Hey Everyone,
Week Four Half Way. Here is some of what I read and learned!
Hearing from God
This week I started reading a book called “Praying by the Power of the Spirit” by Neil T. Anderson. I have only read the first chapter, but already it has had a profound impact on my prayer life! Here are some of my favorite parts of that chapter:
“Okay Lord – I’m setting aside my list, and I’m going to assume that whatever comes to my mind during this time of prayer is from You, or is allowed by You. I m going to let You lead my time of prayer... Whatever came to my mind that evening was what I prayed about. If it was a tempting thought, I talked to God about that area of weakness. If the busyness of the day clamored for my attention, I discussed my plans with God. I actively dealt with whatever came to my mind... In one sense it doesn’t make any difference [where our thoughts come from] we are responsible to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ... In the past I tried to shove evil thoughts away without much success. But when I began to bring them to the light, I was amazed how liberating that was. All the issues that I had been trying to ignore during prayer were issues that God wanted me to deal with. He wanted to make me aware of matters that were affecting our relationship... Confession to God literally means to agree with God. We don’t confess our sins in order to be forgiven. We are forgiven because Christ died for our sins on the cross, and therefore we confess our sins to have an intimate relationship with God... Hebrews 4:15-16 ‘15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. 16 Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.’”
After I read this chapter I went out and sat out by the road outside my house. It was pretty late at night so everything was pretty calm (relative to city life) and it had cooled off some putting it at around 85 degrees. AS I sat I laid down my list to God and just started talking to him. Whatever thoughts came up I prayed through and before I knew it forty five minutes had gone by. I am the kind of person that doesn’t usually do too well just sitting still for forty five minutes and especially when it is hot out haha. But, not having to fight all of my thoughts was incredibly freeing. I am a sinner, and I was free to be a sinner before God, I am distracted and I was free to bring whatever came to my mind to God. It felt like talking with a friend, and I even got some weird looks from a couple neighbors as they walked by on the other side of the street, just a white boy talking to himself. The challenge for you reading this is to enter into a time of prayer with God where you lay down your list. Recognize to God that every thought you have is either from him or allowed by him. The good things and the bad things, if you have bad thoughts, distractions etc bring them to God instead of fighting to put them away or stay focused, and allow him to lead your prayer time! I challenge you to have a great time of prayer!
Answered Prayer
Monday of last week was a hard day at the Timothy Initiative. George, the director, had one thing after another piling up against him and wearing on him. The final straw was that the closing on a house that the Initiative is buying got pushed back a month. This is a big deal because the house renovation project was going to be providing two months work for the guys, and in order to make sure that everyone was free to work on the house George had not lined up other work for them to do. This meant that after a slow week of almost no work for the guys, and with them expecting to start work on Wednesday, George was going to have to tell them he didn’t have work for them because the house deal didn’t close. It was right about this time and getting this news that George realized the upcoming weekend was the two year anniversary of his sister’s death from a drug overdose. Needless to say George was feeling pretty worn down and as a leader and someone who never wants to let people down he felt really bad about not having work for the guys.
But, this is where the real character of George as a leader came out. Feeling like he had nowhere else to go George’s first response was to call Will, Greg, and I to come and pray about everything that was going on. We quickly debriefed on all of the issues that had come up over the last week and we dove right into prayer. It was a great time to just surrender to God’s control and trust that he would provide. You can take this for whatever you would like, but it was halfway through that time of prayer that George got a text message from a friend. In the message was an offer and description of a job that would start on Wednesday the same day work on the house was supposed to start! After we had finished prayer, George opened and read the text and with a smile he told us the news. God is good and the guys have had steady work on this new job :)
I believe that God loves to provide for his children! I believe that God responds when we are faithful to ask! And, it is a blessing for me to be serving with leaders who know that they cannot succeed by their own strength but seek God and his provision. The Timothy Initiative operates in faith and this is just one small story of how God has blessed their willingness to surrender and to trust His leading.
“The issue is the issue, we can only get through this together.”
