'The Motions' by Matthew West

I have been hearing a song named 'The Motions' by an artist named Matthew West. For some reason I have only been able to catch parts of the song. Today I was able to hear the song in it's entirety. Wow! What challenging lyrics. The chorus of the song says

I don't want to go through the motions

I don't want to go one more day

Without your all consuming passion inside of me

I don't want to spend my whole life asking

What if I had given everything

Instead of going through the motions?

I guess those words are particularly challenging to me right now because I feel like God is breaking me out of a spiritual lethargy that had overtaken me. I admit that I had become comfortable and I sense that God is doing what is necessary to bring me back to a place of brokenness, willingness and usefulness.

The process of praying, dreaming, questioning and wondering we are experiencing is causing me to see the struggle between my human instincts (fear) and my spiritual understanding (faith). It is as if God is challenging me in the area of faith so that I can gradually learn to live in that realm on a daily basis as a variety of opportunities and decisions come along.

A great man of God said to D. L. Moody many years ago, “The world has yet to see what God can do with a man fully consecrated to him. By God’s help, I aim to be that man.”

http://www.ctlibrary.com/ch/1990/issue25/2510.html

Church planting preparations

Pastor Paul has asked us to go through a church planter assessment process so Joan and I have been filling out spiritual gift tests, talent assessments, personality tests, and applications over the past couple of weeks. It has been quite a grueling process because most of the questions require a lot of soul-searching and transparency. Honestly, I believe that the process has been good for us because it has caused us to take a closer look at what God has given each of us and what God might want to do through us.

In a few weeks we will be traveling with Pastor Paul to Grand Rapids MI where the West Michigan District of the Wesleyan Church has established a church planter assessment center. They will have collated and analyzed all of our answers to the various questions we were asked and they will put us through an interview process that lasts about three hours. After we are done they will compile all of the data and let Pastor Paul know if they believe that we are an appropriate fit for church planting.

Please keep us in prayer throughout this process. Ask the Lord to guide the assessors, Pastor Paul and us. We want to end up in the place and the position where we can best serve the Kingdom of God and the Eastern New York district.

With the understanding that we might be planting a church in the Clifton Park NY area I have begun looking for a solid job since I will probably have to be a bi-vocational pastor in the beginning. We are also looking into housing in the region. Both renting and buying are quite expensive so please pray with us about the right housing situation for our family.

We are so excited to be part of God's work in eastern New York.

Saratoga County NY

Just a quick update. We are going to be planting a church somewhere in Saratoga County NY. This region is just north of Albany and is a high growth area. There are families moving in constantly and new businesses are coming in over the next couple of years.

The church will probably be located somewhere between Clifton Park and Malta on the Northway (I-87) corridor. Over the next couple of months we will need to find somewhere to live and begin the process of scouting out a place to begin holding services. Then over the summer we will continue to develop our ministry team and pursue connections to the community around us.

Please continue to pray for us as we take this step of faith as a family and as a district (Eastern New York and New England).

James

Albany NY

It appears that we will be either planting a church north of Albany, Clifton Park area, or that we will be restarting the Albany Wesleyan Church. I have been having ongoing discussions with Pastor Paul James about ministry opportunities and it seems that we are centering in on Albany as the place that best suits our skill set and our ministry gifts.

This is welcomed news because Joan and I have been feeling led toward Albany from the outset. We just wanted to be sure that we were not telling God or telling the district what to do. When Pastor Paul called to say that his heart was leaning toward Albany my spirit just leapt because I sincerely believe that God has a work for us to do in Albany. I see the many, many houses and many more lives and I can just imagine God reaching to family after family. I can just see kids who hear about their heavenly Father for the first time, teens who recognize their value in the Kingdom of God, and parents who come to understand Biblical principles for marriage, family, finances and relationships.

Last week I came across this scripture and I have received it as God's call upon my life.

'I am sending you to them to open their eyes

and turn them from darkness to light,

and from the power of Satan to God,

so that they may receive forgiveness of sins

and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.'

Acts 26:17b-18

Please pray with us as we move to Albany in late June and July and then take the next weeks and months to prepare for a church to open. We have never gone into this exact kind of situation and we know that we will need your prayer support. I believe that the call God has given us is to invest ourselves in this region long-term. In time I pray that we will be able to sister other churches throughout the Albany region and toward Boston.

