Desperate People In Desperate Times

Chapter 5
Desperate Leaders Follow Jesus

“Then Jacob said, ‘O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, the LORD who said to me, 'Return to your country and to your family, and I will deal well with you: I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies and of all the truth which You have shown Your servant; for I crossed over this Jordan with my staff, and now I have become two companies. Deliver me, I pray…” Gen 32:9-11 (NKJV)

Jacob had reason to fear as he faced his brother. He quickly reminded the Lord of His promise and asked once again for His mercy to attend the meeting. Fear and distress did not stop Jacob from his God-appointed meeting with Esau. Now his destiny was completely in the hands of His God and his brother.

As I read this story of Jacob I hear the stress that is on this man. He works to minimize his losses by dividing his family into two groups but there is no guarantee in his mind how this is going to turn out. He is throwing himself on the mercy of God and the mercy of his brother, Esau.

At what point does the risk outweigh the reward? Do you think that there were concerned family members who were counseling him to cancel his appointment with his brother?

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The Visitation of Jesus
One of tests that we all have had to pass is the offense test. I did not know that the offense would come from the Lord. Turns out I am in good company.

“Then Jesus went thence, and departed into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, ‘Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.’ But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, ‘Send her away; for she crieth after us.’ But he answered and said, ‘I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ Then came she and worshipped him, saying, ‘Lord, help me.’ But he answered and said, ‘It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.’ And she said, ‘Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table.’ Then Jesus answered and said unto her, ‘O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt.’ And her daughter was made whole from that very hour” Matt 15:21-28 (KJV)

Notice that at the cries of the woman Jesus first ignored her. To make matters worse the disciples, taking their cue from Jesus’ non-response, thought that He did not want to be bothered by her, so they encouraged Him to send her away. What an environment to get a prayer request answered!

What Jesus does next is simply alarming! He as much as calls this woman of Canaan a dog. That is the door slamming shut for most of us. Who would tolerate such a statement? This Canaanite did not see this as the door slamming shut, but she saw the door crack open and she responded fast.

Leaders who do not pass the offense test from the Lord are leaders who are not desperate.

Our congregation, the daughter in the story, was sick. We were not seeing many signs that Jesus was pleased with us but it did not seem to matter because we had not come to the place of being desperate.

We had come up with a sophisticated way of spelling success. We spelled success by numbers and dollars, exactly opposite of how Jesus spelled success.

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How Does Jesus Spell Success?
At the height of Jesus’ ministry there was a very large crowd following Him. He had preformed some amazing miracles and the news of His power and authority spread.

At a point when I would have been putting together strategy to take us to the “next level,” Jesus calculated the level of dedication His followers had to the truth of His message and then He preached the following sermon;

“Then Jesus said to them, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down from heaven--not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever." John 6:53-58 (NKJV)

Jesus did not just preach this truth; He drove this point home by emphasizing it again and again.

The result of Jesus’ message that day was predictable;

“From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more” John 6:66 (NKJV).

Jesus did not preach His message for the purpose of shrinking the numbers of His followers, but it was and continues to be a message that offends and receives that result.

Yet, according to Jesus, this message is absolutely essential to life and growth to maturity in the Kingdom of God.

If we are measuring success by dollars and numbers, we might conclude that the risks for loss are too great if we teach such a truth. We might even reason that it would be irresponsible to preach in such a strait-forward way. Our alternative is to water down essential but offensive massages to make them more palatable to our compromised ways.

The truth is that if we want the presence of Jesus, we must follow Jesus’ ways. And it must be acceptable to have people (and their money) leave. In our case, we had to sincerely bless people as they chose to leave our church and make sure that they are planted in a church they can be comfortable with.

It was not easy for us to make such a transition. We had worked hard for years to grow to the place that we were. In the past if a family left the fellowship we would make an effort to persuade them not to leave. Now the Lord was leading us to bless them without any argument.

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More Provoking
Jesus also began to provoke us to examine why we did what we did. For example, why did we separate the family immediately upon entering the building to departments? Why did we spend so little time in prayer? Why did we take attendance? I have a three inch binder with growth studies for the past fifteen years along with tithing statistics. Why did we do this? I reasoned that we needed this to calculate if a project is possible, based on the giving of each person who attends a service.

The Lord began to show us how many of the practices of our church were offensive to Him. So, we repented as leaders to God and stop what was offending Him.

As we look back over the course of the past four years and as the things disappeared, God was faithful to put it on our heart to implement the things that would please Him.

