Success in ministry?

In ministry how do we really know if we are doing the right things. How do we know if we are actually getting any where, gaining any traction, making any difference? In weight loss you know if you are doing something right if the scale says you have lost weight (or if the pants are more loose today than yesterday). In physical training you can tell if you are getting somewhere if you can add on more weight to the dumbbell than you could yesterday. Even in dating you can tell if you are making progress if you get a kiss on the cheek when you drop her off. But how do you know if you are making progress in ministry?

Is it only when there are more people present? Is it when the offerings go up? Is it when there are new faces? Has it been a ‘successful’ day if someone comes to the altar?

Furthermore, how do you know if the fruit that you are seeing is from what you are doing or from something else altogether?

Does this mean then that the success of ministry is something that really cannot be gauged? Could it be that ministers need to simply leave all measure of success to God? But what of fruit inspecting?

We know of course that we should only being doing the things that God has directed us to do, and of course by listening to the Spirit we can/will be checked when we do something wrong. We do need to inspect fruit but I daresay the most important fruit is the Fruit of the Spirit and obedience to the Great Commission and the Great Commandment not the number of people who became members last year or the average attendance. If the New Testament church had kept average attendances the numbers and stories would have been skewed. It is awesome to know that 3000 were added to their number in one day. But it is also amazing to know when one family get’s saved and baptized. And the point wasn’t to average those events and compare it to what happened in the upper room, but rather to experience the fullness of God in each of those moments and praise God for His saving grace!

So I wonder if some key questions that we should be asking in our search for health and growth and maturity in our ministries and churches are:

  • Do we hear testimonies of God’s moving?
  • Do we see His glory on people’s faces?
  • Is there a sensitivity to the Spirit?
  • Is there a burden for the lost?
  • Is there a passion for prayer?
  • Is there a hunger and thirst for the Word of God?
  • Is there a God-motivation to help and serve others?

I think that a church with these qualities might just be a church that experiences revival!

On our desperate need for God

My mind (and heart and spirit) keeps returning to thoughts of the glory and beauty of God and our desperate need for Him.

I simply cannot get away from the nothingness that we are apart from Him and how pitiful and pathetic our gestures are apart from Him. We were made by God, for God and intended to dwell in God and He in us. When we attempt things apart from Him we are attempting to create ex nihilo (out of nothing) and that is simply not possible. Scripture reminds us that it is in Christ that we live and move and have our being. Attempting to operate apart from Him is trying to work without life, love, peace, joy, grace, goodness and a million other things that flow from the heart and character of God.

Church apart from God is an abomination as it takes what was created only for His glory and makes it a mockery through religious exercises, human wisdom and human traditions. If we attempt to be the church without God’s presence, who are we worshiping? Who are we praying to? For what reason are we gathering?

Life apart from God is an impossibility because God is the giver of life and we only have life because His breath is within us. Life apart from God is hollow, depressing, the walking dead. Life apart from God is full of anxiety, worry and fear and a million other things that are opposite of the character and heart of God. In other words, life without God is death and hell.

So why do we try to handle things on our own? Why do we try to make things look good and sound good to other people, when God sees right through the house of cards we have built? What does it matter what the world thinks or if we gain the whole world, if we don’t have God?

And need I remind you that we don’t receive the presence of God because we wish for it, think about it, understand the theology of it or because we have certain spiritual exercises or disciplines that make us feel holy or pious. Receiving the presence of God is waiting for the presence of an actual living Being, who has His own thoughts, emotions and will. We cannot manipulate or coerce God into coming into our lives so that we can somehow have life and church. We must wait for and before God, trusting that He will reveal Himself in the way and in the time that He knows is right. When we are broken and surrendered fully and always unto Him, He not only graces us with His presences but invites and allows us to live in Him and He in us! And so then in response to our desperate cries comes His gracious and glorious habitation!!

Let us wait for the Lord!

Even so, Lord Jesus Come!

What we need for Christmas

We each have our lists of what we want for Christmas. And perhaps some of us are the responsible types that only ask for what we ‘need’ on our Christmas list. But I want to take a moment to talk about what we really need for Christmas:

We need the Lord. We need His presence. We need His Spirit. His gifts are nice. We are grateful for the talents He has given us to use and to invest for His glory. We ought to be overwhelmed with gratitude at the blessing and favor that He has bestowed upon us again and again. But most importantly we need His presence. When Jesus came to earth, He was known as Immanuel, God with us. We have forgotten this. Or perhaps we think that God was with the disciples but not so much with us. What we need for Christmas is a fresh encounter with “God with us, Immanuel”. And no, we don’t need this encounter through a nice Bible story, sermon or church service, as good as those things are. We need to encounter the Living God in the presence of His Holy Spirit. We need for Christmas to realize that the greatest gift ever given is when God gave us Himself! And when He gave us Himself, He gave us love, righteousness, holiness, compassion, glory, power and so much more! God wants to continually pour Himself into our hearts if we will but ask Him and wait and receive His promised Holy Spirit! I challenge you: this year ask God for one thing only, and ask Him again and again: “Lord, please, give us Your Spirit”!

