WISE, INTENTIONAL

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

TITUS EMAIL

Volume 3, Number 7 – July, 2009

Tomorrow four people are joining me in the trip to Africa. Veteran of WILD trips, Marty Aubol is going along with two young ladies, Becci and Rhonda plus my teenage son, Ben. We will have unique opportunities to minister with the variety of people involved. Thank you for praying for us. I am excited to see what God is going to do. Mike

PROMOTE BUILDING THE KINGDOM AS A TEAM

No man (or woman) is an island. We interact with people all the time. That is the human dynamic and God created us to be social beings. It is a gift from Him and one that He wants us to use in forwarding the Kingdom of God.

Only in the way God can make it happen, He brings people into our lives to co-labor together in the Kingdom. We have the choice to accept or reject those gracious gifts. The Body of Christ is to help us complete our tasks and complement, not compete with, one another’s giftings. Members of the Body are our teammates. As spiritual leaders we are to build our team members up.

We become stronger spiritually when we work together (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10). God brings gifted people into our lives to help us accomplish the tasks God has laid on our hearts. If you can accomplish those opportunities continuously by yourself, the likelihood is that you are not looking to see who God is bringing along side you to accomplish your tasks or there is pride in your life where you do not want help.

If you do not want your team member to be successful in ministry, then there is a pride or jealousy issue. Get over it. One of the main responsibilities of a spiritual leader is to develop others, so the Kingdom is enhanced and continued.

Look at the people who cross into your life. They may be the answers to the assignments you have. Just as described in Acts 13:1-3, the Holy Spirit will affirm those team members. Henry Blackaby said, “The Holy Spirit guides companions together, whether the leader identifies the companion or the companion is drawn to a leader. It is still evidence of the Spirit at work in the hearts of the people.”

If you have a vision or dream from God to accomplish some task, it is bigger than you. Jesus had His team. Paul involved many companions to accomplish his mission. Nehemiah did not rebuild Jerusalem’s walls by himself. If your vision is to reach your neighbor, this will take other Christians sharing and living their lives in such a way that the Holy Spirit will draw the person to Christ.

How we treat team members is very important to God. Treat them correctly. The value of a team member is priceless if they are like-minded (1 Corinthians 1:10). Recall the friendship between Jonathan and David. Jonathan had every human right to be jealous and angry because he was the lawful heir to the king’s throne. Yet he knew David would be the next king of Israel and chose to love David.

From 1 Samuel 18 and 20, we know Jonathan and David were like-minded. The love that flowed between the two are an example of how we should respect and care for team members. There was no jealousy. Jonathan wanted only the best for David, desiring him to be successful and made David more important than himself.

If we have leaders over us, honor and respect them, serve them with sincere hearts. If we are in charge of others, honor and respect them, love them and care for their needs. If we made everyone else’s needs more important than our own, the world would see a love for others that would draw them to Jesus. Christians need to be the example to the world of how a team respects and cares for one another and works together. What kind of team are you and I promoting?

YOUTH MINISTRY

ABRAHAM’S FAITH DEVELOPMENT

Have you ever thought that Bible characters are larger than life, that maybe they were not really human, in order for God to use them the way He did? Jesus is the only one that would not fit in that category because He was both God and a man on earth. Other than that, everyone else was 100% human.

Abraham fits that category. We remember Abraham as a person of faith. Yet Abraham struggled throughout his life with faith. After faithfully following God to live in a foreign, distant land and was told he would have a great nation come from him (which he believed), Abraham and Sarah had to travel to Egypt because of a famine and Abraham told Sarah to lie that she was his sister, not wife, so as not to get killed by Pharoah (Genesis 12). God intervened even to protect Pharoah’s home from death as a result of Abraham’s lie.

Then a couple of chapter later, God had Abraham look up in the sky to see all the stars and God told him that he would have more decendants than all the stars Abraham could count. This was before Abraham and Sarah even had a child. Abraham believed and trusted God and it was credited to him as having the right relationship with God (Genesis 15:6).

