Daring to Pray for the Big Stuff

I personally like change. I like seeing things evolve, moving toward the perfect. I also realize that I will never attain perfection in this life, nor will I see every change that I would like to see actually take place. I am called to do what I can with what I have where I am. Thankfully, God does not allow my actions or my abilities to be the end of the story. He wants me to depend upon him to be the foundation for the change that brings about the best. He wants me to expect him to deliver with the stuff that he and I both know I cannot accomplish. I, we, need to dare to pray for the big stuff.

The idea of praying for miracles is basic to Christian life. We pray for healing that is beyond medical skills. We pray to be delivered from natural disasters (I pray a lot for hurricanes to stay out in the ocean!). We pray for the needs of family, friends, country, and world. Miracles are something we want. They represent the hand of God active in our world. They reassure us that God has not forgotten us. They remind us that it is not all in our hands. Miracles represent the big stuff.

When the widow went to the unrighteous judge (Luke 18:1ff), she knew she was demanding something she could not deliver for herself. She had to have help from a greater source. Jesus said that she received what she wanted because of her confidence that the judge had the power to give her what she wanted and because she had the persevering spirit that would never let him forget it. She went after the big stuff.

I look at my churches. I hear their dreams. I listen to their prayers. Rarely do I hear them praying for the big stuff, the kind of stuff that only God can do. Where that does come into play, it usually involves keeping some saint out of heaven or at least out of pain. That may be seen as as worthy prayer and in many cases something only God can do, but our prayers for the big stuff should never be limited to physical needs.

When do we pray for the matters of heavenly importance and concern? Jesus said that our Father already knows about our earthly needs. How much time do we spend praying for Kingdom righteousness? How much time do we spend praying for transformed lives and churches? How much time do we spend praying for things that have eternal significance? That's the big stuff.

Here are some prayer topics I'd like to hear in our prayer meetings. Boldness in sharing our Christian testimonies in the marketplace. New Testament moral guidelines for political decisions. Families committed to having Christ in the center of their homes. Walls of prejudice destroyed in our lives and communities. Courage to make the Golden Rule of Matthew 7:12 the personal rule for our lives. True grief over the lost condition of so many souls around us. The demand for power would be surrendered to the desire to serve. Material bounty would be seen as a blessing to help those with less. Secular jobs to be seen as missionary opportunities. Higher emphasis upon church members at work in the fields and less on sitting in the pews. And yes, the list could go on.

This is the big stuff, the transformation that only God can perform. You have to be courageous to pray for the big stuff. When God answers those kinds of prayers, he usually demands that we be part of the answer.

People Investments

I have a retirement program into which I make regular financial investments in preparation for a future that may or may not ever arrive. By most that is considered wise planning. I wish I could invest more, but there is no chance of a future unless I also take care of today.

Whether we realize it or not, we are all investing in the people around us. Sometimes that is intentional. Many times it is not. You can call it mentoring, teaching, directing, or simply influencing. Whatever name you give it, you are investing in people.

As couples we are investing in our spouses. As parents we invest in our children. As workers on the job we invest through our efforts and work ethic in the lives of employers, coworkers, and employees. In our churches we are investing in our membership. As leaders we do it with a high level of intentionality, but everyone does it to one extent or another. And it all relates to our present and our future.

Investing in people should be intentional. As followers of Christ we should always be seeking to influence others in a way that will point them to the relationship they need with Jesus. Our daily actions will influence others as they watch us and interact with us. Our speech will reveal the priorities of our hearts. Our words, tone, and body language will convey a desire to build up or tear down. No matter what we do, for better or for worse we will be investing in people.

Jesus invested his ministry in his followers. He chose twelve to walk with him. He chose three to share in his most critical moments. As church leaders we would do well to follow such an example. The next generation of leaders will look to someone to see what to do or what not to do. If they can see the positive in you, then your investment in their lives will be to the benefit of many yet to come.

