I was in a conversation with my small group about spiritual growth last week, and God is really showing me where we have a tendency to become complacent in our walks with Jesus Christ.  We have a tendency to look back at where God has brought us and where we are now and think that we are in a good place with God.  We look at what had been in the past and what is currently happening in the present and feel very comfortable about it.  The problem is that we become complacent.  We become comfortable in our relationships with Jesus.  We do not look at the depths of where God desires to lead us through our relationship with Him, but instead we sit and become fine with how our relationship looks now.  It is like sitting at the top of a small hill at the foot of a mountain.  We think that we are in a place of great depth since our relationship has ascended to the top of the hill, but we fail to miss the mountain in front of us that is the place where our relationship with Jesus can grow to.  Are you sitting on hills when God desires to lead you up the mountain?

I have been reading through Dr. Calvin Miller’s book Conversations with Jesus in 2009 and came across something that was very challenging and confronting.  The book is Dr. Miller exploring texts by doing an exposition of the text from the perspective of Jesus having a conversation with the book’s readers over the central theme of the text.  The section that I read under the title “Show Business and Human Need” with John 4: 46-48 as the corresponding text had the following prayer in response to the text:

“Lord, the world is a weeping place. Yet so often the church seems to be more of a theater than a hospital.  Entertainment has replaced ministry.  I see so many in need of splints and bandages, and our triage is flawed.  They bleed and die while we are dispensing song and dance.”

Dr. Miller continues with an observation from the perspective of Jesus:

“You have a taste for compassion (referring to the reader and also the crowds that surrounded Jesus in John 4: 46-48), but you must also realize how religious miracles are easily subverted to entertainment. You have seen that show-biz is always a temptation in the church.  Some churches have honestly gotten into this show-biz gospel in the attempt to exorcise the demons of congregational boredom from their worship.  Then they move from the Spirit’s direction to hype. Few of these mean to adopt hype and abandon the Spirit. But in trying to keep things exciting and positive, they trade worship for glitz.

Let me suggest that the only foolproof way you can know that I am present in worship is to ask a more difficult questions: Is the Lord present in the worship leader?  Worship leaders void of me can become quite proficient at entertainment, but they cannot lead in real adoration.  Your need is therefore rooted in their integrity.

Your salvation is an issue of simple worship; your worship will require you to walk and talk with me.  This is your best hope of honest adoration.”

The devotional entry ends with this prayer of challenge:

“Lord Jesus, I am needy, and I know all those with whom I worship are needy too. Would you come to us and teach us true soul hunger so that we never can be satisfied with any smaller definition of worship than that which starts and ends with you alone? Help me to turn from glitzy praise and start to meet you at the altar of my heart. Amen.”

My prayer for you as you lead and minister to people is that your passion and praise for Jesus Christ would be the driving force of your ministry.  Let us worship Jesus not to make much of us or to make others think that our church or ministry is cool, but let us worship Jesus because He is the only One who will eternally satisfy!

“The greatest opposition to what God is doing today comes from those who were on the cutting edge of what God was doing yesterday.”- R. T. Kendall in The Anointing

I read the above quote yesterday on a blog and cannot stop thinking about it.  I know from my experiences launching and leading ministries that it is easy for your idea and your vision to become like your child.  You want to remain in total control of the organization to make sure that the core values, programs, and innovative ideas.  The issue is that God may be opening new doors and allowing the organization to evolve into something new and different in order to be more effective in reaching people for Jesus and ministering to the church.

The struggle of a leader is letting go of something that is close to his or her heart.  We need to make sure that we are open-handed on the way that we do ministry while remaining grounded in the unchanging truths of the gospel.  God may be birthing something new in the hearts of people in your ministry, but you may be to busy holding on to the ideas and dreams of yesterday that you miss the opportunity of today.