A call to prayer and fasting

Isaiah 43:19 says: “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” The Lord is calling His church to again be a people who call on the name of the Lord in desperation, hunger and thirst, in need and in humility. God wants to bring revival into our midst that many (if not all of us) have never seen or known, but only read about or heard about. That revival is a moving of His Spirit on His people. He is asking us to wait on Him. (Psalm 37:7)

 

And so I am asking you to join me in calling out to God on behalf of His people. The church is struggling not because of lack of plans, resources, people, buildings, or vision but because a lack of the power and glory of God. And these things don’t come because of something we do, but rather they come when we wait before God. His Spirit comes when we humble ourselves and wait and pray. And so I am asking you to call on the Lord like you never have before. To call on Him in desperation and ask Him to humble us, break us and have His way in us.

 

God is speaking to me about Joel and the call He gives to His people for a holy fast. Please, take time to read Joel and join me in this prayer and fasting that God would again send His Spirit upon us. When we wait on the Lord we have all that we need and even the business and ministry of the church is handled in His time and His way without our meager efforts standing in His way.

 

Even so, Lord Jesus come!

What am I thankful for?

I am thankful for many things: some big, some small. But I want you to know that I am most thankful for the love and presence of our Lord Jesus Christ! He has made us, He calls us, He thinks thoughts of love and hope and purpose for us, and He pours out His Spirit into our lives. I am thankful that my God is alive and that He is all powerful and that He not only said He would be with us, but that He would be in us! I am thankful that I don’t have to walk this sod alone. I am thankful that I am not left to my own devices nor to my own inclinations. God knows what we need when we need it and if we will but turn to Him and cry out in our desperation and need, He will hear from heaven and heal our land! I am thankful that the Holy Spirit is a real, living, present Being! He is not an idea, a fairy tale, a legend, an impersonal force, a future reality or an unknown, indefinable quasi-real theological idea or man-made construct. The Holy Spirit is the power of God! He is the glory of God! He is the presence of God and He is very present to those who believe and seek Him with all of their hearts. I am thankful for our loving Father, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the promised and now here Holy Spirit. I am thankful that the Lord is near to those who call on Him. Are you calling on Him? Are you thankful for the Lord?!

Our desperate need for revival

We all “know” that we need revival, but therein is exactly the problem. We “know” it: with our mind. We don’t grieve in our spirit that God’s Spirit is not present in our lives or churches. We don’t have heaviness on our heart for the lack of passion for God and His Word. We don’t weep and mourn and wail for the lostness of people or the emptiness we feel in our lives apart from God. But intellectually we ‘know’ that we need revival. Kind of like we know that we should eat more vegetable. Like we know we should sleep more. Like we know we should spend more time with God. But we don’t have the time. We don’t have the energy. We don’t have the will power. And that too betrays what is really going on in our hearts. We think that to have revival we need to try harder. We think that to have revival we need to put forth more effort. In a sense we do, but really all that is need for revival is desperate waiting on God: desperate crying out to God. We need to admit our weaknesses, admit the impossible situations, and admit the filthy rags that we have previously called our own ‘goodness’. And then we must wait. In the waiting God will shine a light on our hearts and then we will only be even more convinced and convicted of our need for revival. Our need is revealed in our apathy, in our ignorance and in our souls. Pray that God will show you your own desperate need for revival!

To those who poured faith and life into me

Life and ministry seem daunting, overwhelming and yes impossible.

There are a few people in life who have found the peace that God intends for His people. God desires that His people have peace in the midst of the storm, strength in the midst of weakness and a deeply settled rest in the deepest part of their souls. The people who have found this deep peace are people of great faith, though I imagine they did not begin that way. These persons who are firm and secure and cannot be shaken are only created after having been shaken, broken, re-molded and reshaped by the Lord Himself. I want to be one who has His peace within!

God has promised that His people can enter His rest. He has promised that all who are weary and heavy laden may come to Him and He will give them rest. God has told us that we can take His yoke upon us which is easy and light. And yet most often we take these Bible verses to be nice spiritual platitudes rather than actual, tangible promises that God will pour into our lives. But I want to be one who enters His rest!