Paul's command to his young disciple in I Timothy 4:12 is clear wisdom for all of us. Set an example for the believers in speech, life, love, faith, and purity. Be intentional in pouring yourself into the life or lives of one or more who will carry the mantle after you are gone. Your name is not important, only Christ's. What you have received from others is very important. Share the teaching and set the example of a crucified life in this world, faithfully carrying out the work of the Master until he returns to claim his own.

Bivocational Ministers - Precious Servants

Last week my wife and I attended the annual state convention small church/bivocational ministers retreat at one of our conference centers. The setting in the Uwharrie Mountains was beautiful and the testimonies of these servant leaders left me both inspired and humbled. These pastors and directors of missions may be partially funded but they are definitely fully involved in their ministries.

The Apostle Paul said that the man of God is worthy of his hire, but he was also one to say that he proudly worked to pay his own expenses. He took the offerings of churches such as that in Philippi, but he saw these as extra blessings from God that served more to reward the givers than himself as the recipient. Paul worked a secular job because it set him free from any unnecessary ties to a local congregation. Financially he was free to come and go. He was in the middle of the society he was trying to reach. He proved himself to be a man of integrity that was beholden to no one but God.

Bivocational ministers represent a growing class of Christian servants in our society. With the coming demise of the builder generation that paid most of the bills for our churches, new sources of support for our ministers must be found even as we seek to teach younger generations the biblical basis of tithing. The bivocational ministry lifestyle represents one of the most positive. One denominational leader recently has said that within a few decades perhaps half of our pastors will need to be bivocational. New church planters are being told that bivocational status may be a necessary part of their work if they are to have a healthy church plant.

The blessings of a bivocational ministry setting include many that are limited or ignored by being a fully funded minister. Among these are being involved with the secular world on an ongoing basis. Fellow workers, employers, and employees constitute a relational family different from the church, opening doors to ministry that would otherwise be closed or unknown.

Church members are required to see themselves as ministers because the "paid" staff will not always be available due to work schedules. The lay leadership must step forward and get the work done instead of waiting for the pastor to take care of matters. Spiritual gifts takes on a more obvious and critical role as the church membership must become the church in action.

The finacnial situation can bring additional blessings as the bivocational minister receives income from  a source in addition to the church. This financial support might include extra retirement and health insurance that the church would be hard pressed to provide. These church funds then become available for other ministry and mission needs.

I have often called these men and women in bivocational ministry "God's Jugglers". They must find time for secular jobs, church ministry, personal spiritual development, and THEIR FAMILIES. As the congregation supports their bivocational pastor, they must provide that encouragement to make personal family time a priority. If the church family will understand and cooperate, there is no reason for a bivocational minister's family to feel any ill effect from the minister' work.

In associational work we must applaud our bivocational ministers, we must pray for them, and we must support them in every way we can. Without them a lot of churches would never get started and a lot of developing churches would close their doors.

Freedom and Security

Several years ago while on a mission trip to Ukraine, I heard our interpreter make a rather disturbing comment about his nation. In brief he said that many of his countrymen would gladly go back to the days of the Soviet dominance in return for a guaranteed job, paycheck, and pension. This idea that security is to be preferred to freedom is repeated in a quote by H.L. Mencken from the book Why You Do the Things You Do by Clinton and Sibcy. Mencken says, "The average man does not want to be free. He wants to be safe." (p. 15)

Having just come through another Independence Day holiday season, I am reminded again of the struggle we must continually face and the tension in which we must live to have what we call a free country. Our history is fraught with this dilemma of freedom versus security. The more we have of one the less we have of the other. At what point are we willing to sacrifice one to guarantee the other?

A significant percentage of colonials did not feel the war of rebellion against the mother country was worth the social risks. Yet even those who cried out, "Give me liberty or give me death" knew that there could be no liberty without the order that only law could provide, hence limiting the very freedom for which they were willing to die.

