"And I said, Hear you heads of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel! Is it not for you to know justice - you who hate the good and love the evil, who tear the skin from off my people, and their flesh from off their bones, who eat the flesh of my people and flay their skin from off them, and break their bones in pieces and chop them up like meat in a pot, like flesh in a cauldron. They will cry to the LORD, but he will not answer them; he will hide his face from them at that time, because they have made their deeds evil."
Micah uses the imagery of cannibalistic savagery to graphically highlight the depraved character of leaders who do violence against the oppressed instead of justice. He says brutal oppressors in Israel perpetrate horrors on the people because they love evil and hate good. As a result of what they have done, when they cry out to God in need, he will turn a deaf ear. The rulers and heads of the house of Israel have betrayed their trust in such a vile way that he will ignore their day of anguish.
Such a stunning picture of corrupted hearts reminds me of the imperative God's leaders have been given to love his people the way he does. They are never to knowingly abuse, neglect, deceive or harm them in any way. To the contrary, they are to do unparalleled good to and for the people because they are near God's heart. While such is a tall order requiring a manner wisdom and love only taught by the Holy Spirit, it is the invitation to any leader desiring to do God's redemptive, freeing work.
We all recognize what terror and suffering can result from leaders who do evil in the sight of God. What blessing and good come from leaders who love him, and because they love him, they love what he loves. When that happens men and women are freed and enabled to be God's people in the world for his pleasure and glory. They become unlocked, inspired and surrendered to his heart - a Jesus-following leader's deepest passion for people.
May the leaders of imagine/Northampton, and all of the leaders who love and serve him in the Pioneer Valley be such men and women of the good.
May the desire to do good characterize all of us in a way that unlocks the Pioneer Valley for the Kingdom.
May our collective ministries be characterized by uncommon love, wisdom, graciousness, kindness and humility; breaking down walls of ingrained cultural distrust and indifference.
Anyway, just a reminder to use the "Follower" widget on my blog. That way you automatically get a notification that I have made a new post. It also let's me know who is regularly reading it.
"Therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?" - Jesus.
"Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."- Paul.
"Be strong, and let your heart take courage all you who wait for the LORD!" - David.
"Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the LORD your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you." - Moses.
Maybe it is just my emotive temperament, or maybe all geezers planting churches get waylaid more than their share by bouts with worry and discouragement. From what I have read through the accounts of even the great Kingdom missionaries over the centuries, these two pernicious saboteurs of the heart show up unwanted with frequency. They have to be battled or they can hamstring a mission, even turn it back leaving spiritual bodies everywhere.
What is a saboteur? The simple definition is anyone who commits sabotage.
What is sabotage? It is any underhanded interference or undermining of a cause, mission or enterprise. It is designed to cause so much injury or disruption as to derail the success of its target. It is secretive, and covert.
So a saboteur is someone or some agent dedicated to disrupting and destroying its object, and it tries to do so without detection.
All Christians are the targets of demonic saboteurs who work to obstruct, entrap and destroy them. They can attack subtly or overtly depending on the foothold they have gained in a person's life. Sin is the easiest entrance point for them, especially chronic sin that has serious disruptive or wounding potential. Even if not the case, demonic saboteurs are at work daily to obstruct, frustrate, tempt, lie to, and harass every believer. The goal is to distract, divert and destroy a Christian so he or she gradually walks away from God in despair: believing lies, trapped in sin or convinced there is no God - he gave up on the likes of them.
Harassment, enticement and deceit are key weapons of these saboteurs. The heart is the ultimate battlefield. It is in the heart that the battle is won or lost.
Of late, meaning the last month or so, the saboteurs of worry and discouragement have been whispering lies. It goes something like this:
"You know the money is going to run out again just like it did at the end of 2009.
"Your counseling is drying up, little by little because you are a crappy counselor. No one wants to come and see a loser like you."
"You know how many bills you have to pay each month? How long do you think you can keep doing that?"
