Written 3 years ago??? Just now posted.... welcome to how I blog.... hahaha....
Over the course of the last couple of years, there has been an increase in the stories I have been hearing about some really miraculous events surrounding many individuals coming to faith in Christ Jesus. People of all races, nationalities, religions, cultures etc are experiencing revelations of Jesus in many many different ways...dreams, visions, people simply begging for others to tell them about Jesus and they are receiving Him and being changed despite incredible cost to them. Stories such as these often ignite our passion to see these things happen first hand and build our faith in the God of the miraculous. We need these passion stirring, faith building testimonies! So often these stories are accompanied by the truth in the word. We, as followers of Jesus, are ALL MINISTERS of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is true. Each one of us is called to make disciples of all nations. We are called to be the hands and feet of Christ...it is a command. It's in the word. We need this understanding of scripture. Additionally, we are being made aware of the needs in the world. Everywhere you turn here in the information age, we see clearly the needs of humanity around us. You would have to really try hard to NOT know the needs of at least one people group in this world. We need this knowledge to help us understand and know WHAT to do. And, on top of all of this, we also must know what our gifts are. There are over 7 billion people on this planet. Each one of them needs God's love. Each. One. However, no one person could meet all of the varied needs of these people nor understand how to or what to minister to them. We simply cannot be all things to all people. However, somewhere in the spiritual DNA of each of His sons and daughters, we have been fashioned to uniquely with gifts, talents, passions, and desires that are fit to meet these needs. You HAVE to understand what your gift is...what it is the Lord has uniquely given you to offer. Thinking about this, I began to view these components like ingredients in a recipe. If I were to make brownies, I would need eggs, chocolate, flour, sugar, vanilla, and maybe other things... I would put them all in a bowl and stir them up.... But just because I have all the ingredients in my bowl doesn't mean I have brownies. They have to be cooked first. They have to go into the oven where I wait until they are ready. What I realized is how many times people have gathered all the necessary ingredients together to "do missions" but it never got put in the oven. The oven, represents taking all of these things before the Lord and sitting in His presence...and humbly asking what. Asking where. Asking when. At its core it is intimacy with Him. It is receiving love and healing from Him. It is being made whole. It is falling in love with Him. Jesus had all the necessary ingredients to complete the work before Him, but He still saw fit to be lead...to be Fathered into ministry. He took the ingredients into the oven of the Presence of His Father over and over and never took it upon Himself to direct His gifts nor did He allow anyone else to direct Him and tell Him what He SHOULD do. No matter how many ingredients we have in place, we still need our Dad. We need Him to refine and burn up all the things that don't need to be there, to infuse Himself into the natural things we have and make them supernatural, anoint them if you will, for His purposes. When you cook something, truly cook it, it doesn't just make that thing rise in temperature. The brownie batter doesn't simply become really hot brownie batter, it changes in chemical composition to become the thing that it was designed to be. To try and step out while still in the "batter" stage only causes a big mess. He is after our hearts. He wants to not just USE us. He wants to Father us. We will serve His purposes for our lives, we will fulfill the call He has on us as a natural response, by product, out pouring, as we learn to serve His heart. His greatest goal is not getting the most use out of our lives as possible. We are not merely wet rags He is going to wring dry, squeezing every last drop out of us until we are completely exhausted. He wants to Father us in the process. He wants our journey with Him to be full of Life as we minister Life to others. Our call to disciple nations, our longing to serve Him is at it's core a longing FOR him...for intimacy with Him. We weren't made to do ministry to people for eternity, but we were made to minister to His heart for eternity. To be His son or His daughter for eternity. From that place we will instinctively and naturally serve others, though "others" never become the center or the focus. Serving can't be what we seek after to try and fill ourselves up, feel important, absolve ourselves of guilt, prove ourselves to others, or even to prove to ourselves that our faith is real. You can't use ministry to convince your own soul you are a follower of Christ. If any of these things are missing or out of place, your still kinda drippy like batter. If you try and minster to the needs of others out of these places in your soul that have unanswered questions about yourself, your call, your relationship to the Father, you will not be ministering to His heart, nor will you be giving life. You can't both seek life from the thing you are supposed to be giving life to and give life to that thing at the same time. We receive From Jesus, give to Jesus, and then to others. (But always always Jesus.) I think this post is really a product of having felt a lot of guilt from other people who are "doing" it when I look at my life and think I am not "doing" it. It's as if they show up with bags of ingredients and say, "okay, here's your flour, here's your sugar, here's your eggs, here's your chocolate, now go. Make your brownies.....Uh, why aren't you making brownies??? You have all the stuff??? Just do it!!!" And in my heart, I am saying, "Uh, okay...maybe your right. Look at all the stuff I have. I do need to make brownies." and then I start slinging batter at innocent bystandards and wonder why no one wants to know this Jesus who just made me throw brownie batter in their face...Hmmm... I don't have brownies until I take all these things, go to the secret place and He infuses Himself into them. Changing them and making them just right. Then I can go and invite people, "Would you like to try these brownies? They are really good. Here, taste and see....Yeah, the guy who taught me how to make these, Yeah, He wants to teach you too....They are really good..."