I have been searching over the course of my life for meaning, purpose, calling, love, peace, joy, contentment and rest. I have sought in different ways and have settled for many pitiful expressions of these things, because ultimately all of these things are only fully realized in the presence of the Lord. And let me clarify: meaning, purpose, calling, love, joy, peace, contentment and rest are not gifts that are given from the hand of God, but rather present realities that are experienced in the Presence of God. I want to live in the presence of the Almighty!

All along my journey of life and ministry I have chosen many lesser things and meanwhile there was always someone along the way who knew that what I was really hungry for, what my heart and soul were really yearning for was the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit. These people were humble and gentle with me, shepherding my soul trying to guide me, lead me and push me to Jesus. These were men and women who poured the life of the Spirit and the faith of God into my life when I was too arrogant to hear, too stubborn to listen, too self-sufficient to ask for help and too driven to stop and wait. These people modeled for me Isaiah 53 and the suffering Messiah as they listened to my pathetic schemes to find full and abundant life and loved me in the midst of my foolishness. They watched as I headed down many wrong paths and fell into many pits and yet they simply continued to pray and pour their faith into me hoping and believing that one day I would call out to the Lord. I want to never stop calling out to the Lord!

Perhaps these men and women know the impact they have made on my life, perhaps not. But for all of you who may read this post and wonder whether your prayers, words, attitudes and actions make any difference, let me assure you: they do! My mom and dad modeled faith in the midst of trial, sacrifice in the midst of scarcity and that God’s truth is everywhere if we will look for His revelations. Greg Wood, Richard Reed, Don Boesel and Don Cowan believed that God was working in me in spite of my impetuous, arrogant, stubborn, always have-a-plan-and-an-answer attitude that I approached life and ministry with. They were patient with me and let me stumble into new areas of faith and growth and for that I am thankful. Aaron Coffey listened, sympathized and encouraged me with no personal benefit in return. Corey Jones and Tim Kellerman had faith that God would show me His glory when I didn’t even know what they were talking about. Their few words and simple faith-filled prayers lifted me in ways that words can not express. Dan and Doug Bohi have spoken life into me and my wife by the Spirit of God and have allowed God to flow through them as a conduit while probably not knowing the direct, personal affect they were having on me and my wife and yet they made themselves available to the Lord and to us nonetheless. I want to be a conduit of God’s grace and a vessel that God’s Spirit lives in and through!

This is a brief and incomplete list and a pitiful attempt to convey the deep debt that I owe each person who has prayed and believed, but I want each of you who have asked and believed the Lord to work in my life to know that your prayers have not been in vain, but the Lord has been and is continuing to answer what you have lifted before Him! God is shaking me, breaking me, re-molding and remaking me!

And so now I want to commit that to those around me who don’t know what they are looking for; for those around me who are scrambling, grasping, reaching for things to fill the emptiness: I will lift you before the Father; I will seek to pour the life of the Spirit and the faith of God into you, so that whether you know it or not, God may begin to reveal Himself to you as He has revealed himself to me because of the faith of other men and women who asked and believed! Thank you Father for your faith-filled children who had faith enough to bring me to you! Bless and honor them I pray for their sacrifice and their faith and obedience! Lord help us to call out to you that you will be our All in all and that you will bring peace to our troubled souls!!

I want to dedicate this song to all those who believed for me when I didn’t know enough to believe or couldn’t or wouldn’t believe for myself:

I have found a deep peace

Author: Haldor Lillenas
I have found a deep peace that I never had known
And a joy this world could not afford
Since I yielded control of my body and soul
To my wonderful, wonderful Lord.

Refrain

My wonderful Lord, my wonderful Lord
By angels and seraphs in Heaven adored
I know Thou art mine, My Savior divine
My wonderful, wonderful Lord.

I desire that my life shall be ordered by Thee
That my will be in perfect accord
With Thine own sov’reign will
Thy desires to fulfill
My wonderful, wonderful Lord

Refrain

All the talents I have I have laid at Thy Feet
Thy approval shall be my reward
Be my store great or small
I surrender it all
To my wonderful, wonderful Lord

Refrain

Thou art fairer to me than the fairest of earth
Thou omnipotent, life-giving Word
O Thou Ancient of Days,
Thou art worthy all praise
My wonderful, wonderful Lord.

Refrain

We need Thee, oh we need Thee!

What a desperate need we have for Jesus Christ! We think we know how to approach life. We “know” how to make plans, organize lives, get things done, set goals, develop ministry strategies and yet we fail again and again in personal lives and in ministry. As Scripture says about us: unless the Lord build the house the builders labor in vain. Our only hope is the Lord. Our only hope is calling upon and waiting upon the Lord. No matter what we attempt, no matter our efforts or intentions, apart from the Lord we labor in vain. We must begin to cry out to the Lord. And I say begin, because once we start we simply should not, cannot stop ever again. We must realize that only utter desperation and dependence on the Lord will bring about the character formation, mind transformation, heart transplantation and Spirit indwelling that we need!

