- Isaiah 22: 19-23
- Psalms 138: 1-2, 2-3, 6, 8
- Romans 11: 33-36
- Matthew 16: 13-20
- Finding your place
- Shebna was the king's right hand man, a person of enormous influence in Israel. But Shebna was looking for more than even that position was due. Shakespeare tells a similar story of tragic out of control ambition in Macbeth.
- What are your ambitions for your spiritual life?
- Do you think that you'll be ministering the same exact way that you are today in another five years?
- If God suddenly called you into some other role, even some other place, how would you take that?
- Do you think that God might be calling you to anything to prepare you for that next chapter in your life in His service?
- Celebrating God in prayer
- God's greatest act of ongoing love for us is to help us continue to unfold, continue to grow, continue to become more like Him, and in so doing become more like that man or woman that God made us to be.
- Intercessory prayer comes down to asking God to be true to God's own nature in our lives and the lives of others.
- We often see psalms reminding God of who God is, as a preamble to a request. Got needs no such reminding, but we often do. How do you remind/celebrate God's character?
- Is it a loving response on your part to invite God to act from His central character, His personality in our world?
- Would you have it any other way?
- Foundations of trust
- In our age, cynicism is a national pastime. We sneer at anyone who trusts those in authority to do the right thing for the right reasons, we hesitate to believe what we hear, no matter who we hear it from. For many, trust is equal to naivete.
- Why do you trust God? Is it because He has proven Himself? Because you have heard testimony of God's trustworthiness from others? Is it because you have no choice but to trust?
- Does God have to explain Himself to us?
- Why not?
- Do you think that you could be happier if you trusted more?
- What is holding you back from that greater trust?
- Lonely at the top
- It's hard to know what went through Peter's mind when Jesus broke the news to him that he was going to be in a position of authority in the Kingdom. Being a good Jewish boy, I'm sure one thing that crossed his mind was "Mom will be so proud." Or perhaps "Maybe now, those rotten brothers of mine will show me a little respect."
- To what extent is your congregation/parish a family for you?
- To what extent is your family a community for you?
- Have you ever found ways to support those in authority?
- Preparation for Reconciliation
- Where is God offering me more profound humility?
- Why do I pray?
- What blocks my trust in God?
- Where is God calling to me to support my leadership in love and respect?
What are you building?
By nature, I am a strategist.
I like to see the big picture.
I want to know where the matter in hand fits in.
Others I know are content to do as they are told
Asking only that the expectations they are held to be clear.
The work itself being reward enough.
I try to pray the prayer of unknowing:
God, I have no idea where this effort is going, when it will get there, or what will happen -
What matters is that my hands and feet are bringing me closer to you.
But a part of me, a part that I believe is God-given, craves assurance.
Assurance that today really matters.
Assurance that what I am pouring my heart into will amount to something in the end.
And so I pray that I can find that assurance in trust.
Trust that God has a plan, that I am part of that plan.
And that all of His followers are part of that plan along with me, unseen though they may be.
Even if you and I disagree, I have come to believe that God can be using both of us.
And on my better days, I can just believe that God needs both of us -
Keeping watch over each other in a dynamic tension that is both painful and creative.
And I have come to believe that what looks like a reversal, a failure, a death
Can be transformed, reawakened, resurrected to new life if I but trust enough -
Trust enough to enter that dark valley in the first place.
I doubt the big picture will come to me in a flash.
I only hope that I am attentive as God reveals Himself in the time ahead.
And that I will learn to need a blueprint less and less -
As God executes that plan in me more and more.
Shalom!
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