Wednesday, March 9, 2011

It's About God, Not Us

It's March and relatively few mentoring matches have been made so far this year.  Even though that has been disappointing, I have learned after five years of working with LAMP that God is in control and I am not.  I struggle when I focus on numbers and trying to force growth when God is always moving in his purposes.  As it turns out, God was stirring many hearts in the first two months of this year.  Over twenty people have signed up to mentor in the past couple of weeks, and I am in conversations with several other people about their mentoring interest.  Leadership and obedience do matter, but in this particular case I did not really do anything differently to recruit new mentors than I've been doing over the past couple of years.  God is just up to something right now, and I'm going with it.

It is so important in urban ministry to be Spirit-led.  God moves, and we follow... not the other way around.  Too many times ministry leaders design programs or make key strategic decisions first, and then we ask God to bless what we've done.  That takes all of the focus off of God and puts it on us.  That is always doomed to fail, but it is one of the enemy's best tricks.  He gets us to focus on ourselves or our programs instead of keeping our focus on God.  This is why, as Christians, we must first and foremost focus on a healthy relationship with Jesus Christ.  When we truly follow God, then anything that we might do, no matter how big or small, will be about glorifying our Maker.

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