Shortcutting the Processes of Faith

"...and we rejoice in our suffering because we know the easy answers that allow us to forego tough times and get right to a maturity and abundance and excitement that transcends the process of growth"

...okay, maybe that's not quite how the verse goes, but I'd like it a lot better my way! (compare to Romans 5:3-5)

As the rain is pouring down this morning, I realize it lands on two people today: those it refreshes and those it depresses.

My own strife - of stolen credit cards, lacking finances, strained relationships, and a hurting body - pail in comparison to others I care about this week.

It's almost impossible for me right now to share the grief with you on this page... I'm broken hearted for the broken hearted! People I'm close to feel rejected, insignificant, anxious, unsupported, listless, lonely, hopeless, unheard, isolated, and just plain blah.

Some have given up on Christ as Life because life doesn't look any easier that way. Another runs from friends in the Church because she anticipates their rejection. Another seeks out the advice she wants to hear and rejects everyone else's intervention so she might feel justified in her decisions. Another feels he's irrevocably recked his life by his behavior and may not see it disentangled again. Most recently, a dear friend struggles with an unidentifiable melancholy, wanting everything to be what it ought to be, but not sure what that even means right now.

So - people I love are hurting, lonely, lost and desperate. ...and I am not the solution. Not even a little.

My friends, if you are flailing, I love you dearly, but God is your Source. I might be available for Him to use (as I hope you are for others in your life), but it cannot be mine to fix.

I would love to help, but He is your help. Maybe He will use me, and maybe He won't, but I'm not the solution, and - most likely - the problem isn't what you think it is, either.

Here's a little prescription for reorienting things when nothing seems to be as it should in your world, but you're not going to like it (at first):

1) You probably feel like you're missing something or being hurt by someone. The problem, however is not what someone has done, what you lack, or what you need done. The problem is the flesh. Once we realize that the only obstacle to the fullness of Life God promises is my trying to meet my own needs, justify my behavior, justify how others should behave differently, or somehow create change in my circumstance - once I embrace the reality of the flesh in me - I can begin to understand what God's up to in my time of suffering and struggle. As long as I am trying to be my own source, the flesh and all it's twisted and deceptive desires will reign and I will be experiencing death. So there it is - regardless how you feel, the problem is the flesh. His joy and abundance is not based on circumstance, behavior, or perception, but dependence on God as your Source.

2) Then naturally the solution to your flesh is not always what we want to hear either. Getting the date, the job, the recognition, the change, the finances, the marriage, the furniture, or the opportunity will not meet your need. Getting married, getting divorced, eating more, eating less, working harder, not working at all - all these are powerless to produce what you're needing in your life... Not even a little. The solution is trusting God as your Source. Don't perform. Don't bargain. Don't persuade. Just receive. The problem is we want what we want like a druggie needs another hit - our flesh craves more of what it needs to justify itself. We don't just want what we want, but we want to be right to want it! That's the self-justifying work of the flesh. Trusting Christ instead of trying to achieve or justify is the only path to experiencing Life. That's life with a capital "L".

Everything else is a knockoff and will fall apart in the rain.

There's a passage that's dear to me, one I turn to frequently to be reminded of the sufficiency of Christ as my Life. In fact, it's so personal, so intimate a voice Father uses to speak these words to my heart, it is challenging to share, but they are too powerful NOT to share. Jeremiah was having a really tough time. He was doing what God asked, and life was getting harder and harder. It didn't seem fair and it was emotionally exhausting. He was speaking to folks having a really tough time, too - Israelites cast under the shadow of their enemies, feeling rejected by God, the mockery of their peers, having what little they had taken from them, and generally lacking any hope in life at all. And into Jeremiah's heart and the Israelites ears, God spoke...

"Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the Lord. He will be like a bush in the wastelands. He will not see prosperity when it comes. He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives.

(Can anyone relate to that? Feel like your life is that of a scraggly bush in the desert? Listen to your Father's desire for you in the next verse...)

"...But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends it's roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit."

Don't be condemned, my friends, and don't feel rebuked... Be refreshed! Be renewed in the power of His love. Be energized by the sufficiency of the Spring of Life that will flow out from you as you imbibe His Life.

Come to Him now even more completely and receive rest for your weary soul. Seek Him alone today and watch His life flow through your members. Determine to need and know nothing but Christ and see the fruit - for you and for others around you - that He alone can and will produce. What will He withhold who gave completely of Himself? What do you lack that compares to what He wants to provide for you?

