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#EN2010 Afterglow: How to Land Safely

July 26, 2010 by 1 Comment

Pastor Jojo Henson of Malaysia said something that got stuck in my head yesterday in Victory Caloocan. He mentioned in passing how Peter asked Jesus if they could make tents in the Mount of Transfiguration so they could stay there with Moses and Elijah. You’ve probably heard this a dozen times already but in light of the excitement and afterglow of the EN2010, I think this message never gets old. The idea is that Peter was so overwhelmed with the presence of two prominent Old Testament figures that he wondered aloud if they could just stay there and bask in the glory of the moment.

There was nothing wrong with the request. Peter probably did it in good faith, I mean, who wouldn’t want to just sit back and enjoy the glory of God’s presence? If it were me, I would probably feel the same way as Peter. The fact is that whenever we experience something glorious, our natural tendency is to hold on to it and never let it go.

But as much as we want to make the moment last, a time always comes when we have to step down from our high moments and get assimilated back to our daily realities. EN2010 concluded with a loud bang for most of us. Yesterday, Metro Manila churches enjoyed an extended time with some international delegates as they spent their Sunday with us. The mountain ends there though. Today, a day after all the flurry of activities, we’re back to our offices, to our work stations, to the normalcy of the daily grind. It’s time to roll up our sleeves again and deal with our backlogs.

As I think about these things, I am reminded of Acts 1: 8 and Matthew 28: 19: Jesus said that “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you and you will be my witnesses… therefore go and make disciples…”

Powerful encounters with God are meant to fuel us to love God more. They’re meant to drive us to action, to go and carry out His mandate with fresh fire and fresh revelation, not so we could sit back and just enjoy the glow. No, there’s a heaven for that kind of stuff. The sooner we understand that, the lesser the frustration we’ll feel. I’ve seen countless young men and women attend conferences and come home feeling like they are ready to take on the world. Some of them were even so fired up with the euphoria that they vowed to go into full time ministry. When they attend church the first Sunday after the conference, the sing the loudest and cry the hardest. Reality sets in after two or three weeks though. They come down from the mountain and face the gritty realities of the daily grind. Life’s back to normal again.

How are we to land safely then? I mean, after the exhilarating flight of our spirits, after the so-called foretaste of heaven, how do we touch down gracefully? I couldn’t find much clue in the story except the fact that Jesus walked with them on their way down the mountain. Jesus never rebuked Peter’s ignorant prayer to make three shelters. He perfectly understood why Peter longed for that permanence in a glorious place. But He had to take them to the real world again so they could get on with their jobs and their ministries and their callings.

It is such a comfort that the God who shows us His great power and glory is the same God who will walk with us as we go down to the normal, ordinary details of our days. He is alongside us the moment we got back to our work today. He is not just a God of the mountains or the valleys. He is God everywhere.

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Blurt Out

June 24, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Jesus was in the middle of a very interesting sermon about how the Holy Spirit would help us in times of trouble when out of the blue, someone from the crowd interrupted Him with a totally unrelated question.

“Master, order my brother to divide the inheritance and share it with me!” Luke 12: 13

I chuckled when I read this the other day because the story tells us something very revealing about human nature. First is the fact that there are times when we pretend to listen to people when they talk but in reality, we are just waiting for our turn to speak. This proved to be embarrassing for the guy in the story. With just a few words, he showed the whole wide world his ignorance of spiritual matters and his preoccupation with money.

Second is how he misunderstood Jesus. Instead of drinking in the life giving words of Jesus, he was only interested in resolving his domestic troubles.

Third is the tone of accusation in his voice. He asked Jesus to “order” his brother to do the right thing, IN PUBLIC! It is one thing to ask God to right the wrongs in our families in the privacy of our prayer closet but to broadcast them publicly is just plain wrong. Even if his brother was really on the wrong, he didn’t deserve this kind of humiliation.

Fourth, don’t we do this in our prayer meetings? When we tell the church our prayer requests, don’t we sometimes err on this area?

Lastly,just because you’re the one praying doesn’t mean that you are right. It will never do you any good if you speak against your brother in front of God! Who knows he’s praying too!

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Interruptions

June 22, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Story has it that in the middle of working on another masterpiece, Leonardo da Vinci laid down his brushes to answer a knock on his door. Outside was an elderly man who needed help with his water line. Da Vinci dropped what he was doing, picked up his tools and went out the door to help the old man. We don’t know if he made for a good plumber or if he was even able to finish the job. What we know is that the work of art that he started that day remained unfinished till the day he died.

Interruption. Everyone knows what it’s like. You start a personal project that’s very important to you and just out of the blue, some other things scream for attention and before you know it, you’re reduced to responding to the urgent needs around you. Some years later you realized your project remains unfinished. Where have all the hours gone?

Or maybe you set aside a time to read your Bible at a very convenient time but just when you were about to receive a very important revelation from God, your cellular phone started ringing. You dropped your Bible to check the message and realized it was just a funny Facebook update. You check your computer and before you know it, you’ve been surfing the internet for hours. Meanwhile, your Bible sat on the empty table, unread; and the revelation that would have changed your life vanished into thin air.