"You know God is not going to keep bailing you out. He is frustrated and angry with how inept you are. Imagine/Northampton is going to fizzle and die. Everyone will see your shame because of the fool's errand you have been on. He never asked you to come up to Northampton."
"Look at how few people want to be involved with imagine. They came and went because they saw how lame you are. You guys couldn't do this if your lives depended on it. You just don't have it. God is abandoning you to your failure. Accept it."
"Admit it . . .it's over. What a joke. And all the people who trusted you are ruined because of you. They believed in what you said, and you let them down."
I could go on and on, but those thoughts were also accompanied by deep feeling of heaviness and emptiness showing up at night and at times when it feels we are dead in the water.The feeling were palpable and draining, both emotionally and physically.
I need to say, however, that people I know and love have been telling us God is having them pray more and more for us. To a person, they send words of encouragement, from God and from their own hearts. And, my own prayer life has been deepened and restored by the true adversity we have faced here in Northampton. I am getting stronger in prayer. Knowing other people have been summoned by God to pray and give witness to his love and mission for us has been water in the desert - treasures of life and spiritual sustaining. I have actually felt the physical sensation of some sort of darkness lifted off me twice early in the morning, a loosening and freeing. Quite extraordinary because I did not expect it, It happened all of a sudden.
I am realizing worry and discouragement are powerful saboteurs of the heart. They obstruct and work to inhibit the sustained enlivening of faith and hope. They work to undermine courage and plant cancerous doubt in the heart of Jesus-followers who are stepping out in faith to fulfill the Kingdom mission God has summoned them to.
Worry steals faith; discouragement turns us away from hope. Both wear down and exhaust our hearts until we are numb and weary. We become lulled into impotence and sterile submission.
God commands: "HAVE NONE OF IT! DO NOT LISTEN. DO NOT AGREE. DO NOT SUBMIT. DO NOT STAY SILENT IN THE FACE OF HEART-SABOTAGING WHISPERINGS FROM LYING SPIRITS!"
The Truth is . . .
Jesus exhorts us not to worry at all. He avers that our lives are so much more than our daily needs which the Father already knows and will provide.
Paul says worry over nothing, and pray all the time for our need. He says if we persist, peace will guard our hearts against lying saboteurs.
David tells us to stand strong and let our hearts hold fast to courage while we wait for God who will be faithful.
Moses asserts God Almighty is with you and me; he's never left nor will he. In fact, he goes with us into the places and amongst the people we dread. Why be afraid?
So where are the spiritual saboteurs in your Kingdom mission these days? What are you doing about it? Where to you need to be healed or restored?
On December 6, 2009 I published on this blog a post entitled: To Help Us Grow a Missionary Mindset. The post came from a simple tool I created to help folks on our team think and act as missionaries in Northampton. If you read it you would have seen the 8 questions I invited team members to measure their weekly progress against. It was designed to help us all really become missional rather than talk about it. Talking about it is easy to do and weirdly emotionally satisfying. It can take the place of actually doing it. I know, I am quite brilliant at giving lip service.
From looking at the tool lately I have decided to put some flesh on each of the questions I outlined. I will do so in 8 posts detailing one question at a time. I hope you all find it helpful in your own missional development. Remember it is about gradually developing a missionary mindset, i.e., way of life.
Question 5 takes us deep into the heart of having a missionary mindset and being missional as a primary way of living. It is one thing to connect with new people, pray for them, and take initiative to love and serve them. All good stuff. It is the next step (and deeply related), to devote the time and make the concerted effort to build a true relationship with a person who does not share your faith. Not so easy. Getting to know a person on their terms can take a large dollop of gumption.
Building such a relationship needs a sense of humor, creativity, quiet perseverance, flexibility, wisdom and all sorts of grace. Remember, the relationship I am referring to is one which gradually opens the person to Jesus, not merely having a new friend:
It is strategic, yet genuine.
It is focused, yet natural.
It has a purpose, but is gracious and sincerely loving at the core.
