Unmanageable

By Märt Vähi

Managing God. Sounds strange, doesn’t it?

We as leaders are very familiar with the concept of managing. We manage projects, we manage people, we manage situations, we even manage circumstances.

The thought of managing God may seem unusual, but it does happen. Whether consciously or unconsciously, we slip into the mode of trying to manage God. This does not happen to leaders alone, but the tendency flows out of the lives of many Christians, who, in managing their life affairs, start to make an effort to manage God to look after their concerns and activities.

Now, you may ask, “How does this play itself out in practical terms?” Perhaps I can start by pointing to this example in our prayers. Just take an inventory of how we so often pray: “Lord, I have a lot of work on my plate today. I ask you to help me get this work done! I ask you to do what I cannot do, and thank you for looking after that today.”

Sounds like a good prayer—perhaps? But let’s look at it. First, we inform God, as if He does not already know, our circumstances. Second, whose fault is it that we have a lot of work on our plate, and why is it a problem that “I cannot get it all done”? Whatever the reason for the problem, we are directing God to take care of it. We pass our concerns to God to take care of.

This is a simplistic illustration, but I think you get the picture. All we need is to listen to our prayers and the prayers around us. We hear echoed the same idea: telling Him the day’s news or the details of our circumstances, informing Him what He should do about it, and giving Him a deadline or schedule for accomplishing it.

Take a short inventory of your prayers and those around you, and you’ll see what I mean.

So, what brought this to my attention? One day, I decided to simply read the words of Jesus. I began in the Gospel of John. Quite unexpectedly, I began to realize through the words and life of Christ how backward my prayers had become.

Take, for example, Jesus’ words in John 5:30: “I can do nothing on My own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.” Jesus, the Son of God, said He could do nothing of His “own initiative”!

Again, in the very same chapter: “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in the same way (verse 19).

More and more I began to realize something about the life and ministry of Christ: Jesus’ entire life exemplified an attitude of total submission to the Father.

John 7:28-29 states: “Then Jesus cried out in the temple, teaching and saying, “You both know Me and know where I am from; and I have not come of Myself, but He who sent Me is true, whom you do not know. I know Him, because I am from Him, and He sent Me.”

Again, in John 8:28: “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am, and I do nothing on My own, but I say these things as the Father instructed Me.”

This brought me to my knees, appalled in humble repentance, not only for the way I prayed but my whole attitude toward managing the affairs of my life and ministry. I cannot say I had not walked in submission to Christ, but now it became clear that so often we have our projects, plans, committee meetings and projections all in place, neatly packaged, and then we ask God’s blessing upon them, telling Him so kindly to see it all through!

I realized I had it all backward. How did Jesus do it, then? The initiative came from the Father, not Jesus. Jesus willingly submitted to the will and purpose of the Father.

John 6:38 states, “For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.”

In the most quoted scripture in the Bible, John 3:16, we sometimes miss the point, thinking Jesus loved the world so much that He came, being born in a manger, to reach humanity. No, it was not that way—though Jesus undisputedly loved the world. Listen to this:

 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.

We read in the following verse: “For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but so that the world might be saved through Him.” 

This reveals that it was on the initiative of God that Jesus was sent, and in being sent, Jesus submitted to His Father. This opened a whole aspect of Jesus’ life and ministry. In the Gospel of John alone, at least 42 times, Jesus refers to being “sent” by the Father. This is not an isolated thought but a principle that unfolds in the life of Christ. He never once instructed, commissioned or “managed” His Father, but submitted and did His Father’s will, even in the crisis moment of Gethsemane. It was “yet not My will, but Yours be done.”

Now comes another astounding fact: After the numerous scriptures showing that Jesus was sent by the Father, in His closing remarks to the disciples, He brings it straight home to us. Jesus says in John 20:21 (KJV): “As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.” In the Easy-to-Read Version, this verse reads: “It was the Father who sent me, and I am now sending you in the same way.” No matter what version you may be using, there is no doubt about the text's precise meaning, which never changes.

I would draw your attention to the small words “as,” “even so” and “in the same way.” These are words of comparison. If Jesus had said, “The Father sent me” and “now I am sending you,” these words of Jesus would not have had the impact they have as He uses small but seemingly insignificant words like as and even so.

These small words change everything, making the statement highly significant for you and me. What He is saying cannot be taken any other way except exactly how it appears: “The Father has sent Me, and now I am sending you in the same way.” Comparatively speaking, we are sent in the “same way” He was sent, except now, by Jesus Himself.

If you and I want to know how Jesus sends us and what our response should be, then we should pay close attention to how Jesus was sent by His Father and how He responded and related to this. Jesus did not manage, manipulate or direct. Just the opposite: He submitted and obeyed, getting His directions, instructions and commands from the Father. Now we are sent in the same way!

Finally, one of the most significant principles is the thrust behind it all: relationship and that which cradles it—love! It is out of a deep relationship that He guides us, and we submit to Him. That is why, in the middle of this whole subject and stories of the Gospel of John are written in John chapters 12 to 17, the bond of relationship in love and unity. The vine and the branches, the unity, Jesus’ last intimate prayer with His Father, which so includes us with Him and far excludes us from in any way, shape or form, consciously or unconsciously, lowering ourselves to the very thought of somehow “managing God!” Read it:

“The glory which You have given Me I also have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and You loved them, just as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, although the world has not known You, yet I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me; and I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them (John 17:22-26).

And with that, we do not send Him, but He sends us!

Look out for Märt Vähi's latest book, Sent...