge with us simply His vessels of use. We have the Spirit of God within us but we still have this flesh and our own carnal minds limiting us ever so often. There are no limits with God. Let Him be God in every way. Take your hands off the situation. Be bold. Be confident in who He is.

Let’s let today be the day we start going and doing awesome things in His name. We are his hands and feet on this Earth. Hands and feet just do what the brain tells them. Let’s let go of the natural so that the Lord can work fully through us.

If God wants to do something, He will be sure to provide for it.

‘…And Abraham called the name of the place, The-Lord-Will-Provide…’ (Gen 22:14/NKJV)

Blessings.