Your Platform with God

There’s been a lot of talk in recent years about building platforms.

Build your platform so you can grow your tribes…expand your audience…extend your reach…multiply your influence.

Having a nice platform of followers helps to sell books. Grow attendance. Catalyze leaders. Book concerts or events. Whatever it is you want to do… but more of it.

Platform building has its place. It’s a necessary component to stewarding influence and spreading impact.

But don’t forget about building your platform with God… giving attention to the things that get his.

Scriptures suggest there are things we can do that cause God’s eyes to follow us a bit closer. “For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him (2 Chronicles 16:9).

Can we really build a platform to get more of God’s attention?

Think about it. Mighty men and woman of God don’t pursue him just to complete a check-list. They do so because when they do, something happens. Real connection with God takes place. Encounters become more real. And rich relationships take shape.

When your platform with God is your focus, your activities will reflect it. Instead of just posting ideas to the world, you’ll spill your deepest thoughts to God. Instead of tracking your followers each day, you’ll be giving careful thought to Who you follow each day.

As your platform with God grows, your platform to influence others can also. But if your earthly platform grows while giving no attention to your heavenly one, conventional platform-building will be a futile grind.

After all, pleasing the world is hard work. Her expectations are high and the bar is constantly rising. And as technology and culture changes, so do the challenges. The pressures of this kind of platform-building never ends.

While pleasing God is work too (faith is a verb, not a noun), it’s very attainable work. In fact, we were created to please God. It’s our purpose. And it’s comforting to know that pleasing God does not require adjusting to technology or culture or the flood of expectations or demand shifts from the market.

The methods for platform-building with our invisible God are constant and are the same for us as it was for Apostle Paul…King David…Moses…and Abraham.

Every time the Israelites found themselves broken and distant from God, it was the same platform-building behavior that pulled them out. Nehemiah used a hearty dose of prayer, scripture reading, giving and fasting to pull the people out of the muck and to help them rebuild their platform with God. Ezra used the same tools for helping the Israelites as well.

How’s your platform with God?

So how’s your prayer walk? When’s the last time you’ve journaled deep thoughts to God? Or read one of the Gospels in a weekend. Or soaked for one hour on a particular chapter, passage or even a single verse?

How would you like to have a 3-day weekend to be alone with God? If that sounds unattainable, maybe you start with just a Friday? Or even half a day to take a walk, breathe some fresh air, inventory your heart and take in some silence.

If platform-building has you tired, perhaps what you need is a break from it so you can rebuild your platform with God.

While building earthly platforms takes lots of time and a list of steps, your platform with God can be launched today. Right now actually!

Surprisingly, when you focus on your platform with God, the pressure to build the ordinary platform softens. That’s comforting.

And once your platform with God has a strong base, you’ll find just the strength, conviction and freedom you need to get back to doing what God has for you to do… things like spreading a message, extending influence, mobilizing followers, serving tribes, disciple-ing a flock.

You know…building a platform!