Coping with Non-Cooperation

Growing up in church, we heard a fair bit of teaching about how to carry-out one's vision, gifts and destiny.

But most of the teaching was with the assumption that we would always have a near-perfect mutual relationship with our church.

Our Pastor would always recognise our talents, and give us full space to express them...

It's like the only thing we needed to do was discover our gifts - because once we discovered our calling we would always have the full co-operation of our church to see our vision implemented. Wonderful.

Perhaps the only other thought that might have sometimes crossed our minds, was the thought that some unfortunate people - in other churches of course, not in our church - in a worse-case scenario might have to leave their church, but only to immediately join a different church - like ours - where their God-given vision would then receive 100% co-operation.

We weren't really equipped in advance with the knowledge of what to do in the event that we don't actually find that 100% co-operation all of the time!

But then reality starts to set in: and let's face it - that's probably one of the main reasons people get discouraged and discard their vision, isn't it? Not for lack of desire. Not even just because of sin. But not feeling cooperated with.

Understanding our gifts and calling is the easy part, really. But you're not going to get very far if you don't know how to respond when you encounter non-cooperation.

What are you going to do? with your gifts and calling, your vision. Unfortunately, since many haven't been taught much from the Bible about how to respond, they're left to respond the best they can, and usually they respond out of their own personality.

And it's usually somewhere between put up with it, or leave. With a fair bit of fed-up in-between. And often with some other traits too depending on one's background style.

But what should we do? What are the godly, spiritual, Biblical principles. Because very often it's how we respond at that point - and how we continue responding - that makes or breaks our destiny.

So that's where we need to be equipped in advance with a knowledge of some procedures to follow. Prepared for the inevitable event that we encounter some non-cooperation. (Along with all the inspiring stuff, about discovering your gift and calling and having a vision.)