“Worry is a waste of imagination — Trust God!” (Seen on a church sign)
We are often victims of our own imaginations, worrying about things that we cannot change. Worrying about outcomes we have no control over. Worrying until stress increases our blood pressure, gives us headaches, and sleepless nights.
The answer is to “cast all your cares on Him.” Although it may not be easy, it may be very difficult for some — it really is as simple as this: “Trust God.”
When we worry to the point of physical, mental, and medical detriment, it still doesn’t “fix the problem”, but actually increases the problems we face.
“Trust and obey” is not just lyrics to a popular hymn, but should become a lifestyle of trust in the Lord. He really does have the answer, and He really does care. Resting in Him is to trust without fail.
It was happening again! Children and pre-teens were peering in the windows and doors during the youth conference and training sessions. They wanted to be a part of the learning and fun that was taking place. However, they were too young! Soon they began disrupting the sessions and making a nuisance of themselves. Feeling a strong sense of responsibility to provide good training, youth training teams assigned some of their members to stand guard and to chase the children away when they became too rowdy. Some of the trainees began to ask their trainers what to do about this problem. It had become very difficult to train youth with the children making disturbances. They agreed to pray about it. The Lord gave the answer!
Why not train some of the youth how to work with children instead of chasing them away? they could train the local youth to be leaders and teachers in the local churches, some could become Sunday School teachers, and some would develop leadership skills through the training. The idea was put into action. As a result, youth are teaching other youth to teach children!
The youth leaders had learned a valuable lesson: An important key to leadership is thinking beyond the problem to the solution. As Spiritual Leaders, we go to God for the solution. He will supply it as we ask for HIS agenda. Let’s look at some roles and responsibilities of a Spiritual Leader.
Pastor/Priest: Provide Spiritual Formation God is looking for sanctified servants. When we understand leadership in the light of God’s calling on our lives, we will be prepared to lead effectively in God’s kingdom — the church. At any level of church leadership, there is a strong component of the pastoral role. Influence, enabled by right relationship, is very important. If we are in right relationship with God, right relationship with people will follow. Influence flows out of right relationship. Spiritual influence has to flow from God. A Spiritual Leader’s greatest challenge is to know God’s agenda both for the organization and for the leader within the organization. Knowing God’s agenda will empower his leadership and inspire his followers.
The leader whose heart is sanctified and steeped in God’s Holy Spirit will be a leader who is fully submitted to the leading of the Holy Spirit and His agenda. His heart will be God’s heart. His desires will be God’s desires. His agenda will be God’s agenda. His character will be a Godly character. His ability to be continuously responsive to the leading of the Holy Spirit will be so important to him that his own spiritual formation, and that of his people, will be his top concern. If he is not carefully looking out for his own spiritual development, commiuni0n with God will be broken or weakened and he may wander off on his own, leading his followers astray.
Encourager: Provide Inspiration and Motivation: The Spiritual Leader needs to foster an atmosphere where-in his people will also desire to know God’s agenda and will be motivated to pray until they learn God’s will for both their organization and for themselves. The Spiritual Leader provides inspiration and motivation to his fellow leaders in the role of “Encourager”.
Clear and repeated communication of the organizational goals, priorities, and objectives is absolutely necessary for providing inspiration and motivation., Frequent meetings and contact with people are important for inspiration, and for reinforcing motivation. Repeat the vision and mission statements of the organization often, both for the leader’s benefit as well as for the members’.
Vision Caster: Provide God-led Direction A Spiritual Leader is responsible to provide Godly guidance to the leaders around him — through relational influence – to set the organization on the right path toward God’s agenda together. This must be the God-given vision that comes from close communion with God. Vision is the rudder that sets the direction. Without vision, the people perish. Without vision, the organization perishes, and along with it, the leader. Someone has said a leader without vision is not a leader at all. A Spiritual Leader without a vision is a grave danger to the church.
Strategist: Planning and Development In the role of strategist, the leader works with those around him to develop strategic plans that will set the direction for the organization according to God’s agenda. In this role, the leader helps the members of the organization discover God’s divine purpose for their organization, evaluate who they are, what their purpose is, how and when to get there. The leader must help facilitate the organization in setting out a strategic plan and setting it in motion.