I hope it is abundantly clear I am not reducing such relating to "winning" converts as if we are making sales, and "upping our numbers" for God. Yuck! Seems to me such an attitude reduces the person to a target rather than a precious human soul, a person worthy of respect. Lord, keep us from such insulting practices!
Question 5: Am I Building a Relationship With Someone Who Doesn't Know Jesus?
1. Do I love Jesus to the degree that my heart longs for others to know him?
2. Have I allowed God to "break my heart" for people far from him: the broken, blind, stubborn, and superficially satisfied?
3. Have I asked him to help create more space in my life for building relationships with people who don't share my faith?
4. Have I examined my fears over "imposing my views" on others, and asked God to give me courage and "words salted with grace" toward them?
5. Have I decided to surrender some of my time to make this a way of life?
6. Am I studying ways of being more effective in this regard?
7. Am I satisfied with "God if you really want to use me this way, I guess I'm OK with it?" The passive approach is fine by me. I'm not an evangelist, you know.
8. Am I convinced going about building such relationships is the Scriptural way of life; being a missionary is just another way of saying Jesus-follower or Christian?
Take some time with God this week. Reflect on the questions. Pray and listen to God. Engage a fellow Jesus-follower and talk them over with him or her. Use these questions in your small group and commit together to engaging this adventure.
May Jesus take you and me far into the freedom and joy of building relationships with people who do not know him. May our lives be more and more characterized by the missionary mindset and way of life.
Last Wednesday, I met for an early breakfast with a dear old friend. He a man of God in the truest sense of the term. He is also a man of prayer and has been for the 20 years I have known. Prayer is his way of life.
He is also a man who listens to God as one of the key ways he relates to him. We have shared retreat ministry for years around helping people learn how to listen as a mode of prayer. We see it as an essential mode. All communication if it is true communication involves listening, especially the ability to listen well. Prayer is listening too.
In the course of our warm-spirited catch up conversation he spoke of struggling over Christmas time to connect with Jesus in prayer. He was not hearing him and wondering why. As I listened, the Spirit began to remind me of how I had largely abandoned listening prayer almost completely since I moved to Massachusetts. Yesterday, he exhorted me to "return to my strength." I know he was talking about listening to him. My entire ministry at the Center For Renewal/Klesis grew and flowed from the frequent practice of this spiritual discipline. It guided all we did.
I had abandoned my strength in favor of tackling the avalanche of minutiae attending launching a church. Really foolish. Really, really foolish!
So beginning yesterday morning, I returned to the Well to listen in the Scriptures and to the still, small voice of the Spirit. My life depends on it. I little noticed the riches of what I had forsaken. Living in this dark city without being spiritually tethered was desiccating my spirit and dimming my hope little by little. I was wandering in the wilderness of my own making.
Even after just two mornings, here's what I have been shown upon returning to the well-worn path:
1. Without listening I am largely wandering around on my own.
2. Without listening I defer quickly to my motivation for exploring without a clear design.
3. Without listening, I focus on trifles and spend my resources on what matters little, but looks promising.
4. Without listening, I stumble more easily into sin, errant passions, and foolish pursuits.
5. Without listening, I have little discernment about spiritual matters and the lying spirits who seek to entangle me in dangerous traps.
6. Without listening, I am spiritually impotent and frighteningly self-absorbed with little of true Kingdom consequence.
7. With listening, my love for Jesus and desire for his glory grows and centers me.
8. With listening, I locate his will and way; I am more able to obey and produce fruit that lasts.
9. With listening, I am more allied to my deeply spiritual wife ad partner in ministry; we are more in sync in everything.
10. With listening, wonder grows from apprehending the greatness, beauty, holiness and majesty of God.
11. With listening, I have the greatest chance of being effective in launching imagine/Northampton.
12. With listening, I am more able to love and connect my broken humanity with the broken humanuty of everyone around me.
In other words, it is my lifeline. I am a fool to neglect, much less abandon it.
Jesus, may you keep me on a short leash to help me stay near you with open ears, a soft heart, quickened mind, and a deepening love for you and those you love. Please let me never stray again from my strength and my LIFE.
