I'm Hungry

Folks I’m hungry.  I miss the presence of God.  I miss deep worship.  I am crying out for a visitation!  Something more than we’ve known.  I am longing for the Holiness of God to come in and lay us low.  I am longing for the Majesty of God to come and subdue us.  He is our only hope!  We have so many words, so many ideas, so many ways of attempting to get the job done, but they all fall terribly short of the goal. 

 

You know, I love wisdom.  I love asking for strategy and working hard to accomplish something together with the people of God, but sometimes I think we shut down the Holy Spirit when we do that.  Or we ask for his minimal involvement.  Is there a place of balance to be found between planning the work and working the plan and just leaving it all to the Holy Spirit?  There must be.  Jesus had no question on the matter.  He walked every minute led by the Spirit doing what the Father was doing wherever he went.  How do we do this?

 

I don’t have answers I just have questions today.  Today is my last Wednesday leading worship for Ignite Youth ministry.  It is a bitter sweet day, but in a way I feel like I am leaving ministry to learn how to be a true minister.  Jesus didn’t have an organization, a service schedule, or a website.  He just walked around being the incarnation of God on the planet.  I really want to learn how to do that.  It is my deepest desire.

 

 

God's Will 5 - The way to walk -Courage, Faith, Wisdom, and Diligence.

Courage, Faith, Wisdom, and Diligence.

 

Ok so.  My whole desire in these posts is to bring some measure of clarity, freedom, and joy to my friends who are wrestling with the issues of direction.  FREEDOM!!!! In Jesus name.  I just believe with all my heart that the issue of God's will is not meant to be an issue that is difficult for us to understand.  I think the pattern in God's word is very clear and deeply freeing.  God created us to be lovers of Him and live like it. 

 

Today I want to talk about a subject that is very near and dear to my weak heart.  That is the issue of resource development.  This is, in my belief, the primary way that God leads AND PROVIDES for us.  The most convenient point of reference for this desire in the heart of God is Jesus parable of the talents.  This frightening and wonderful parable speaks of deep Kingdom realities and unveils God's management style AND His expectations of His children.

 

The master comes to his servants and invests in them.  He takes very large sums of money and puts them in each person's hand according to their ability.  He gives no instruction to them as to how to use the money he only tells them He will be returning and expects them to manage the resources well.  The first two servants go out and take a risk, they invest the money in ways that could possibly end up breaking them, but through their hard work, ingenuity and diligence they end up doubling the amount of money they were given in the first place.  The third servant is worried that he might not be able to hold on to what he has been given so he puts it in a very safe place.  Under the ground!  Sure enough the master returns and He wants to know how His affairs have been maintained.  He speaks with the first two servants and is very pleased with what they have accomplished.  He says, "you have been faithful in a few things, I will set you over many"  He speaks with the last servant and he is furious.  He calls the man wicked and lazy.  He takes away even the little that the man has and gives it to his most capable servant.  It struck me hard the other day that this man did not lose one penny of the master's money, but the master was completely unsatisfied with his performance.  The master expected multiplication.  Wow. 

 

This is how God deals with us.  He invests in us and He expects results.  Our tendency is to say, "well when He tells me to invest I will."  the problem is He already told you to invest!  He told you that by giving you management of His resources!  The lazy third servant told the master that He didn't do anything with the money because he knew his master was a man who cared about making money "reaping where he had not sown".  The master's response is revealing.  He says, "If you knew I cared about making money you should have done something to make me more money!!!"  God cares deeply about the investments He has made in our lives.  He cares about the opportunities he has given us to produce.  He puts us where He puts us because He wants us to produce!!!  One of the ways we can know what God wants us to do is to pick up our heads and look around!  What is there to do?  How can we use what we have to get what God wants.  I believe that specific step by step instruction is a great way to train a dog, but humans need room to be creative and innovative and we can accomplish so much more that way.  So what we do is fix the goal in mind and then run the race guided by the heart values of God.  Four of His heart values are Courage, Wisdom, Faith, and Diligence.

 

Courage - we have to take the risk of investment.  We risk loss, we risk hurt, we risk failure, but we must in order to produce!  The servants could have lost every penny of their master's money and what would his response have been to them!  They knew the only way to please the master was to take a risk.

 

Wisdom - in order to know what risk to take and how to take that risk for our maximum return we have to have wisdom.  That means counsel, asking for help!  That means research, that means patience to wait for the right opportunity to come along and jump on it in the best way we can.

