For Such a Time as This

     Recently, I resigned from the ministry I was serving in.  I had thoroughly enjoyed my time there and the students I got to lead, and I will miss them.  But I knew that God was calling me elsewhere and asking if I would be willing to take a step of faith--risking to look crazy to my family and friends who didn't and still don't understand.  I answered the call and said yes.  So over the course of a weekend my parents and I packed up all of belongings and I resettled them in Joplin, MO, and this past Sunday was the first in a while when I can truly say I experienced what the church should be, and yet what so many seem to be missing.  

     It had nothing to do with the sermon or the music that was played.  Rather it happened during a time of prayer, a time that most worship services seem to exclude.  It was the kind of prayer that happens spontaneously; prayer that that happens when people gather together and envelope one another with love and acceptance.  My response, tears.  I couldn't stop the tears that flowed down my face, they just kept coming.  

   I had people who loved me and wanted the best for me, people who have been with me every step of the way for the past year as I searched for what God was doing in my life.  They enclosed around me and prayed over me.  And I just cried.  I knew that God was doing something in my life, but never imagined it would be felt in such a painful and joyful menagerie of tears. 

     The sermon that morning was nothing spectacular, but there was one line, a line that will stick with me as I travel through this wandering I find myself in.  The line is this: "Sometimes we sit around and wait on God, but what if he is waiting on us?"  Profound.  God is at work and has been already in my life.  And as I search for what God is doing already in my life and where he is already preparing people for me, I must move; move in His direction and find what he has been waiting for me to do, to find the place, that when I look back on my life, I can say that God has been preparing me "for such a time as this" (Esther 4:14).

I Have A Dream

I thought what better day then Martin Luther King Jr. Day to share one of my biggest dreams and goals I have for my life.  It was King who once said, "I have a dream," and he worked hard to see his dream become a reality.  He even gave up his life to see his dream come to life.

It was during my second semester of college when an upperclassmen approached me and told me that I have the right personality type and persona to be a church planter, which at the time I didn't even know what that meant.  He gave me a test, I passed, I guess, and we began talking about church planting.  I declared my major to Bachelor of Christian Ministry with an emphasis in Church Planting and signed up for my first class, and I have been hooked ever since.

I have had opportunities to work with church planters in Africa and New York City and northwest Arkansas, and each time my heart continues to pound in my chest that this is what God is calling me too.  I see the need and the importance of starting new churches.  Statistically, new churches reach more for Christ then existing ones, and I want to be a part of reaching people for Jesus.  With that said, I feel God is calling me to work in church planting.  No I don't have the logistics figured out and I have no time frame I'm working with.  God has given me this dream and I can only hope that someday I can accomplish it.

What's your dream?  Has God laid something in your heart so heavy you are about to bust at the seams of not having yet accomplished it?

Lessons Learned Along the Way

I believe the year of 2010 has held a lot of firsts for me.  Some in my personal life, some in in emotional life and maybe more importantly, in my spiritual life.  I can't go in detail about all of them, but here are a few...

First, God has taught me a lot about loving people when you don't want to love them. (You can read my previous post for a further explanation).  God tested me and tested my obedience to what he was calling me too.  I had preached on loving my enemies and praying for those who persecute you, but had never fully understood this until this fall.  And let me tell you obedience is hard especially when you don't want to do what you're being asked to do.

Second, God has been moving in my heart telling me I need to repent of my prideful attitude.  I was talking to another friend about this and I think I can say with completely honesty that I have never truly repented before.  Sure I've been remorseful and I've talked about repentance, but I don't think I have ever been convicted before and truly followed through with an act of walking the other way.  I am thankful that God is teaching me these things and testing my obedience to him.  Yet again it is not fun, but I know that I will be better off then I am now once I've submitted to His will.

Lastly, God has started using me to really share my faith.  This is a first again for me.  Today while I sat in a coffee shop drinking my coffee, a man approached me and made a comment about my shirt I was wearing (go SOONERS!) and we struck up a conversation.  We talked about his job and family and then he asked what I do, which led to a good conversation about Jesus and the church.  He was a Christian, so I wasn't sharing my faith with a non-Christian, but I still think God was teaching me a lesson--its not as hard as people make it out to be.  

     

It is my hope in the next year I can follow God's voice and guiding more, and continue in the long, hard road of obedience so that His kingdom might be advanced, one act at a time.

Loving Through Obedience

I never really understood what Jesus meant when he said “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”  I never thought I would have to face and real enemies or persecution.  I don’t live in a impoverished nation.  I don’t leave in hostility towards the gospel.  But rather, I live in the Bible Belt of America, in a small rural town in southwest Missouri.  So how could I really have any persecutors that I must love? 

Let me explain…

Ministry is hard.  No one said it was going to be easy, but I didn’t know exactly how hard it was going to be, and any time one deals with people he should expect it hard.  People make things difficult, not intentionally, but make it hard.  Everyone doesn’t agree with decisions that are made or the direction the church should go.  Everyone has an opinion, including myself. 