The development comes through implementing the strategic plan. It includes a means of regular evaluation and adjustment of the plan, as well as adjustment of actions to meet the goals of the plan. Setting strategy in motion without an action plan for evaluating progress is a sure plan for failure. A Spiritual Leader in the role of strategist must always keep God’s purpose for both the organization and himself in focus. All strategy and development must lead toward that purpose. Whatever activities are not moving toward the divine purpose should be eliminated.
Mentor: Identifying, Developing, Equipping, and Enabling Leaders The Spiritual Leader as Mentor carries the greatest challenge for a Spiritual Leader. The Spiritual Leader must “IDEE” the leaders around him. This includes Identifying Emerging leaders, Developing and Equipping them for leadership and, Enabling them for their task. No one can do the task alone! Identifying others to bring alongside you to help, to train, and to release them to carry their share of the load, is the only way leadership can mature and expand, and the organization can continue to grow. For the Church, growth is what we are all about! Evangelism — winning souls for Jesus — brings growth. Without growth, the church is dead and people perish without God.
Identify Emerging Leaders: The Spiritual Leader must always keep his eyes open to spot upcoming, emerging leaders. He must be prepared to invest himself in them and help move them toward maturity in their walk with the Lord and in leadership development. This means spending significant time with them, both in significant quantity and in significant quality.
Develop the leaders around you: Leaders who are developing learn not only from books but also by rubbing shoulders with leaders they respect and admire. This is mentoring. Mentoring must be done on purpose, in person, and with a plan. Know where each potential leader is in his development process. Keep notes on his development and what you can do to help him take the next steps.
Equip your leaders: Every leader needs leadership and management skills in his toolkit. A little education in leadership can go a long way. There is an incredibly large number of good books and authors you can share with your growing leaders. Whet his appetite for learning with books, materials, seminars, and training sessions. Any leader who is not growing and learning is not a leader! Another way to get those tools is by rubbing shoulders with a stronger leader who will pass on various learned skills. A Spiritual Leader must also find a way to instil within his people a deep and abiding hunger and a desire to feast on the things of God, and to nurture his relationship with God.
Enable your leaders: Perhaps one of the most important aspects of mentoring is to enable the growing leader by giving him the authority that goes with the assignment. Yes, he will make mistakes. Only those who try can make mistakes. It is part of learning. Let your leaders lead, and support their leadership in front of others, especially in front of those they lead. Coach them in private, never in public. Enable them by empowering them with the authority to carry out the responsibility you have entrusted to them. One of the worst mistakes a leader can make is to delegate a task or authority to someone and then take it back. Guide them gently as needed to keep them going in the right direction. Remind them of the vision, the mission, and the priorities, keep them accountable, and give them the authority to be a success.
The church has lost its purpose of making disciples, and has focused inward. The book of Acts movement was without walls. People were the church. Is “If we build it they will come” a true principal of the church? I don’t think we really believe that, but evidence is born out in what we do and how we behave. Much of our tithes and offerings are spent on buildings, music, stage lighting, projection equipment, and public address systems. What would happen if we took monies set aside for these things, and spent it on getting “out there”? The church must re-focus on New Testament purposes that will cause a paradigm shift in who we are and what we do as a church.
My daughter’s birth brought me up short, a wake-up call to learn the heavy responsibilities of what it means to father a child. What did I know about being a dad? I knew nothing!
What does it take to be a good father? I reasoned that fathering a child is more than just bringing a child into this world, and exchanging butterfly kisses. Fathering is a life-long responsibility. It is a forever commitment. That is, if a man truly wants to “father” his child.
So what to do? I wrote a description of what I wanted my daughter to become. I wanted her to become a woman of integrity, honesty, and good morals. For that to happen, I decided I needed to model these qualities for her. That meant I had to be who I wanted her to become. I was sure a strong faith in God, who has those same qualities, would help.
I started early. While she was still pretty young, I started taking her out on daddy-daughter-dates. I wanted her to experience a good example of how a man should behave. I opened doors for her. I held her chair for her. I ordered the meal and the drinks, and explained to her appropriate behavior for a young woman on a date. We talked of what she would want in a man, and how she wanted to be loved and cared for. We talked about integrity, honesty, and chastity. We talked about faith in God, and whether faith was relevant. We even discussed the Bible, which gives answers to most of life’s questions that arise.