I have often thought that America contains within its breast the seeds that could easily spell its doom and destruction. To be free brings its own risks. Social man has never shown himself able to handle freedom in a manner that is both responsible and non destructive. Freedom can only be sustained through the use of power; yet power, and the control it provides, is the one thing that freedom cannot tolerate.

Tony Campolo, former professor at what once was Eastern Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, said that the use of control and love must always be inversely proportional. The more one seeks to control the less love can be shown. The more one loves the less control will be exerted. Perhaps only in the parent - child relationship can we approach the positive use of both. Perhaps only in the Divine Father - mortal child relationship can control and love both be practiced in perfection.

Scripture rather clearly states that man was born to serve. Only in his sinful bent does he dream of the idea of being his own master. In truth his only free choice is who his master will be. Perhaps our churches and the Kingdom of God would be better served if we preached more on the divine plan of human security under the Lordship of Christ and less on the human need for freedom. Ask any member of the persecuted church in countries we deem less free than our own. Would they rather have the American dream of political freedom or the knowledge that they can be free only as they find their freedom in their slavery to Jesus Christ?

Thoughts on Father's Day

On my desk sits a folding photo frame with a picture of my two sons as young boys on one half. The other half of the frame contains a quote that reads, "A truly rich man is one whose children will run into his arms when his hands are empty." I am proud to say that I am a very rich man.

Love cannot be measured in terms of material goods or dollar value. Yet love that is offered in the form of acceptance, encouragement, openness, support, and time made available is priceless in anyone's eyes. Father's Day is very special when memories include these qualities.

A father's love does not always involve condoning. It does not always involve sparing pain. It does not always involve providing a ready source for personal and immediate gratification. In fact many times it is just the opposite. A father's love can include learning through hard and painful lessons. It can involve clarification of boundaries and limitations not easily accepted. It can involve teaching cost, consequences, accountability, and personal responsibility. Love at times can hurt everyone involved.

Our heavenly Father gives us the best example of love. He has always found a way to show grace. He has always found a way to offer forgiveness and redemption. He has always found a way that will allow the object of his love to become more than they were before.

The Father's love must be revealed in the home and in the church. His love reveals himself and his hopes for his creation. His love reveals his power to control and his refusal to intervene. His love reveals his demands and his grace. His love reveals his requirements and his own willingness to sacrifice.

A church must practice such fatherly love. A congregation exists to reach out and include. It cannot compomise the nature of the One whose blood and Spirit established it. Neither can it stand as judge over those whose Creator has accepted them.

A church must be willing to sacrifice the material and the traditional so that the Truth may shine brightly. The Truth is a Person. His love that led to personal sacrifice on a cross cannot be buried beneath demands that separate the individual from God. A church is not in business simply to offer material goods or financial gain. To the world its arms may often seem empty. But for those who are seeking the Father's kind of love, they must be able to see the arms of the church filled with his forgiving Presence.

Distractions

People aren't the only "things" that can get distracted from their primary purposes or goals. Churches get distracted. Associations get distracted. I suppose that conventions, state and national, can also get distracted.

Different people and different entities have their own unique distractions. What distracts me might not receive a passing glance from another individual. What will take one church along a course it never intended would not gain the attention of another congregation. What might make an association or convention suddenly take a strange, new road would be absent from the agenda of another.

I am firmly convinced that churches, and associations, can have ADD just as much as an individual. The overt and seemingly obvious causes may be as varied as the congregations. From my experience the root problem, however, remains the same. To be or not to be! We are most often distracted by a felt need to survive, and not only to survive, but unfortunately to survive in the same form we have existed throughout the recorded past.

Faithfulness in this world to the cause of Christ always involves risk. Taking risks invariably brings change. Sometimes that change might involve deciding that survival holds a low priority level. Faithfulness takes focus. Thinking in worldly terms can easily distract a church from the faithfulness that is demanded. We are caught in attention deficit because the influences around us appear to be greater, brighter, more acceptable, more threatening, or more powerful than our prior commitments. We suffer spiritual ADD and we are thrown back into survival mode.

