Page 60 - No Apologies

we sow. If our lives were self-directed, God will not judge us to have been conformed to the
life of His Son. Christ ever lived to do the Father’s will. He was attentive to the Father,
inquiring constantly to know what He would have Him do, and He was careful to do all “in
like manner” as the Father revealed it to Him.
If a woman chooses employment, or college and career, or even devotes herself to
fulfilling some vision of ministry, apart from being directed by God the Father to do so, she
will be accounted as lawless in His sight. Consider the message of the following words of
Christ.

Matthew 7:21-23
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘LORD!,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he
who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on
that day, ‘LORD!, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out
demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?' And then I will declare to them,
‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’”

Yahshua is not condemning those here who are doing overtly evil actions. He is not
saying that adulterers and murderers and liars and thieves will be judged as evil doers. He
is speaking of men and women who are casting out demons, prophesying, and performing
miracles. Why then are they declared as “lawless”? The answer is found in the opening
sentence of this passage. “He who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter (the
kingdom of heaven).” If the Father has given you no command to do a work, even an
apparently good work, you are out from under authority. To be out from under authority
is to be accounted as lawless.
A person’s soul can direct them to do good works and God will despise those works.
Why? Only that which He commands is approved in His sight. All else is striving and works
of the flesh. It is not enough to do good works. We must do those works God has appointed
to us.
When Christ went to the Pool of Bethesda we are told that there were a multitude of
sick and injured present waiting for the stirring of the waters that they might be healed.
Christ healed one man who had lain there for thirty-eight years. He then departed and hid
Himself. He left the multitude in the condition in which He found them, for He had no
command from the Father to heal all of them. (John 5)
How many Christians today having the power to work miracles and to heal the sick
would have acted with such restraint? Many Christians consider only what they are able to
do. They do not consider whether God has commanded them to do it. A need does not
constitute a calling. In the book of Acts we read that the apostle Paul and those with him
had perceived a great need in Asia. There were multitudes of people dwelling there, and the
gospel of Christ was unknown. Nevertheless, it was not the will of God that Paul take the
gospel to Asia. The Father had other fields of labor prepared for the apostle.

Acts 16:6-10
Now when they had gone through Phrygia and the region of Galatia, they were
forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia. After they had come to
Mysia, they tried to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit did not permit them. So passing
by Mysia, they came down to Troas. And a vision appeared to Paul in the night. A
man of Macedonia stood and pleaded with him, saying, "Come over to Macedonia