That faith faltered as in Genesis 16, Abraham and Sarah got impatient and had Sarah’s maid get pregnant by Abraham. Though Ishmael was Abraham’s son, he was not the heir God intended to bless Abraham with. They were not doing this God’s way. When God gives a promise, He will accomplish that promise His way, not by our manipulation.

Finally Issac was born to Abraham and Sarah when Abraham was 100. 25 years had lapsed from the time God sent Abraham off to a foreign land until Issac, the promise was born. To finally test Abraham’s faith, several years later, God had Abraham take Issac out to the wilderness, telling Abraham he would be sacrificing Issac, the heir to the promise God had given him many years earlier (Genesis 22).

Abraham obediently laid Issac on the sacrificial altar and as he brought the knife down to kill Issac, an angel stopped Abraham. He fully trusted God that no matter what, God would fulfill His promise of Abraham becoming a great nation through his heir. Abraham’s faith was at the highest level ever at that point of his life. Even though often through his life Abraham’s faith faltered, he kept coming back to God and reconfirmed his faith in God.

The key was his heart’s desire to pursue God, to know God better each day. Abraham’s faith in God kept developing even when he struggled in that faith of trusting God. We all have times of faith struggles in our lives. Abraham did and yet when we go to heaven, if we have placed our faith and trust in Jesus, we will see Abraham there because of that faith. Do not give up on seeking to know Jesus and growing in your faith.

ILLUSTRATION ON FAITH

The Cliff

A man named Jack was walking along a steep cliff one day when he accidentally got too close to the edge and fell. On the way down he grabbed a branch, which temporarily stopped his fall. He looked down and to his horror saw that the canyon fell straight down for more than a thousand feet. He couldn’t hang onto the branch forever, and there was no way for him to climb up the steep wall of the cliff. So Jack began yelling for help, hoping that someone passing by would hear him and lower a rope or something. “HELP! HELLP! Is anyone up there? HELP” He yelled for hours, but no one heard him. He was about to give up when he heard a voice.

“Jack. Jack. Can you hear me?”

“Yes, yes! I can hear you. I’m down here!”

“I can see you, Jack. Are you all right?”

“Yes, but… who are you, and where are you?”

“I am the Lord, Jack. I’m everywhere.”

“The Lord? You mean, GOD?”

“That’s Me.”

“God, please help me! I promise if you’ll get me down from here, I’ll stop sinning. I’ll serve you for the rest of my life.”

“Easy on the promises, Jack. Let’s just get you down from there; then we can talk. Now, here’s what I want you to do. Listen carefully.”

“I’ll do anything, Lord. Just tell me what to do.”

“Okay. Let go of the branch.”

“What?”
”I said, let go of the branch. Just trust Me. Let go.”

There was a long silence. Finally Jack yelled, “HELP! HELP! IS ANYONE ELSE UP THERE???”

QUOTES

“The more time you spend with God the better you will know Him, the better you know him, the more you will trust him; the more you trust him, the better you will tap into his power” Bill Perkins

“I prayed for faith, and thought that some day faith would come down and strike me like lightning. But faith did not seem to come. One day I read in the 10^thchapter of Romans, ‘Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.’ I had closed my Bible and prayed for faith. I now opened my Bible and began to study, and faith has been growing ever since.” D. L. Moody

“Whenever we fail God, it is vital to return quickly to that altar of consecration and faith. God is waiting for us there, like the prodigal’s father waiting for his son to return. He looks forward to getting us back on track. The greatness of Abram was not in his moral perfection, but in getting back to God and believing again.” Jim Cymbala

“ A two story house had caught on fire. The family-father, mother, several children- were on their way out when the smallest boy became terrified, tore away from his mother, ran back upstairs. Suddenly he appeared at a smoke filled window crying like crazy. His father, outside, shouted: ‘Jump, son, jump! I will catch you.’ The boy cried, ‘But, daddy, I can’t see you.’ ‘I know,” his father called, “I know. But I can see you.’” Henri Nouwen