I already mentioned the hour of prayer before service. The teens began to meet for prayer before their weekly meeting. The elders began to pray together weekly for God to continue to lead them. We also have corporate fast days.

Monthly fellowship lunches were started by our hospitality group because we saw that people were disconnected from one another, there was very little community among us.

Children started staying with parents during worship and participating in taking communion together as a family, which we began serving each week.

Later, we added prayer teams in the front during worship that anyone could go to, to have their needs prayed for. A short time later we added two prophecy teams available for anyone.

The Lord was coming to us to lead and then to watch if we would trust Him to follow. Once we did lay our own agendas down and began to just wait on Him to give instruction, He was faithful each time we took a step forward, to meet us.

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Turning A Large Ship
One of the man made arguments for not following Jesus is, “well, it takes a long time to turn a ship around.”

Perhaps the answer to this line of thought is in the idea of what kind of ship we really are.

In a time of war if a ship is given an order to turn from a certain coordinance and to go a different direction, there is an understanding that lives are at stake. The person that is in charge of the vessel does not have the perspective that the director of the army strategy does nor does he have the luxury to question the orders. So his job is to do exactly what is ordered as quickly as possible.

We have to be honest and accountable for what our commander is speaking in these days. That is not to insinuate that we are insensitive toward the need to carefully explain what we believe the Lord is saying to the people we lead.

If what we mean by the concern for “turning a large ship around” is that it takes time to prepare for new mindsets, I could not agree more. But if this is an excuse to stay the course because of the risk of losing popularity I only have to remind you of the Titanic. Its captain ignored numerous warnings about the water conditions. I am sure that the guests on board the Titanic could have overlooked arriving late or experiencing some discomfort if it would mean saving their lives.

Studies show that the church could use some direction change. Researcher, George Barna reports in his book, Revolution, Finding Vibrant Faith Beyond the Walls of the Sanctuary, some startling findings.

“Eight out of ten believers do not feel they have entered into the presence of God, or experienced a connection with Him, during the worship service.” ¹

“The typical church believer will die without leading a single person to a lifesaving knowledge of and relationship with Jesus Christ.” ²

“Only 9 percent of all born-again adults have a biblical worldview” ³

“Fewer than one out of every six churched believers has a relationship with another believer through which spiritual accountability is provided” ⁴

This is only sampling of many alarming facts that Barna’s studies have found in the American church. It is sobering as you read the information that he provides.

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Charting A New Course
Our early days of change were anything but smooth. We were transitioning from something that was very familiar, to something that we had very little understanding about what it would mean for us. If we were to make the same transition now I am sure that we could have made the followers feel much more confident about where we were going.

However, there is a sense of urgency in the hour in which we live for leaders who will follow the call when it is heard. Thankfully, the majority who stayed as we made our way through the rapids were ready to be called up to a higher level. There were many emails and personal responses of encouragement to continue. I give my heartfelt congratulations and sincere appreciation to the body of believers that I have been so privileged to serve for over 20 years.

There have also been many others who have joined with us during our journey and some because of our journey. To them I also want to express my appreciation.

These are the heroes of our journey who heard the call of Jesus coming from their leaders. It was not an eloquent or a well rehearsed message. But it was as if the Lord was commanding His troops to the battle of their life and for their life. The urgency of the message matched the intensity of God speaking through His prophet Joel.

“The LORD gives voice before His army… ‘Now, therefore,’ says the LORD, ‘Turn to Me with all your heart, With fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.’ So rend your heart, and not your garments; Return to the LORD your God, For He is gracious and merciful, Slow to anger, and of great kindness; And He relents from doing harm. Who knows if He will turn and relent, And leave a blessing behind Him-- A grain offering and a drink offering For the LORD your God? Blow the trumpet in Zion, Consecrate a fast, Call a sacred assembly; Gather the people, Sanctify the congregation, Assemble the elders, Gather the children and nursing babes; Let the bridegroom go out from his chamber, And the bride from her dressing room. Let the priests, who minister to the LORD, Weep between the porch and the altar; Let them say, ‘Spare Your people, O LORD, And do not give Your heritage to reproach, That the nations should rule over them. Why should they say among the peoples, 'Where is their God?' Then the LORD will be zealous for His land, And pity His people. The LORD will answer and say to His people, ‘Behold, I will send you grain and new wine and oil, And you will be satisfied by them; I will no longer make you a reproach among the nations.” Joel 2:11-19 (NKJV)

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A New Evaluation
Joel’s call was intended to wake the nation to realize their spiritual condition and call them to repent.

