Desperate People In Desperate Times

Chapter 2
Desperation Makes You Do What You Would Not Ordinarily Do

“The man asked him, ‘What is your name?’ ‘Jacob,’ he answered.” (Genesis 32:27)

The reason for the question, “What is your name?” was not that the angel was having trouble remembering. It was to be an admission of his guilt, of who Jacob was and what he had become. It was also for the purpose of a change - God wanted to give Jacob a new name with a new destiny, but in order for that to happen there must first be a death, a death of an old man.

“Then the man asked, ‘What is your name?’ ‘Jacob,’ he answered. Then the man said, ‘Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with man and have overcome.” (Genesis 32:27-28)

Earlier in this chapter it describes how blessed Jacob was. He was arriving back home with so much after leaving with so little. And yet there was still an inward knowing and an inward gnawing that something was wrong, very wrong.

Jacob had built on a shaky foundation and there was a real threat that it all could be gone very quickly. There needed to be a deep work done in a foundation that was not righteous, and Jacob knew it. This understanding brought him to a place of desperation.

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Testing Foundations
Even when there is apparent success, God will challenge and test what sort of stuff we build with. As long as the source of our building is from the old man’s strength, wisdom, and creativity, it will not stand through the fire.

Paul reminds the church at Corinth of an important promise, a promise of fire that will test our building materials.

“For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work.” (1 Cor. 3:11-13)

It is easy, inexpensive and quick to build with wood, hay and straw but it will not stand up to the test of God’s fire. Building with cheap materials is like building with human ingenuity, wisdom and creativity, it will not last. Building with gold, silver and costly stones is just the opposite; it means waiting long past what seems to be rational to the human mind. It means knowing that God is giving the orders and the direction, and when He leads the building will last even through the fire.

Paul also goes on to remind them that provision from the Lord is not necessarily an indication of His approval of them. Using Israel in the wilderness as an example;

“They all ate the same spiritual food, and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered over the desert.” (1 Cor. 10:3-5)

This was a very important point for me in our journey. It would be very easy to conclude that since we were experiencing some measure of success that God must be pleased with us. Not so, we were experiencing the amazing mercy that God has for His people.

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Personal Confrontation
After Rhonda Hughey gave her diagnosis of the church she suggested that the prescription for our condition was the presence of Jesus.

“Today it is rare to find a church where the manifest presence of Jesus is the primary attraction or sustained focus…It would appear that the corporate church today has made an erroneous conclusion – that her ministry is no longer absolutely dependent upon the evidential reality of Christ’s presence. A theology of His abiding presence has replaced hunger for and the pursuit of His glorious manifest presence.” ¹

Rhonda Hughey talked about the manifest presence of Jesus in a way that I had never considered, distinguishing manifest presence from omnipresence. Suddenly it hit me, most of the programs we were doing in the church, we had presumed upon His manifest presence. We simply assumed that any program that we imported from someone else’s ministry would bring the same glory as it did with that ministry.

In her talk, Rhonda Hughey followed the course of the typical church in America and spoke about the logical conclusions of our choices. What she described was the church where I had pastored to a tee.

“We have many methods and plans about how to make people feel welcome in the church. Many of those methods are successful in drawing people, but are they drawing the presence of the Lord? The presence of Jesus always has been and always will be what is most attractive for hungry people. For long-term success, we must build something that attracts His presence.

“When God’s presence becomes a tangible reality in a community, the church then becomes a catalyst for growth. God’s presence is more effective than our best church growth methods. When God’s presence is tangible, spiritual ministry results and becomes a magnet for hungry souls and broken people.” ²

The way back, she said, was first through repentance and to ask Jesus to restore His presence back to His church.

There are times in our lives when we know they are pivotal moments. Jacob had to know that as he wrestled with the Lord. God had come close to Jacob that night to give him the opportunity to turn from his ways and follow God.

God was encountering my heart in such a way. This was my Jacob moment: when I knew that there must be a change in my direction. It was both fearful and wonderful. It was fearful because it was real. There was no loud music, no strong invitation loaded with strong words to pull us to the altar. Just a simple invitation to come forward followed by a simple prayer of repentance.

It was wonderful because the Lord was encountering my heart in a way that I had not had for some time. That night I made my way to the altar to repent of presuming upon His presence. I felt a weight upon me, a weight of the responsibility of leadership in the church, no His Church. I could not really say much; through profuse tears I managed a short prayer of repentance. The atmosphere in the church that night was heavy with conviction and the quiet sobs could be heard through the sanctuary as people lingered at the altar.

I was lost, for several minutes I knew that it would be totally inappropriate to speak. For the first time in a long time I was in the manifest presence of Jesus. It would take me a very long time to work out language for what was happening in my heart; a longer time still to determine how this would affect the ministry in our church.

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Wrestling With Presence
Victory Fellowship Church was not atypical of any other church in America. We were working hard to draw people to God and to our church. Admittedly, the primary way our church was growing was through transfer growth. People who for one reason or another left one church to join us. That condition was also true for the other churches in our city of Council Bluffs, Iowa.

My family and I have served Victory Fellowship since 1986 and since that time there has not been a change in the overall percentage of people who regularly attend church in the city.

But that fact had not stopped us from creating an elaborate program from the nursery to the adults to keep them excited and energized about what was happening at Victory! The last thing that any of us in leadership had on our mind was dismantling anything — if it is not broke, do not mess with it!

This message of hunger for His presence told us that something was broken; we just had not stopped long enough to notice it. We were hungry, but hungry for the wrong thing. We were as guilty as Jacob and his mother Rebekah of conspiring to help God out with what He had promised.

