Steven Furtick recently posted on the single most important aspect of ministry (church planting in his case). He said that it was hearing the voice of God. I tend to agree with him. In his blog, he says,

“You can’t fake or simulate the ability to hear from God. You must cultivate it day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year. The ability to distinguish the voice of God and the promptings of His Spirit is more valuable than a Doctoral degree, 10 leadership books and 4 conferences a year, your hero’s advice, and even 50 years of life experience combined. All of these inputs serve as avenues for God’s instruction to reach our hearts. But they are not a substitute for a “speak, Lord, for your servant is listening” posture, and a willingness to be radically obedient when He clearly reveals your next move.”

Like my Pastor, Troy Maxwell, has preached on in the past, the key to seeing miracles is, “Whatever He (Jesus) tell you to do, do it.”

JL

I am so thankful today that God is patient. Aren’t you? If God would not have been patient with me, I would have been gone a long time ago. I never want to take His patience and mercy for granted. Yet, we know that there are people who will take it for granted and actually spit in the face of it. The Bible calls them “mockers.”

As we have been looking into 2 Peter 3, we see that in the last days mockers would start showing up on the scene. Who are mockers? Mockers are people who ridicule, deride, and scorn, in this case, the coming of Jesus and the things of God. They mock by saying things like, “So, where is this Jesus you speak of? Everything goes on as it always has. This Bible stuff is a fairy tale for children.”

The scripture tells us that would speak this way because they were following their own evil desires. It’s not necessarily that they really don’t believe, but that they have a way of living that they are not willing to break from in order to live the way God is calling them to live. As time marches on without any judgement in their life, they get bolder and more readily shake their fists at heaven. God is not moved, in fact, He laughs. He actually mocks the mockers. (see Psalm 2)

The Apostle Peter warns us that God’s timing is not like our timing, and the reason that God is holding back is because He is giving men the chance to repent. You see, God does not want us to “perish”, but the fact is that we will, unless we repent. To repent means to change the way we are going; to make a 180 degree turn and walk the other way. This is what God’s patience is for. If we take it for granted, we may find that our window of repentance is no longer open.

Peter tells us to “bear in mind that the Lord’s patience means salvation.” But it only means salvation to the ones who are willing to recognize their rebellion against God and repent.

JL

Yesterday I wrote about the coming fire. It’s been said before and is worth repeating, that “This world is not our home.” In the blink of an eye, each one us will enter eternity. Our lives are like a vapor or like a flower that is fading. Think about it. Tell me the name of the person who governed your hometown just one hundred years ago. No one remembers them. At the time, they were important. People knew them. They had prestige. They may have been local heroes or even infamous. Now they are just a factoid in some dusty historical book. How much more will most of us be forgotten after we are gone.

It makes me think of a quote from the late Leonard Ravenhill, “Have only one life and soon it will past, only what’s done for Christ will last.”

Speaking of the coming fire, the Apostle Peter asks an important question, “Since, everything will be destroyed this way, what type of person should you be”? Then he answers his own question. Below are the answers from 2 Peter. May God help us to align our lives with His purposes in our generation.

1. People who live holy and Godly lives.
(We are called to be set apart. If this happens we will be a “peculiar” people.)
2. People who are working to hasten the coming of Jesus
(see Matt 24:14)
3. People who are looking forward to a new heaven and a new Earth. (not afraid or avoiding the thought of it, but longing for it.)
4. People who love righteousness enough to live with it forever.
(We should find out what is pleasing to God.)
5. People who make every effort to be found blameless, spotless, and at peace with God. (What kind of effort are we putting in?)

JL

Although, we may not like to meditate on it, the fact is there are some things that God detests. There are thinks that He feels so strongly about that He actually uses the word “hate.” When I think about this, words come to mind like: sin, the devil, injustice, wickedness etc. But the thing that snagged me today was more easily overlooked. The scripture where Jesus says, “What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight” came to my mind and wouldn’t leave.

My mind was spinning immediately as God brought light to this scripture. What do I value highly? Is it what God values highly or are my values more closely aligned with what is valued “among men”? You may say, “John, you esteem missions, what could be closer to the heart of God”? It’s true that rescuing the lost is close to the heart of God, but I won’t let myself off the hook so easily. What about the other areas of my life? What about the day to day? What about the praxis of ministry?

One translations says, “what is highly esteemed.” What do we esteem in our culture? What do we place high value in? Appearances, image, clothing, style, money, a certain education, a certain job title, prestige, sexual “freedom”, business “tactics”, entertainment, pop culture? If it’s honored among men, it’s detestable to God.