Over the course of the last couple of years, there has been an increase in the stories I have been hearing about some really miraculous events surrounding many individuals coming to faith in Christ Jesus. People of all races, nationalities, religions, cultures etc are experiencing revelations of Jesus in many many different ways...dreams, visions, people simply begging for others to tell them about Jesus and they are receiving Him and being changed despite incredible cost to them. Stories such as these often ignite our passion to see these things happen first hand and build our faith in the God of the miraculous. We need these passion stirring, faith building testimonies! So often these stories are accompanied by the truth in the word. We, as followers of Jesus, are ALL MINISTERS of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is true. Each one of us is called to make disciples of all nations. We are called to be the hands and feet of Christ...it is a command. It's in the word. We need this understanding of scripture. Additionally, we are being made aware of the needs in the world. Everywhere you turn here in the information age, we see clearly the needs of humanity around us. You would have to really try hard to NOT know the needs of at least one people group in this world. We need this knowledge to help us understand and know WHAT to do. And, on top of all of this, we also must know what our gifts are. There are over 7 billion people on this planet. Each one of them needs God's love. Each. One. However, no one person could meet all of the varied needs of these people nor understand how to or what to minister to them. We simply cannot be all things to all people. However, somewhere in the spiritual DNA of each of His sons and daughters, we have been fashioned to uniquely with gifts, talents, passions, and desires that are fit to meet these needs. You HAVE to understand what your gift is...what it is the Lord has uniquely given you to offer. Thinking about this, I began to view these components like ingredients in a recipe. If I were to make brownies, I would need eggs, chocolate, flour, sugar, vanilla, and maybe other things... I would put them all in a bowl and stir them up.... But just because I have all the ingredients in my bowl doesn't mean I have brownies. They have to be cooked first. They have to go into the oven where I wait until they are ready. What I realized is how many times people have gathered all the necessary ingredients together to "do missions" but it never got put in the oven. The oven, represents taking all of these things before the Lord and sitting in His presence...and humbly asking what. Asking where. Asking when. At its core it is intimacy with Him. It is receiving love and healing from Him. It is being made whole. It is falling in love with Him. Jesus had all the necessary ingredients to complete the work before Him, but He still saw fit to be lead...to be Fathered into ministry. He took the ingredients into the oven of the Presence of His Father over and over and never took it upon Himself to direct His gifts nor did He allow anyone else to direct Him and tell Him what He SHOULD do. No matter how many ingredients we have in place, we still need our Dad. We need Him to refine and burn up all the things that don't need to be there, to infuse Himself into the natural things we have and make them supernatural, anoint them if you will, for His purposes. When you cook something, truly cook it, it doesn't just make that thing rise in temperature. The brownie batter doesn't simply become really hot brownie batter, it changes in chemical composition to become the thing that it was designed to be. To try and step out while still in the "batter" stage only causes a big mess. He is after our hearts. He wants to not just USE us. He wants to Father us. We will serve His purposes for our lives, we will fulfill the call He has on us as a natural response, by product, out pouring, as we learn to serve His heart. His greatest goal is not getting the most use out of our lives as possible. We are not merely wet rags He is going to wring dry, squeezing every last drop out of us until we are completely exhausted. He wants to Father us in the process. He wants our journey with Him to be full of Life as we minister Life to others. Our call to disciple nations, our longing to serve Him is at it's core a longing FOR him...for intimacy with Him. We weren't made to do ministry to people for eternity, but we were made to minister to His heart for eternity. To be His son or His daughter for eternity. From that place we will instinctively and naturally serve others, though "others" never become the center or the focus. Serving can't be what we seek after to try and fill ourselves up, feel important, absolve ourselves of guilt, prove ourselves to others, or even to prove to ourselves that our faith is real. You can't use ministry to convince your own soul you are a follower of Christ. If any of these things are missing or out of place, your still kinda drippy like batter. If you try and minster to the needs of others out of these places in your soul that have unanswered questions about yourself, your call, your relationship to the Father, you will not be ministering to His heart, nor will you be giving life. You can't both seek life from the thing you are supposed to be giving life to and give life to that thing at the same time. We receive From Jesus, give to Jesus, and then to others. (But always always Jesus.) I think this post is really a product of having felt a lot of guilt from other people who are "doing" it when I look at my life and think I am not "doing" it. It's as if they show up with bags of ingredients and say, "okay, here's your flour, here's your sugar, here's your eggs, here's your chocolate, now go. Make your brownies.....Uh, why aren't you making brownies??? You have all the stuff??? Just do it!!!" And in my heart, I am saying, "Uh, okay...maybe your right. Look at all the stuff I have. I do need to make brownies." and then I start slinging batter at innocent bystandards and wonder why no one wants to know this Jesus who just made me throw brownie batter in their face...Hmmm... I don't have brownies until I take all these things, go to the secret place and He infuses Himself into them. Changing them and making them just right. Then I can go and invite people, "Would you like to try these brownies? They are really good. Here, taste and see....Yeah, the guy who taught me how to make these, Yeah, He wants to teach you too....They are really good..."
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