So let's have a look at the difference between a servant and a king and I'll just quickly go through these. I could develop them more but I'll leave it to you to think through. Now the first thing is for the servant, his identity is a servant. That's who I am. I am a servant. I serve, see? But for a king, well his identity - I'm a king. I am a king and I make decrees and declarations. I begin to build. I have designs and desires. I have a dream and vision. The slave, well the slave is not thinking like that. That's who he is. So you see here's the second thing about a servant; a servant is waiting for instructions. They don't do anything until they hear. They need to hear, so they practise listening and obeying and they're very good. They listen and obey and they're very good at that.
Jesus said if you don't learn to listen and obey you can never graduate to being His friend, because learning to listen and yield to God, revelation and obedience are qualifiers for friendship, see? But that's not where we stop, so a person who thinks like a king takes initiative. It's very difficult for many Christians to take initiative, because they're afraid of getting it wrong, afraid of making a mistake, afraid of missing the will of God. What if I miss the will of God? That's what they do and so they live like a slave. I'm so scared of missing the will of God, actually I won't take responsibility for decision making. I won't take responsibility for my life. I'll wait until God tells me.
Now there is a place and times when we need to listen clearly for directions from God, but if you want to - see I hear people say well God told me to go down and buy this, God told me to go down and buy that. God told me - you know, you hear people talk like that. Well God told me to buy - and they kind of go on and on about what God told them. It appears like it's really spiritual. It's incredibly childish. You could just if anyone talked to you like that say wait a minute. Hang on, back up here. Let me just run this by you. You're telling me that you are so childish and irresponsible that God's got even to remind you to buy toilet paper? What is with you. Grow up. Think it through. It sounds spiritual but it's incredibly religious and it's incredibly childish - but it can intimidate and come through as spiritual. That's what it's meant to do, but actually it's childish.
God gives you a free will and He gave you a mind. A mind. ... [Applause.] ... A mind to think, design, imagine, create and order your life with. He gave you that. He's not going to do it for you. You have to think. Tell someone you have to think. I know it's going to hurt, but think. It's true. Some people become Christians, they stop thinking. They become in slave mentality - I just got to do what I'm told, I got to wait for God to tell me what to do - but God, you're not talking to me. I'm not hearing anything. I'm stuck - passive and stuckness. There's another thing, so for a servant their relationship is authority based so they're big words. The big words that are big in their mind are submit, yield, wait, obey you see?
Well the king has already gone past all of that. They've grown out of the childhood stage and now it's covenant based, so they're concerned about engaging. What they have is God's, what God has is theirs, and they talk then about the sharing of resources, how they can walk together. It's a different deal. It's a whole different level of relationship. He said I'm not calling you servants any more, I call you friends. Friends talk and share dreams and desires with one another.