Where Much is Given, Much is Required

For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more. (Luke 12:48b)

None of what God wants to do in your life happens without your participation. That is the honest reality of being the junior partner in this relationship. God provides revelation, wisdom, peace, guidance, and power. But you have to provide the body kept in line, the mind being renewed, the mouth yielded to the Spirit, the time set apart, and the consistent pursuit of His presence. You have to do what is required to receive it.

God is merciful, and He meets people where they are. For example, when you first come into the Kingdom, He gives you grace for where you are. Most believers can remember those early days when they were brand new to God. They would open the Bible almost at random, and the exact Scripture they needed would practically jump off the page. God was encouraging a newborn. He was building their faith in the early stages of a relationship.

But then one day, you opened the Bible the same way, and it no longer worked. If you did not understand what was happening, you might have thought something was wrong. Nothing was wrong. You had simply grown past the baby stage, and God was no longer treating you like an infant. The expectation had shifted because you had been given more.

Unto whom much is given, much is required. What worked at one level of maturity gives way to what is required at the next. The believer who keeps doing what they did as a spiritual infant and expects God to keep responding the same way will find themselves confused and stalled. The goal is to grow to such an extent that you easily know the voice of God. You know the Word of God. You know the peace of the Holy Spirit. You know the check on the inside when something is wrong.

Practical Application

It does not take a dramatic crisis to hear from God. You just know. That place is reachable. But it requires doing less talking and a great deal more listening. It requires less noise, less rushing past the quiet moments, less filling every silence with your own voice and more stillness, more waiting and more actual listening to the One who is speaking.

James 1:19; 1 Corinthians 9:27