Desperate People In Desperate Times

Chapter 3
God Speaks to Desperate People

“…Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome.” (Genesis 32:27)

A new beginning was exactly what Jacob needed. His given name had stuck with him and he had carried out the prophetic meaning of the name, a deceiver and a supplanter.

A legal change of name, though expensive, is relatively easy today. To change the nature of an individual is not so easy. What we often overlook in this nature change in Jacob is the word, “struggled,” a synonym, suffered! Jacob’s metamorphosis did not come easy, it came with a high price, that price was the struggle of breaking free from the seeming safety of control and predictability.

God was the crew chief in charge of this nature change that would make this man, a man worthy of carrying the name, Israel.

Is it not interesting that God did not say a word about Jacob’s deeds? There is no rebuke for his lies…no mention of any of it. Instead God wanted an admission of guilt. And then in the final exchange between God and Jacob, Jacob was rewarded for this preliminary struggle with a new name, Israel.

I am sure this made as much sense to Jacob as it did when Jesus walked up to Simon and said, “Your name is Peter.” Or, when the angel came to Gideon and called him a mighty man of valor. The distance between what these men were in reality and what God spoke over them, is the place of struggle and suffering. All God required from Jacob, Simon, Gideon, or anyone else is a “yes,” an agreement with Him. Agreement with God is permission for Him to begin to work on the foundation.

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Early Beginnings
It was in college that I said yes to the call of God to the ministry. From that day there was never any intent to deceive anyone. The early years of Jacob’s life were very different than mine; yet, the Lord used his life to show me that there were some very real similarities.

From my first commission to pastor a small rural church in Iowa there was a “GO” in my heart. Everything that I had been trained to do, I was ready, and more than willing.

My wife and I quit our well paying jobs, pulled up stakes in our urban lifestyle and moved to a very rural community. I remember the first visit by my mother and father-in-law. We showed them around with some pride. First we showed them the church; we walked up and moved the rock that helped hold the door closed. It had an oil burning stove that sat in the middle of the sanctuary. Before each service I would go in and light it an hour before it was time to start. You did not have to worry about the water pipes freezing because there were none. The bathrooms were around the back, called outhouses. Quite a disadvantage to church growth, I thought, but folks around this rural community did not blink an eye.

You should have seen my in-laws eyes when we told them! The parsonage did have inside facilities — installed two years before we got there, hallelujah! You could actually look across our yard into a pasture of long horned steers. Well, Carolyn’s parents did not make a long stay of it — they gave their blessing and drove back home.

That small community of thirty or so people had two churches and as it turns out, years before the church where I was pastoring had been a split from the other church.

We hit the ground running, as they say. My wife and I did visitation, mailings, annual VBS for the children in the area, and everything else we could think of to do. Church growth is the result of hard work we were told. “Find a need and fill it” was another popular phrase.

My prayer life consisted of asking God to bless my efforts. After all could God resist such a sacrifice? We were giving our all — why? Because that was the way it was done.

Waiting was not a part of my vocabulary. Why would we wait? We had our orders, “Go into all the world,” and all of the parables of Jesus that admonish the hearers to go.

From that day until August of 2004 you could not tell me differently. The days that followed my encounter with the Lord my heart was different; I was being called by the Lord into a new thing. This was my Divine wake-up call.

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Wrestling with the Lord
Almost immediately I began to have some strong impressions that I knew were from the Lord. The first concerned my time. I felt as if Jesus was calling me to just sit with Him, no studying to prepare for a service with elaborate power point presentations, just quietly sitting with my Bible and journal.

Some of the things that the Lord showed me about me were alarming. And just as the case in Jacob’s life, God was not revealing this to change the fruit, but to change the root. All that I could do was to weep and repent. This went on for about six months. Almost daily I would go into the church sanctuary — the same place every day — and wait and meditate. And almost daily the Lord would confront the things in my heart that no one wants to admit are there. Jesus was there to offend me…my flesh…my way of doing things.

How nice it would have been to have a retreat center to go away to and figure this journey out and come back with a nice packaged presentation for the leaders and the church. No, my journey was ugly and everybody in our fellowship got a front row seat to it.

There were days that everything He said was for me and no one else. And then there were things that were for or about the church.

The Lord began to show me things about how I pastor His church. This emotion of Jesus was stirred in me after I had been led to the passage in Jeremiah 50:6:

“My people have been lost sheep; their shepherds have led them astray and caused them to roam on the mountains. They wondered over mountain and hill and forgot their own resting place.”

My heart broke as I meditated this verse knowing that I had been one of those shepherds. As these words sank into my spirit I became totally aware that much of my ministry leadership style had to change. I had touched the jealous heart of God and it was a terrifying thing. I will never want to stand before God and answer for the worldly ways and strategies that I had employed to lead His people.

