Leading and Learning

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Faithful to the process

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road fork

I have had a few conversations in the past few weeks with discipleship leaders who have had people remove themselves from their groups. And when you only have 3 people connecting, losing one person means that you are losing 33% – Yikes. The reasons have varied – some have given “legitimate” reasons, others just aren’t calling and showing up.

Some of the conversations I’ve had with these leaders have to do with their own self-worth – are they failing in what they believe they are called to do. Others have questioned whether they moved to quickly in inviting someone in, that perhaps they weren’t discerning enough. Others are wondering if there really are people “out there” that want to take their relationship with God seriously or not – is it worth their time to engage in such an intentional way.

I will offer some simple guidance on this from my experience:

1) It won’t always be smooth sailing. I have had discipling relationships that were amazing right through and I’ve had others that were cut short for many different reasons. I have had times when the guys I’m with didn’t want to commit, and I’ve had times when I wondered if I personally still wanted to commit. This is just the reality of relationships – messy and often confusing.

2) My role is obedience to the process, my role is not life change. I love 1 Corinthians 3 when Paul states: “It’s not important who does the planting, or who does the watering. What’s important is that God makes the seed grow.” Believe me, I don’t always think this way. I want to control the life change, I want to determine what the person learns next, I want to control the rate of change. But I don’t and I can’t. My role is the planting, the cultivating, the watering. The mystery of the growth has nothing to do with me. This can be both comforting and frustrating all at the same time.

3) Know when to move on. To many times I have wanted to “save” someone.  I believed that I knew what they needed and I was going to drag them along whether they liked it or not. The reality is that sometimes I need to cut someone lose. They just aren’t at the place to receive what I believe I have to offer, for whatever reason. This is not for me to always understand. I do know however that at times I simply need to move on, and that there is nothing wrong with this. I didn’t fail, they aren’t bad people, but it just isn’t moving in the direction I believe it should be moving.

Faithfulness to the process, that is all I can control. May God grant us the strength to keep moving forward, and may we always be humble to keep learning as we continue.

For the kingdom.

Prayer: It changes you

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Change

A Post from My Daughter:

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A while back, before I started mentoring my girls, my dad and I were talking about the changes he sees in the guys he mentors. One of the things that came up was the topic of prayer. He shared about how as he spends more and more time with the guys, and they dig deeper and grow stronger in their faith, their prayers change. I was intrigued by this, so I asked him what he meant. My dad began explaining that when he initially starts meeting with a couple guys, their prayers are more self-focused, but as time goes on, their prayers became more others focused, as well as more glorifying to God.
I thought this was fascinating. I didn’t quite understand how this could happen, or even what these prayers sounded like. To me, prayer was a quick prayer throughout the day, and prayers before meals. I guess you could say, I didn’t fully understand the power of prayer, and why it was so critical – although I was told thousands of times at church. I didn’t understand how someone could sit somewhere for a lengthy period of time and not get distracted while talking to God.
The transformation I see in myself, but also in my girls, has been phenomenal!
I’ll start with my girls. Sometimes I listen to them pray, and forget that they are only 14. The sincerity of their words, and their desire to talk to God, is so inspiring, but also encouraging to know that there are youth who have a passion to pursue a relationship with their Heavenly Father. There have been nights, where after we finish our study, one of them pipes up and says that they want to pray that night. How can I say no to that? The Holy Spirit has done some incredible things in their hearts over the past few months, and only God can be given the glory. “Now all glory to God, who is able, through His mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20).
I’ve recently just finished the book Discipleship Essentials with my mentor. My dad has been using this book for about a decade now, so it’s been fun to go through it myself and see why he speaks so highly of it. Between this, and the studies I have done with my girls, I understand how the week in and week out work is essential to your faith, and how much it actually changes you. These things have had a major impact on my prayer life. I see how important prayer is, and the power it has. My prayers have gone from “I pray for a great day, and thank you for this food” to an earnest, heartfelt prayer. I pray daily for my girls, that their eyes will stay continually focused on the Creator of this universe. I pray that they will understand, as much as a person can, the depth of Christ’s love. I pray that their heart’s cry will to be made in the likeness of Jesus.
For 2014, I have made Ephesians 3:14-21 my prayer. The subtitle is “Paul’s Prayer for Spiritual Growth”. I have altered it to “Madison’s Prayer for Spiritual Growth”, and more recently, to “Eden, Jessie, and Hannah’s Prayer for Spiritual Growth”.

It says:
“When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make His home in your hearts as you trust in Him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep His love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. Now all glory to God, who is able, through His mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. Glory to Him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen.”