OUR OWN BOOTSTRAPS: How often do we bring our plans to God as an afterthought?
- Too often in church life and in our individual lives, we come up with our plans and then we bring them to God.
- “Is this alright with You?”
- “Please bless this.”
- “God, make everything come together.”
- “Father, help it all to turn out all right.”
- And when we do this, we can feel pretty smug because we’re praying over our plans. We’re bringing them to God! So that is an obvious indication of our devotion to Him as a church or as an individual.
- The problem, though, is that we’re including Him on the tail end, after all the significant decisions have been made. We’ve already brought everything together – we just want Him to pour out His blessings on that.
- That’s unacceptable to God, but even doing that we’re not really asking for anything from Him.
- How do I know? Well, our next point is. . .
STRONG ENOUGH?: We try to accomplish things in our own strength.
- Even when we do bring it to God as an afterthought, generally we’re not actually expecting anything from Him.
- Rare is the plan that we’ve devised ourselves that is dependant on God actually showing up.
- Usually, it’s a plan that accomplishes what we want to see done with the resources that we have available. We don’t really need God at all – we’re just praying to make it look a little religious.
- A telling question: what percentage of our prep time for whatever we’re doing is spent in prayer?
- Usually, it’s an afterthought or a cursory obligation at the beginning, but it’s rarely the meat of our work.
- Another telling question: how much of what we do would go on without interruption if the Holy Spirit failed to show up?
- It’s been said (correctly, I believe) that most churches could have the Spirit cease to show up and things would continue to move along uninterrupted. That’s a truly scary thought.
GETTING STRONGER: We should see Christ as our leader and the Spirit as our coordinator.
- Matthew 23:11.
- We are often quick to want to fill the vacuum of power with our lives and within our churches rather than allowing Jesus and the Spirit to fulfill their roles.
- What do I mean by that statement?
a. Christ as our leader.
- We want to be the leader. We want to make the decisions. We want to be the boss.
- But we’re not the leader. Jesus said, “Follow Me.” It’s hard for us to admit that we’re not the ones calling the shots.
- We have to be willing to submit to His leadership and not demand that we be in charge.
- That includes when He’s points us to do things and go places that we might not have chosen on our own.
b. Spirit as our coordinator.
- The Spirit is to be our guide, directing us as we go through life.
- He is there to give us the step-by-step instructions that we need as we trust God to walk with us.
- He’s our “on-board guidance system.” He coordinates things for us as we move forward. Again, it’s God calling the shots.
- What’s the pastor as servant look like?
- One thought: Acts focus on preaching and prayer as the centerpiece of pastoral duties.
- Cf. pastor adding more ministries to fill programming needs vs. only doing something that someone feels called to do.
- Cf. Billy Graham coming to a church and cleaning toilets. “That’s beneath you.” Actually, nothing is beneath a servant of God. But we tend to exalt pastors and put them on pedestals.
- Part of the problem may be the organizational structure that many churches have that puts the pastor as the centerpiece – attending all the committees, chairing all the important stuff, knowing all that’s going on.
- Some of this is self-imposed by pastors wanting to have their hands in everything.
- What if you dropped “organizational structure” and everyone just did what they felt called to?
- Examples:
a. You call your people to serious prayer before doing anything.
b. Rather than cultivating the image of being the smartest one in the church about the Bible, you look for ways to bring in others’ thoughts.
c. You regularly participate in ministries where you’re not the one in charge, but you’re following someone else’s lead.
d. You drop the lofty “Rev.” and “Dr.” titles.
- What’s the Christian as servant look like?
- We recognize that obedience is not optional.
- We recognize that we’re to be followers of Christ.
- We recognize that we’re bought with a price and not our own.
- Examples:
a. At work, you step up to do what others don’t want to do.
b. At home, you’re quick to help your spouse with whatever they’re doing.
c. In the neighborhood, you’re the one who does the trash pick-up or helping a hurting neighbor.
GETTING THERE: That humility would probably involve more listening, more waiting, and more power.
- Matthew 23:12.
- Unpacking the statement:
a. More listening.
- Rather than running ahead with what we think is the right path, we spend more time in prayer listening to find and confirm the will of God in our lives.
- Doing that, though, leads to. . .
b. More waiting.
- If you’re looking for speed, you’re looking in the wrong place in looking to God. He’s never in a hurry.
- You would have more time spent in getting the plan and the direction before moving forward.
- Knowing that we don’t like waiting, this doesn’t really sound like something we’d want to do.
- But we should, though, because more waiting leads to. . .
c. More power.
- To get the power of God working in our lives, we need to be in the will of God and following the plan of God. That isn’t usually where we are. We’re too busy working on our own plans.
- But when we read the Bible and see the miracles that the power of God is able to bring about, we see that it’s worth it. The power of God can have a greater impact in a moment, than our own power could bring about in a lifetime. The power of God can do amazing things.
- In fact, the truth is that nothing that we do in our own power is going to have eternal significance, so you could say it’s not a question of having more impact, but having an impact at all.
- But we don’t get that divine power by doing things our way. We don’t get it by following our plans. We don’t get it by conjuring our best ideas.
- There is a trust in God and a looking to Him that is necessary here.
- We have to wait on His timing. We have to trust in His methods.
- What’s wrong with strong, dynamic, can-do church leadership? Quite possibly, a lot.
- John Maxwell church leadership books read very much like business leadership books.
- Sometimes the waiting is for greater maturity.
- Our efforts to create Kingdom growth by our abilities and power will fail and lead to us being less.
- What we’re talking about here is what v. 12 is pointing to.
- We humble ourselves by listening for God’s will, by waiting on God’s voice, by refusing to move without His clear direction. We stay humble and submitted to Him
- When we do that, in His time, He will lift us up, He will exalt us.
- What’s it look like when God exalts someone?
- For a pastor:
a. His sermons speak exactly the word that people need to hear in their lives to become more like Christ.
b. He and his people find themselves running into people who are hungry for spiritual food and eager to come hear more.
c. He and his people have more baptisms and rededications as the Spirit moves deeply in hearts.
d. The church’s public worship is dynamic and vibrant.
- For a Christian:
a. She finds herself stumbling into deep conversations and abundant opportunities to encourage hurting people and point them toward God.
b. She serves within the church in a ministry that has a disproportionately powerful impact for the effort they’re putting in.
c. She sees people saved because of her witness.
d. She enjoys a peace that comes from knowing she’s in the center of God’s will for her.
- And, it should be noted, the opposite is true, as v. 12 notes.
- When we try to lift ourselves up and do things in our own strength and wisdom, we’ll have no one less than God Himself frustrating our efforts and bringing them (and us) to nothing.
- He will humble those who exalt themselves.
WHY WE DON'T DO IT THAT WAY: A big part of our problem in control.
- If you could boil down the reason that we don’t do this to one word, that word would probably be control.
- We like being in charge. We don’t like waiting. We don’t like the painful work of having our heart molded. We like being the boss. We like holding the keys.
- It’s easy for us to say that we believe God is loving and faithful, but we still don’t find it easy to trust Him.
- We would never say that we think God is incompetent, but we are reluctant to put Him in charge.
- The challenge to you today: Are you willing to give God control?
