Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Led

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

LED


Returned late Monday from a weekend in Grand Junction. Good time. Ministered three times and all seemed to be very deeply received. Ted and Tami Miller and the staff and people at Grand Junction First are doing it well.

As we pulled away from the city, I checked my e-mail and had a point of feedback.
Someone had identified deeply with something I shared about my journey. What I had shared in the first service, was a statement made to me by someone I deeply respected at a very vulnerable time in my life. It was shared in jest, but it wounded me, drained the blood out of my face at the time - and appeared again and again in bad dreams. It was a blight on my self-identity for a very long time...until Jesus set me free.

This person, hearing my account, was led to immediately identify with an 18 year struggle of similar proportions in her life. "God spoke to me and told me I have to forgive her and let it go."

I was blessed to receive the feedback...and know that God was using things shared to bring substantial change to people listening. Substantial enough that they would communicate with a whole page written with immediacy.

And I reflected on how I had not shared that illustration in the second service....how that story in fact, had come to mind rather suddenly, not the result of notes or prior planning. And how I had gone a bit deeper and more vulnerably with it than before. Seemed so much like I had been led by the Spirit not just happening to strike a chord in someone because I had shared it over and over. Hmm.

Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. Romans 8:14

Ah, that says it is our priviledge as God's children to be led by Him. All of us, led by God...

We all would like to be led by the hand...or a clear, printed, set of directions - but so often we end up being led and not even being aware of it (like on Sunday), being nudged, having our attention drawn in certain ways, having something "on our hearts" that just won't stop sitting there, a "good idea" turns into a God idea, a "makes sense" becomes the wisdom from above, and a person's look at us becomes the gaze of God Himself. It happens all the time. God is endlessly creative and endlessly able to do what it takes to lead us forward.

Sometimes we can be led by having natural responses go strange....I wrote in the book I am putting together about the lady that shared that she was driving in upstate New York and in mid-day got so weary that she pulled off the road....and just then an accident occured right before her.

God had made her tired, to show her His mercy.

Led....it is a gentle, quiet, experimental thing.

Led....it is a surprising, often humbling, rejoicing thing.

You...who are part of God's Family...are being led by the Spirit of God.

Wow!

Selah.

David

1 comment:

Galen said...

Lovely. Isn't it wonderful when God does things that we can't possibly take credit (glory) for? These interventions are a relief. They serve more than the immediately recognizable purpose (and thank God for both). It's hard to recognize the elusive shadows of vainglorying or even pure competition, because these hide themselves behind actions that could have any number of good underlying motivations. God does us such a wonderful turn by taking the wind out of our sails by taking our breath away - when we are unwittingly led by him, because we have invited him in. But I think it is also a helpful insight to realize that for me to glorify God, the only two persons necessary are me and God. If I stop giving myself credit within, and truthfully acknowledge all glory (credit) really is God's, I've taken the first significant step to following Christ. This is what it means to take up my cross in a christianized context. In a context hostile to christian faith, the seeming opposite is true: people don't want to be associated with God's glory because it would mean losing the esteem of men. In "christian" America, people don't want to be associated with God's glory, because they want it for themselves, and so they play an elaborate religious game of image pageantry, often without being fully aware of what they are doing. This is a type of spiritual insanity. But God wants to give us the spirit of a sound mind, and imparts a bit of himself to us in our daily lives. How absolutely wonderful! See Luke 9.