Shine

  Today, I would like to offer a word of encouragement to anyone called to serve publicly.  Perhaps God has temporarily placed you where you are not regularly serving in that capacity (preaching, teaching, whatever), but make no mistake...the calling is still there, the fire still shut up in your bones.  (Jeremiah 20)  Man may try to extinguish it, but their efforts are wasted against the fire of God's calling.  Man may try to hide it, but rest assured it will burn right through anything they plant in its way.  (Matthew 5)  So, before I get to the gist of what God is speaking to my heart, I want to be clear that, though God may place us in a season of waiting or change how He is currently using us, His calling has not changed.  When Paul wrote in Romans 11:29 that "the gifts and calling of God are without repentance," he meant that God is never sorry He called us, and He never intends to revoke the calling.   I think when those of us called to speak go through silent times, God is teaching us a more sincere form of service...one that is more like Christ than any words spoken from a stage.
       There is no greater satisfaction to be found in ministry than seeing others and creating opportunities for them to use their gifts.  And when I say seeing them, I mean, really seeing them...taking time to hear their concerns, study their mannerisms, see what brings a spark to their eye, considering their strengths, their insecurities, seeing manifest what seems to be the thing they aspire to do, but feel incapable of accomplishing or even beginning.  And here's what I have learned in regard to that part of our calling as leaders - When Jesus spoke of the light in us (Matthew 5), He said it should be placed on a candle stick.  I'm afraid many of us have mistaken this to mean a stage. 
     When I feel frustrated over not having opportunities to use the gifts of my calling, I try to remember that the lamp in my home is more important than the streetlight outside.  Both are important, and while the streetlight is seen by more people, it serves a very short-term purpose and will never really meet close, personal, daily needs.  When I lose my way in the night, I don't reach for the streetlight.  When I need to see those I love so I can help meet their needs, the lamp serves a much greater purpose.  Even outside my home, I can carry that light to others in need.  The streetlight can provide general guidance, but it doesn't light the living room of the lonely widow or reach into the shadows of the wayward child.  It rarely leaves the ninety-nine to seek out the one lost sheep. 
     Much like the streetlight, though more dangerous and less effective is the spotlight.  Social media has made our spotlights more mobile, but they're still spotlights.  The thing about spotlights is you don't see much past them.  They will rarely illuminate much beyond the person at center stage.  And while we can all be blinded by who or what is being showcased, no one's vision is as distorted as the one on-stage.  Spotlights can reveal some very important things to us about ourselves or others, but be reminded that all it reveals is how you  look on stage.  You may be "lit", but remember that real ministry goes beyond the platform.  If your hands are only lifted on stage and never worn by service, you will never know true fulfillment.  In your darkest, loneliest time...you're going to need something more direct than the spotlight. Even more, the world needs lights placed on candlesticks...people willing to step off stage and light the everyday darkness people are facing.
     If you are in a season of life that seemingly feels like a "time out", you are not being punished.  In this time that seems like the lights have gone out, they haven't gone out at all.  People may be trying to hide your light, but they cannot extinguish what God has set ablaze in you.  Right now, you're learning what it really means to be the light of the world.  Because the light Jesus (not man) sets on a candlestick gives light to "all that are in the house", not only to ourselves.  So "let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven."  I promise He deserves all the glory. 

     

   
     
     
     
   
     
                       