Waiting for the Lord

They that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run , and not be weary ; and they shall walk , and not faint . Isaiah 40:31

What does it mean to wait before the Lord? And when we wait what are we waiting for? And epiphany? A vision? A mighty roaring entry of His presence like the train of a robe (as Isaiah describes it)? Or is it something more? Something different?

I have been waiting before God. Not for long. And certainly not in all the ways I could or should. But God has been teaching me to wait. To wait for His perfect timing, to wait for His miracles, to wait for His providence, to wait for His glory. But the beautiful thing is that waiting is not laborious. Thousands of times before it has been difficult, trying and unpleasant. But that was because I was waiting for God to do something for me instead of me simply waiting in the presence of God. I think we have confused the definition for waiting on God to presume a delayed, indefinite, agonizing time of suffering and painful discipline, with the kind of waiting on God which simply sits at His feet and gazes on His beauty. The waiting on God in the present and in His presence and simply finding joy in who He is,  is so much better than the waiting on God for some unknown future date and time when He might give us what we want (or think we want).

I have for far too long perceived of prayer as the necessary ‘key’ to get what I want from God. In a crass kind of way I visualized prayer as the the manner in which I would stroke the genie’s bottle in order to get my ‘three wishes’. What a travesty! What a shame! Prayer is not about getting things from God, it is about being with God. Prayer is about living in the midst of God’s glory and realizing that there is no other place you would rather be!

And when you wait on the Lord, He will meet you there. You may not walk away with your circumstances changed or with the shiny, new thing you have begged off of God, but you will leave changed. You will leave fulfilled. And hopefully, prayerfully, you will never leave the presence of the Lord. Yes you may leave the prayer closet, prayer room or sanctuary, but when we abide in the presence of God, may we never leave Him! Oh God may Your glory come and cover me like a robe, like a mighty, never-ending waterfall of Your goodness! Lord may I sit at Your feet a while longer?

Oh the Glory!

Oh the glory of Your presence, we your temple, give You reverence!

What is the glory of God? What is the presence of God? What does it look like to see the manifest presence of Almighty God?

Can words describe it when the Holy Spirit descends on His people? Are there certain activities, characteristics or behaviors that are present when God’s Holy Spirit comes? Are there certain things that we can do as His worshipers to invite the presence of the Holy Spirit? All of these and more are questions that I have rolling around in my head after a week of prayer, worship, healings, miracles, corporate faithing, testimony, confession, laying on of hands and the glory of God coming upon His people. I can’t really put into words all that I experienced. I will try to somehow pass along what God has revealed to me so that I might somehow be a blessing to others and invite others to experience the mysterious and mighty presence of God.

This last week I attended a “conference” in Fort Worth to consider prayer and that we might be pushed towards corporate desperation for the glory and presence of God. The conference and the desperation of the attendees was expressed in words, groans, crying out, interceding, shouting, crying, worship, praise, humility and brokenness. From the time the first prayer service began it was obvious that the leaders (and likely many of the participants) had been crying out for God’s mercy to be upon His people and for God to do signs, wonders and miracles among His people and thereby transform the hearts and minds of broken people. Each prayer service and teaching session was marked by prayers with “loud cries and tears” as the people just invited God to change our understanding and experience of Him (in most of our lives/churches) from “Ichobod” (the glory has departed) to “Ebenezer” (living sacrifices placed on the altar). During these sessions people experienced physical, emotional, spiritual and relational healing. Chains were broken, faith was imparted and built, prophetic words were uttered for the edifying of God’s people and above all God’s name was glorified!

The only identifiable things that the leaders did to prepare for this conference was desperation, prayer, fasting and saturation in the Word. The manifestations of God’s presence included shouts of praise, agreement in prayer, more desperation and much testimony. It was not a program, a song, certain magical or mystical words that brought about the presence of God and no it was not an emotional, chaotic gathering of people trying to have a ‘spiritual’ experience. It was nothing short of the throne room and the glory of God!

I pray that we would each seek after the glory of God! I pray that we would learn with Mary what it is to sit at the feet of Jesus and listen. I want to touch the hem of His robe and sense His power pouring over me. I pray that we would refuse to accept anything less than the manifest presence of God in our lives and our churches. Will you pray that prayer with me? Can we together learn what it is to be broken, empty, weak vessels that God fills and uses?