God hasn't told me
I was talking to a leader who had called me for some advice
and help a few months ago. After assessing the situation I made some
suggestions on how he could turn the situation around and make some really
important and pertinent changes in his church. I believed that those changes
were vital not only to his survival but his relevance as a church. In the
course of the conversation he said to me "I can't do that because God
hasn't told me to do that" I find it very difficult to then continue the
conversation when I hear statements such as this. Who am I to argue with the
Almighty.
It got me thinking about when God speaks to us and how God
speaks to us as leaders. I sometimes- in my more bored moments, watch God TV. I
see the TV evangelists selling their wears and telling us they had this great
conversation with God. God told them this and God told them that and they
laughed and God laughed and the best thing of all is if we support them by
sending our monetary gift then we too can share in the financial blessing that
they have received. The question I ask is did they really have an audible
conversation with God? Or rather was it a process of reading the scriptures and
prayer and a revealing of revelation through the witness of others, the word of
God and a supreme sense of peace that this was the direction that they should
go. I am not saying that God doesn't speak audibly to people but in my
experience it is rare. The fact is God does speak in different ways to
different people.
But one of the ways that God speaks is through the witness
and wisdom of others that cross our everyday paths. The leader that I was
talking to a few months ago needed help, he asked for my help, I looked at his
situation, discussed the situation with him and came to my conclusions. Because
he didn't like those conclusions his default setting was "Well God hasn't
told me to do that" In that moment in that instant he was clear that God
had not talked to him and shown him that he should go down the path I was
suggesting. The unfortunate thing is that his church as continued to disintegrated even
more over the last few months.
In the last few days I have been to two events and heard
things that really thrilled me. In one event the guest speaker said that God
did not tell him to start and pioneer his church he just did it and in the last
eight years he has grown from 4 or 5 meeting in his front room to over 400
meeting in a hired industrial warehouse every Sunday morning. The fact is that
God has already told us to build his church, He hasn't changed his mind. In the
second event I was in a leaders meeting and the senior leadership team shared
about how they do church and why. It wasn't that they waited on God for
revelation on how they should do stuff they just got on with it. They built
structure and function as the church grew and put in place systems as they were
required. All the time they built around the two central points that they felt
was God's original intention, Love everybody and win the lost for Christ. For
the rest they used the wisdom and expertise of those people that God had
brought to their church to build it.
Sometimes it takes an Ass as in the case of Balaam for us to
believe that God is speaking to us. Or like the rich young ruler who came to
Jesus, sometimes we are not willing to give up the obvious for the sake of
seeing the truth. For many leaders sometimes the answer is staring them right
in the face but they can't see the wood for the trees and they become paranoid
that a this can't be the answer to their problems. Sometimes the power of a new
perspective is always better than an old idea.
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