We will not lose heart.

This excerpt was written by Niki H back in April at the beginning of the Covid shut-downs; the truth of this word remains even more relevant today. Church, do not fall asleep on your watch. Do not mistake following a movement for being a part of a movement. Do not sell the your birth right to be a carrier of change to any organization or party. We have been given the mantel and authority to bring forth the kingdom of love and light into the dark and lost world. - Jessie J

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It’s time for the Church to wake up. To live like a Bride fully alive walking in the power and love of her Beloved. I believe this could be our finest hour. 

I’m reminded of John 11:4, when Jesus, speaking of Lazarus, says, “this illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” I really believe this virus and the fear of the hour, meant and seeking to destroy us, will be the very thing that ushers us into our divine destiny. I in no way want to suggest that this thing is from God but I do know a God who delights in redeeming even the darkest of days and who brilliantly uses every bad and evil intention to miraculously bring forth life.  

A famous quote in reference to the United States after the attack on Pearl Harbor during WWII states, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” Though unknown (at least by me) whether this was actually said or just a quote from a film, I believe it captured the times well and I believe it is a prophetic declaration that will well capture the times we are in now as well. I believe this is the Church’s hour to fully wake up and show the glory and hope of her Beloved to a world that desperately needs it. 

Just as an attack on U.S. soil awakened a country to get actively involved in the war, I believe this crisis is awakening a Bride to fight. To not merely be bystanders that, while appalled at the atrocities of war and filled with sympathies in our words, remain immobile.

May we now be moved to be physically engaged and actively involved in the fight. May we be moved to the point of willingness to sacrifice – a laying down of our very lives. If ever there were a call to arms in our day, now is the time. Let us not let this moment pass us by. May we not be ones that find ourselves wondering where we were when the war was waging all around us, but instead, may we be mobilized and fully given to the fight. And as the weeks continue on, may we not lose heart or become weary of doing good. May we daily be faithful to take up arms and fully engage. May the Church not simply send good wishes to a hurting and fearful world but may we be the sleeping giant now awakened and filled with resolve-now ready to be physically engaged. Ready to sacrifice. Willing to shed blood and tears.  

May this be the catalyst that awakens the Church of Christ. Though once rocked to sleep by our own comfort and distance, unaware of our own strength and authority, the Church is waking up and moving to be nameless, faceless, lover-soldiers of King Jesus. May this be the last straw that pushes us to be fully mobilized in our calling and break the back of the enemy. 

May this time not be remembered primarily by the spread of disease and the shutdown of nations, but by the awakening of a world to the powerful hope of Jesus and the unstoppable love of a Father. 

We are awake. We are in it for the long haul. We will not lose heart. We will never give up. We will arise as the glorious Bride of Christ and step into our divine destiny, storming the gates of hell with a hope that’s secure and a love that breaks chains, moves mountains and renders darkness powerless. We will not waste this hour and look back with regret. We will never be the same.

Trustworthy

Times of cultural sea change, chaos, ambiguity and natural disaster are all opportunities for the believer to reconsider the genuine source of safety and security. 

The king is not saved by a mighty army; A warrior is not delivered by great strength. A horse is a false hope for victory; Nor does it deliver anyone by its great strength. Psalm 33:16-17

The modern world has sophisticated systems of wealth management, insurance, education, medical technology and science.  These all combine to make the world a much better and safer place to live. Much good is accomplished. They reflect our immense capacity as creators made in the image of the Creator. The subtle deception that lodges its way into our psyche is that these creations are trustworthy of our absolute faith. We are and should be impressed with humanity’s accomplishments.  They are micro-reflections of our origin. Humans, the pinnacle of creation, overthrew our connection to the Creator, with independent behavior and choices. That introduced a deluge of chaos, disaster and uncertainty into creation. Consequently, anything we can invent can be destroyed by other renegade segments of God’s creation.  

The devil’s gateway to earth was our unwitting complicity with His schemes.   In the Lord’s benevolent patience, He allows rebel outposts for a season. Thus, humanity persistent compliance with the devil’s dictates called ‘sin’, reverberates into all creation destabilizing everything from the weather to microbes. The existence of this uneasy, (and generally unacknowledged by humanity) alliance between man and the devil perpetuates this sabotage of God’s creation.  God’s, intention for earth was to be beneficent to humanity, but instead can turn hostile and deadly. Hence, we suffer from pestilence, plagues, natural disaster, and inexplicable terror. Even our own creations turn deadly: splitting the atom and DDT.  

Alas, harnessing creation’s enormous power, is an insufficient source of true security and safety.  We place our trust in the One who created it all, the One who is reservoir of life, and the One who delivers us from our own folly is worthy of our unqualified trust.  Everything else will prove unreliable. 

LeaderMan vs. Servant Leader

The following article was written by Brant Hanson on his blog in 2008. You can find the original article here.