A decision was being called for. God was asking us to come with Him for an adventure into the unknown (for us), to leave the very predictable world that we had carefully constructed to a place where He was Lord and would lead us, not day by day, but step by step. A place where He would turn us inside out and show us what we had become. We began to refer to this place as the fearfully, wonderful place. Wonderful because we knew in our spirit that the Lord was speaking, fearful because we sincerely had no idea what to do next but felt the loving hand of the Lord present with us.

This was our wrestling period with the Lord. We wanted something desperately from the Lord, Him. And He was not quick to answer.

For the next several elder meetings when the other four elders and I would meet, we ceremonially put all of our programs and agendas on the table and asked the Lord to remove anything that was not from Him. God first began to speak to our hearts about our own leadership in the church; my leadership style was heavy on structure and predictability. I had things in the church pretty constructed.

We heard the Lord say, “I will build My church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:18)

I realized that there were some things that I had missed in my study of this revelation that was spoken to the Apostle Peter.

First, as in the days of Jacob, we realized God IS quite capable of fulfilling His promises with or without me. The important thing here is that I get my part right and then allow Jesus to fill His role.

Second, when Jesus is the architect of the church the gates of hell will not overpower the church.

As in the days of the early church, the leaders were in a place of constant prayer, fasting and worship until the Holy Spirit spoke His instructions; He would accompany their efforts.

“In the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers…While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’ So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them out.” (Acts 13:1-3)

Who has to be reminded of the ministry that ensued as Barnabas and Saul set out on their journey? Hearing from the Lord was so important that even after they all agreed that they were to send Barnabas and Saul, they entered back into a time of prayer and fasting, presumably for more specific direction from the Holy Spirit. The next verse goes on to say that, “The two of them, sent on their way by the Holy Spirit…” There is another clue about what the Holy Spirit was revealing to this company in verse 47. “For this is what the Lord commanded us: ‘I have made you a light to the Gentiles…” The Holy Spirit had some very distinct instructions for them. I believe that the Holy Spirit still has some very specific instructions for those who will wait with the same attitude of prayer, fasting and worship.

We were beginning to seeing a very important guiding principle from the Lord. His presence will lead and as scripture also indicates, His presence will resist if we will listen. Later as Paul continued his travels he was forbidden to preach in certain areas and in a dream God gave him specific instruction for ministry.

“Now when they had gone through Phrygia and the region of Galatia, they were forbidden bythe Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia. After they had come to Mysia, they tried to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit did not permit them. So passing by Mysia, they came down to Troas. And a vision appeared to Paul in the night. A man of Macedonia stood and pleaded with him, saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’ Now after he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go to Macedonia, concluding that the Lord had called us to preach the gospel to them.” (Acts 16:6-10)

The guiding factor in the early church that we had overlooked was His manifest presence. What evidence did we have that the Lord’s presence was with us? Certainly none like that was evidenced in the early church. But the better question was: When was the last time we had fought our fleshly appetites to do something, anything and instead stopped and waited on the Lord for instruction?

The truth is we had run so far ahead of the Lord that almost everything that we were doing we had no specific direction from the Lord on. It is risky business indeed and the stakes are way too high for us to continue on presuming upon the presence of the Lord.

This account of the early church leaders posturing themselves before the Lord in prayer and in patient waiting was a very new thing for me and the elders.

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Learning to Hear Jesus’ Voice
A road map would have been really nice right about then. The elders continued to try to navigate through the many questions that had come up. We all agreed that the Lord was convicting us about our foundation that we were building upon. We had allowed ourselves to be swept up in a program based, and an event-based craze. Victory Fellowship had become a very good marketer of - Victory Fellowship! I wish that I could say that our motives were to market the gospel, that would sound a little better, but it would not be true. Even our evangelism and outreach strategies were designed to make a good impression and hopefully get a few more people in our church. We were not doing any of these things because they were birthed out of a place of prayer!

The problems did not start until we began talking and praying about how to redo our shaky foundation. Jesus had come to Victory Fellowship with fire to test what sort of foundation we had built upon. When we began to realize what this meant, it was not “setting well” with everyone. A lot of patience was needed at this important juncture.

After we ceremonially placed all of the programs and agendas on the table and asked the Lord to remove anything that was not from Him things began to happen. It took a couple of weeks but Jesus began to speak to our hearts.

It was worse than any of us suspected. Jesus began to show us our motives for doing what we were doing. Again I began to feel the weight of the responsibility of the leadership of the church. But this time I was not alone, the men who sat around that table felt it and were crying out with me for God to forgive us and for the way we were leading His church. There was brokenness in the leadership, and that brokenness that led to deep repentance

If we were to stop everything we did that was out of a motive that was not from Him, we would not be doing much. So slowly, over a period of weeks we stopped many of the programs and began to pray about the way of we were administrating the church. We simply tried to wait on the Lord and listen to see if Jesus would show up and teach us what to do. And He did.

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Personal Journal: September 2, 2004
Psalm 27:14 Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.

Isaiah 8:17 I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding His face from the house of Jacob. I will put my trust in Him.

Isaiah 45:15 Truly you are a God who hides Himself, O God and Savior of Israel.

Demands of life scream at me not to wait…

The offer that Satan made to Jesus to rule over the kingdoms of the earth if He would worship him was an offer that would be a shortcut to Jesus ultimate position. It was a shortcut to ruling – but in submission to Satan!

Personal Journal: September 7, 2004
The noise of the world is like anesthesia that deadens our pain, drowns out the voice of God and blinds us to the needs of others.

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