From Conversation to Missions

I grew up with a great awareness of the supernatural and a great fear of it.

My life had changed, and God was in me. My bible started to make a bit of sense.

Right from my conversion I was wanting to go full-time. 

I saw the need for discipleship amongst the least-reached people. I had this hunger for missions.

If I’m going to do church planting, I’m going to need to know what a church looks like.

Discipling and spiritual warfare

I was asking more basic questions for which they didn’t have the answers.

I wasn’t interested in church planting in our neighborhood. I was interested in church planting amongst those who didn’t know.

Even after we equipped people with evangelism explosion, we still didn’t see anyone come to Christ.

God said to me very clearly, “When you’re ready to disciple them, I’ll give you converts.”

You need to disciple people from scratch; you’re not inviting people into a body where they sit and listen, and that’s it.

My spiritual gift is my spiritual job description.

We need to teach people to live by faith. We talked about the whole Christien thing is about Faith, but how do you learn to teach somebody to trust in God? How do you teach somebody to learn to hear God’s voice? How do you teach somebody watch in obedience and submission? To me, it’s a fundamental of discipleship. Not just engaged with God, but engaged with God.

I live in a Western community, and we support the mission, but there’s no sense of the reality of the evil one.

Unless God deals with things in the spiritual realm, there is no hope of life, understanding, or insight in our hearts and lives.

If there’s no rain on the mountain, there’s going to be no water in the valley.

The whole understanding of the reality of the enormity of spiritual warfare is something that a lot of folks just aren’t even aware of.

We quote scripture, but we have no idea what it actually means.

People Development

I suffered with an inferiority complex when I was a teenager. But to come to the point where I realize that God shaped me in the womb, God had made me to serve him, God, uniquely, put my background, my family, as good or bad as that was, because he had a purpose for me.

For me, the whole idea of calling is key. Unless I know that I’m here because this is where God wants me, I don’t have the guts, the faith, the tenacity to see things out. But because I know this is where God wants me, then I know that he will help me and I can trust him to get through this, regardless of the opposition, regardless of the difficulty, regardless of the lack of resources.

People have the sense that God’s will is a mystery and is going to remain a mystery.

Finding God’s Will

The fundamental question of discipleship is, how do we help people hear the voice of God, discern the promises of God for them, spend time with God, and engage with God?

The arena of Gods’ activity is far bigger than you can imagine.

The Earth will be fulled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, the purposes of God will prevail.

We have to learn to hear God‘s voice. I don’t believe for a moment that God wants us to be ignorant of his will for our own lives.

But we went to pray, and we asked, “God, this is yours. What do you want us to do?”

We often go and complain to God and bring all of our issues to God, and then walk away and close the door. Instead of saying, OK, let me wait for the answer. Let me wait and see what God is going to say.

It’s not a matter of waiting of until this makes sense in my head. It’s a matter of until the spring peace in my heart, and I can trust God with it, regardless of whether it makes sense or not.

Learning over the long haul

I don’t want to waste my life on what is not significant to God. I’m not interested in hanging around beyond my due date. So, if God has something new for me to do or step into, I want to step into that.

It’s a conviction that God has a purpose for my life, and I want to walk with him in that purpose. That purpose is developing and unfolding as I go.

Leadership matters

Accomplishing God‘s desired results through people by building them up and making them successful. To me, that’s the essence of leadership.

What are my strengths, what are my contributions to leadership, and where do I need help?

You’re going to have to have a leadership team if you want any kind of ministry of significance.

Without God, we cannot. Without us, God will not.

We have to learn that we are not the center of God’s attention. If I think I’m the center of what God is doing, I will never make sense of my life or anything God is doing.

A lot of people are frustrated or disappointed with God because he’s not doing what they expected him to do for them.

God has greater plants and greater purposes of which we are a part.

What I have to do and what I’ve been called to do are by God’s mercy; they are not circumstantial. It’s not the organization that gives me my calling in my role; it’s God.

Pitfalls Competencies

You never lose authority by giving away authority. You multiply authority by giving it away.

Beware of the focus of the task to the detriment of people.

Dead center in all of that is that I have to manage myself as a leader and understand my unique rules in the changing demands of this leadership.

Character has to be stronger than competency.

When I’ve seen leaders go wrong is when they stop listening to God and they stopped listening to people, and they’ve created their own fantasy world in which they think they have to succeed.

Restoration after failure

The reality is there any leader of significance, but it’s not had to overcome failure? Because we are all moral failures. We are works in progress. We are his masterpiece.

The world is very cruel today. We would never accept David as our king. And he wouldn’t be allowed in membership in our church.

Restoration is about God and not about the person.

I think we need to get around fallen leaders, and there is the option of restoration.

Sometimes the fallenness of a leader is a violent grace that God has allowed to strengthen him for his purposes going forward.

We’re not putting a person in leadership because they’re brilliant and wonderful. We’re putting a person in leadership because God has called them, and it’s God in them that is brilliant and wonderful.