I started thinking, “Wow God, you are not like us.” If society honors it, I feel the current pulling me to honor it, but you are not moved. Over thousands of generations, you are still the same. This is where the holiness of God comes in. His ways are not our ways, His thoughts are not our thoughts. See Here. I began to think about the unsettling scripture, “work out your salvation with fear and trembling”. When we think of God’s ways and what God esteems compared to the strong current of the culture we live in, it’s understandable that we would “tremble” before him, especially when we are representing Him before the world and will one day have to answer to Him before representatives from every nation and every generation.

It’s in these times that I cry out, “search me O Lord.” “Help me to have the mind of Christ; to be able to see things like you see them and to be able to make the adjustments in my life without the fear of what others may think.” I have always said, “When you love someone, you care about the things they care about.” This is the motivation, not fear, but love. In the end, it’s only God’s judgement that will matter, not man’s.
JL

There are men and women who have served God in their generation that many of us know nothing about. Yet, their stories are essential to understanding our faith. Their lives are living proof of what it means to “hate your own life.” (see John 12:25 & Luke 14:26) Their stories challenge me deeply. I struggle with how to apply their hard won life lessons into the context of my 21st century American life. Yet, I am not ready to pretend that I have never heard these stories. Instead, I want to let them saturate my being and change me from faith to faith and from glory to glory. I think one of the greatest lessons learned is to never despair where you are in life to the point of giving up. Keep driving forward and never lose the vision. The determination of these men and women who have gone before us, should challenge us and drive us to pursue a greater commitment to living our whole lives for Jesus, no matter what the cost.

Listen to this passage from the book of Hebrews, chapter 11, and reflect on the dedication of those who dared to live for Jesus when it cost them greatly:

“Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. 36Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. 37They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— 38the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.”

I found a site today where author, pastor, and missions mobilizer John Piper teaches from the biographies of great men and women of God who suffered to take the Gospel to the hardest places of the world in their day. Take some time to read and listen to their stories. They will absolutely amaze you and give you a perspective of ministry you may have never seen before.

Start with the one of Adoniram Judson called, “How Few There Are Who Die So Hard! “. He paid the price to bring the Gospel to Burma, now called Myanmar. You may have heard about this country in the news lately.

The rest of the biographies can be found here. Let me know what you think.

Back to the motivation theme again. One thing that kept coming to my mind was Jason Upton’s song “Dying Star.” This is what Jason writes in regards to this generation:

“All through the Bible God used people who didn’t have a clue, who didn’t have all the answers and who didn’t really know anything. They had no strategy – or their only strategy appeared to be to look to heaven and say, ‘my eyes are on You, great victorious warrior, You are my shinning star’. In the end, it’s our own choice whether to live out our own strategies thereby living so that others see only ‘our’ abilities; but then we’ll end up just like the enemy – just another “dying star”.

God is building an army of sons and daughters whose single-minded passion is for His purposes alone. Stars rise and fall but sons don’t. God has raised up a generation of sons and daughters, not a generation of superstars. But as long as we continue trying to be someone or something we will never be anything of worth to God. Jesus was worth everything to God. Jesus was the ultimate warrior, the ultimate pastor, the ultimate intercessor, the ultimate worshipper, and the ultimate teacher; and not because Jesus was the ultimate superstar, but because Jesus was the ultimate son.”

When I look at the last couple of years, I see a growing list of “dying stars.” I was going to name a long list, but I couldn’t bring myself to it. It’s heart wrenching. I know that most of us would like these stories to pass silently into the night, but we need to revisit them and learn the lessons that they are trying to teach us. These men and women all had visions to “win the world”, but in the process they somehow lost what mattered most. May God gave us the grace to always remain faithful sons and daughters before anything else, including missions work and the ministry. JL

I have been reading a few things from various leaders lately and one thing they all seem to have in common is that they have failed at something they’ve tried to do.

I am seeing that it is only when we have conquered the fear of failure that we can truly be courageous and do something significant for God.

Erwin Lutzer in his book, “Failure: The Backdoor to Success” points out how a detour can lead to the main road.

John Maxwell writes in his book “Fail Forward”,

“The difference between average and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.”

Author Napoleon Hill says

“Every adversity, every failure and every heartache carries with it the seed of an equivalent or a greater benefit.”

As missionaries and future missionaries who want to do something great for God, we will have to look the fear of failure square in the face and move right past it if we are ever going to make an impact in the nations.

Those who send us will also have to be willing to manage the potential of our failure and see that God can even use our detours as a way of getting us to the place he wants us to be.

The more and more I read the biographies of missionaries, I see the hand of God leading taking them to one country or town initially, only to show them the real place or ministry he had in mind for them. But they would have never known it or seen it unless they had gone to the first place and “failed.”

One example that comes to mind is that of Amy Carmichael who started her missions career in Japan and due to various disappointments, ended up in Ceylon, India where she made a huge impact.

There is no doubt that failure costs something.

But I have come to understand that playing it safe and not trying, because of fear of failure, costs even more.

JL