Let Him uproot you from the lacking strife of the flesh, and He will replant you by the Stream of Living Water anew that you may drink deeply from His sufficient grace today.

You Lead this week...

As a leader, you've no doubt learned that those who look to you for leadership don't always know what good leadership looks like, but they never miss the lack of it! Here are five critical elements you contribute to the security and credibility of your leadership:

1) Give CONTEXT - define the environment in terms of the roles of your team member. If her role is management then define the environment in terms of efficiencies and inefficiencies. When they look at a task or a project, do they see a thousand unrelated variables, or a thousand potential efficiency improvements they might readily effect? If her role is teaching, then give context specifically for communication. What does she need to say or do to communicate the solutions people need. One of the greatest gifts you can give your team member is seeing and speaking from their perspective, putting things into the terms they will operate with. Without this step, they must translate your ambiguous or emotional input into useful terms, and will often misinterpret your feedback. So if you tell a greeter that people are feeling frenetic and lost, that's not nearly as useful as telling them to immediately suggest where they might take their kids or wave them in the direction they should go with a smile. Vision is critical, but it's the job of leadership to translate vision into practical reality of how followers contribute to the vision to avoid peresonal disconnects.

2) Give DIRECTION - the most critical element of leadership is not vision, but direction. Vision paints the picture of where we want to be, but direction points a team in a unified way to accomplish that vision. Without direction, vision is just a great idea no one can connect with, contribute to, or get excited about. If your vision is for ministry to have a specific measurable impact in 3 years, what will be in place in 6 months, who's managing that project, and what will it cost? What will the impact be on 18 months and what is the shift in resources as it grows? Vision without strategy or direction is poison to your organization. If we disconnect our goals from our resources and priorities, we disconnect people from the vision, because there is nothing they can do to make the leap from where you are, to where you want to be... People need the "how we'll get there", too. By the way - the best direction is personal and relational. It speaks to "who we are" TODAY, and how that will bring about the vision we've set long term.

3) Give OWNERSHIP - if you're the lead that sets the vision, be the lead that gives it away. How will each of your team members contribute to that vision with their unique skills and expertise? ASK THEM! As soon as your team is working on making their ideas for bringing about the vision work, it's become theirs and not yours... and that's a really good thing. Your vision and your ideas translated into tasks for others makes them feel like their just working on your project for your success. But their ideas for what they can do to bring about a shared vision makes them feel like their accomplishment is the team's success. If your team nods assent to the vision of your organization, the very next thing you say should be a question about what they can do individually, with their unique role, gifting, skills, andopportunites to impact that vision being a reality. At that point your job as a leader shifts from vision casting to resource allocation, because the vision is now theirs,based on the success of their ideas and investments.

4) Give EQUIPPING - Casting the vision, giving context, and giving ownership make it a shared vision, but the authroaty and resources to act still have to be given away for vision to become a reality. Your goal can now become the success of your team. What do they need to be successful? Do each of them have what they need - both internally (skills) and externally (resources) - to make the contributions they want to make to the vision they've taken ownership of? If tasks, schedules, resources, or ideologies conflict among team members are the priorities clear enough - based on the direction and strategy you've set - for clear decision making? Obviously you as a leader are a limited resource. Finances, facilities, equipment, other personnel, and any centralized resources are limited in quantity as well. Without clear strategy, priorites seem arbitrary, but once strategy and direction are set, priorities become clear as well, since some things need to move forward before others. Today's priorities aren't necessarily "forever priorities" or pet projects, but necessary steps in a specific order to agreed upon goals everyone is invested in. In is way, a lot of "no's" become clearly understood and even embraced "not now's" becAuse when a task takes priority is based on it's urgency within your strategy.

5) Give YOURSELF- Once the vision is shared, the strategy is clear, and the priorities are set, the "doing" of ministry is in the hands of the practitioners - the experts (or those becoming experts) for each area within your organization. Your focus now shifts from the vision (though ever in front of you and consistently re-articulated) to your team. Equipping them, resourcing them, empowering them, running interference for them, removing obstacles for them, and Dvocating for them in any other way possible becomes your primary job as a leaders. This doesn't mean pulling the rug out from under one team member for another, but facilitating the necessary communication for priorities to be clarified and strategy to be implemented BY THE TEAM. When your job becomes your team, and the team's job is the vision, expect incredible personal and organizational growth!


