Livin' Small

I’m winding up another week as we all are. We’ve all encountered circumstances of one nature or another. It has been a trial to some and not so much to others. The point of it all is this. If negativity has invaded your space did you turn it from a circumstance to a challenge? My perspective is when circumstances come to bring me down I take them as a challenge to defeat. How do you view yours? Take the following circumstance that I had mid-week.

I was in a meeting Wednesday evening and from the very start, I felt I was being distracted (attacked to be honest, by the enemy of my soul). My new computer tried to give me problems. But we got through the meeting and I could say I was overwhelmed, but I took that bull by the horns and turned it into my challenge of the week.

The next day I talked to God about it and He told me what to do. The results are I have gotten a letter done to send to my Chaplains and created a large email group of twenty-three and it’s been sent out for a response to test it to make sure it is getting to all of them. I’ve already gotten a response from some. I still have two more lists to complete and one more email group, but I know where I’m heading. God called me to this ministry I’m tackling at present and I’m still on this riding it to the end.

For a year coming up now since God spoke to me to become a certified Chaplain under the American Chaplain’s Association, I have found each step brought a clearer vision of what I’m called to do. I hear people saying all the time that they don’t know what their calling is or they don’t know what they are supposed to be doing. I don’t fault them for saying that, but my first question would be are you moving?

Let’s take a car as an analogy here. If you have a car and it sits in the driveway and you never take the key out to it, start it, and drive it out on the road how are you going to get somewhere? My wife asked me way back at the beginning of her endeavor to know God as to how I knew God talked to me. I kind of take it for granted I suppose since I’ve held conversations with God since I was a very young man. You’re going to laugh perhaps, but my first question to her was did she pray. She said yes. Then comes the kicker. I asked did she stop at some point and listen. She looked a bit stumped at that question.

I then kicked into teaching mode. When you converse with God it can’t be a one-way communication. At some point, you have to stop talking and listen. So, I told her when she prayed if she would find time to be quiet she would hear Him speak. Well, not too long after she came back to me and said she heard God say something, but it was only one word essentially. He told her to look for the key. Then she asks me what the key is. I told her that was her quest. Not mine. I told her to search for the key to look for. God didn’t tell me to look for the key. He told her to look for the key.

Not long after we attended a memorial service for a mutual friend of ours from our younger days back home. The minister got up to do his usual conveyance of condolences to the family and tie it to scripture as we all know too well. But in his speech, he said “Jesus is the key”. My wife’s face was instantly lit up as she turned to me and said “JESUS is the key”! She had found the key. To fast forward this, she now holds her own conversations with God daily and sometimes He tells her to go tell someone something they need to hear from someone else as a witness of what is transpiring in their own heart. She has become very sensitive to God’s voice. That’s one of a thousand reasons why I love this woman. She is dogged to learn more all the time. She never gives up on anything.

She also knows very well the principle of turning circumstances into challenges. If you want to know what your calling is, you need to put the key in, turn it and then put the car in gear and get moving. Once you start moving you will find God will take the wheel. God doesn’t want to be the co-pilot. He wants to be the pilot. But you have to be moving. If you are questioning what your calling must be, ask yourself first if you are moving or not, and if you are not, get your pat and charlie on. Some of you will understand that phrase. We use to say that when we had to walk because we couldn’t get a ride.

I share my life’s story to give you hope. Not to polish my reputation. I don’t have the itch to preach. I just have a desire to spread to you what God can do for you in like fashion as I have found by doing.

Stop standing still. It’s time to move. Review your perspectives and regroup if necessary. But most of all move. God can direct movement, but if you continue to stand still He can’t. Your calling depends on motion. Another avenue to explore then will be will then open for you to explore.

I moved with the ministry I was under for thirty years that had a budget of over half-million dollars a year. Their ministry grew because they moved forward constantly. Then it became my turn to step up. Now at seventy-one, I find myself ordained as a minister of the Gospel and a nationally certified Chaplain in charge of close to fifty Chaplains with over 300 more in the wings to indoctrinate into the field God has called me to for Disaster Relief. Folks call it what you want about me, but I plan on in the next two years to see the ministry I’m servant to grow to the second largest disaster response ministry only to Samaritan’s Purse.

And with all that, I count is all dung if I don’t follow His will in all of it. After all, it’s God’s Kingdom appearing in what He’s called us to. Never put yourself on a pedestal. You’ll fall off. Walk softly with what you’re called to. I say what I say because it amazes me what He can do when you set your perspectives straight and follow God’s voice. We become His vessels of dispensing His life and will in this earth before men. Don’t ever make yourself the focal point of all that goes on. But count yourself privileged to be the carrier of the importance of the dispensation of His will in the earth. That, my friend, is the proper perspective.