• Our hope-filled future is bound up in sharing the story of Jesus, in discipling others, in bringing those disciples together into communities of believers, and in developing and releasing those believers to create other communities... till Jesus the King comes again!

Prayer takes planning

Posted on February 2, 2017 by wtdavid

One of the guiding principles in the World Team Ministry Framework is prayer.  We describe it this way:

“Prayer is real conversation with God and is vital to growing relationship with Him and ministry in His name.  Prayer reflects our belonging and submission to Him, our need for direction and provision, and our acknowledgement that we can do nothing without Him.prayer-in-groups

We believe that personal and corporate prayer manifest obedience and humility, submitting ourselves to God and His agenda, and for His power.  Such dependence nurtures alertness to the spiritual dimensions of our undertakings and equips us with wisdom and knowledge for our calling.  Above all, prayer changes things because it is God’s desire that we ask Him to work.”

 It is a growing dependence that we seek in prayer; a dependence that reminds us of our constant need of the work of the Spirit.  However, prayer takes planning.  When I don’t ‘plan’ prayer into my day, it gets overlooked.  We all know how true that is.  Most of the time, it’s simply a reflection of the fact that prayer is not a priority in our daily lives.  To become more dependent though, prayer must become a reflex.

A week from today, we as a WT Global community will join in prayer for the needs of the ministries God has entrusted us with.  We need to ‘plan’ prayer into our day next Thursday or Friday; to set aside time, however short or long, to be with others to pray.

I received a note from the France team earlier this week and know that they have ‘set aside’ next Thursday to pray.  Is it in your ‘agenda’ already?

Prayer is a real conversation and is vital to growing relationship with Him. 

Filed under: Community, Prayer | 1 Comment »

Reading backwards

Posted on February 1, 2017 by wtdavid

These words of a 17th century English Presbyterian minister, John Flavel,right-to-left are worth ‘chewing over’ in our day:

The providence of God is like Hebrew words—it can be read only backwards.”

The Hebrew language is read backwards, from most of our perspectives.  It is read from right to left, rather than from left to right.  What Flavel meant to say was that God’s providence must be read in a similar way, or as one writer put it: “backwards in time”.

Remembering what God has done is one of the structuring devices of the Bible. It would do us well to ‘remember’ more often what He has done for us in the past in order to hold more firmly to the assurance that He will continue to show His mercy to us in the future.

John Flavel had this to say further in that regard:

“Search backward into all the performances of Providence throughout your lives. So did Asaph: ‘I will remember the works of the LORD: surely I will remember thy wonders of old. I will meditate also of all thy work, and talk of thy doings’ (Psalm 77:11, 12). He laboured to recover and revive the ancient providences of God’s mercies many years past, and suck a fresh sweetness out of them by new reviews of them. Ah, sirs, let me tell you, there is not such a pleasant history for you to read in all the world as the history of your own lives, if you would but sit down and record from the beginning hitherto what God has been to you, and done for you; what signal manifestations and outbreakings of His mercy, faithfulness and love there have been in all the conditions you have passed through. If your hearts do not melt before you have gone half through that history, they are hard hearts indeed. ‘My Father, thou art the guide of my youth’ (Jeremiah 3:4).”

Those words are definitely worth ‘chewing over’ in our day!

Filed under: Remembrance, Sovereignty | Leave a comment »

Never forget WHO is in charge

Posted on January 31, 2017 by wtdavid

There are many days when we can despair as we look at events swirling around us.  Reading the opening verse of the book of Ezra, though, re-centres our hearts and minds on what is really true.

“In the first year of in-chargeCyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom.”

When Cyrus broke onto the historical scene, I assume, he believed it was simply the result of his cunning and smarts.  The biblical writers ‘interpret’ the situation differently.  It is not Cyrus who was in charge.  It was God.

One commentator put it this way: “In its quiet way, however, Ezra 1:1 shows not only that this mighty king was subject, whether he knew it or not, to the promptings of God (who “stirred up his spirit”), but also that God had brought him to pre-eminence for the very purpose of the salvation of his people.”

Now we all know that.  Yet, we can be easily blindsided by an event that happens and causes us to be late for a meeting, postpone a translation workshop, or seemingly place a roadblock in ‘completing’ the hand off of ministry in a particular place. What oozes out of our hearts, at that moment, is not trust and confidence in our great God, but discouragement at having to ‘figure out what to do now’.  We exchange the truth that God is in charge for the belief that we are in charge and must do something to figure out how to solve this new problem.