But not all interruptions are bad. When Jesus was on His way to Jairus’ house to pray for his sick daughter, a woman who’s been bleeding for 12 years interrupted Him. She crawled through the crowd to touch Jesus’ robes and when she did, she was instantly healed. Jesus stopped in His tracks to investigate the power that He felt came out of Him. We know how the story unfolded but what we often forget is that while this exchange was going on, Jairus was anxiously waiting for Jesus to wrap up His investigation and proceed to his house so his daughter can be healed.

I have a feeling that Jairus wished the woman didn’t interrupt them at all. His daughter was on the verge of death and the woman who interrupted them looked like she could survive a few more hours of not getting her miracle. Why Jesus lingered was simply beyond him. Then the news came and shattered his last hope for miracle. His daughter’s dead, he need not bother the Master! I could just imagine the look of accusation in his eyes. If only the woman didn’t interrupt them… If only Jesus hurried a little…

Few verses later, we learned that his daughter was resurrected from the dead, a far more glorious miracle than rising up from the sick bed. The interruption was intentional in the plan of God. Partly, it was meant to teach us that there are times when we have to give in to divine interruptions just so we can allow God to work out something.

But how do we know which interruption is from God and which one is not? Now that’s something that needs a lot of practice and fine tuning in our part. Learning to listen to the voice of God is not something we can learn from a blog or a book. We’ve got to do it, live it, and learn it ourselves.

Disclosure: This post is inspired by Joe McKeever’s “Interruptions: Blessings and Burdens,” posted on October 28, 2003

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The Faceless, Nameless Disciples

June 14, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Most of the sermons we hear about discipleship today is how twelve unlikely men turned the world upside down with the gospel of Christ. That’s only half of the story because there were not only twelve of them. There were others who worked alongside them, some nameless people who did great but whose names were left out by the Holy Spirit for some reasons. Luke 10 tells us about how Jesus also commissioned 72 other disciples to evangelize Israel. There names were never identified in the Bible. Until today, nobody knows who they were.

There are a few lessons we can get from this unnamed bunch of disciples. First is that it doesn’t really matter if you don’t get to be one of the big guys in a church or organization. You don’t have to be the head usher or songbird of the music team or the number one deacon in church to be part of what the Lord is doing. For most of us, to be able to serve is enough. It is God we are trying to please and live for anyway and we certainly don’t need the praises of men to fuel our service.

The second lesson is the fact that no matter what your spiritual gifts are, there is definitely a place for you in God’s Kingdom. In Luke 10: 2, Jesus lamented the lack of workers in the harvest field that He immediately commissioned the 72 to go and preach the gospel. The context of the verse implies the magnitude of the work, the urgency of the harvest and the need for more workers. If we are to use the farming analogy, I would assume that Jesus was saying He needed all the help He can get.

I grew up in farmer’s household and one of the few things I understand about farming is that when the fields are ready for harvest, it’s not something that you can postpone for another day or week. When the grains turn gold, nothing else would matter to the farmer but the harvest. Every other activity comes second compared to the urgency of the task at hand. He will need all the help he can get or he’ll run the risk of losing the grains to thieves or bad weather. The same thing goes for church and discipleship. When you see people who are hungry for God, it’s not something you postpone for another day. Either you do it now or you’ll never have the chance to reach that person again and lose him to the world.

One of the guys in my victory group told me how he missed some of the people we used to have in our group. He wanted them back but there was no way to reach them now. I admit I’ve also agonized over the same problem before but I realized that it is one more reason why we need to really get into the business of discipleship whenever we can because we will never know how much time is left for a person to stay with us. He might be here today but he could be gone next week. The lesson I learned? Make the most impact whenever you can. Pray for the person when he hints that he needs a prayer. Don’t wait for the victory group to be in a quorum for you to get into your “ministry mode.” Say the word that the Lord impressed in your heart whenever you can and please, for the love of God, give that blessing when the Lord tells you to do so. You’ll never know the world of difference it will make in the lives of the people you touch but trust me, that’s the least of our problems here on earth. There’s a heaven and an eternity for us to know those stuff. In the mean time, let’s just go ahead and make disciples!

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The Killing Spree

December 22, 2009 by 2 Comments

One of the often forgotten part of the Christmas story is the massacre of children in Bethlehem shortly after Jesus was born. Herod heard of the birth of Christ from the wise men and in a brutish act to protect his position of power in Israel, he ordered the murder of all the young boys in all of Bethlehem to get rid of Jesus. He was too late though. By the time this atrocity was committed, Joseph was already transporting Mary and Jesus to Egypt.

What happened was a classic example of how much damage insecurity can cause in leadership. Herod was threatened by the rumors of a leader who was supposed to deliver Israel from oppression. He ordered the slaughter of countless children just to eliminate one particular boy who won’t definitely be doing anything political in at least twenty years.

Insecurity is a terrible driving force in a leader’s life. When one stops acting like a leader and starts chasing after his rivals, real or fancied, that person’s leadership is obviously in decline.

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