We don't need any more of "LeaderMan".  What we need are servant leaders, men and women who are gifted for leadership, whom people naturally follow, who point those people toward Jesus alone, our Teacher.

Granted, as always, I may not know what I'm talking about.  But below are some off-the-top-of-the-head attempts at distinguishing one from the other.

Servant Leader:  Has something to say

LeaderMan:  Wants a platform on which to say something

LeaderMan:  You almost feel you know his family, because he's your Leader

Servant Leader:  You allow him to influence you, because you know his family

LeaderMan: Wants you to know he's a Leader

Servant Leader:  You're not sure he knows he's a leader

LeaderMan:  Loves the idea of the Gospel, and the idea of The Church

Servant Leader: Loves God and the actual individual people God brings across his path

LeaderMan:  A great speaker, but self-described as, "Not really a people person."

Servant Leader:  Makes himself a people person

LeaderMan:  Helps you find where God is leading you in his organization

Servant Leader:  Helps you find where God is leading you

LeaderMan:  Gets together with you to talk about his vision

Servant Leader:  Just gets together with you

LeaderMan:  Resents "sheep stealing"

Servant Leader:  Doesn't get the "stealing" part, since he doesn't own anyone to begin with

LeaderMan:  Wants the right people on the bus

Servant Leader:  Wants to find the right bus for you, and sit next to you on it

Servant Leader:  Shows you his whole heart

LeaderMan:  Shows you a flow chart

LeaderMan:  A visionary who knows what the future looks like

Servant Leader:  Knows what your kitchen looks like

LeaderMan:  If it's worth doing, it worth doing with excellence

Servant Leader:  Not exactly sure how to even calculate "worth doing"

LeaderMan:  Talks about confronting one another in love

Servant Leader:  Actually confronts you in love

LeaderMan:  Impressed by success and successful people

Servant Leader:  Impressed by faithfulness

LeaderMan:  Invests time in you, if you are "key people"

Servant Leader:  Wastes time with you

LeaderMan:  Reveals sins of his past

Servant Leader:  Reveals sins of his present

LeaderMan:  Gives you things to do

Servant Leader:  Gives you freedom

LeaderMan:  Leads because of official position

Servant Leader:  Leads in spite of position

LeaderMan:  Deep down, threatened by other Leaders

Servant Leader:  Has nothing to lose

From Disappointment to Perception

Most of us have to get advanced degrees in ‘disappointment’ to correctly perceive the Lord.  Disappointment empties us of our personal vanities and false expectations.’

Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” Luke 24: 31-32

We can easily identify with the disciples walking with Jesus after the His resurrection on the road to Emmaus.  Like them, we have our own ideas and ambitions that keep us from perceiving Jesus or His Kingdom realities, even we He clearly states them.  Our default focus is on what is temporary. His focus is on the eternal.  When we experience loss, we over value it, remaining oblivious to eternal gains we could have received had we ‘taken up our cross’.  All we see are our preconceived dreams evaporating. 

Repeatedly, Jesus warned the disciples of the jarring death He was to suffer.   Obviously their ‘visions of grandeur’ in His new government were dashed.  Jesus saw redemption of the universe within one temporary pain filled event call the cross. They saw nothing but defeat and loss of their ambitions for Him and them.  He saw permanent victory and humanity’s redemption. 

When we are in a state of ‘disappointment’ over dashed, destroyed and decimated illusionary dreams, we are tempted to reject any voice that fails to justify our pain and suffering.  To our chagrin, these voices see everything differently.  They even annoy us. The Lord loves to hide in plain sight, explaining what was evident all along. There is often a prolonged delay before we see Jesus or what he meant.  Regrettably our false expectations are born out of vain ambition, misguided enthusiasm, youthful foolishness, and simply not knowing the ‘ways’ of God.  They leave us feeling betrayed, abandoned and disappointed when they don’t work out.  Disappointment then leads to disillusionment.  Disillusionment has two pathways from which to choose: either hopeful reality or skeptical unbelief.  

I dare not gloss over the depth and pain of disappointment.  We do indeed feel real loss.  We might even feel it comes from the Lord betraying us, but that too is vanity.  The pain actually comes from hanging on to what is false as it decays.  The lofty and vain imaginations to which we cling have only one solution: death. So, we have a choice; to die slowly or quickly.  One choice is to take up our cross and die quickly and quietly. There other is to make the self-referential choice that leads to a long and painful death, often taking years.  Yes, the loss and suffering are real but long painful losses are usually self-inflicted. It’s like the young person who knew they shouldn’t marry that very bad character but did anyway.  For any number of reasons, they proceed, despite clear warnings from Jesus not to. After their divorce 15 years later, you will hear them blaming God for all their life’s misfortunes.  