The Eye of God

"Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, 

and God the Father, who raised him from the dead;)" Galatians 1:1    

     I have just begun an in-depth study of the book of Galatians, and for the last two days I have been hung up on the very first verse.  The Apostle Paul is greeting fellow believers of the Gal region, and as you often see in his writings, Paul is reaffirming his apostolic authority. A result of where his conversion falls on the timeline in comparison to the conversion of the other Apostles left Paul constantly defending his apostleship.  Everywhere he ministered, he met men and women skeptical of his calling...suspicious of this former persecutor of the church.  And so here, some time estimated to be no less than fifteen years after he was saved, and possibly as many as twenty-five years later, Paul has adopted the habit of greeting fellow believers with the disclaimer that he was an apostle (an authorized individual sent to fulfill a mission) ordained (granted authority) by God, Himself.  This made many Jews (non-believing and believing) very uncomfortable, because ordination was a physical laying on of hands that dates back to the Apostle Peter.  Paul was a man of many firsts, but this was huge!  He dared claim no one laid hands on and ordained him, but the very risen Christ!  That was bold, and we can understand some of the skepticism he faced early on, having previously persecuted the church and having been on his way to arrest Christians the very day Jesus appeared to him on the Damascus road.
     As I read and contemplated this verse, I understood why Paul would add this tag line to nearly every description of himself.  We must always be quick to affirm Jesus as the authority behind our calling, but I felt a sort of grief at the necessity of it with other believers.  I began to wonder that, if I had lived at this time in history and met the Apostle Paul, or any other believer, would I have greeted him, then grilled him on his authority to preach the gospel?  Had I held this letter in my hands and read the greeting, would I have been grieved for this fellow believer years into his walk with Christ continually feeling critiqued by his very own brothers and sisters in Christ?  Because I hold him in the highest respect and consider him a biblical mentor, it was pretty easy to dismiss the thought I would require Paul's disclaimer of himself.  But here's what got me:  How often do we speak to one another with a skepticism that makes them feel the need to defend the source of their authority or the motive of their actions?  Beware people who constantly require your credentials.  But, most importantly, we as believers must beware the tendency to do so, ourselves.  We should reach a place of spiritual maturity where the authority of fellow believers is spiritually discerned.  John writes in 1 John 4:1 that we "try the spirits whether they are of God", because there are false prophets...but what John suggests here is a spiritual trial of someone's motives...a discernment that welcomes someone who professes Christ, then surrenders to the Holy Spirit in us and trusts Him to reveal on what authority someone is acting, instead of questioning men the way worldly men do.  John reminds us in verse 4 that we are children of God and that the one in us (the Holy Spirit) is greater than "he that is in the world."  We CAN discern a person's sincerity and keep our mouths shut in the process.
     Our current culture commends someone who instantaneously and regularly blurts out questions against anyone and everyone.  People cross our paths and get interrogation instead of inspiration, skepticism instead of support.  They approach a fellow believer for trust but get the third degree.  James (ch. 3) wrote that this sort of behavior is the result of an untamed tongue "set on fire of hell."  Ouch!  It is a wisdom that is "not from above" (v. 15) but instead earthly, meaning this is the way the world does it.  But for believers, this "blessing and cursing" in speech, whether to someone's face or behind their back "ought not be so." (v. 10).  While we are engaged in a spiritual war that requires we be as shrewd as serpents, we cannot forget that we are simultaneously called to be as innocent as doves.  Much of maintaining our innocence before God will require most of our thoughts and concerns being taken to God alone.
     The Pharisees asked John the Baptist by what authority he baptized (John 1:25).  They asked Jesus by what authority he cleansed the temple (Mark 11:28).  The Jews asked the man healed of lameness, "Who told you, Pick up your mat and walk?" (John 5:12).  In other words, "Who gave you permission to break the Sabbath work laws?"  So, the continual examination of our motives is nothing new.  I am suggesting, based on scripture, that among fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, it be done in wisdom...and more often, in silent communion between Christ and ourselves.  Solomon said it is a fool that speaks everything in his heart (or mind), but it takes a wise man to keep those things in.  An even wiser man will carry every suspicion or well-meaning question to God before he will confront a person or (what most often happens) someone else about the authorization of a fellow believer.  None of us living now are apostles like the original twelve disciples.  We have not physically seen Jesus in a group.  We have all had to see him personally...for ourselves.  No one living now has witnessed Christ physically touching and ordaining servants.  It is a spiritual calling that we outwardly confess, therefore let us be careful to exercise spiritual discernment in examining everyone's sincerity.  It rarely needs discussed.  Words will never uncover what can only be seen with the eye of God. 
     Will we risk appearing too trusting to actually trust? There will be fakes.  We'll see our share of people in it for themselves, but if we discredit everyone not approved by a person in whom we place our confidence, we risk falling into a sort of leadership idolatry or self idolatry and missing so much of what Jesus wants us to experience.  We'll miss the miracle.  Elisabeth Elliot said of the man who would be Christlike: "We pity his naivete, his narrowness, his unreality, never suspecting that there could be in our midst a few whose minds are set on things above because their lives are hid with Christ.  A renewed mind has an utterly changed conception, not only of reality, but of possibility."  My sincerest present concern for the church is a loss of hope.  Could it be we could begin to regain hope by choosing to see the value in mankind God deemed worthy of His only Son's blood?  In one another?  In those around us who have no explanation for what drives them besides their spiritual healing?  In those of us who laid like that man by the pool of Bethesda seeing everyone be healed...but then Jesus touched us?  It was He who told us to take up our mat.  It was He who told us to go and sin no more.  Our calling, like Paul's, is not of men, neither by man, but Jesus Christ.  He qualifies us.  He is our disclaimer.  May we look beyond ourselves to see that same possibility in others and leave the rest to God.