Churches can be distracted by the material concerns of buildings and property. They can be distracted by the numerical concerns of attendance and budgets. They can even be distracted by baptisms to the extent that they feel getting someone wet is the end all and neglect the part of the Great Commission that says, "teach them to observe (obey) all that I have commanded you."

Associations can also be guilty of distractions leading them away from their primary purpose. An association is not a local body of believers. It should not try to act like one. An association has become distracted if it begins to operate as a local church, trying to provide activities and ministries which need the context and personal involvement of a local congregation. In some measure the association should be equipping the local churches as surely as the ministerial leadership in a local church should be equipping the saints there. The local church should be the primary context of Kingdom work rather than the association or any other larger organization.

Vision/mission statements do have their place particularly for those of us as individuals or as organizations who have shown the tendency to be distracted from our calling. The Apostle Paul was adamant about his focus. He knew he could be distracted (Acts 16:16-18; Rom. 7:15-19; Gal. 6:17). Therefore several times in one form or another, he mentions his life focus and what he was willing to do to maintain that focus (Acts 20:24; Rom. 9:26-27; I Cor. 2:2; Phil. 3:13-14).

One church in New York City used a very simple technique to avoid some of the dangers of spiritual distraction. Each year on the anniversary date of their founding, they would read their mission statement as a part of their worship service. As a congregation they would recommit themselves to their purpose for existence. They refused to allow themselves to become distracted.

This would be good advice for every church, and every Christian with a life mission. Associations should regularly review why they exist and make sure every member church is also reminded. This world makes it very easy to lose focus as organizations.

Perhaps our churches, and our associations, would become more effective by recognizing that avoiding distractions can never be a one time action. Forget survival. It's overrated. None of us were intended to last forever on this earth anyway, people or institutions. Rather focus on the richness of our calling to be salt, light, and leaven in the world. If we have to empty the salt shaker or run out the batteries to do so, so what? God has something better waiting for us anyway. Take the risk. Give all you've got. Don't get distracted. Whatever it takes, it's worth it.

Remember Me

I am forced to admit that each time I read the final words of the thief on the cross (Luke 23.42), my eyes well up in tears. Here is a plea for one to live on at least in someone's memory when no such existence is deserved. It is a plea that should touch every heart and before God be uttered by every heart. "Remember me" is one of the most human phrases in our language.

Memorial Day has become one of three days in our American calendars on which we remember those who "gave the last full measure of devotion". As others have said, we need to remember that all gave some and some gave all so that we can enjoy freedom as few people on earth do or ever have. We repeat this call to remember on Independence Day in July and again on Veterans' Day in November. As one who can look back through his ancestry and see the record of family members who fought in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War (both Blue and Gray!), World War II, and in the Viet Nam conflict, I can with a certain measure of pride say that these have done what they felt was right for their country/state for well over 300 years.

At the same time I look at the calendars of our churches and the celebrations of remembrance by their members, and I see little that reflects any recall of the heroes of our faith, the martyrs who have watered the tree of divine, sacrificial love with their own blood. The Voice of the Martyrs (persecution.com) estimates 150,000 to 175,000 believers lose their lives each year because they carry the label of Christian. In most publicized cases this occurs in areas of northern Africa, the Middle East, and southern Asia. Yet it also occurs in many other nations where a Christian influence is seen as a threat to the reigning powers.

The second Sunday of November is set aside as the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church. Let our society remember those who paid the greatest price to maintain the freedom of our country. Let us as individuals remember with words of comfort and deeds of support those families whose brave soldiers will live on only in their memory. Let us also take time to remember those who lay down their lives standing for the Kingdom of God. Jim Elliot's (martyred missionary in South America) words are wise for all, "He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."