On December 6, 2009 I published on this blog a post entitled: To Help Us Grow a Missionary Mindset. The post came from a simple tool I created to help folks on our team think and act as missionaries in Northampton. If you read it you would have seen the 8 questions I invited team members to measure their weekly progress against. It was designed to help us all really become missional rather than talk about it. Talking about it is easy to do and weirdly emotionally satisfying. It can take the place of actually doing it. I know, I am quite brilliant at giving lip service.
From looking at the tool lately I have decided to put some flesh on each of the questions I outlined. I will do so in 8 posts detailing one question at a time. I hope you all find it helpful in your own missional development. Remember it is about gradually developing a missionary mindset, i.e., way of life.
This question is a tough one because it exposes our fears and besetting prejudices. Most of us are squeamish around certain people or certain types of people. Maybe they smell bad. They are dirty. Then there are the loud and obnoxious. Sometimes they represent values or a lifestyle we abhor, even judge readily. Maybe they are unpredictable or threatening in some way. Perhaps they are awkward and hard to talk to. Most people have a hard tine knowing how to relate to street alcoholics and addicts. A few are just crazy.
So, why would I want to talk to "one of them?" Most of us shy away from people in our personal "one of them" categories. After awhile we don't give them a second thought.
I'm pretty sure God finds such attitudes repugnant.
If you are going to develop a missionary mindset, you are are going to have to blow your comfort zone to smithereens, and head hard into unfamiliar territory. The CZ is a suffocating barrier preventing you from learning to relate to the least and most difficult of God's people; the one's most everyone avoids. It steals opportunity for us to experience the mind-blowing power of God to transform the most unlikely people. You will never witness such miracles from the deadening confines of your comfort zone.
You will have to cross the DMZ, your individual no man's land, and extend a hand of friendship, however hesitatingly at first. You will have to take a risk and feel the unsurety.
4. Did I Go Out Of My Comfort Zone to Connect With a Person I Normally Wouldn't?
1. Ask God to give you his love for people you are often uncomfortable with. Ask him to soften your heart and open your eyes to these "image bearers." Ask him to let you see them as he does.
2. Ask him to make your comfort zone less comfortable concerning these people.
3. Pray for increased opportunities to encounter them and the courage to connect as you do.
4. Ask the Holy Spirit to "give you the words to speak" when you encounter someone he wants you to talk with.
5. When you do connect, let it be on their terms. For example, see how they respond and go only as far as they invite.
6. After you make a connect take time soon to reflect on what you were feeling, hoew you encountered God in the interaction and what you learned.
7. Thank him for letting you do this and invite him to continue opening opportunities.
Father, help all of us go beyond our comfort zones. In so doing, shatter our prejudices, overcome our fears, and let us see your incomparable power for transforming people we never thought possible because of our ignorance or blindness.
I was thinking about the fact that the Scriptures it said the prayers of the saints go up to God as a sweet fragrance to him. So I began to wonder how the suffering and tears of the world go up to God?
This is what I heard: "The tears of my people in their suffering I mix with my tears for them, and for the suffering of the world. Your agony is my agony.
When you are wounded; I am wounded.
When you are abused; I am abused.
When you are forsaken; I am forsaken.
When you are oppressed; I am opressed.
When you are abandoned; I am abandoned.
When you are mocked; I am mocked.
When you are violated, I am violated.
When you are crushed; I am crushed.
Not one of your tears is forgotten by me. I know them all. All of them will be dried and turned to laughter.
Remember that the cross married your agony to mine and sealed the promise that soon I will bring everything to rights. The world will be healed. It's peoples will rejoice. The oppressor and abuser and murderer and tyrant will be exposed and brought to justice. No injustice is forgotten. No tear dries alone . . . unnoticed.
My blood, agony and tears are restoring Creation. The Laughter of Heaven will turn all the sorrows I have collected into the leaping of true Freedom and Joy.
Hold fast to all my promises. Carry my love with you as a bond of surety.
Never forget I know every tear. I have each, and I will never forget them or you.
