WISE, INTENTIONAL

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

TITUS EMAIL

Volume 3, Number 3 – March, 2009

Greetings in the Lord! I trust you are well. WILD has a special guest here for several weeks right now - Pastor Henry Mukonda, from Kitwe, Zambia, and WILD Regional Director in Africa. Henry will be spending a great deal of time in training and development, plus he and I will be in extensive discussions about vision and strategy of how to develop spiritual leaders in central and southern Africa. One other key reason to have Henry here is to let people in northern and central Wisconsin learn more about WILD and how they can become involved in your lives. Please pray for his time here. Mike

HEADING TO MACEDONIA, PART 3

We have been looking at how Paul discerned God’s will for his life from Acts 16:6-10. Paul had a dream that a man from Macedonia was begging Paul to come. He was attentive and sensitive to the Holy Spirit to follow that leading. Luke wrote that when Paul consulted with his leadership team, they were in agreement to leave right away for Macedonia.

They had tried to go to a different area to minister but God had blocked that direction. Often you have to try different opportunities to see if God is leading you. There is a part of us that wants to hold back until we receive more verification or everything is laid out. Yet we know if God is a part of what we are going to do, faith is a key element in carrying out His will. The priests had to put both feet into the Jordan River before it parted (Joshua 3:14-17). Then Israel could enter the Promised Land.

Henry James once wrote a story titled “The Madonna of the Future” about an artist who devoted her entire life to a single painting. But when the artist died, it is discovered that her canvas was still blank. She never finished, because she never started. So the question is, “What is your unpainted canvas? What God-given dream is waiting to be released?”

There are walls to overcome if you want to do God’s will. One is take responsibility. Begin pursuing the God-ordained passion in your life. That can be scary for you might do something never done before, go somewhere or deal with someone you never dealt with before. God-ordained vision has more questions than answers. Look at Abraham and Nehemiah’s visions. Ask God how He made you, and let Him mold and shape you.

Another wall is your relationship with God when it has become more of a chore than an adventure. So change, develop the discipline of simplifying your life. Literally slow down and take time to listen to God. Also, stop making assumptions that God can’t do something. What limits have you placed on God? Did you know that children ask 125 probing questions per day while adults ask only six? We easily put God in a box with adult logic.

A fourth wall is guilt for Satan waits to remind us of our past mistakes and we do not have the emotional or spiritual energy left to dream Kingdom dreams. Yet Jesus came to forgive both our sins and the guilt of those sins. Remember the lives of David and Peter. They were given second chances and God used them mightily because of their repentant hearts.

We think that if you make a mistake, it is over. I am a failure. Do not think that way. Again, think David and Peter. Also, Paul who in Acts 27, 28, has a snake bite him and ends up ministering to the chief official, Publius on the island of Malta or ends up in Athens because the Jewish mob in Thessalonica ran him out of there. The failure comes when you do not continue on. It took Thomas Edison over a 1000 failed experiments before he discover the light bulb.

Finally, fear will keep you from pursuing your vision. Do not let your worries about the unknown dictate your decisions. God-sized visions have more questions than answers. We need people who are more afraid of missing opportunities than making mistakes! Think about Jonathan (1 Samuel 14:1-6), Esther in Esther 4:14-16 and the three friends in Daniel 3:16-18.

Keep pursuing God’s direction for your life. Do not let walls keep you from being who God created you to be.

YOUTH MINISTRY INSIGHT

GOD VISION

The news of his hometown blew him away. His friends and family were clearly in danger. “Why was there no one helping them?”, he thought. With the city wall destroyed, the enemy could easily harm the people. All Nehemiah could do was sit and cry. Then he prayed and ate nothing for several days asking God that even though the people and he did not deserve rescuing, that God would rescue them and Nehemiah wanted to be part of the solution in rescuing Jerusalem.

In the book of Nehemiah, Nehemiah happened to live in a land far from Jerusalem. His job was none other than being the king’s cupbearer, which meant he got to taste the food and beverages the king was to eat. That way, if someone tried to poison the king, Nehemiah would die first and the king would then know not to eat the food. Like most jobs, there were good and bad aspects to the job.

One day the King saw how sad Nehemiah was, for it was suspected that Nehemiah was a rather friendly, nice looking guy. So the King asked him what was wrong and Nehemiah shared his heart ache (2:1-9). Here is a pretty cool part. When Nehemiah shared what was wrong, God had already been working in the heart the King (who was not even a Christian) to prepare the King to hear what was on Nehemiah’s heart. The King right away asked how he could help. Nehemiah gave the King some ideas and the King authorized Nehemiah to go back to Jerusalem plus have the authority to get supplies needed to rebuild the way. In essence the King gave Nehemiah the King’s credit card to get what he needed and did not have to pay for those supplies.

When God lays something on your heart and you know that dream is bigger than what you yourself can supply, it is a pretty safe bet that it is a God vision. When Nehemiah arrived in Jerusalem, he assessed the damage and believed the wall was repairable.

Even when you are doing what God is leading you to do, most times, it will not come easy. Sure enough, a couple of local people got upset that the wall was being rebuilt, so Sanballot and Tobiah rallied a lot of people to go against Jerusalem and threatened violence (4:1-3) When you are doing something for God, expect negative feedback.

How did Nehemiah react? In three ways this is how he handled the situation. First he went to prayer again (4:3-5). Secondly, he reacted with remembrance (4:14), recalling God’s faithfulness in his life. Recall how God has worked in your life. Lastly, he look at the criticism to help his plan, for maybe there needed to be a change. Nehemiah did revised his plans (4:9,16-18). When you do receive criticism, there is the truth that some of the criticism is probably valid.

The result was the wall was amazingly rebuilt in 52 days. Nehemiah had accomplished his goal and God was honored. How does God want to use you? Learn how He has created you and what interests you. Obey and honor God and He will use you.

ILLUSTRATION

Evariste Galois, on May 29, 1832, wrote a 60-page mathematical masterpiece from start to finish in one sitting. He accomplished more in one day than most people do in a lifetime. What he wrote kept mathematicians busy for hundreds of years! He treated that day like it was the last day of his life, because he knew he would be in a duel the next day. That duel occurred and he was the one that died that day.

QUOTES ON PURSUING VISION

“Some want to live within the sound of church or chapel bell; I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell!” C. T. Studd, 20^th century missionary

“Make no mistake. Selfish ambition is bad. But godly ambition is good. I’ve never met anyone who was overly ambitious for the things of God. We need to dream God-sized dreams. And it’s not because we need to make a name for ourselves – selfish goals always result in shallow victories. We need to dream God-sized dreams because they’re the only things that will drive us to our knees and keep us living in absolute dependence upon God the way we were designed to.

Can I share a personal conviction? I think vision is the cure for sin. One reason many of us get entangled in sin is because we don’t have enough God-ordained vision to keep us busy. The more vision you have, the less you will sin. And the less vision you have, the more you will sin. It is a vision from God that keeps us playing offense spiritually.”

Mark Batterman – Pastor

“The difference between where you are and where God wants you to be may be the painful decision you refuse to make!” Craig Groschel, Pastor

“The voice we should listen to most as we choose a vocation is the voice that we might think we should listen to least, and that is the voice of our own gladness. What can we do that makes us the gladdest? I believe if it is a thing that makes us truly glad, then it is a good thing, and it is our thing.” Fredrick Buechner