Tried it All? It’s Time to Strategize with Heaven!

By: Brooke Keith

Feel like you just don’t know the next step? I’d say that puts you in fine company. That would make up quite a gift portion of the population!

You’ve tried it your way. A million times, perhaps.

Have you tried it God’s way? Do you know how to find out what that is?

When I think about Kingdom strategy I can’t help but think about Kingdom helpers. One of my favorite instances of Kingdom strategy and the helpers appointed to a season is in the story of the widow and the prophet Elisha. The woman owed a great debt that she could not pay… and she was at risk of having her family sold into slavery. (After grief, this was insult to injury!)

God sent her Elisha and through Elisha He sent her revelation.

“Gather all the vessels you can find. The oil will not run out until the vessels do.” And they didn’t. And she paid off every last debt. With some left over to live on.

Now, even though I love me some anointing oil, if you would have told me before I was older, wiser, and more confident in who the Lord made me to be that I needed to go ask my neighbors for bowls, jars, bottles in which to store up oil to fix my problems? I’d think you might be a little bit nutty! Especially if you knew that I live in a HOA neighborhood. (Not the friendlist of folks sometimes. I’m sure there is a exception, however.)

As a woman who can totally see God telling me to tell someone something just THAT odd? I get it now. What might look crazy to someone else now looks like the only way to me if I am certain that God said what He said!

KINGDOM HELPERS AND THE BODY OF CHRIST

I see it in my office everyday. In churches. In consulting. Sometimes God uses me to be a Kingdom helper with strategy. Sometimes I am receiveing Kingdom strategy from the elders that know to some people I may have it all together but they remember when I was small. They know when I FEEL small. They know how to give me strategy that wades through the waters of the leader that I am and finds the little girl in me that may be struggling with fear or indecisions.

This is how the Body of Christ works. Sometimes, God Himself will part a cloud and tell you exactly what to do. Sometimes? He depends on His people to be obedient with strategy and to do what He says to do or say what He says to say.

GOD’S WAYS ARE ABOVE OUR UNDERSTANDING AKA DON’T GET SCARED WHEN THE ANSWER IS “WEIRD”

I think often about a story I once heard about a man who was doing pushups in the church service. In the audience! Weird, right? Wrong. It’s easy to assume people are doing things to “be seen” unless you understand how obedience works. Sometimes? God will ASK you to do the thing that you KNOW looks insane. We have to care about pleasing Him in order to not care what people think. Even then, it may be difficult to step out on faith.

As it turned out, that day in service there was actually someone who was speaking with the Lord silently saying, “If You are real someone needs to do some pushups in this church!” That’s how hurt they were. That it needed to be so WILD and so OUTLANDISH that it was almost impossible to happen. And if it happened? They would believe. And they sure did after it happened!

That makes me wonder how many other people God told to do pushups that day, the days prior, and they didn’t listen. How pleased the man had to be when He heard that His act of obedience had led someone to the Lord when perhaps no one else in that church building was willing to take the risk.

STOP LOOKING TO WORDLY MODELINGS OF SUCCESS AND ASK GOD WHAT HIS PLANS ARE

The amount of books on my bookshelf about how to be a good leader are vast. In fact, when they hand us the keys to a pastoral office it is usually already packed with books, studies, quotes about how to lead people well. I’ve read quite a lot of them in my day. But I have never once in my life learned more about leadership than I did from God Himself and the men and women around me who taught me what Godly strategy was.

What worked for one set of people would not work for another. Sometimes I’d have to start from absolute scratch. Other times? I’d have to be willing to do something a little out of the ordinary for them to understand what I was trying to teach them.

I have to come back to Godly strategy time and time again. Be it at work. In ministry. In my own life. In my own piggy bank when life packs a punch.

Stop looking to wordly resources to solve problems that God wants to solve. You can watch every red-pill video. You can listen to every worldly woman or man on the planet tell you how to find a great catch in a partner. (You’re not looking for a worldly partner anyway!) You can even look to the world to figure out how to finance your idea, your book, your business… or you can look to the Maker of those ideas. The latter is always the answer.

Today, tomorrow, always let us be quick to look for the strategy of heaven. There’s no better strategist in the world than our God. Let us be quick to run to Him and to utilize our brothers and sisters in Christ who might just have the download from Heaven that we so desperately need.

And instead of panicking? Let us hold unswervingly to the God who promised…

Because He is faithful and worthy to be trusted.

In Him,

Pastor Brooke

Brooke Keith Ministries