Lessons From My Weekend

This past weekend I learned a lot of lessons.  I didn’t go to a conference or any special training. I was just doing life. On Saturday, I went into a meeting where Pastor Olman Sanchez, a missionary who works with the indigenous people in the mountains of Costa Rica was sharing his testimony. He spoke about the people believing that there are evil spirits in the river even though that is not true. It is not easy to dispense with these ancestral beliefs, which have been deeply embedded in that society for generations.  Pastor Olman feels that these beliefs have oppressed the indigenous villagers. After hearing this I wondered how many traditional beliefs I have held that may not be true which have hindered the Word of God from being firmly rooted in my heart thereby stunting my spiritual growth.

The Pharisees and the scribes *asked Him, “Why do Your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat their bread with impure hands?” And He said to them, “Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: ‘This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far away from Me.  ‘But in vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.’ Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men.” Mark 7:5-8

My traditional beliefs may have kept me from obeying God. I gave an example of this recently when I wrote about the saying that I have heard since I was a child, “God helps those who help themselves.” Many use this as a quote from the Bible, although it is not biblical. It is contrary to God’s teachings, which tells us to cease striving and know He is God in the latter translations of the New American Standard Bible. I love this version because it is basically telling us to stop trying to control the situation and let God have His way. Popular Christian author and actress, Priscilla Shirer, and her son spoke about a similar theme as they sat down for a chat on a podcast released on YouTube this past Sunday. She went on to explain that after she did theatre for a summer while in university, she never wanted to act again. But years later her paths crossed with the Kendrick brothers who at the time of her giving up acting were in their backyard using video cameras to record films because they wanted to be filmmakers. She was not trying to be an actress, yet God moved all the pieces for her to meet these brothers twenty years later to collaborate on the seventh highest grossing Christian film of all time in the United States, War Room, even though film critics gave it a negative review. Without her or the brothers knowing what God was doing, He was working out His plan in their lives to make their paths cross for His glory.  All we have to do is “rest in the sovereignty of God” and let Him put the pieces together.

The mind of man plans his way, But the LORD directs his steps. Proverbs 16:9

One of the other things she said about how she lives her life that really impacted me was that she recognized the purpose of her life was not to entertain but she knew the point was to share God’s Word. That made me look at my life knowing that even when I knew I was called to do ministry I strove to entertain to make people look at me. I tried really hard by appearing on a reality television show and then working free for two weeks on a soap opera as I attempted to break into the media industry in Jamaica. I never failed so much and had so many rejections in my life during that period. I went against God’s will to make me the point instead of sharing His message. And if I did share His Word, I would want the glory and applause of people.

As a disciple of Jesus Christ, your great responsibility is to be a friend of the bridegroom, following the example set by John the Baptist: “The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him” (John 3:29). The bridegroom’s friend never takes the central role away from Jesus or becomes a necessity to another person’s soul. If you find, in your relationships with others, that you have stolen the spotlight away from Christ, then you know that you are out of God’s established order for his disciples. You’ll know your influence over others has taken the right direction when you see their souls gripped by the claims of Jesus Christ.

I think that excerpt from Oswald Chambers’ Utmost for His Highest is quite appropriate as I realize it is a time of repentance for me as I put Jesus in His proper position in my life by decreasing and letting Him increase. Putting myself in the spotlight has to do with the condition of my heart. While watching a sermon on the Parable of the Sower on Sunday, I recognized the hardness of my heart. There are some parts of my heart that are so hard the seed of Word of God has not penetrated the soil to have roots deep in the love of God. So, when temptations and trials come, I cannot bear the fruit I need to in that part of my life. And there are times when I have allowed the weeds to choke my spiritual growth as I worry about the things I need to take care of, and there are other times when I allow the pleasures of the world to distract me from being in God’s presence. It is track and field season, so now I have a tendency to tell the Creator of the universe that I will talk to Him later as I want to finish watching an event or a race. Therefore, I put God on the back burner as I watch the Jamaicans burn up the track or in some cases cool it down. Thankfully God is merciful. Yet, there are those around us who have little mercy and will trample the seeds that are meant to be fruitful in our lives. The preacher said family and especially church folks can do a lot of trampling with their words and actions. It is important that I make sure I am not trampling anyone but rather being an encourager. So, it behoves me to take time for some weeding and ploughing to make way for God’s Word to fall on good soil in my heart.

But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called “Today,” so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Hebrews 13:3

It is important to encourage each other so that hearts are not hardened.  Encouraging each other instead of judging each other also comes from understanding that God is doing something different in all our lives. An example of this came at my friend’s birthday party on Sunday night while speaking to two other friends. They told me that their pastor had preached the weekend before. I thought that made no sense because he was on sabbatical. But they said in Latin America the pastors need to be at church as they are just taking a break from being the leader, but they are still the pastor. Whereas in my culture, the pastors take a break to do more studies, write a book or do something else that has been on their heart.  We wouldn’t expect our pastors to be preaching at church while on a sabbatical. And to my Latin American friends, this makes no sense. This is why we cannot lean on our own understanding and use that to judge others because our backgrounds and ways of doing things are different and more importantly, God is doing something different in other persons’ lives that may not make sense to us. Therefore, it is important to be led by the Holy Spirit to discern what He is doing.

And on the topic of the Holy Spirit, I have been reading A.W. Tozer’s book, The Holy Spirit’s Presence, and it is making me think a lot.  He wrote this:

It is possible to run a church without the Holy Spirit, which is a terrible thing. You organize it. You get a board, a pastor, a choir, a ladies’ aid society and a Sunday school, and you get all organized. I believe in organization. I am not against it; I am for it. You get organized, and you get a pastor to turn the crank, and that is all there is to it. The Holy Ghost can leave, and the pastor goes on turning the crank, and nobody finds it out for five years. Oh, what a horrible tragedy to the Church of Christ.

It is truly a tragedy if the Holy Spirit is not leading, and we are striving in our own strength. Whether it is a church, a business or our lives we can have great worldly success without the Holy Spirit through our connections, expertise and money. But there will come a time when we recognize that in all we did, God was absent. And that means all our hard work has amounted to nothing in God’s Kingdom. Therefore, it is best to learn that we should plough the soil of our hearts so that God’s Word will be firmly rooted in it, and we should always be led by the Holy Spirit in everything we do so that we are submitted to God and walking in His purposes for our lives.