It felt as if I was being driven to the floor to my knees and then completely prostrate before the convicting power of Almighty God. I was a lump of clay being remade by His hand. Again I found it very difficult to speak, only to think, ‘O God, please give me another chance!” And if I was given another chance I knew that there must be repentance before the congregation for this.

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Public Repentance
On that Sunday when it came time for me to speak I read this text from Jeremiah 50 and through tears spoke to the people about all that God had dealt with me about. The same conviction that was with me a few days before, attended the words that I spoke that morning. And at the conclusion I asked for forgiveness from the congregation.

I bowed my head and began to pray. I kept my eyes closed almost afraid to open them. When I finished praying I paused — keeping my eyes closed. After a couple of moments the silence was broken with the sound of a small child’s voice repenting for disobedience. I opened my eyes and to my surprise the majority of the church had joined me in the front, many of them weeping. The young boy’s prayer of repentance opened the flood-gates for repentance that morning. There must have been more than twenty people who repented of various things.

I had expected a reaction, but not like this. My imagination told me that if I really disclosed what as on my heart that morning the people would no longer respect my leadership. It was through those fears I spoke that morning and what happened was just the opposite of what I had imagined would happen.

There were other course corrections that the Lord would make. It seemed that many of our corporate meetings in those days were filled with confession and repentance. I had always preached about the need for repentance but never before been in so many services wher people were compelled to repent!

Because of my and the leadership’s willingness to publicly repent, we had unintentionally created a safe environment for other people to follow.

Even though the leaders and I knew that our decisions would have some negative effects on the attendance of the services, we knew that we were following the Lord in this journey. We also knew that when some decided to leave our fellowship that we could get them back, but we were not willing to alter our journey which would be the cost of their return. In this was the test of the Lord; will we continue to follow Jesus and bless those who would leave?

In an article by Arthur Katz entitled, Pretext or Reality?, he writes about the three tribes of Israel that decided to remain on the desert side of the Jordan River.

“…not all of the house of Israel crossed, but a portion of the tribes of Gad, Manasseh and Reuben chose to remain on the other side. They remained because the ground there was lush, and the grasses were high and they were cattle breeders, who obviously recognized something of immediate value. They were unwilling for that risk of a faith in what might be found on the other side. They pleaded with Moses and got what they wanted, and they were allowed to remain on the wrong side of the Jordan and have been subsequently lost to the whole history of Israel. The only melancholy reminder we have of the tribe of Gad, who chose the wrong side, are the Gadarenes of the New Testament time who raised pigs and were unwilling, even at a later time, for a deliverer to come because it proved expensive for the flesh. They much preferred to sustain their herds, rather than welcome Him who casting those same herds into the sea delivers from evil spirits!
What a commentary on the consequences of an unwillingness to cross over, of languishing on the wrong side. I think that the reason is always the same – because it is conducive to the ‘flesh,’ because back there we have an assurance of things that pertain to ‘herds’ (i.e., our immediate self-interest”).

It would be easy to go back to the way things were. It would seem to be the logical thing to do especially when finances were shrinking as families decided to worship elsewhere. This is the struggle, the suffering that produces a new nature.

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Leaning on Jesus
It was difficult and slow changing the way things were. I am, like all humans, a creature of habit. I loved spending hours studying in preparation to preach but for a long period my study and preparation time was used to be sitting before the Lord with my Bible and a prayer journal. God then challenged me to take my prayer journal, not my sermon notes to the pulpit.

The first few services that I followed these instructions were frightening. But over time it became very natural to pray and allow the Lord to speak His thoughts — then take those thoughts to the congregation of the Lord. Jesus is a very good teacher and He desires to teach through His servants.

At the beginning, the time spent in solitude was very hard and the conviction that the Lord brought was confrontive to all that had become normal to me. But as I continued, my spiritual disciplines turned into an appetite. There are still times that it seems like God is nowhere to be found in my life, but when I touch heaven for a moment it does not matter any more that I had to endure a season of drought.

There was a metamorphosis happening in my heart. Everything about my passions, pleasures, and emotions were in a state of change.

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Personal Journal Entry: August 12, 2004
Matthew 6:33 “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well .”

As I was meditating Matthew 6:33 today I felt Jesus say to me, “I know when you seek Me…and I know when you seek Me for things.” An immediate conviction came over me as I know that most of my coming before Him is for things.

Ezekiel 8:5-6 “…then I looked…and saw an idol…And God said to me, do you see what they are doing – the utterly detestable things…that will drive Me far from my sanctuary ?”

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