This week in Pastoral Care (which despite my hesitations is proving to be a phenomenal class) we talked a lot about how we approach a situation where someone is seeking pastoral care from us. It was never my intention to talk about this class in my blog every week, but it is really that good so I can’t help it haha. First of all we talked about how the person who is looking for help is the expert in their own lives and we have to learn from them. We should go into the situation ready to explore and learn just like we were in a new country. Within this there were three themes that we can embrace to help us be successful as we pastor: Partners, Mess, and Limits.
First of all Partners means that when a person comes to us seeking pastoral care we become partners in trying to figure out what is keeping them from being whole. The person is not the issue, the issue is the issue and we can only get there together! Secondly Mess means that because I know I don’t have all the answers I don’t have to fear messiness. Whether that is things that don’t make sense to us, or things that don’t fit in our biblical view, owning that Pastoral Care is messy helps us to be humble. When we don’t have all the answers it lets God remain God, the one who does the healing! Third of all, Limits means that we understand our limits and we share them which moves us back to partnership. It is ok to tell the person you are at a limit, “I have never experienced anything like this before, I want to ask you some questions.”
The reason that I wanted to share this was because this week I got to talk to a friend on the phone who was seeking pastoral care from me. I have had many conversations with this person in the past and I have never once finished a conversation feeling like I was helpful or that any progress was made... In fact, most of the time I just didn’t know what to say. But, after taking what I am learning in class to heart I found that I had a whole new outlook on how I should try to pastor this friend. We ended up talking for about forty minutes and I kept the issue the issue in my head, I partnered and asked questions asking God the whole time to reveal to me what was keeping my friend from wholeness, and instead of telling my friend to get back to the rules I encouraged them to continue to seek God! It might sound really simple as you read it, but for the first time ever in two years of conversations I actually felt like progress was made! I am so grateful for everything I am learning in my class, and I really feel like God is using it to strengthen me in an area that I am pretty weak. I still wouldn’t call myself very Pastoral, but by God’s grace (and grace from my friends) I am getting there.
Tamed tongues, covenant eyes, and surrendered hands.
This week I got to lead morning devotions on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Here is a short overview of each one. On Monday, we talked about how we should work to have tamed tongues as James strongly warns in chapter 2 of his book. James explains that the tongue is a fire that is capable of great evil and turning the whole body like a bit for a horse and a rudder for a ship. Then looking at Matthew 12 we talked about how out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. The words that come out of our mouth are not only a reflection of what is inside of us; they are also the first opportunity we have to bear good fruit. Often the things that you say will be the best or worst witness to the people around you. This is talked about seriously by both Jesus and James, so much that Jesus even says each of us will have to give an account for every careless word that we have spoken. So we vowed to be a community of tamed tongues in what and how we talk to and about one another.
Then on Tuesday we talked about covenant eyes taken right out of Job 31:1 “I have made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a girl.” Job continues to talk about how lusty eyes are a fire that burns to destruction, and that it is a sin to be judged. We also looked at another passage in Luke 11 where again Jesus explains the eyes are the lamp of the body, and if the eyes are good the whole body is full of light and vice versa. Here the word good in the Greek really means undivided or single fold as opposed to two fold. We talked about how our eyes can either serve God and fill us with light, or serve our flesh and fill us with sin and darkness. Lastly we talked about accountability and how important it is in battling out lusty eyes. As a community we vowed to have covenant eyes.
Lastly on Wednesday we talked about having surrendered hands to God. Specifically we took hands to be “works” or everything that we do and make, and we looked at three questions to find what kind of hands please God. The questions were, “are we at a place where we are working to try and earn God’s favor or his grace?” With this question we looked at Ephesians 2:8-9 which says, “For it is by grace that you have been saved through faith – and this is not from yourselves it is the gift of God --- not by works so that no one can boast.” We talked about how there is nothing you can do to make God love you more, and there is nothing you can do to make God love you less. God did not love Paul more that he loved each one of us. Jesus did not love the disciples more than he loved us. His love for us is perfect, and it has no limit!
