Joy Best

I Cor. 9:25 Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.

Let me explain the pic. This mural is on a wall in a slum village in Ethiopia we visited in Dec. Their plan is to educate and evangelize the children and see a whole country changed in a generation. The church is partnering with Compassion International and the effect is awesome. The principle is “take our seeming weaknesses, (slum kids with no future hope) and train them with Jesus’ truth, and see strength come where there was no strength. There IS a segue here… can you find it?

As church leaders we often have a sense of what we’re not good at, where we need to grow to produce a healthy church.  But unless we like looking dumb, we can simply avoid that area altogether,  practicing what we’re good at. It’s fun to use the gifts we’re strong in. It brings us joy to be working in our areas of confidence…..ahhhhh…this is what I was born for!

If we look at our natural bodies for a picture of how God works, to see His wisdom through the creation, we see that it is important to work on our weaknesses.  We train areas that are faltering so that strength can be built up. Gary had a lot of back pain some years ago. He  got some back exercises from our chiropractor, did them faithfully and he now has no back pain! I jog most days because that’s one thing that lowers my blood pressure. We both have embraced a healthier diet so that we won’t be taken out of the race with malfunctioning bodies. Practical stuff.

A nuclear family provides us with another picture of stretching and growing…in and out of our comfort zones! Not many of us are experts at training up all ages of kids.  I was better at little kids, Gary was better at understanding teens. If you love your children, you will stay with them and learn new skills, enduring the discomfort, in order to see them be equipped for life.

Apply this same principle to our weak areas as leaders and it looks much the same.  Whatever we practice we get better at.  Sometimes it is painful when we flex things that have not been used much, but eventually we become more adept. Here’s a story:

I have always loved to see people born into the kingdom, choosing a new life and following Jesus for a lifetime.  I looked around our church and noticed that we did a lot of training, but none of it was for pre or new Christians.  I really wanted someone who was good at this kind of stuff to do a class in this area. I would even help them doing-whatever they needed. The problem was I couldn’t find the person with this gifting. I felt the Lord ask me would you do this for Me?  My worst nightmare. But what can you say to the God who gave His most precious Son to buy me a life?

My worst fear was that no one would come.  You’d set it all up and no one would show up. I checked around and there seemed to be about a dozen people who were interested. OK, here we go…so the first night none of them show up. One guy showed up who was a drug addict.  He was a sweet guy and we spent the evening well with him. Of course I had my shirt in a knot when I got home and my conversation with the Lord was something like “this is just what I thought, no one showed up…I hate this. I don’t know what I’m doing.” Blah blah blah..I went on for awhile.  Then I felt like He said, “I don’t want you to evaluate, just do the 6 week course and talk to me about it when it’s over.”  Of course the next week the dozen people all showed up and the first night guy never did return. We had a 6 weeks adventure learning what it was to follow Jesus, to hear His voice, to live in forgiveness, be accountable, all these wonderful pieces of good news. I was terrified the whole time that God’s Spirit would get mixed up and not attend the class, but He was always there, I just had to calm down and wait for Him.

At the end we did have a talk, and He just encouraged me with what happens when I face my fears and walk right into them, facing certain death. Actually the fear was what died.

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