 

Faith - we have got to believe that God is going to reward our courage and wisdom by blessing.  Look at these two servants, they had a 100% return that's pretty darn good!

 

Diligence - we can never give up.  even when it looks hard, and maybe even hopeless.  We have to work hard and smart to the end!

 

Josh Hawkins

BDS

 

 

God's Will 4 (a long one)

Last time we dealt with depressing side of the issue that God sometimes stops giving direction because you already know what He wants you to do.  Today we get to talk about the uplifting side of this whole debacle.  It can be depressing because all we want is a new word!  "God Just TELL ME WHAT TO DO!!!!!!", but if we look at this another way we will see the truth that this is a loving God creating us for maximum enjoyment and freedom in love.

 

You see I've realized recently that the way I've looked at God's calling and purpose in my life has been all wrong.  I always kind of looked at it like this - Here I am little old me with talents, giftings, faults, struggles, dreams, desires, and life circumstances. One day I God meets me in the road and says, "this is what I have for you to do!" and the 'call of God' drops down on me.  All my stuff that I had before the "call" no longer matters, I have been given a mandate and now this is how I must walk.  My call defines me and the work I have to do gives me a purpose and a drive.  I can live this way.  The call may be hard it may not even be what I really want to do, but I know it is God's and so I do it.  "Carrying the cross", for Jesus, but what happens when God takes that away?  What happens when God comes to me again and says ok you're done with this and takes it up off of you, but never gives you anything else to carry!  Suddenly my purpose is gone, my drive is gone, and my way of life has to change, but to what?  I no longer have that cross to carry.  What the Heck do I do now?  The whole thing just doesn't work.  I may have been miserable before but at least I knew I was doing what I am supposed to be doing!

 

The problem is that this is NOT how God really works!  Let me give you the real story.

Before the foundation of the world God had an idea that was you.  He loved this idea.  The idea was not about what you would do, but who you would be.  The idea was not about what you would accomplish but about the things He could show the world about Himself through you.  The idea was not about the ways He could use you or your effectiveness in His kingdom, but about an eternity of showing you more and more ways to fall in love with Him.  God looked forward to being loved by you, but He never needed you, He just wanted you.  So when the perfect time came, He formed you and sent you into the world to discover Him.  Human beings are made to love in a multiplicity of ways.  We love Him by beholding, we love by changing, we love by responding to love, we love by reflecting love.  So as you walked He guided you into places where you could see His love in new ways and show others His love in specific ways.  He leads you there because only the specific idea that is YOU can show His love in the way He wants it to be shown in that place at that time.  After a time He lead you out of those places , but it's never about the places.  It's always about Him and you.  This walk and this purpose, loving and being loved is the eternal calling.  It is the ultimate purpose, the forms and the tracks it takes are important but they do not alter the purpose.  God gave us life LIVE and because He is a productive person He made you in such a way that only as you are producing fruit in partnership with Him and for His glory are you happy.  Because He is a creative person He made us in such a way that only as you are being creative in partnership with Him are you happy.  He is a relational person a self existent community of Father Son and Holy Spirit so He formed you in such a way that only in community with others that love Him will you be happy.  All of this is for our joy and fulfillment and His Glory and revelation to us of Himself and NONE of it is about rules or a cranky God trying to pile something on top of us that we don't want .

On this road God does lead us through hard and confusing times but even these are His way of showing us love.  The hard and confusing times teach us lessons about ourselves and God that only hard and confusing times can teach us.  They buy us treasures that only this costly a price could buy us.  In the end we will agree with him that what we received is far and above the worth of what we paid.

 

So what does all of this have to do with God's will?  Only this.  God's will is not something imposed upon us.  It is something God grows up THROUGH US.  He doesn't create us one way and lead us another.  He forms us for the walk that He wants us to walk.  If God has put a desire in your heart to do something then He wants you to do it!!!  If God has not put a desire in your heart then, unless He has given you VERY CLEAR direction to do it, you should not be doing it!  So the directive is this:  Get you heart deeply in love with God and then DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO, and act with confidence that this indeed is GOD'S will for your life!

If you are floundering, if you are unsure, if you just don't know what God wants you to do it is probably because He wants you to go after your dreams.  He put them in your heart did He not?  You might say, "follow my dreams HOW?"  Well that is for next time, but I will give you a couple of words to chew on until then.

Courage, Faith, Wisdom, and Diligence. 

