Who Do You Let Lead You?

You know those messages that you seem to hear over and over and over. Well, this post is about one such lesson that God is trying to sink into my brain. It has to do with letting go of all control and allowing Him to guide you down the river of life.

Today, was one of those days when the this particular message hit me over the head and I finally got it.  The illustration came from a John Ortberg book, “The Me I Want to Be.” I have not read the book yet and intend to do so, but my bible study teacher read an excerpt that I wanted to share with you.

Here was the illustration that John gave us regarding how we are to walk with God.  He said that he has never really danced, but, his wife Nancy wanted them to take ballroom dancing.  John obliged, wanting to please his wife.  On their first lesson, their astute instructor asked them both, “who is going to lead?”  I loved that question.  Nancy knew she needed to answer the question – for she knew she must let her husband handle the task. And the instructor asked a second question, “who will follow?”  Again, this was posed at Nancy and she had to say out loud that she would follow.

John went on further to point out to us how God asks the same of us.  Every morning as we wake up, He asks us if we want to join Him in that day’s dance. He asks us if we will surrender our will and life over to Him. He wants to know if we will let Him lead us through the day. And He wants to hear us say out loud, that no matter what, that we will follow His ways and His plan.

Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
⁶ in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight. (Proverbs 3:4-6)

Will you follow or lead?

There always is a sticky side to transparency

I sat in an amazing session last week led by Alex Hamilton (The Redeemer Church) at the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit. He told us he would be talking about one of the most important issues facing the church – when leaders fall and how you handle it. Well, being a crisis communication executive, my ears certainly perked up.   Kudos to Pastor Hamilton – he did lead one of the most important seminars of the conference and what he had to say about how to handle it was spot on – he took a risk and was transparent with his congregation when his church was faced with such a problem.

Pastor Hamilton had to deal with two of his pastors who were in an affair together.  He wanted to tell his church about it and trust them to not gossip nor stone the victims. So he sent a letter to congregation stating the fact that two pastors have professed to the affair and that they were now going through a process and may or may not return.  He told the congregation that he would talk about it further on Sunday. That next Sunday, the church was packed to hear about how Pastor Hamilton was going to address the sin.

How did he handle it?  He hit it head on and asked his congregation to drop it and let the guilty parties go through the steps of healing. He said that he received numerous letters from people who thought he handled this brilliantly while others said he should have hid it from its members. Transparency is always the best way to deal with crisis.  It nips any further speculation, gossip, lies or rumors from spreading. It’s also the fastest way for a situation to blow over.  This was handled beautifully. Very impressive.

The old ways of cover-ups never really work. Eventually, as more and more lies are told to cover up the initial sin, the truth will come out. Leaks do happen.  Just read the papers every day.  Also, in this day in age of social media, it’s harder than ever to keep things under the wraps. Every one with a smart phone now has a recording device with them.

Transparency is key in every situation as a Christian, not just for church leaders.  God calls us to be transparent with Him. No matter how much we try and hide our sins and try and cover them up – He’s all knowing.  The best way out is the honest way out.  Tell God everything that hurts you and where you need forgiveness and grace.  The burdens will immediately fall off your shoulders and the baggage will be left behind.   Transparency is the key to the other “t” transformation.  Always remember the importance of crossing your “t’s” in prayer.

Thank you Pastor Hamilton for being so transparent with us.

Also, as a sidebar to this discussion, Pastor Hamilton left us with some practical steps on how to avoid temptation.

5 R’s of Resisting Temptation

• Remember who you are – a follower of Jesus Christ – A child of the king!
• Recognize the consequences of your actions – will I feel better or worse after I’ve done this. Will I be proud or ashamed? Who will be hurt by it?
• Rededicate yourself to God – stop, drop and pray
• Reveal your struggle to a trusted friend.
• Remove yourself from the situation.

How's Your Spiritual Growth?

Just read these words and boy, they are convicting. Here’s the proof in the pudding that…one can lose their salvation.  These are tough words, but oh so important.

“So let us stop going over the basic teachings about Christ again and again. Let us go on instead and become mature in our understanding. Surely we don’t need to start again with the fundamental importance of repenting from evil deeds and placing our faith in God. ² You don’t need further instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. ³ And so, God willing, we will move forward to further understanding.

⁴ For it is impossible to bring back to repentance those who were once enlightened—those who have experienced the good things of heaven and shared in the Holy Spirit, ⁵ who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the power of the age to come—⁶ and who then turn away from God. It is impossible to bring such people back to repentance; by rejecting the Son of God, they themselves are nailing him to the cross once again and holding him up to public shame. – Heb. 6:1-7″

Boy, oh boy.  These are good words for all believers.  God is telling us that we must keep growing in his Word and teaching – move up levels- we must not stay in the same grade – if you will.

So this scripture leads me to ask you the questions I ask myself.  Are you being stretched by extending your comfort zones? Are you thirsty for more teaching and to grow spiritually? If you feel stagnant – pray. Pray that you are maturing.  Keep learning and repent if you need to.

Again…when in doubt go back to the basics – praise, pray and study the Word. If you keep on those three – you’ll be maturing and graduating grades.

You can do it!

Because God is our perfect Teacher.

Amen.

I understand that cleaning process right now, as like never before. I mean it’s not enough that we’re entering a new technological age, but we are in the midst of digging ourselves out of a meltdown with our business infrastructure. The Internet was one of the best advances ever, however, with it came the problem that it was offered for free. That free part has hurt businesses like none other in the sense of open platforms. Software, resources, applications that we once paid for – now can be found free, etc. etc. etc.

But, needless to say, this did not in anyway affect Toyota’s problems. The Internet did not cause that. Negligence did.

Anyway…what I am meaning to say is that just about everything we were once comfortable with is changing. Change is now the new constant. And with that comes growth. New acceptance. And Trust.

Which leads to me to the title of this post. A common blog function is upgrades. As new bells and whistles are added or as bugs are fixed to your blog templates, a new upgrade notice appears on your control panel.  When a notice notifies the blogger of an upgrade,  they can either choose to hit button that says “Upgrade Automatically” or “Manual.” The Manual operation allows you to control the upgrade…it doesn’t completely override the system in case you had implemented custom codes. But, I like the auto function. And the last time I upgraded I thought wouldn’t that nice  to have an auto upgrade button in our lives that we could hit to grow more like Christ.  If so, then just like that we would have grown without experiencing much pain and it would be fast. We’d be on to the next level, waiting for a new upgrade to get that set of bugs out.

I want an life auto upgrader!

But, maybe it’s God who has the upgrade buttons. He hits them and to Him we changed automatically. Could it be that it’s just that we don’t see this happening in our timing, but God’s. He’s the master auto upgrader or as Joyce says – “Cleaner of fish.”

Growing in Christ,

Cindy