A Lesson from a Cloudy Day

Ok, so you might think that I'm reading to much into things, but I like analogies and here's one that came to mind as I was thinking about clouds:

While looking up at the bright white formations, they seemed like a towering mountain range, even though I knew that they were only gas and immaterial.  I can see why ancients surmised so many things about clouds and what could be hidden up there.  They truly do seem substantial when one is just looking at them.

So I "naturally" drew the parallel of those clouds and life's problems.  Sometimes our worries seem like huge mountains that obstruct any dreams we have in life.  From God's perspective, though, they are just masses of gas that can be moved around or disappear entirely as He so chooses.

That thought made me happy.  :-)

3 Reasons You Might be "Failing" in Ministry

I think that one of the biggest indicators of how successful your ministry will be is reflected in how comfortable you are with the possibility of failure.

Failure in ministry is a painful experience because we feel like it is a measure of our worth as Christian leaders.  Failure seems to scream to the world: "I don't know what I'm doing!"  It tells those who follow us, "You can't trust me.  I have let you down."

But really, although sometimes the failure might be a result of our own lack of responsibility, preparation or training, or a gap in our skill set, many times failure in ministry is due to reasons beyond our control.  To illustrate my point, I want to share 3 areas of ministry over which we have no control... and are therefore susceptible to failure.

1. Other people's reactions:  Although this is a self-explanatory observation, I feel that it needs to be stated, for the simple fact that we so often take responsibility for autonomous adults!  As Christian leaders, we must understand that our responsibility is to love people and minister to them in the ways that God has uniquely gifted us.  Beyond that, their response to what they have heard and experienced is entirely their own decision and they are responsible before God.  We mustn't feel like we have failed when we have done our part someone else has not.  God gives us free will to chose how we will act, and the least we can do is extend that same freedom to others.

2. Circumstances:  Let's face it, sometimes we have everything planned weeks in advance and then on the day of a ministry event everything goes wrong.  Not only does Plan A fall through, but Plan B, C, and D do as well!  The electricity goes out, it rains on the picnic, there is a blizzard, a virus or a war breaks out, all computer hard drives get wiped by a hacker and you lost your USB.  There are a million things that could go wrong.  And for those moments, God gives grace; we just need to learn to give ourselves--and those around us-- that same grace.

3. God's purposes: The Bible says that "Many are the plans of a man's heart, but the counsel of the Lord will stand." (Prov. 19:21)  There are times when we give it everything we've got and things just inexplicably don't work out.  It may be in those cases that God has another purpose behind everything that we just can't see.  Sometimes He might let us fall to understand that we need to depend on Him.  His strength is made perfect in our weakness.  Other times we will never understand what His reasons are, but we must trust that He knows what He's doing... and when we have been faithful and obedient in what He called us to, we shouldn't feel that we have failed just because things didn't turn out the way that we were expecting.  If things went according to God's plan, then our ministry was a success!

I hope that if any of you reading this have been struggling with feelings of failure, that these reflections have been an encouragement.  Please rest in the peace that what we are called upon to merely be faithful to what God has called us to do... and then be gracious when it might seem to others that we have "failed."

A Great Cloud of Witnesses

 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.  Hebrews 12:1

A couple of weeks ago I went on a retreat with all of the Latin America Missionaries from Mexico.  We stayed at a lovely hotel in Cuernavaca, enjoyed the  pools and ate way too much good food.  But what really impacted me about that weekend was the feeling that I truly was surrounded by a "great cloud of witnesses."  Over the course of those few days, I was able to hear testimonies of men and women who had devoted their whole lives to God's work.  

One woman, technically my current host "grandmother," moved from the States to work in Latin America, married a Mexican man and raised her children here.  Now her daughter has welcomed me into her home to live with them.  Her granddaughter is my friend and we have supported one another in life as well as our respective ministries.  I'm sure that this seasoned saint would never have envisioned what her life would look like when she began this journey over 60 years ago.  She simply followed Christ step by step, decision by decision; "a long obedience in the same direction."

I ate breakfast with an elderly couple who had poured their whole lives into the ministry and was awed by their humility as they looked over what they had accomplished and just saw the hand of God guiding them through each step.  Far beyond retirement age, they are simply continuing to pour their lives out in ministry, just as they had since their youth.

I shared a room with a woman whose ministry always seems to take her to dangerous places, usually involving drug conflicts.  She just related matter-of-factly the peril that surrounded her every day.  Towards the end of our time she shared the story of how she spent 3 days enclosed in her house, crying-- "whining" as she put it--praying and in deep fear for her life.  At the end of that time, God gave her a peace and sense of His love and she left her house willing to die for Christ, or to live for Him if He gave her life.  Her story reminds me of the disciples between Christ's death and Pentecost!  They saw very vividly the price of discipleship, but they were also filled with power from God to strengthen them in their call!    

