God Sized Vision

“So the wall was finished on the twenty-fifth day of the month of Elul, in fifty-two days. And when all our enemies heard of it, all the nations were around us were afraid… for they perceived that this work had been accomplished with the help of our God.”  Nehemiah 6:15, 16

Nehemiah’s calling was bigger than his ability.  The scope of what God wanted to do in his people was greater than that people’s treasury.  What people though impossible, God accomplished through weary people in fifty-two days.  What the church needs is God sized vision.

It was about a year ago that I was moved to begin to pray a very specific prayer for the congregation I serve.  As I looked at all of the activity of our congregation, I saw a lot of hard work coming to fruition.  People were joining the church in impressive numbers.  The congregation had unanimously approved the search for an associate pastor of family ministry.  Our bottom line was well in the black.  Ministries were going well across the board.  Attendance was up in every facet of church life.  There had been very positive “same-minded” discussions around where we were headed as a church.  I was very busy planning, teaching, leading, and visioning toward a bright future.

Then, in a time of prayer and reflection one morning I was overcome with conviction.  I had been busy and prayerful concerning things within the ministry over which I had a lot of control.  Most of my prayers involved God using me for His purposes in the life of our wonderful community of faith.  Never one short on vision, I saw God answering those prayers faithfully.  But with this wave of conviction I was moved to pray in a different way.  I felt God was moving me to begin praying for something over which I would have no control.

Books I had read, passages of scripture, and a sense of smallness flooded my conscience at once as I became aware that I ought to be praying for something much more significant than what God could use me for.  I was used to being pretty specific with God about what I wanted Him to do through me.  But here I was, at a loss for words, as I was moved to pray for God to begin an awakening that at the end of the day couldn’t be credited to good leadership, a healthy budget, creative preaching, or a forward thinking session.  I was moved to begin praying that God would do something that only God could get credit for; something beyond my ability to vision or bring about.

I had no clue what I was praying for.  This prayer was unattached to programs, facilities, music, or events.  I could not see what I was asking for God to do.  It was pleasantly humbling to discover that God doesn’t need me to bring about the awakening he laid on my heart to begin praying for.  I found myself saying, “Lord, you might not need me for this, but I want to see it when it happens.”

One of the dynamics of the Acts 16:5 Initiative is creating a hope-filled expectation of God sized activity in and through your congregation.  If the hopes and expectations of a church are pastor sized or session sized, then we are expecting far too little of God.  Nehemiah’s vision was a God sized vision.  And at the end of the day God got the credit and the glory, even from His enemies.

Grace and Truth,

Scott Castleman   

No Rest for the Weary

Jesus left that place and went to the vicinity of Tyre.  He entered a house and did not want anyone to know it…  -  Mark 7:24

Tyre was a town on the coast of Phoenicia.  It was north-west of Jesus’ normal stomping grounds.  From the context of Mark’s gospel this little excursion up north to the coast of the Mediterranean was a break, a get away, a vacation.  Humans were designed for rest from the very beginning.  God rested from his works of creation not as a result of weariness, but for the purpose of delight in what he had made.  Rest, in the biblical sense is not laziness, it is worship. 

Honestly, my day off (Friday for the most part) is filled with non-stop activity.  Weeds and my golf swing both need attending too.  I’m exhausted when Friday evening rolls around.  Part of learning to rest in the Biblical sense means stopping.  It means being still enough to quietly delight in God’s world, in God’s word, in God’s grace, and in God’s presence.  But we live in a manic culture.  Everything has an immediacy of its own.  Rest, true rest, worshipful rest, goes against our every inclination.  Even when we do take rest, it is often void of stillness.  And stillness is where we experience God.  God is the still point in our manic world.  To know Christ, is to walk away from our nets filled with their hundreds of flopping, writhing, attention grabbing  fish to become consumed with the King who calls us to follow him.

Spending a week at the beach in Florida with my wife’s family was a great reminder to me of how poorly it is that I practice true rest.  I went away, had a good time with family and came back tan, but not rested.  I was not still while I was away. 

You see, intimacy with God will always be a struggle.  Adam and Eve took the fruit, they immediately recognized their sin, covered themselves out of shame and hid.  God expelled them from the garden.  Naturally being in God’s presence in the stillness of that perfect garden would never happen again.  We are out of the garden.  We are in the sweatshop of a fallen world.  It will never be easy to steal away and be still.  God had to command “remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.”  It is our inclination to forget Sabbath, to neglect rest, and to hustle away the stillness. 

Knowing Christ means following him to Tyre.  It means refusing to let our own inclinations for maniacal living to keep us from that abiding stillness with our savior who is our only access back to the garden.  The passage in Mark 7 ends this way: “… yet he could not keep his presence a secret.  In fact, as soon as she heard about him, a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an evil spirit came and fell at his feet.”  That rings true doesn’t it!  Sounds about like my vacation.  True worshipful rest will never be easy.  But it will always be good. 

In Christ - Scott Castleman                  

Salt and Light

As I write this blog post I find myself a bit tired; not by long and arduous work but rather tired by the little things demanding attention that I feel rob me of greater focus on those tasks which to my mind seem more significant.  In every redeemed heart God places, as a part of his redemptive work, a desire for significance.  Indeed, it was Christ who looked at those following him faithfully and said, “You are the salt of the earth… You are the light of the world.”  Salt and light make a difference whenever they are found.  Salt and light are significant, noticeable, impacting.  

Today is a day in which I don’t feel salty or bright.  Perhaps today is a day in which you don’t feel particularly significant in the role God is calling you to play in the consummation of his kingdom.  But it is on the days that feel dim and saltless that we need to allow our theology to convince us of that which our feelings cannot.  Our feelings of spiritual insignificance are rooted in guilt and shame that come not from God but from his enemy the devil. 

How many times have you thought that you weren’t a “good Christian” or that you needed to do more for God?  Most of us are familiar with those ideas.  Those ideas of a “good Christian” and “doing more for God” are rooted in the false thinking that our significance, our saltiness and light are somehow things that we are ultimately responsible for.  And yet scripture teaches us that our spiritual condition is not based on some kind of external activity but rather on the internal reality of our redemption.  The wandering and wasteful son thought he was no longer his father’s because of his actions.  But it was the father who puts a robe on his back, sandals on his feet, and the family signet on his finger that lets him know he never stopped being his son.

So it is with us.  You don’t feel salty and bright.  How you “feel” about that does not change the fact that Jesus has called you both.  You ARE the salt of the earth and the light of the world.  So you “feel” like you have wandered and squandered away your status as God’s child.  It is not so!  You have been adopted and you are God’s own.  You cannot undo that.

It is in our striving to be significant that we lose sight of the fact that we already are- not because of what we have done or will do but because of what Jesus has done for us.  The key to living in the reality of our significance is in the irony of being still and simply knowing that God is God and that we are his.  So I sit bleary eyed and tired behind a keyboard desiring to do more.  But the truth is I am salty and bright, I am God’s son.  And no amount of activity or inactivity can change that.  Praise the Lord!

Grace and Truth - Scott Castleman