What He saw the Father doing
Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, “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.” (John 5:19).
We used to think of our Scroll of Destiny as having everything we are supposed to do written on it, and that we needed to see it to know what to do. I do not believe that anymore. I probably would have thought that way initially, and even taught it, but as I have discovered my relationship with God and discovered who I am, I am now just learning to rest, and be, and go with the flow.
Jesus only did what He saw the Father doing. It was not that He had a huge scroll with the detail of every miracle He was going to do written on it: what was on His scroll was “Here is My Son: I am in His heart and He is in My heart”. When we have that relationship then that state of being releases a flow of everything we do.
Mandate for the day
I used to go to God every day and ask what my mandate was for the day. After a while He simply would not give me any information about that: He stopped me from doing, in order to teach me to be. He just hugged me, for months. In the end, I stopped asking “what are we going to do?” because I started to enjoy being, and being in His presence, without the agenda. We tend to think God has an agenda that He is wanting us to accomplish. Rather, He wants relationship; and from that relationship, everything flows.
Now I am not looking anymore for my mandate for the day or how I am going to fulfil it. That was just putting myself under pressure, which removes the joy. Life is to be enjoyed and that enjoyment comes from relaxing and knowing the Father’s heart, and just being. Just being is so much more important than focusing on what I can do, what I need to do next and how to do it.
It became almost formulaic, and that is not how God intends our lives to be. If all we have is a formula, we will end up doing things in our own strength. Now I would say that it is far more important to have that union with the Father in which He reveals His heart for us. If we know who we are, then we do not need to do something written on a scroll. He wants to reveal His heart to us so that we can express His heart in a much more relational way. If we have a relational perspective rather than a performance perspective, we will not end up feeling like we are a slave to our destiny: “I have to fulfil it, or else…”
We do not have to get into guilt and shame over whether or not we have done certain things today. It is not about what we did or didn’t do, or what we did wrong. If we are constantly thinking that we have somehow ‘missed it’, that will draw us back into works rather than grace. It is not as if He cannot rewrite the script to enable His purposes to be fulfilled, in ways which are beyond our ability to understand. God is going to bring good out of everything, even the things where we may not have heard clearly (or even at all). He has it all in hand.
I used to think I would one day have to give account for all those things I haven’t fulfilled. I don’t buy into that anymore. God gives us a continual purification of that scroll of our life, and when we choose poorly or with wrong motive He does not hold it against us. We have come to understand that, contrary to what we may have been told, ‘carrot and stick’, punishment and reward, are not His way of doing things. He shares His heart and inspires and encourages us. He continually enables us to walk in our destiny: and it is more about who we are than what we do.
Predetermined, predestined
So I don’t believe that our scroll of destiny is a list of achievements that we need to accomplish. I think it is much more about our alignment with the heart of God in who we are as creative beings. That allows us to outwork our destiny in multiple different ways, rather than there being the one way which is the right way, predetermined and predestined.
What was predestined was relationship. We are predestined to a restored face-to-face relationship, not for a whole series of things that we should be trying to do. All the Father is looking for is relationship, in which we’re sharing heart together. He is unveiling His heart and intentions to us: we cooperate and outwork that through who He has made us to be. Every day, Jesus saw what the Father was doing and cooperated with it. And, like Him, we can do so in a very creative way. That is one reason why Jesus healed people in so many different ways. I think He was trying to get over the point that there is no formula: you have the Father’s heart, now express it through who you are.
I am only responsible to be who I am created to be. Everything else will flow out of that. So I fix my eyes on Jesus and on the Father and then I find that I just walk out every day and enjoy it. Life is so much more enjoyable when I am not pressured to perform some duty or obligation that religion has put on me: “You should be praying every day, reading the Bible every day, witnessing every day. You should be doing this, you shouldn’t be doing that…” The Father is the one who is going to direct me every day, and He does not give me specific directions very often, other than “Hey, let’s walk together” or “Let me show you something.”
Freely we receive
We tend to put a higher value on religious activities than God does. He would rather we learn to be an expression of love in every situation than get caught up in performance of any sort. Let’s not underestimate the value of love. Someone may appear to have done nothing in their life but love their family, yet He places such a high value on that. Let’s focus on being an expression of love ourselves.
This means we do not judge anyone else or where they are on their journey. When we rest in love, we can be an expression of love ourselves. Freely we receive, freely we give (see Matthew 10:8); so let’s make sure we freely receive, otherwise we have nothing to give. For a lot of people, they are wanting to give because the Bible says so or they are conditioned to believe they should, when they have never really focused on receiving, and being, and experiencing, and knowing the unconditional love the Father has for them. It is hard to love unconditionally if you have never really experienced unconditional love yourself.
A place of rest
Now all this is not to say that God doesn’t have things for us to accomplish in relationship with Him; but it is the way we do it rather than a series of things that we have to fulfil. I have engaged with the heart of God, discovering who I am and discovering that state of being at rest, that state of consciousness which is an awareness of the heart of God.
If we are trying to get our identity from the things we do, that will always result in feelings of condemnation because we will never do enough to satisfy ourselves. God just wants us to be, and the more we can just be, the more everything flows out of being. That is a wonderful state, such a place of rest: all the striving, all the performance, everything goes.
That place of rest is filled with joy. I just don’t find a lot of religion that is filled with joy: there is such pressure to perform and to avoid failure. We are never going to meet some magical mark of perfect performance. So let’s receive grace and mercy every day and know there is no mark to attain. We do have a destiny, but it is to be who we are. Bring it back to that simple thought: my destiny is to be the ‘me’ that God created me to be.
If I focus on how much transformation is still needed, that can put pressure on me, because I am not there yet. If I just enjoy being where I am and continue the journey, it will take me to where I will be. The journey itself is important, not a series of destinations, because it is a journey of relationship and that journey will inevitably bring me to a completely fully restored perspective.
The ‘me’ I am at the moment, I know, is not the ‘me’ that I will eventually be. But from God’s perspective I already am, because that is how He sees me. He does not see me the way I see myself or the way others see me. And when I agree with how He sees me, it enables me to become like that.
But He already sees me that way now, which is why He smiles. When I look into His face I see no condemnation of where I am, just the love and pleasure of His heart because He wants relationship. That is His highest agenda.