40 Days of Prayer Day 01

Purpose Driven Life Point to Ponder: It's not about me.

EHBC Prayer Guide Note: Pray that as you spend the next 40 days in prayer and seeking God, you will be able to clearly discern His voice. Record in this journal the things you read and hear. Pray for protection from the enemy. Seeking God on a deeper level makes you vulnerable to spiritual attack. BE AWARE. Cover yourself in prayer, and cover the other members of the church. Read PSALM 42 Pray for that deep calling to deep.

What I think I have heard from God today:

(1) Years after first reading "it's not about me," I still fail so often to live in the light of this wisdom. Many of my angers, frustrations, and impatient attitudes simply crumble before the force of this simple statement. For example, when my children are fighting, why does it make me so angry? What does it have to do with me? The moment is not about my "peace and quiet," but about the adults into which God is growing these children--and He has tasked me to participate in that developmental process! I do not have to meet their anger with my own, because "it's not about me."

(2) [via John Piper preaching] Pursuing the cause is not important; seeking purpose is. What this means in my context is this: I feel fairly certain that certain actions and attitudes have resulted in our church being disciplined, and that this is the cause for the financial problems we have been experiencing. Almost no one that I know of agrees with me on this. I want them to. I want them to hear me, agree with me, and then REPENT! I think God is telling me to let that go. Maybe (if I'm right) He'll show them these things some day, but for now the important thing is not how did we get here, but what does God want to do from here forward. This is hard for me to accept, because if sin got us here, then I think we need to recognize that and repent before we can move forward. But I think God is telling me that changing the minds of other people is not my department. What I need to focus on is primarily this: what will God do in ME through this situation, regardless of the cause. Even if sin got us here, God has an overruling purpose for me--and for the church. This is where I need to focus. [I'm still not sure I'm hearing this one right. I don't want it to be this way. I want to FIX what I think is wrong! I'll ask God to help me see clearly on this matter.]

(3) [incidental, triggered by a glance at a "new believer's workbook"] Discipleship should not be about managing the growth of another believer (new or otherwise), but about facilitating that growth. I have tried on occasion to design a discipleship strategy for our church, and I think they have always been about managing: making sure everyone went through this or that series of studies, learned this or that series of truths... I don't believe having some overall goals or strategies is necessarily a bad thing, but I think my tendency (and I doubt I'm alone in this) is to want to control the path the new believer walks. In considering the concept of facilitating rather than managing, I can envision that a newly baptized believer is paired with a mentor (coach, partner, whatever) who takes him to lunch and at some point asks the new believer: "What questions do you have?" Now, even if the mentor knows the answers to the questions, he doesn't answer them. Rather he leads his new friend to pray to God about the questions, and then (over time, perhaps) they work together to find the answers in Scripture. In this way, the mentor moves in the direction God seems to be moving in this new convert's heart, and he teaches not just the answer to a question, but how to find answers. The joy of discovery and the faithfulness of God to answer prayer are highlighted for the one new to the faith! I'm not saying this is an entire discipleship strategy. I'm just jotting these ideas down while they are fresh in my mind.