Last Sunday’s sermon was on forgiveness, and I felt God nudging me to forgive some individuals from the church where I work.  I didn’t really want to, but knew that I needed to if I was going to grow in my faith and truly move forward in who God is molding me to be.  I have forgiven before but there was something that happened this time.  It was if I truly felt a burden lifted from my shoulders.  I was finally set free from trying to convince them my opinion was the right one or that I had to live up to their expectations of me. 

Don’t let me fool you though, it was a tough and humbling experience for me.  I didn’t want to forgive them and I didn’t want to swallow my pride, and yet as I sat down at my desk and wrote out cards to each of them, I knew that I was doing exactly what God had called me to do.  God needed me to learn this lesson of humility and leadership, but more importantly he needed me to be obedient to his calling and nudging in my life so that I could continue in my sanctification as a Christ follower. 

My sense of gratitude for these individuals has greatly grown larger because I was forced to honestly evaluate their positions, their opinions and see that I am not always right.  I learned how to love my enemies and how to pray for those who persecute me by obedience. 

Will you join me?  Will you too, learn to love those who hurt your feelings; those individuals that may make your life difficult?  Will you learn to love others by being obedient?

What Am I Supposed To Do?

What does one do when you work at a church and are trying to serve God and grow the kingdom and the church, and someone comes up to you and asks your girlfriend (who just started coming down to serve alongside you in ministry) “What are you doing here?  You like burning fuel?  Its a waste of gas!”? How do you do ministry with/to people when this is their attitude?

Common Denominator

I have been reading in the Proverbs a lot this past few days, and yet again I have been struck by simplicity and complexity of the proverbs when applying them in our Christian walk.  Today I read Proverbs 27 and 28.  Here are the verses that stuck out to me.

“Better is open rebuke then hidden love…As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another…As water reflects a face, so a man’s heart reflects the man…He who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy…Blessed is the man who always fears the Lord, but he who hardens his heart falls into trouble.” (Proverbs 27:5, 17, 19; 28:13, 14)

These verses all can be taken apart or together.  Some might find it difficult to see what they have in common, but to me they all boil down to our instinct to want, and yet run from community. 

No one likes to be alone or feel lonely.  No one likes to feel like they don’t have anyone to run to in times of hurt or times of tragedy.  God created us to have this desire of community.  He created Adam and Eve.  He knew that we couldn’t make it by ourselves.  When the nation of Israel was created, and when the Church was born, God created community.  Their were laws of protection for outsiders.  There were times of celebration, times of worship as a community.  In the Church, believers shared their belongings.  They gave to one another so that everyone would have.  God created humanity to be in community.

And yet for some reason when times get really hard, or things get personal, we flee from community.  We try to hide.  Whether we are caught in sin or hiding sin, we don’t want it to get out for fear of what the community will do or say.  The community that was created for good has now become a community for judging and a place of fear of rejection, the very thing community was created to get rid of.

So as I read these verses, I am struck with the fact that I must be in community with other believers.  I must be willing to be challenged when I need challenged, to be sharpened in my faith when I need sharpened so that I might start reflecting God in my life.  If my heart reflects me, then I want my reflection to look like Jesus.

Common denominator.  A commonality found among a particular group of items by which the whole group can be divisible by.  These verses, when dividing why the common denominator (accountability) equals community!

May we all strive to have this denominator in our life so that we live in true, Godly community.  So that we can begin to look like the Church as God designed it to be.

Grace and Peace

Are we there yet?

Every parent and children with younger siblings hate to hear this dreaded question.  Okay maybe hate is too strong a word, but most don’t like, especially when it is repeated every 3 minutes.  But sometimes, I wonder if God ever gets tired of hearing us ask this same question.

In my daily devotional time the other day, I was reading in Proverbs 19.  These two verses stood out to me.

“Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purposes that prevails.”—Proverbs 19:21

“The fear of the Lord leads to life:Then one rests content, untouched by trouble.”—Proverbs 19:23

So many times we want to have everything figured out in life.  We want our questions answered, we want our directions set and we like our life plans and dreams to be set.  Maybe I’m the only one, but I love being spontaneous but hate not knowing my future.  It is so hard for me to rest in God’s plans for my life.  Like the Solomon says I have tons of plans in my heart.  Things I’d like to accomplish, places I’d like to go and it gets frustrating when God’s ideas and his plans don’t match up with mine.

If only I could learn to trust fully in God.  Then I might have the rest and contentment that I need to not go insane.  When we start to focus on ourselves, it is too easy to get distracted and to forget to find God.  It is then, when we seem not to be content but rather always searching for the next and brightest idea to entertain us.  I am reminded of a passage from Colossians 3 where Paul writes “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward.  It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”  If only I can remember this when I get distracted.

So are we there yet?  Only God knows the answer.  Just like a parent who knows the directions, the time of travel and the mileage one must go to reach his destination, so God is the one who knows about our journey, our plans and our dreams.  May we always learn to trust in God and find our satisfaction in his timing and contentment in His plans.

Grace and Peace