In fhe final analysis, your leadership will be evident not in the greatness of your vision, but in the success of the individuals on your team. Giving direction, equipping, context, ownership, and ultimately yourself for the success of those team members redeems your vision by developing a unified, motivated, consistent, and empowered organization.

And isn't that what you want to see happen when you lead?

October 17, 1869...

October 17, 1869

"I feel as though the first glimmer of the dawn of a glorious day had arisen upon me. I hail it with trembling, yet with trust- as to work, mine was never so plentiful, so responsible, or so difficult; but the weight and strain are all gone. The last month has been perhaps the happiest of my life; and I long to tell you a little of what the Lord has done for my soul- Perhaps I shall make myself more clear if I go back a little- My mind has been greatly exercised for six or eight months past, feeling the need, personally, and for the mission, of more holiness, life, power, in our souls. But personal need stood first and was the greatest. I felt the ingratitude, the danger, the sin of not living near to God. I prayed, agonized, strove, fasted, made resolutions, read the Word of God more diligently, sought more time for meditation and prayer - but all was with effect. Every day, almost every hour, the consciousness of sin oppressed me- each day brought its register of sin and failure, of lack of power- then came the question Is there no rescue? Must it be thus to the end - constant conflict and instead of victory too often defeat? How, too, could I preach with sincerity that to those who receive Jesus, to them gave He that power to become the sons of God (i.e. God-like) when it was not so on my own experience?

I hated myself. I hated my sin; and yet, I gained no strength against it. I felt I was a child of God: His Spirit in my heart would cry: 'Abba Father'; but to rise to my privileges as a child, I was utterly powerless."

"All the time I felt assured there was in Christ all I needed, but the practical question was how was I to get it out?- I knew full well that there was in the Root abundant fatness; but how to get it into my puny little branch was the question. As the light, gradually dawned on me, I saw that faith was the only prerequisite, was the hand to lay hold on His fullness and make it my own. But I had not this faith! I strove for it but it would not come; tried to exercise it, but in vain. Seeing more and more the wondrous supply laid up in Jesus, the fullness of our precious Savior-my helplessness and guilt seemed to increase. Sins committed seemed but as trifles compared with the sin of unbelief, which was their cause, which could not, or would not, take God at His Word, but rather made Him a liar. Unbelief was, I felt, the damning sin of the world-yet, I indulged in it.

"When my agony of soul was at its height, a sentence in letter from dear McCarthy was used to remove the scales from my eyes, and the Spirit of God revealed the truth of our oneness with Jesus as I had never know it before. McCarthy, who had been exercised by the same sense of failure, but saw the light before I did, wrote:

'But how to get faith strengthened? Not by striving after faith, but by resting on the Faithful One.'

As I read I saw it all, 'If we believe not, He abideth faithful' (2Tim 2:13). I looked to Jesus and saw (and when I saw, oh, how joy flowed!) that He had said: 'I will never leave you.' (Heb 13:5) Ah, there is rest I thought! I have striven in vain to rest in Him. I'll strive no more. For has He not promised to abide with me?

"But this was not all He showed me, nor one-half. As I thought of the vine and branches, what light the blessed Spirit poured direct into my soul- I saw not only that Jesus would never leave me, but that I was a member of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. The Vine, now I see, is not the root merely, but all- root, stem, branches, twigs, leaves, flowers, fruit; and Jesus is not only that: He is soil and sunshine, air and shower, and ten thousand times more than we have every dreamed, wished for, or needed. Oh, the joy of seeing this truth!

I do pray that the eyes of your understanding may be enlightened, that you may know and enjoy the riches freely given us in Christ."

"Oh, my dear sister, it is a wonderful thing to be really one with a risen and exalted Savior; to be a member of Christ! Think what it involves. Can Christ be rich and I poor? Can your right hand be rich and the left poor? Or your head be well-fed while your body starves? Again, think of its bearing on prayer. Could a bank clerk say to a customer: 'It was only your hand wrote that check, not you,' or 'I cannot pay this sum to your hand, but only to yourself?' No more can your prayers or mine be discredited if offered in the name of Jesus (i.e. not in your own name, or for the sake of Jesus merely, but on the ground that we are His members) so long as we keep within the extent of Christ's credit - a tolerably wide limit"...

Dr. Hudson Taylor
Founder of China Inland Mission