The Leaders Perspective on the Future
INTRODUCTION
Part 1
We will never accurately find our place in the kingdom work of God until we come to possess a Christlike view of eternity. How we view our lifetime and how we view eternity is of utmost importance.
God certainly has both a plan and a purpose for our lives. It is sadly true that many people experience only a small part of God’s plan and discover little of His greater purpose for their lives. In order to make effective and divinely encouraged decisions about our futures, we must acquire God’s wisdom.
Making decisions about the future of your ministry without a clear sense of wisdom imparted by the Holy Spirit is dangerous. The Bible tells us that we should seek and pray for wisdom. “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90). This prayer of Moses sums up living in God’s wisdom from three perspectives or three key words: eternity, brevity, and priority.
- Eternity (Eternal Perspective)
- Brevity (Empowering Purpose)
- Priority (Essential Priority)
1) Eternal Perspective
We are seeing many paradigm shifts in our rapidly changing and ever more complex world.
Our perspective on the great issues of life defines us as a person. It is at the very core of all that motivates us day after day and in all situations. Our perspective determines how we view the events of life and how we interpret our call and present opportunities. Without an eternal perspective, our methods and motives will become secular and self-centered. We will do what we want to do and we will decide what God’s will, is based on what seems best for our career right now.
Psalm 90:1,2 says, “Lord you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.”
Without an eternal perspective, any decision we make about our future will be profoundly impacted by a knowledge that without Jesus Christ men are lost for eternity. We will be convinced that however we spend our life and in whatever way we serve God, we are a soul winner, a witness, a light! We will see ourself as the salt of the earth. An eternal perspective involves:
A) Faith in Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Church
Peter declared before Christ, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). Such faith, Jesus said, could only come from God. Next, Jesus announced: “On this rock I will build my church …” (Matthew 16:18). Jesus has promised that He will build His church, and His church is people!
The church belongs to God, not man. The church will be triumphant, for Jesus said, “The gates of hell will not prevail against the church” (Matthew 16:18). When we look at the church in the world today, we can often get discouraged. What we sometimes see is a messy, ambiguous, and imperfect church. It is true that there is no perfect church. It is a church rich in diversity. Charles Colson said, “The church of fact is always struggling to conform to the church of faith.” It is true that we sometimes get discouraged over the pettiness, failures, and discord we encounter. What a sorry mess people often make of things in the name of the church.
Let nothing steal your faith that Jesus will build His church on the Rock. I am glad to know that I am a part of this victorious church.
B) A Biblical World-View
Everyone has presuppositions, a general set of beliefs, a grid through which we perceive everything that happens — a general belief about what is true. Our presuppositions form the basis for our values, and these values determine how we behave.
The man or woman of God must not be shaped or controlled by the secular view of the world. We must not allow ourselves to become or live as bitter, critical people. Unless we keep faith in God, respect authority, and live holy lives, we will reflect the world-view in our attitude instead of the character of Christ.
In deciding our future and living our life, we must measure our activities, habits, use of time and money, sexuality, ego, etc. against one yardstick: Is it consistent with a Biblical view of life and does it bring glory to God?
Some of what we see in Christianity today is a deadly form of spiritual schizophrenia. Live mature spiritual lives and rise above the view of the world or you will never know the true peace of God.
Many Christians suffer from an inferiority complex and are intimidated by the world. An eternal perspective keeps us strong, positive, confident, and motivated in spite of all obstacles.
C) A Purpose That Makes Sense
What we do for God flows from who we are! Some people go on chasing goals to prove something that doesn’t have to be proven: they are already worthwhile. A sense of purpose gives meaning to our lives. When we have a purpose in life with an eternal perspective, we enjoy everything more. A man or woman without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder. This leads us to the second point, that of an empowering purpose.
2) Empowering Purpose
It has been said that a journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step. “A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by or like a watch in the night,” says Moses (Psalm 90:4).