Please pray specifically that we and the Eastern New York Wesleyan District officials will have a clear understanding of whether we should plant or re-start.

The ticket (funny)

I was driving along with my four year old daughter Julia and we were having an ongoing discussion about everything around us. We saw a policeman who had pulled a car over for speeding. The policeman was writing something in a notepad and Julia asked me what he was doing. I answered her that he was giving the man a ticket for going too fast and that the man would have to pay money for going too fast. She was silent for a couple of seconds and then she said to me, "Daddy, can he go as fast as he wants after he pays the ticket?"

Missed opportunity at Dunkin' Donuts

I was with a friend of mine late this morning having a cup of coffee and solving the problems of the world when someone interrupted our conversation. I had just said to my friend "if I did not have a job right now, I'd go tomorrow and get one". A young gentleman near our table turned to me with little bit of fire in his eyes and said, "what did you just say?"

I looked at him and said "Are you talking to me? Because I was talking to him" (nodding at my friend).

He responded with a bit of edge in his voice, "I thought it was admirable that you could go get a job right now because I have been laid off for a while."

I quickly thought of several different ways this conversation could proceed and I could not think of any good options. I did not want to get into an 'edgy' conversation so I said again "I was talking to my friend here". The exchange lasted a few more seconds and then we mutually ignored each other for the next half hour.

On my way home a little while later I was replaying the whole scene and I realized that because of my fear and defensiveness I had missed an opportunity to share God's love with a hurting person. I realized that my human thought process tends to value self-preservation and pride. I wondered if I would ever be in the place where I would have responded to that young man from a heart of love.

I replayed the scene again and this time my response to him was "you were laid off, I'm sorry to hear that - where were you working?" And then from there he was able to share about his situation and I was able to be a positive, caring person at this low point in his life.

Dear Father, please forgive me for being so interested in me. Open my eyes to how you are working in the lives of others. Help me never to be motivated by fear or pride. Please help my heart to be ready for these kind of situations. I am so sorry I was not ready this time. Amen

Lord Whatever You Ask

I was driving to Syracuse early yesterday morning to teach a Homiletics course to a group of Burmese ministry students and I sensed God talking to me about 'the future'. I turned off the radio and just tried to listen. What I began to realize is that I had told God 'yes', with preconditions. My prayer sounded a little bit like this.

"Lord, I am willing to go wherever you send me

and do whatever you ask - within these boundaries."

Now, I was not saying it that plainly, I was explaining to God why He needed to understand my boundaries of where I was willing to go and what I was willing to do. I thought that my reasoning was really quite good. I really had myself convinced that I had committed all to God, and that God would totally understood my hesitation in a few areas. God could certainly learn to work around my preconditions.

Well, the longer I sat in that car and listened the more I realized that God needed me to be completely surrendered to his will whether it made sense at the time or not, whether it fit into my preconceived notions of where and what, or not. I would love to be able to say that this was a simple step for me to take and that within a matter of moments I had surrendered my will completely to God, but the truth is that I surrender and then I begin 'figuring it all out' again.

Later that day I was driving back home after teaching and I was going through the same process again - giving in, taking it back, giving in again - when the words of a song I have sung for years came back to me. "Whatever You Ask" was sung by Steve Camp in the 1980s.

Lord whatever you ask, I want to obey you.
To let my heart beat with a servant's heart.
Lord whatever you ask, I know
That you can give me courage to equal the task
Whatever you ask.

God make it plain that I would not have peace in my heart until I was willing to serve God with no strings attached. I have been in ministry for more than twenty years and it was quite humbling to realize that after all these years I still had strings attached to my call from God. I asked God for forgiveness and I had a great time of prayer after that, not about the future, but about who I need to be before my Creator, my Lord, my Father and my God.

I know that a few hours in a car and a song will not totally fix my tendency to 'figure it all out' for God. But I do know that God has made me aware that I was trusting him partially and he wants me to trust him completely. I am praying that this kind of willingness will be what guides me in these next few months of transition and for the rest of my life. Lord whatever you ask...

Therefore, I urge you brothers
in view of God's mercy
to offer your body as a living sacrifice,
holy and pleasing to God,
which is your spiritual act of worship.
Romans 12:1