We continued to “date” until she married. I knew I would only get one chance to get it right. She would only be young once. I knew that if I were to impress on her heart the values I knew were important, I had to talk about them at home, when we were out, and when she got up in the morning and went to bed at night.
Now that she’s married, with children, we still go out on an occasional daddy-daughter-date. She feels free to talk openly and candidly to me because the door to that kind of relationship opened long ago. We can explore together answers to more mature questions that are on her heart. We can pray together for solutions to problems she faces in her grown-up world.
I found that it takes a lot of effort and commitment to be a good dad. I discovered I had to do it on purpose, with purpose, to make a plan and work the plan. I set out on a mission to be a good dad and devoted myself to make it happen. We still exchange butterfly kisses; we have a very special connection, my daughter and I. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
I was the first person to hold her tiny, delicate form in my arms. My hands trembled as the nurse placed her tenderly in my arms. Miniature and fragile, could she break? Looking into her E.T. face, I instantly fell in love. I counted all her fingers and toes. There were ten each—tiny and perfectly formed—paper-thin nails and all. My eyes stung and my heart swelled as she turned toward me, and snuggled into my chest. I couldn’t help it. I promised her I would always love and protect her. I would shield her from evil and harm all her life. I promised to raise her to love and fear the Lord.
My mind jumped to the future. This is my little girl. Already, I was thinking what I would say to her when a young man would ask her out on her first date.
Then I started thinking about what I would say to her date! How do I prepare her for that? I began to search the Scriptures. What does God say about fathers? What are a father’s responsibilities toward his children?
I discovered that a father’s responsibility to his children is to mentor them and to teach them the ways of the Lord, His commandments and His decrees. A dad must live a Christlike life before his children, teaching them to hear, trust, and obey the heavenly Father. Following Deuteronomy 6:5, I read, “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up” (vv. 6-7).
I found it is up to a father to help his child recognize that God is the teacher and ruler in the child’s life. It’s not about me, and what I could do as a father. It is about God, and what a child could become by learning about God
Her E.T. face is now beautiful. Her fingers are long and skilled at the piano. My heart still swells when she turns to me and hugs me. She’s married to a fine Christian man who became the main man in her life. But she’s still mine. And, most importantly, she is God’s.
Garlic. Just mentioning the word evokes memory of how it smells. I have a clove of garlic in my hand. Its strong, pungent odor assails the taste buds and makes my mouth water. I peel off the paper-like skin. My nose stings and tears fill my eyes. Garlic reeks through the house as I chop it into tiny pieces and place it in stew.
Garlic flavor permeates the vegetables and meat in the stew, flavoring everything—even steam billowing from the boiling pot smells like garlic.
Garlic is garlic inside and out, and will always be garlic, no matter how I chop it, slice it, or cook it. My fingers reek of garlic. Garlic saturates everything it touches. It doesn’t go away easily. Tomorrow, the kitchen will still smell of garlic. After eating the stew, my breath, even my skin will smell of garlic.
Daniel of the Old Testament was like garlic inside and out. Not because he smelled, but because a Godly integrity saturated him through and through. It penetrated everything he touched—everything he did. Daniel’s character had a strong quality, difficult to corrupt, and difficult to suppress. He couldn’t hide it—it is who he was.
When he was elevated (Daniel Chapter 5) to be over King Darius’ entire kingdom, it was because of his integrity. When jealousy arose among the other leaders, they tried to destroy him by watching for anything he might have done amiss. But we are told they could not find any ground to accuse him of any wrongdoing. His integrity was impeccable. They had to manufacture a way to trap him by passing a law they knew his faith would not let him obey. They passed a law that everyone in the kingdom must pray only to Darius or die.
Daniel immediately went into his chamber to pray and to worship God. His enemies caught him in the act of praying to the one true God.
I have discovered that a person’s character is who he is. It suffuses everything he touches, everything he does, in much the same way. It is who people perceive him to be. Integrity is a condition that does not vary with circumstances of life or personal preferences. I have learned that a person of strong integrity will be strong in character. Conversely, a person of weak integrity will be weak in character.
Is integrity a condition that varies with circumstances of life or personal preferences? I think integrity is an ethical quality. It is moral excellence. It is honesty. It is innocence of motive. It does not have bad intent or improper behavior. Daniel was filled with the Spirit of God. He worshiped God only. He depended on God for everything. Daniel’s integrity was righteousness of the heart. It was a transparency of Godly motive. It saturated him through and through. It nearly cost him his life.