The second question we asked was, “are we working out of our own strength because of a lack of faith – or - Are we afraid to even make plans that are impossible without God because we are afraid he won’t show up? With this question we looked at Galatians 3:2-3 where Paul asks the Corinthians if they are so foolish that after receiving the Holy Spirit they are trying to reach their goals by human effort. Also we looked at a quote from one of my favorite books, Crazy Love, which says, “If life were stable, I’d never need God’s help. Since it’s not, I reach out for him regularly. I am thankful for the unknowns and that I don’t have control, because it makes me run to God.”
The third question we asked was, “what can we do with our hands that is pleasing to God?” Again with this verse we looked at two quotes from Crazy love which explain, “God’s definition of what matters is pretty straightforward. He measures our lives by how we love. In our culture, even if a pastor doesn’t actually love people, he can still be considered successful as long as he is a gifted speaker, makes his congregation laugh, or prays for ‘all those poor suffering people in the world’ every Sunday. But Paul writes that even if ‘I have faith, as to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing (1 Corinthians 13:2-3 ESV)... Similarly, we are each given different gifts and talents by our Master. The thing that matters most is how we use what we have been given, not how much we make or do compared to someone else. What matters is that we spend ourselves.” We worry so much about doing the right thing for God but here it is clear that the baseline for all of our actions should be love. If our work is motivated from our love of God and our love for our neighbors, not to earn favor, but in faith, then we can know that we are being faithful! We vowed together to be a community of surrendered hands!
Take it to God. Clean up the wreckage. Do it for the next guy.
This week it was put very simply to me one of the motto’s of the Timothy Initiative. Take it to God, clean up the wreckage, do it for the next guy. They believe and have seen that in life the focus on your own recovery is necessary especially in the early stages. However they have also found that to stay in a place so focused on yourself and your identity is one of the easiest ways to relapse. Many guys come into recovery with a list of specific goals or things that they want to accomplish in their own lives. Usually this is because they have a time frame in mind that they would like their recovery to take instead of committing to it for as long as necessary. Often these men reach their goals sooner than they are ready to move away from an intentional community of recovery. When this happens, they either get bored or prideful as they get everything they wanted for themselves done (“clean up the wreckage”) and often they will relapse. This is why the last step, the move away from self, the turn to give back and do it for the next guy is so important for recovery. For any addict the choice to remain sober and to be clean is a lifelong battle, but it cannot be handled in a place of selfishness or isolation. Community is central to recovery, loving others has to be a part of becoming whole. It can’t just be internal and the things we are working on ourselves, being a better person, it has to be external, are you proclaiming Jesus, are you laying down your life for others. Addict or not I think this is something that is true for everyone.
This leads right into what we talked about this week in my History of Action class. We talked about the Dark Ages 600-1000 AD. In its 400 years there were no theologians, no new writings or new thinking, essentially no authentic Christian leadership. In fact one of the only reasons that Christianity survived the Dark Ages was the fact that the Rome never reached Ireland. In a very interesting book called “How the Irish Saved Civilization” this truth is spelled out in the story of a slave named Stephen who brought Latin and Christianity to an illiterate Ireland and then their love for literacy and copying and preserving literature. Essentially Ireland was just tucked away, just weird enough to stay off the radar and preserve Western Civilization and real Christianity. The reason this was the only real Christianity was because in the rest of Europe there was no healthy mission and Charlemagne was going around and baptizing by sword (Either you get baptized and convert or you die).......
So, all of that being said this is what we concluded on in our class. We are not Jesus people if we do not proclaim his name publically to the world. If we do not preserve and put forth the message; there should be no doubt. Mission is not an option it is a necessity. If we are to be Christ followers there are only three real places we can follow him, to mission, to death (physical and metaphorical), and to resurrection. Some questions we have to be asking ourselves are who am I serving in my life, who am I mentoring, and who am I trying to reach?
Things to be Praying For
Please pray for the coming weekend as I am planning on spending it homeless with Dale!
Pray for safety and efficiency on the job site with the guys this week since we are a little behind schedule on our current job.
Pray for me as I continue to serve. Please pray specifically that this week I will continue to have consistent and productive prayer times with God! It is the desire of my heart to be more holy than what people see, and never less. I really want to dive deeper into my prayer life!
Thankyou for your prayers! Proclaim Him this week!
~Kyle
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