God’s military strategy is not to assemble the greatest military minds at the table to evaluate our strength. But to call a fast, and to weep and to mourn for our condition of compromise. It is to sanctify what has been defiled.

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Finding Partners
Thankfully we did not have to make this journey alone. Although there are not too many voices that are speaking in these terms, we found a few. The first came from Rhonda Hughey and her team at Fusion Ministry. They provided encouragement and counsel along the way that was a great help. They were the coaching team for us.

When we made the decision to move in this new direction, my wife Carolyn was right by my side. She was in total agreement with every step and never once questioned it. I do not believe that it would have been possible for us to move in this direction without this support. Further, I would not recommend any leader radically change directions in their own ministry without the full support of their spouse.

There are those forerunners from other nations who have gone before us. We made every effort to listen and apply what we were hearing from them as well.

What a pleasure it was to spend ten days with over forty Transformational leaders from over twenty-five countries at the Global Transformation Summit in Brazil. Very early on in my time with these leaders I became keenly aware that this would be a rare blessing for me and other leaders from America.

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Brazil — A Nation in Transation
Brazil is a nation that is beginning to experience the manifest presence of Jesus.

The Brazilian people are very loving, social people, so each leader was only too happy to give time for anyone to ask many questions. Some of those I had opportunity to visit with I had already heard because they were presenters in the round-tables, so I had some history about their story. I was interested in getting to the “guts” of the movements so I asked questions like, “What is the most significant thing that you did to get the church to this place of transforming revival?” And, “What is the most important thing that is happening right now in your city?” They gave long and simple answers that were peppered with words like; united city wide prayer, humility, repentance, and unity.

Like many of you, I had heard about the many manifestations that were occurring in this nation. Leaves glow at night on a mountainside where believers gather to hold all night prayer vigils, and also about a city that had experienced years of drought whose citizens had turned to “spiritists” for help. For over four years a united city church went to a place on the side of a mountain to pray every day and many times all night. One day on the way to the place of prayer water was flowing in the river bed that was dry the day before. When they reached the place where they prayed, water was gushing from under a rock and has since provided water for the city. Many are turning to the Lord as a result of these miracles.

However, in all of my interviews with these leaders, without exception, not one of them mentioned any of these miracles! I had to ask specific questions about these things. And their answers were absolutely surprising. While they gave glory to God for these things in nature, they were careful to say that these were not the most important or significant things that were happening but rather a result of the most important things that the church was doing. Pastors are repenting to one another for jealousy, a competitive spirit, leaders are coming together on a regular basis for accountability and getting to the root issues in the city. This I found amazing!

I had the opportunity to visit several of the places where these believers pray night and day. One was on the second highest mountain top in the city of Belo Horizonte. The highest point is also a place where believers hold night and day prayer. These two points are about three to four miles apart from each other.

On one of the days a group of seven of us visitors arrived in our van which drove us part way up this mountain side. We parked and walked across the street to a broken up sidewalk to make our way to the entrance gate. As we walked on the sidewalk the presence began to envelop all of us. It was a sweet presence of Jesus that was like a welcome mat into this meeting place. We responded to the presence with tears and laughter. The Lord had our attention. Gone were the conversations about the lovely meal we shared together or any other small talk.

We all entered through the gate and started up the two hundred foot incline. As we did, we began to hear the cries that were coming from the top of the mountain, men and women who were pleading with God for their city. This mountain top had become a place where the Lord leans close to hear His people and respond to their prayer.

As I moved close to these people who were crying out, I was overcome by the burden, their burden for the city, and could do nothing except weep and join the chorus of the desperate cries for the souls of Belo Horizonte. Every breath I breathed in was like I was breathing in the burden and the presence of the Lord. Out of that burden I began to cry out for the souls of a city that I did not know in a way that I had never done in my own city.

It was obvious that these people had counted the cost of following Jesus, decided to follow and now Jesus had come close to them and made certain places His habitation.

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Fiji
I was also privileged to attend a Summit in the nation of Fiji. As the guests from America visited the villages that had been transformed by the presence of Jesus the tangible presence of Jesus was thick. We testified that the joy and peace of the Lord was as noticeable as humidity is in the air. This is the reward of leaders who humble themselves and follow Jesus. The reward is Him!

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