Much of our suffering comes from tenaciously holding onto to false narratives, illusionary reality and our rights.  Holding on to these idols is ‘death’ itself.  When we see Jesus’ kind intentions  toward us, we still might experience anxiety.  We have anxiety of having to make a choice.   Yet when we chose to follow Him, the Lord replaces our illusions, schemes and attitudes with His eternally enduring perspective.  A benchmark of spiritual maturity is how quickly we ‘take up our cross’.  Most of the time this comes from embracing a new value system, not a piece of wood with splinters.  The cross is a new value system.  We appraise our life and the circumstances through a new standard.  The heart of that standard is that Jesus is first and nothing else comes close. Jesus never disappoints us. But many of us experience disappointment with Jesus because we refuse to believe Jesus’ narrative of what’s He has invited us to take up-which really was a cross that means to kill our value systems. 

The “Millennium Bridge” Problem

When the Millennium Bridge opened in London, pedestrian traffic began to cause a slight sway. As each individual began adjusting their gait to compensate for this motion, it unwittingly began synchronizing their input to the resonance of the bridge. So then the sway of the bridge began to take on a life of its own, so to speak.

I feel like a lot of human problems work this way.

Our individual walk might not intend to interact with anyone else’s. “To each his own,” right? But somehow it ends up working together to interact with a flawed environment so that now we all unwittingly begin acting in concert towards some diabolical end. It takes on a life of its own. Even if a few individuals try to stand still to stop feeding the tumult, it carries us along with it anyway. 

It’d be great if we had the sense to walk to a different resonance despite the tumult. And maybe enough others would begin to walk with us so that together we’d begin to tamp down on the way it controls us and makes us keep feeding it. 

But I feel like we’ve been fed a naïve view of what freedom really is. The Tumult has every reason to keep us thinking we’re free to walk however we’d like, because this is the very thing that enslaves and conforms us to serve its ends. 

The Lord calls us to walk freely and together in a different way so that his kingdom, not the world’s, begins to hold sway.

To Love the Lord is to Wait on Him

But as it is written: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” (1 Corinthians 2:9 )

Paul presents a fresh look at Isaiah’s description of waiting on the Lord.  He equates ‘waiting on’ the Lord as the same thing as ‘loving’ the Lord.  How many of us, when asked how we can demonstrate that we ‘love’ the Lord, would immediately respond that we ‘wait’ for Him?  It’s profoundly significant that the apostle Paul considered them one and the same.  Obviously, he considered a lifestyle of contemplative attentive waiting on God as a supreme demonstration of our love toward God.  So why is ‘waiting’ on the Lord such a critically important habit of the mature believer?  

A mentor once said that “the will of God is often easier to understand, than His timing”.  To get that, we must wait in His Presence.  The synchronization of our internal clocks to eternity transpire as we wait. We become aware of the vast "nowness" of God.  His graceful unflappable demeanor is imparted to us as we marinate in His peace and His imperturbable Sovereignty.  The immediate clamor of external circumstance is jettisoned as their incessantly urgent demands for our attention gets silenced. Our ‘timetables’ expand into eternity's perspective.  No longer are anxiety, fear, impatience or discontent able to dominate and invade all my waking thoughts.  I become distracted by the disproportionally massive Presence of God.  Waiting on God calibrates my environment regardless of the circumstances, into a place of tranquility, joy and patience. 

So much of our impatience results from the inverse of waiting on God: waiting on the world, ourselves or even others. Transference of His Character and distribution of His gifts results from abiding in His Presence which requires disciplined focus on the Lord, His Word, and the Holy Spirit.  It bears the attentiveness of a hunter awaiting his prey.  It bears the passion of a lover anticipating the return of his lover. This is God's process.  It's an initial step.  It is an essential step.  It is a step that must be frequently returned to in our lives for a healthy spiritual lifestyle.  It becomes a spiritual habit and discipline we understand and from which we never depart. 

When we don't wait on the Lord the heart allows pride, arrogance, impatience, haste, and temperamental fits.  A general atmospheric hum of low voyage anxiety, and anger emanates around us in our private self.  This hum is like a warning beacon to those around you like a flashing sign saying, "step back from the car".  We become unapproachable, testy, and reactive.  Our self-love then becomes thin as we move from God's acceptance of us, to a performance-based mentality.  Waiting on the Lord is like oxygen to an air-deprived fire fighter; water to a desert refugee.  When we access heavens gates by waiting on the Lord, relief floods our being. We are satisfied.  Then an exquisite exchange takes places.  My stuff or His.  (Isaiah 40:31).  My feeble strength for a strength that will not dissipate.  One discovers newfound capabilities that are impossible otherwise to accomplish.  Practicing active waiting on God is one of the advanced disciplines in spiritual sustainability.  

For since the beginning of the world men have not heard nor perceived by the ear, nor has the eye seen any God besides You, who acts for the one who waits for Him. (Isaiah 64:4)