Faith to Wait (1)

Lately, I think God might be teaching me to wait for Him.

When we first start to truly understand the mission of God and its significance for every Christian who claims to love Jesus, many experience a tremendous amount of motivation to just get out there and do something.

The XXXchurch.com guys wrote a book and did a tour called starving Jesus or something all about our responsibility as Christians to get off the pew and out into the world. I like the book because it attempts to empower and encourage Christians who have given up on evangelism for any number of reasons. Every Christian should be a part of God's mission. Lately, though, I have found myself thinking about times in my past when I may have ventured out into some evangelism opportunity or mission field when it might NOT have been God's will.

That sounds crazy, but here's the logic: God's ministry in the books of Acts seemed to always get accomplished what it wanted to. The Spirit spoke, the apostles acted and people either believed or didn't believe. This makes me see a lot of today's church "outreaches" and say "why do a lot of them just seem like a waste of time?" Where's the effectiveness of the ministry in the book of Acts or the Gospels?

I've always really hated wasting things. I don't like throwing anything away, and when it comes to money I like saving more than spending. So maybe that's why I am careful with any of my investments, but honestly I think there are a lot of moments when we think we are doing ministry, but really our impatience has caused us to put words in the mouth of the Holy Spirit.

Look at the example of Gideon. He knows that God wants Israel to defeat the Midianites, but God wants him to do it HIS way not just anyway. God actually tells him to reduce the number of soldiers in his army. That sounds crazy in the natural mind, but when faith is brought in to the picture it makes sense that God would want the glory of being the God of the people who won an impossible victory. Here's the point: God is not intimidated by the Midianites. He could have defeated their entire army with one Israelite if He wanted to. Similarly, God is not intimidated by our oppositions in ministry. Its not a question of ability. It's a question of worship: Do you trust your numbers or do you trust God to see His mission succeed.

I would rather wait and pray for a year to have one God-ordained conversation than do a year's worth of outreaches with no effect. So I guess another question is do we really believe the Spirit WANTS to lead us in our desire to advance the Kingdom or are we content with doing something? And if He does, to what degree?

After Jesus rose from the dead, he didn't just tell the disciples to get out there and start talking up the gospel. He told them to wait for power from the Holy Spirit. And even after that, there were times of prayer and times of action. Prayer, action, preaching, prayer, and so on is the model I remember from Acts class. They were so dependent on the Spirit's leading. There was no human church planting guru telling them what to do. Acts 2:42 says they were devoted to fellowship, prayer, breaking bread, the apostles teaching (from the Spirit).

How does that compare today? I see very little of dependence on the Spirit and more dependence on the latest edgy church model. Don't get me wrong, whoever had initial success with that church model must have received it from the Spirit originally, but how does that give other churches the right to assume that's how He wants to do it through them?

I believe the Spirit wants to do something through me that is completely unique from how he does it in some famous guru who has written five books on the subject. Maybe what God wants to test me in is this: will I have enough faith to wait for His leading or will I choose to be content with doing something...

Disclaimer: I don't think that the Spirit has to tell us to take a shower every morning or what socks to put on. Where the Bible is clear on what to do, we must do it (loving one another and visiting the widow and the orphan), but when there are areas of our lives that are unclear (like the thousands of questions we have when planting a church) I want to be sure what I am doing is being called for by God and not my anxiety/impatience.