I have determined that I want my life to follow in the footsteps of these missionaries, maybe not in the sense of serving in a foreign country all my life (maybe so!) but rather in the sense of trusting God each day in the direction He calls me, so that I may look back at the end of my life able to say "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith!" (2 Tim. 4:7)

Missionary or Just Missional?

What's the difference?

I believe that it is possible that one of the only real differences is that the former has a title and lives in a different country... whereas the latter does basically the same "ministry" in their homeland.  Ideally, anyway, I think that should be the case.

As I am considering what life after this year will look like, it is very hard for me to say for sure what direction I will go.  I will likely live at home for a while and might look at ministry opportunities to work with Latinos.  Or I might go back to school for a while and work a part-time job on the side.  I might get married and settle down with a family.  The Lord might lead me to return to Latin America for a longer time period in the future.

The truth is, regardless of what possibilities fill my mind as I drift off to sleep at night, I know one thing:  I want to serve the Lord in whatever capacity I find myself.  Maybe I will live a missional life as a Spanish tutor in Pennsylvania.  Maybe I will support missionaries with the income from my career in the future.  Maybe I will live simply so that I can work part-time and be involved in a ministry in my free time.  Maybe my primary ministry will be in my home and my community.

So no, I don't know what my future will look like, but I do know one thing.  When my official title is no longer "missionary" that doesn't mean that I will stop being one, any more than having the title made me one in the first place!  

Tell Him So

Poet Unknown

If you hear a kind word spoken

Of some worthy soul you know,

It may fill his heart with sunshine

If you only tell him so.

If a deed, however humble,

Helps you on your way to go,

Seek the one whose hand has helped you,

Seek him out and tell him so!

If your heart is touched and tender

Toward a sinner lost and low,

It might help him to do better

If you'd only tell him so.

Oh, my sisters, oh, my brothers,

As o'er life's rough path you go,

If God's love has saved and kept you,

Do not fail to tell men so!

I was just thinking about this poem and how much room I have for improvement in this area. There is so much good that we can do by simply speaking the right word at the right moment. 

Lord, help me to advance your kingdom as I use my words to glorify You and edify others!

Working for Grace

 "I just need enough grace till I can get my act together..."

No sooner had those words left my mouth than I realized that I had a really faulty concept of grace.  Let me rephrase that:  I knew the definition of grace, but it hadn't penetrated my reality.  So I decided to reflect a little bit on that statement and its implications.

God's Grace

The Bible clearly portrays grace as a free gift, no strings attached... unless you want to count the step of accepting His grace, which sometimes is the hardest part.  A quick study of this concept of grace yielded these results (I understand that this is just a brief glimpse as truly the entire Bible is filled with the story of God's grace!):

Right after the famous "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" verse in Romans 3:23, the writer goes on to say "and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus."

"And if [God's people are chosen] by grace, then it cannot be based on works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace."  Rom. 11:6

" I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!"  Gal. 2:21

And of course the famous Eph. 2:8-9:  "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-- and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- not by works, so that no one can boast."

The Rub

So if I know what the Bible says about grace, where did I get an idea that I had to earn grace?  The problem is, we humans are so used to conditional grace.  Forgiving someone who sins against us 7 times.  The people in our lives have a certain number of chances to get their act together and if they fail, they're done.  Lives used up.  You lose.  People must show that they are making a good effort.  Each year must be better than the next.  Constant improvement and productivity is the standard.  And unfortunately, the standard that we require of others is one that we are incapable of sustaining ourselves.

Implications

The Bible speaks about this dichotomy of needing grace but refusing it to others.  And it's not pretty. Matt 6:14-15:  "For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins."  In other words, don't hold people to a standard that you wouldn't want God to apply to you.

A Sanctified Perspective on To-Do Lists

My to-do list sometimes looks like sheer torture... other times they're about as exciting as watching paint dry.   Whatever the case, I generally cringe when I think about it.  And I would imagine that it's the same for you.  When was the last time you looked at your to-do list and thought, "Boy, this is gonna be fun!"  or "What an awesome day I have in store for me!" or "I wish that these 20 tasks weren't the only things I get to do today... maybe I can think up more!"?  The truth is, sometimes it takes all of our strength to just plow through our to-do lists.

However, lately God has been teaching me an important lesson about the tasks He has given me for each day:  I am to do them joyfully, as working to the Lord, not for men (Col. 3:23) and to do anything I do for the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31).  As I keep these verses in mind, it has challenged me to be praying throughout the day that God would give me a correct perspective and a cheerful attitude as I do tasks that at best might seem mundane and at worst downright difficult.  And the crazy thing is, that doesn't change my tasks at all, but it changes my attitude!  And God gives me the strength to complete what I have before me each day... for His glory!

Here's a great song for getting pumped up in the morning to hit that to-do list.  Do Everything:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEqdDdvFXZ0

If you're liked this post, here are some other blog posts/resources that would also be an encouragement:
The poem "If"  http://carodeemer.blogspot.com/2011/04/if.html
Book review of Do Hard Things:  http://carodeemer.blogspot.com/2010/08/do-hard-things.html