Pastor Paul writes: my dear friends Mark and Gill Newham first went to Mongolia in 1993 where they saw God birth His church in amazing ways. Since then they have been involved in church planting and also ran a business to provide employment for countryside Mongolians. Having handed the business onto other missionaries and seen Mongolian leadership in place in the churches they left in 2011. Returning to England they knew they wanted to continue to be involved in missions and returned to Asia, spending two years in Beijing before they returned to Ulaanbaatar in December 2014. Today they are involved in discipling pastors and supporting the new, growing Mongolian mission movement that is taking the gospel to the Mongolian diaspora.

Someone’s knocking at the door. The phone rings and there’s a pile of messages to be answered. “I need to see you now,” they say. It is lovely to be wanted, it’s great to be busy, but sometimes we feel overwhelmed by the needs. Of course we want to share the gospel, preach the word of God and minister to those around us. We are after all here on the King’s business. We put our fingers to our mouth and whisper, “We are working for God, fulfilling his will and seeing his church established. We couldn’t possible say no to people.”

However, by the end of the day or week we feel like a couple of rung-out dishcloths. When we stop we find our minds meandering to a familiar chapter of the Bible which we’ve read least at hundred times — John chapter 5. This chapter is wearing a path in our minds as we appropriate and re-appropriate the fundamental truth that John highlights in his writing.

The chapter, which is so well-known, starts with Jesus in Jerusalem by the sheep gate at the pool of Bethesda. The place is heaving with invalids; the Bible says there was a multitude, lame, blind and paralysed. All of them were waiting for the healing waters to stir so they could get into the pool and be healed.

Imagining myself at the pool with Jesus’ power I’d have been dashing around seeking to meet the needs of as many of the people as possible. It was, after all, a great opportunity to display God’s power. However to my amazement this is not what Jesus did. Instead he fixed his eye on one man who’d been there a long time, thirty-eight years to be precise, and asked him whether he wanted to be healed, which seemed an obvious question as why else would he be lying there? The man told Jesus that he had no one to put him into the water when it began stirring. Jesus’ reply was simple, “Get up, take up your bed and walk,” which is wonderful.

But I used to find this perplexing and used to think, wasn’t this a wasted opportunity? Jesus is the Son of God and has unlimited power at his disposal. He could have snapped his fingers and zapped everyone with his healing power but he didn’t. Why?

Reading further on in the same chapter I slowly began to realise that the motivation of Jesus’ heart and mind was not primarily to relieve the suffering of the world but firstly to obey his Father’s word. In verse nineteen Jesus says, “Truly, truly the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing.”

Ah, here’s the key. Jesus could do anything, he could have fulfilled all the people’s needs but that’s not how he chose to live his life. He could have healed everyone at the pool but his Father did not direct him to do so and therefore he did as he always did, he obeyed his Father’s word. He was, and is, in an intimate relationship with his Father, an unbroken relationship which means that he only desires to fulfil his Father’s will.

If Jesus knew he could do nothing without his Father’s leading, then that must be true for me too. Only problem is I can, and do, do lots of things on my own. I have great ideas of how I can serve God and I do ask him to bless my plans but at the end of the day when my work is done and I’ve finally stopped spinning like a headless chicken I begin to realise that my work is just that, my work, done in my own strength and, dare I say, for my own glory.

Returning to Mongolia to continue a new, growing ministry, I am reminded of my need to focus on him and listen to his voice. God isn’t calling me to fix every problem, meet every need or change the world or even my part of it. No! He is continually calling me into relationship with him, a love relationship that is growing and deepening as I walk with him and learn to obey his quiet direction. And I’ve noticed as I obey he starts meeting people’s needs, changing their lives and touching this world.
I don’t want to forget my place in his plan. I do have a part to play but Jesus’ words remind me again. I have one constant need — I am utterly dependent on the Father, for without Him I can do nothing.