We’ve been looking at Edmund Burke’s statement, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” We saw that that approach to life was not a recent phenomenon, but began with Adam in the Garden of Eden. We saw that the good work a Christian is to disciple others to Christ. However, he first needs to be discipled. People often are not humble enough to go through the process of discipleship, and therefore do not learn how to disciple others. They think they are too busy, or too old, or they’ve been a Christian long enough and they just keep doing what they’ve been doing. What prevents people from starting the process? It is easy, because it is just helping another person grow spiritually. However, it is genuinely difficult, because every Christian has so many distractions away from that good work.

I have been finishing our lower level. The sun is up for only a little over eight hours a day right now and there are so many projects that seem like giants. I often don’t want to do them! It’s often hard to get any motivation to get to work! And besides, these are tasks that I’ve only seen on “youtube” so doing them myself seems intimidating. The best way I’ve figured out how to get going is to “attack” the task and just start working!

It’s like not knowing how to start a paper for a class or how to restore a damaged relationship or dealing with a stubborn two-year-old. How do you start? How do you get going? Or how do you start discipling a person, when you don’t know who to ask or what you should do. You know you should, but it seems monumental! Again the key is to start somewhere. Don’t worry about making a mistake. Start with a relationship. If you’ve never been discipled, then ask someone who does disciple people and ask how to do it.

Nike’s advertisement department came up with a good phrase- “just do it.” That is a good phrase, but it lacks one thing. You can “just do” discipleship or any other Christian service, but eventually you burn out or fail. God never meant for you to “just do it” on your own. The lacking ingredient is a relationship with the Lord Jesus, which includes the empowerment from His Spirit. Just as Adam failed in the Garden because he was not dependent on the Lord, so you will “fail” if you are not dependent on the Lord. But, with total dependence on the Lord and pursuing the task, you’ll make progress and evil with not prevail.

God’s plan is to use Christians to disciple the world to Himself. There is no plan “b.” God is not going to use rocks or birds, although they would do a better job than you or I. But God wants you and I to depend on Him and “just do” what He commands us in His Word. Disciple others in dependency on Him and leave the results to Him. Too many of us are going to be thinking of excuses when we get to heaven. We have wanted to be “comfortable” in the Christian life.

We want to be comfortable in the church we attend. We want to be comfortable in the service we perform. We want to be comfortable in helping “nice” people. We want to be comfortable working with the people we are around.

God never promised us we would be comfortable. The comfort we have is in Jesus, not in the world. The real comfort will come when we get to heaven. “Just do” what God commands and quit thinking about it. Because we don’t do the good work, evil is gaining influence. What will you do?