Now I am faced with a question. Will I allow God to fill me with His holiness? Will I let Him infuse me with the odor of righteous integrity?
Sweat burned my eyes and stung the sunburn on my face. Equatorial heat and humidity made it difficult to breathe. My blue jeans stuck to my legs, mud clung to my boots, and made it difficult to climb the scaffolding. From up on the scaffold, Emmanuel asked me to toss him a roll of wire and a sack of nails.
“Emmanuel,” I asked in floundering Spanish, “what do you do for a living?”
“I am a building contractor. And you? What do you do?” He started another nail.
“I am a contractor, but I am praying, asking God what He wants me to be.”
“What are you doing right now?” he asked. “Aren’t you serving Him by doing what you are doing right now?”
“You mean building buildings? No, that just pays the bills and feeds my family.”
“No.” He drove the nail home with three blows. “I mean right this minute. Aren’t you serving Him by doing what you are doing right this minute? By being here, helping us build a church, and visiting my neighbors, and preaching? Isn’t that serving Him?”
“Well yes, I guess it is!” I clipped a short piece of wire. “But this is just a ministry trip. I can’t do this on a permanent basis.”
“Why not? Maybe God is calling you, like Abraham, to go to a country that He will show you?” He took the wire from me, ran it through the holes in the wood planks, and tied them together.
“Look,” he said. “See how these planks fit together? We fasten them with wire and nails? They will hold the planks in place when the concrete is poured inside. Together, they will give a proper shape to the concrete. When the concrete matures properly, we will take off the planks, and the column will stand on its own. We are the planks. God’s word is the wire and nails. He fastens us together, to help shape the pillars of the church He has given us to build. That is what a missionary does. He comes and helps form the pillars of the church until it matures sufficiently and then he pulls himself away and the church will stand on its own.”
God spoke to me clearly, “This is what I have for you. I want you to be a missionary.”
For as long as I could remember, I knew that God was calling me into full-time ministry. I had tried out several roles of ministry—preaching, youth pastor, Sunday school teacher, music ministry, and others—but never felt a confirmed call in any of these areas. I remember asking God to please clearly reveal His perfect will for my life. In my youth, I grew desperate to know what God had for me. It seemed I would never know. Then I had an opportunity to join a work and witness team from my church.
That trip changed my life. I understood my ministry role. Missions has been my life ever since.
“How in the world did I get myself into this? What in the world was I thinking? I had disobeyed my mother, again, and this time she came for me with a Ping-Pong paddle. I knew I was about to get my butt dusted. I deserved it. I knew that. But, being reasonably intelligent, I figured I could outrun her. I ran out the back door, through the yard, and up a tree – can’t catch me!. Hah! Nobody could climb a tree like me! Now she can’t reach me! “Na, na, na, nu, nu!” I thought! Exulting in victory, I watched mom go back into the house. Sitting there basking in the glory of my Flash Gordon speed, I heard the screen door open again. Turning, I saw mom come out, and to my horror she was carrying not only the paddle, but a folding lawn chair. She opened the chair, sat down, looked up at me and said, “Now. You can’t stay up there forever. You’ll get hungry, or tired, and you will have to come down sometime. Oh, by the way,” she said smiling, “you know, the longer I wait the angrier I get!” What was I thinking? Flash got his pants lit up. It was the smile that did it.
All that I know about who God is comes mainly from three men in my life. One is the pastor I grew up under. Another is my father-in-law. But the primary example was my dad. He was a man who loved us with all his heart, yet didn’t hesitate to use the rod when we needed it. He loved God. He loved his family. He loved his church. He lived his deep faith in front of his children, and he lived it with honor and consistency. I honor him. I honor him for his faith, for his selfless service and sacrifice to family and church. He inspired me and discipled me in my faith. When I turned 18 he told me, “The only thing a man has in this world that will leave a mark is his honor. It is honor that makes a man, not his age, not his size. It is honor.” I’ve always tried to live up to that statement. I believe it is pleasing to God to live with honor. Honor fetches the image of honesty, truthfulness, correction, and reproof. Honor conjures perceptions of uprightness, righteousness, fairness, faithfulness, and dependability. Honor is integrity. It may represent a portrait of God.
servinginhisvineyard 
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