God's Will 3

Hey quick thanks to everyone with their insightful comments. I know this issue hits close to home that is the whole reason I wanted to discuss it!

 

We have at least one more post on this subject after today's but today I want to do what I do often and take a bit of a rabbit trail.  My last post was all about the fact that often God stops talking because you should already know what He wants you to do!  That can be a depressing message or it can be an uplifting one! 

Let's deal with depressing first.  I know that for years I begged God to give me the next Word because the last one was unbearable!  I was so sick and tired of languishing in that place!  Working so hard and getting no where.  Dreaming big and seeing nothing.  Trying and failing or having moderate success at best.  It is an exhausting, confusing, frustrating ordeal.  It really really sucks.  It makes you wonder if you heard Him right after all.  It makes you question, "is He good?  Is he real?  Does He even care? Did I do something wrong?" etc etc etc. 

Let me help you if I can.  I want to lift your vision higher than it is.  We get so lost in the, in our face, day by day, realities that we forget what this life is all about.  We were made to be enjoyers of God.  We were formed to be loved by Him and to love Him in return.  EVERYTHING that happens to us, good, bad, tragic, joyful all of it is a gift from the lover of our souls TEACHING us to love Him more.  He puts us in the desert so we can come out leaning on Him like in Song of Solomon.  The Bible has lots to say about this.  I love Paul.  "I consider that this present suffering is NOT WORTH COMPARING with the GLORY that will be revealed in me." or a little later "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose" and James, "Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.  And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." and especially Jesus, "Blessed are they who mourn for they will be comforted".

 

This life isn't about this life!  This life is about the NEXT LIFE!!!  We were made for eternity!  This life has value and worth and eternal significance no question.  This life will determine what our eternal state will be.  That is why we must run the course of this life with obedience, endurance, and patience, but this life is not an end in itself.   So when we obey the Lord and it all fails it is no failure.  When we see what looks like meaningless disaster we know it is not meaningless.  When we dream and our dreams slip away we know they do not slip away forever!  Everything we lose we get back and 100 fold more because the resurrection is real coming.  Jesus said that a seed has to die and go into the ground for fruit to come forth.  God is so much more concerned with eternal fruit, on the inside and the outside of us, than He is the puny grapes of temporal accomplishment.  So even when you feel like you are accomplishing nothing you are WRONG AND it is no excuse to give up and stop pushing, reaching, and believing.  Everything God calls us to do is hard and sometimes He calls us to fail!  I believe that!  We will look back at our failures and see the unstoppable grace of God working in our lives to make us more like Christ.  It is the proof of our faith that is more precious than gold NOT the proof of our effectiveness!

 

 

God's Will - part 2

Last time we talked about the fact the yes God speaks and we all know that when he speaks our job is to say "yes".  So the question stands, "what do we do when God says.....................................................nothing?"  

The truth is that there are often times when God says nothing.  In fact the longer I follow the Lord it seems the less He chooses to inform me of what my next step ought to be.  It reminds me of the old Sunday School song, "Deep and Wide".  Remember that song?  The reason it reminds me of that song is the way we used to sing it.  At first we would sing all the words and do all the motions but after once or twice we would replace some of the words with hmmmm so it went to, "deep and hmmm.  deep and hmmm.  There's a fountain flowing deep and hmm."  etc etc until the whole song was "hmmms" (why the heck did we sing it like that anyway?).  I think God kind of does that with us.  At first it seems He guides very specifically, when you need direction he gives it, when you ask for wisdom it comes, but later in your walk He starts hmmming more and more!  At least that's how it feels.

 

But does God really stop talking?  I heard a guy talking about this the other day and the pastor he was talking too said, "God never stops talking.  You stop listening because what He has to say now is just harder to hear than it was before, it cost you more."  Maybe he's right.  You know the older you get the more your decisions cost you, because you have more to lose!  Maybe that's part of it.  I know my own heart well enough to know that I have shut down the voice of God before.  I guess before I accuse God of not talking I should make sure I am actually listening. 

I do not think however that it is always a case of us not listening.  I honestly think that God says less to us about life decisions as we get further on in life.  I think He says less to us because we should already know!  For example I don't have to tell my 6 year old to go to the bathroom, when he needs to he go he goes.  If he waited until I told him to go he would end up wetting himself.  How ridiculous would it be if he came to me one day and said, "Dad why haven't you told me to go to the bathroom?  I peed all over myself because I was waiting for you to tell me to go!"  God is growing us up!  He is leading us to greater responsibility and freedom.  Isn't that the job of parents?  We raise our kids teaching them our values and our way of life and as they learn they need our instruction and guidance less and less.  We hope, that because they know what we expect of them, they will choose what it right and best.  God does the same.

