Cause and Effect

We’ve had a lot of fog lately.  A lot of people say that means in ninety days, we’re going to have moisture.  Well, maybe.  Ninety days from now would be mid-to-late April, and it would not be unusual to have rain in mid-to-late April whether we had fog ninety days before that or not.  So it’s kind of hard to tell whether the fog had anything to do with it.

That sort of thing happens a lot in life.  We know that one thing followed another, so we say that the first thing caused the second thing.  But all we really know is the one thing happened, and then another thing happened.  We don’t know whether the second thing would’ve happened anyway, even if the first had not.

Let me give you a couple of examples to explain.  If I flip a switch and a light comes on, did flipping the switch make the light come on?  Well, yes, because my turning that switch made some electrical connections and when those connection were sent through the system, an electrical impulse went through and the light came on.  On the other hand, if the rooster crows and the sun rises, did the rooster’s crow make the sun rise?  Well, no, because the sun was going to rise whether the rooster had crowed or not.  Sometimes when one thing follows another it was caused by it, but sometimes it’s not.

When it comes to sharing the gospel, that can make things tricky.  We know we’re supposed to make disciples for Jesus.  But we really have no way to know whether sharing the gospel with someone brought them to Christ.  In fact, we may never know whether what we did had any influence on them at all.  No matter what happened, we have no way to know it would not have happened anyway, regardless of what we did.

So, what we need to do is keep ourselves focused on doing God’s will, rather than worrying about the results.  If we share the gospel with someone, if we show love to someone, we’re doing God’s will.  Whether it makes any impact on that person’s faith is not up to us.  It’s up to God.  God is in the charge of results, not us.  All we’re in charge of is doing our best to serve God.

If we do our best to serve God, God will bless our efforts.  Another way of saying that is that whenever we do our part, God always does God’s part.  We don’t know, and will never know, what would’ve happened if we’d done things differently.  We may never know whether our efforts brought even one person to Christ.  But God will know.  And God will know that, regardless of the results, we did our best.  And God will bless what we’ve done.