What I've Learned So Far - Part 2

For the last five days Jeannie and I have been at a retreat in Delafield, Wisconsin called “Cedarly Pastor’s Retreat.” It has been a time of rest, reflection and a true Sabbath. It has been time without television, internet or cell phones. The focus has been getting quiet enough to listen to God rather than the usual one-sided conversations that we curiously call “prayer.” I have learned a great deal during this time that I believe, most of all, will impact me as a person but also as a pastor and leader. I’m sure it will take some time to process all that God has been teaching me through being quiet, but I wanted to share a “part 2” of some of the things that I have learned during the entire sabbatical.

Here are some more of the things that God has been teaching me during the whole sabbatical (again in random order):

· God knows what it will take to transform me completely and so for me to complain about His method is to set my own selfish ideas above His.
· God’s development of me is an ongoing process with words like “show” and “teach.” I must never be proud of my progress or judge someone else’s because I don’t know where they started or what they’ve gone through.
· Most of my prayers tend to focus on my desires and want God to accommodate those rather than using my prayer to place myself under His desires.
· Truly following and obeying God is never safe or easy, but I am increasingly becoming dissatisfied with any other alternative – it leaves me totally unfulfilled and guilty.
· I need to learn to be able to follow God on a step-by-step, “need to know” basis and not assume that I always need the big picture. Often, I just need to obey and listen for the next step.
· Going “deeper with God” is simply this: becoming more like Jesus Christ. God will do nothing more or nothing less than His expressed will to make us like Jesus.

I believe that the bottom line message that God has been repeating in numerous ways during the sabbatical is that I need to trust Him. Now on a casual reading you may respond with something like: “it took you twelve weeks of sabbatical to figure that out?!” But believe me, trust is no small thing and the ways that God has revealed that it is lacking in my life are astounding.
- Trust means it is OK to spend and hour just listening for a word from God when I have a whole list of unfinished tasks.
- Trust means that I can take more time to simply invest in being with people, even when an unfinished sermon sits on my desk.
- Trust means that I can press ahead with God’s kingdom agenda, even if everyone else isn’t totally on-board yet.
- Trust does mean that I acknowledge I can’t do it all and God never intended for me to think that I could.
That is just scratching the surface of some of the things God is teaching me about trust. I hope that, likewise, God has been impressing you with the same message – He is God and we are not!

I would love to hear what God is teaching you!

What I've Learned So Far

Since we arrived home from Europe I haven’t done much with the blog, but the first part of this week (6/30-7/6), I went on a three day personal retreat and did some reflecting about what I have learned in the first half of my sabbatical. I plan to continue to post on the blog, but no more beautiful pictures of Europe. I will be sharing what God is showing me through my prayers and reading and through the experiences of visiting different churches and from the pastor and wife retreat in Wisconsin that Jeannie and I will be attending July 13-18.

Here – in random reflections – are some of the things that God has been teaching me during the first part of the sabbatical:

· Being “in the Father” – intimacy with God is both subjective and objective. I experience it but it is also known to others by the fruit of the Spirit in my life.
· I should trust completely that God has placed me where He wants to use me and not compare my situation with others. I am convinced that my role in the big picture of First Baptist is to lead the church through transitions. The first was the transition of building and location. The next, and more difficult, is the transition to doing ministry intentional rather than just repeating activities year after year. Ultimately my role is to lead us to God’s agenda.
· I need to learn to manage my time better, especially focusing more on relationships. I want to be more like Jesus in the sense of being with people more.
· Fear is not God’s desire for me, nor is pretending to be courageous, but instead the genuine courage that comes from integrity of thought and action.
· To understand the ways of God and to saturate my life with Scripture, I need to memorize Scripture in a systematic way.
· I am inadequate in my own strength and nothing that I try to do in my own strength can change that. Rather, that awareness should drive me deeper into God.
· Worship is a dynamic – giving honor, praise, and glory to God but also being confronted by God and choosing to respond in obedience. I cannot honestly come before a holy God and remain unchanged.
· I tend to operate from an attitude of expecting to fail instead of expecting to succeed. This “spirit of fear” comes into my life whenever there is a lack of integrity. The area of fear and the area of the lack of integrity may not necessarily be related. It’s just that any lack of integrity in my life opens the door to fear – and it invades with a vengeance.
· I think way too much about myself and my needs, fears, worries, etc. and not near enough about others. Likewise, I can barely understand myself – motives, feelings – what makes me think I can understand others or judge them?
· I have not always allowed the hurts and disappointments in my life to become opportunities to bless those who have hurt me – which is little better than seeking revenge.
· We all have a tendency to identify our cultural form of Christianity as the “true” or “pure” form and yet every expression of the Christian faith is tied to culture and contains flaws and prejudices.
· I want to learn to be like Moses in that my first response to any problem is to fall on my face before God.

That’s just part of what I wrote down from my journal. I will share some more in the next posting.