 

God fills us with knowledge of Himself and His ways.  He gives us dreams, passion and vision and sets loose in the world.  He expects us to choose our course based upon the desires of our hearts, the circumstances that surround us, and the resources He puts into our hands.  He expects us to understand His desire for "much fruit" and act toward that end BECAUSE it is OUR DESIRE TOO!!!  God wants us to do what we want because hopefully our desires are aligned with His.  That's all a parent can hope for isn't it, that your kids will make good decisions when they grow up because they share your values.  They care about the same things that you care about.

There is a scripture I am chewing on that reveals this sentiment in the heart of God.

2 Chronicles 16:9 "For the eyes of the LORD move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His."

Wow what a statement about our God.  He is looking for friends and He is looking for partners who's hearts belong to Him.  He is looking for them so that He can strongly support them.  Imagine the strong support of God behind everything we do.  Wow.  What a freeing beautiful concept. 

To wrap this part of the discussion up I will tell you how the Lord phrased this in my heart. "Josh stop asking me what I want you to do.  I am asking you.  What do you want to do together with me?  What are you dreaming about?  What do YOU want to do lets do the impossible together!" 

 

 

 

God's Will

All my life I have been waiting for the "call" of God.  All my life I have waited at the corners of my life for God to say however softly, "go left" or "go right".  I've been waiting for the thunderous audible voice of the Lord, "Go to Africa!!!!!" etc.  I have never heard it.  There have been important moments in my life where God has given direction even recently with my stepping down from youth ministry  He spoke to me and told me now was the time.  There have been important moments in my life where God has said No and Yes, but more often than not, when I am seeking direction, God seems silent.  I have had so many moments where I was standing at the fork in the road and yelling to the heavens, "JUST TELL ME God!  LEFT OR RIGHT?"  I've watched the skies for clouds in the shape of an L or R.  I've prayed for a squirrel to come down out of a tree and make an arrow out of nuts on the road.  Something ANYTHING!  I've even suggested to God easy ways for Him to direct me like, "Ok God if you want me to go left send a wind from the left, and if you want me to go right send a wind from the right!", or my personal favorite "Alright God I'm going right and if you DON'T want me to go right have a black cat cross the road in front of me."  Anything I can do to MAKE God speak to me I'll try it.  Even threatening God. "If you don't talk to me I'm going to just do what I want to do and you will be to blame if it all falls apart!"  I think maybe that is the point.  We want to be sure that, whatever we are going to do it is going to succeed.  We don't want to RISK anything, and we want a scape goat to blame if it all falls apart.  "Well this was YOUR idea God so it is YOUR fault!"

I am learning slowly but surely that God's will for our lives is not as.... mysterious as I have always thought it was.  God wants us to do what He has made us to do, and He wants us to be happy to do it. 

 

You see, in the church culture that was my upbringing there is a lot of talk about, "what is God's will for my life", and callings, and direction, and I am glad there was.  It taught me never to make a decision without talking to God about it first.  It gave me the rock solid understanding that God is the one that is the ruler of my life and that when He calls you say yes without hesitation!  It taught me that God still speaks to His kids.  What I never learned was what to do when God doesn't speak.  What do we do when God is silent?  I want to explore this over the next few blogs.  I want to give you some insights that I have been getting and I want to dialogue with some of you few readers of this hopefully holy ramble I call a blog.

 

Also I have begun another blog on Wordpress - for two reasons, #1 I'm looking for something better than Blogger and #2 I am a little bit of a web junky and I have to be involved with whatever the cool new web thing is.  That is the only reason I'm on Twitter and Facebook!  Sad isn't it.  I plan on continuing to blog here on Blogger but maybe have a little different focus on the other blog.   I moved all my posts to that blog too so all my old posts and comments are already over there as well as here, but the new posts will be more directed toward family and relationship issues whereas this blog is all about my personal walk with Christ.  Let's call this one my First Commandment Blog (love the Lord Your God with all that you are) and the other my Second Commandment blog (Love your neighbor as yourself)!  You can find the other blog at www.fromhimthroughhimtohim.wordpress.com if you are at all interested!