Read that verse again.  Its simple, yet straightforward message is something I struggle to hold on to each day. However, it is clear about WHO is really in charge.

Filed under: Sovereignty, Worldview | Leave a comment »

Humility check

Posted on January 30, 2017 by wtdavid

humility-copyLisa corrected a misstatement in my previous post.  I had written: “Up to this point, I have not found ‘humility’ as one of the assessment categories on an annual evaluation.”  However, there was such a category in our old Annual Ministry Review form.

This is what you would have found there:

Christian Character—a godly life which shows evidence of God’s work being conformed to the image of Christ as demonstrated by:

  1. a humble, teachable spirit
  Requires Improvement   Satisfactory   Exceptional
Comments:

 

The rub is that no one would have ever wanted to say that their humility factor was off the charts by checking the box, exceptional.

However, the point of that Annual Ministry Review exercise was to get ‘outside-in’ input from others on the ravages of pride in our lives.  Others help us have an accurate picture of where our trust is more in ourselves than in the Savior.  Most of us are self-unaware when it comes to how deep pride runs in our own hearts.  Jack Miller (Serge) used to say that at the root of every sin you would find pride and unbelief.

Humility, as a foundational principle for CPM, reminds us of how often ‘we’ get in the way of God’s missional work.

For a humility check, try asking several others: where do you see me relying more on myself than on Jesus?  Then be ready to take those responses back to Jesus, asking him to give you the grace to turn again from one’s pride and grab hold of His loving and forgiving hands.

Filed under: Church planting, Gospel, Humility | Leave a comment »

Humility? Really?

Posted on January 27, 2017 by wtdavid

So far, I’ve mentioned the following foundational principles in CPM:

(1) “Foundations are forever” – that what is ‘poured into’ a community from the start will dictate how it functions and works

(2) “Nationals do it better” – that our objective as cross cultural workers is to train and give way to local believers to do the ministry.

(3) Community prayer – that prayer is the foundational principle in CPM different-dimensions-of-humility-990x580as we consciously affirm that this is God’s work, not ours.

Perhaps a fourth one would be a humble spirit.

Really?  In looking over the first three principles, I realized that one of the links that tied all of them together was a humble spirit.  It takes a humble spirit to regularly put in question what he/she is laying as a foundation.  It takes a humble spirit to ‘give way’ to others and allow them to take responsibility for the ministry.  It takes a humble spirit to cry out to God that His will be done and that we would decrease while He increases.

There are no six steps towards greater humility.  Up to this point, I have not found ‘humility’ in any of the assessment categories on an annual evaluation.  Yet, we are called to demonstrate humility (James 4:6).  Humility grows from allowing God to search our hearts and drive us back to Him; back to His love, forgiveness, and the honour He bestows on us.  Humility also grows as we open ourselves to the ‘outside-in’ input of others. In other words, by living in close enough ‘community’ (virtually or in person) we allow others to speak into our lives.

Filed under: Accountability, Humility | 2 Comments »

Prayer in community

Posted on January 26, 2017 by wtdavid

John wrote an excellent comment to my blog post from the other day: “Who is your one? (bis)” in which he stressed the importance of the role of community in spiritual formation.  I just hadn’t applied that idea to prayer.

In most of the articles on prayer and CPM, the emphasis seems to be placed on the church planter’s (singular) life of prayer, and rightly so.  However, because prayer is foundational to church planting movements (CPM), it is vital that we also pray in community, that we hold ‘concerts of prayer’ together.

concertofprayeropenartweb_edited-2Years ago, David Bryant wrote the book, Concerts of Prayer, in which he argued for prayer communities and offered a ‘format’ for hosting a concert of prayer.  What I pulled from the book could be simply stated: we need to pray together, in community.

Yes, it takes effort to pray with others.  It takes time to find the time; it takes time to walk, drive or take the scooter to someone else’s place; it takes time just to pray in a group.  It’s always ‘easier’ to pray by oneself, but because this is God’s mission, given to God’s people, it calls for God’s people together to pray.

The World Team Day of Prayer is coming up in just a few weeks.  I challenge each of us to be thinking of ways to ensure that we will be ‘in community’ that day to pray.  God will certainly enjoy the concert!

Filed under: Community, Prayer | Leave a comment »

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