Are you working for God or with God?

I was confronted with this question yesterday when reading our current 'book club' book, Just like Jesus - Learning to have a heart like His by Max Lucado.

Before I read chapter 5, Being led by and unseen hand - A God-intoxicated heart I would have said I was working with God, not for Him.

But as I kept reading I started having second thoughts.

Lucado writes,

For years I viewed God as a compassionate CEO and my roles as a loyal sales representative. He had his office, and I had my territory. I could contact him as much as I wanted. He was always a phone or fax away. He encouraged me, rallied behind me, and supported me, but he didn't go with me. At least I didn't think he did. Then I read 2 Corinthians 6:1: We are "God's fellow workers" (NIV).

Yesterday I spend most of the day in and out of bed with an upset stomach and thick head.

So if I took on the above perspective of God, I would be telling God, as my compassionate CEO that I couldn't come into work today because I was sick, I needed the day off, and I'll get back to working for Him when I am better.

I must admit, I heard myself saying this to Him.

I just can't do anything, it's too hard to speak kindly to my husband and children, to pray or do the 'little things' around the home.

I felt myself saying I'll be back to work tomorrow when I'm better. Don't expect too much out of me today God, cause I need to rest!

But I was challenged to think about what I would be saying and thinking about if I was working with God.

Instead of being somewhere in an office in town carrying on with His own work, He would be right next to me, taking care of me.

He would be filling my mind with sweet scriptures about His goodness and greatness.

As my children approached me with requests and demands, He would give me the strength I needed to respond kindly and patiently with them.

When it was time to make meals, He would encourage me to take a step towards preparing a meal and He would sustain me and keep me while I got it done.

As I started to view God in this way, I started to experience such precious communion with Him, even though I was feeling weak physically, there was an inner strength being generated by Someone most powerful.

The rest of the chapter was all about pursing an unbroken, constant, intimate communion with God. Lucado writes,

"The more we search the Bible, the more we realise that unbroken communion with God is the intent and not the exception. Within the reach of every Christian is the unending presence of God".

Communion with God is not just something I do in the mornings in my devotions, it is something I can experience throughout the whole day - but it is my choice to commune with Him, to think about Him, to worship Him.

I would love to be like Frank Laubach, whom Lucado quotes, who wrote:

It is my business to look into the very face of God until I ache with bliss.....Now I like the Lord's presence so much that when for half an hour or so He slips our of mind - as He does many times a day - I feel as though I had deserted Him, and as though I had lost something very precious in my life. (March 3, 1931; May 14, 1930).