We are reminded that we are mortal, that life is one of brevity. “What has most surprised me about life,” says Henry Kissinger, “is how quickly it passes.” We have important choices we must make throughout our life and we must not put off making these choices when confronted. The brevity of life calls us to face today as a “moment of truth.” Such moments of truth demand that we look at who we are, where we are, and what God has called us to do and to be. A man or woman of God lives with a sense of purpose made (empowered) supreme by the eternal perspective God has placed in our hearts.
Whenever a leader labors in church work without a clear sense of divine mission and purpose, it is easy to become bitter, disillusioned, and critical.
A) Searching for a Purpose
We need to make sure you discover and adopt the real purpose God has for your life. Everybody gets sidetracked at times. We find ourselves off-purpose for some reason. When that happens to us, our ministry, our marriage, etc., we must stop what we are doing and surrender our purposes to God. We must allow Him by His power to move us aright and turn our heart toward home.
B) Purpose to Keep Our Promise to God
“Nothing binds us one to the other like a promise kept and nothing divides us like a promise broken” (Leighton Ford).
Are we a promise keeper or a promise breaker? People are counting on us to be a promise keeper. God wants to empower us with purpose strong enough to keep us focused and directed. God wants us to keep our promises. So does our wife, children, family, friends, and congregation. Jesus was a promise keeper and He will empower us to keep our promises. A psychiatrist said that there are four basic needs we have as human beings. We need love, forgiveness, purpose, and hope. God has promised to meet all these needs as we trust, obey, and abide in Him.
C) Jesus Kept His Promise at Calvary
Jesus sealed His promise with His own blood and God the Father kept His promise on Easter morning with resurrection power. Everything hangs on the thread of promise.
Deciding our future involves making serious promises to God, our spouse, our children, and the church. There are certain characteristics of a promise keeper.
- Integrity
Ethics have almost become a joke to some people. Either we have integrity or we don’t. I am afraid some preachers have lost their integrity and don’t even realize it. They think they can get away with more than God will allow. They have broken too many promises without repentance. - Fidelity
What makes a marriage more than a contract, more than passion spilling over? What makes a family? A marriage and a family are created by a promise. I wonder how many lay leaders and spouses have not divorced just to keep their church positions. Yet, they have lost fidelity in their minds and fantasies. - Loyalty
In our world of change today, people are here today and gone tomorrow. Their promised loyalty lacks power and purpose when things go wrong. Sometimes we make promises we shouldn’t. Sometimes we end up breaking one promise to keep another. Boy, we surely live off-purpose lives sometimes, don’t we? We are all promise breakers somewhere along the way, but with some people it becomes a habit, a pattern, a way of avoidance. Deciding my future means deciding what promises I have made to God that I will not break, no matter what.
Exercise: Take a moment to list the promises you have made to God that you have vowed not to break.
An empowering purpose planted in our soul by the Holy Spirit will keep us fixed and even bring us back when we drift from your calling and purpose. God must be our point of reference, our focus in a world that is quickly passing.
3) Essential Priority
Brevity can make us frantic about our future when we lack a sense of eternity. Set in the light of eternity, brevity can call us to a sense of essential priority. In deciding my future, I must determine what is really important to me. Below is a measuring stick to help you work through this issue.
A measuring stick
What seems urgent now will not seem as important a year from now. Here are some ways to help you distinguish the difference:
What is urgent is measured by the running clock.
What is important is measured by the growing spirit.
What is urgent clamors loudly for action.
What is important knocks quietly for attention.
What is urgent says “do this now.”
What is important says “put this first.”
What is urgent is knowledge-intensive.
What is important is value-intensive.
What is urgent may boost my career.
What is important will build my character.
What is urgent shows in quarterly profits.
What is important is seen in empowering people.
What is urgent is having taller buildings.
What is important is building stronger families.
What is urgent may add to my reputation.
What is important will determine my destiny.
What is urgent makes me focus on my schedule, what I want to get done.
What is important makes me focus on God’s opportunities.
What is urgent matters most in time.
What is important matters most in eternity.
– Leighton Ford
Jesus understood the difference between the urgent and the important. He was able to live free from the “tyranny of the urgent.” While His life was only a short thirty-three years, His life was so complete that on the eve of Good Friday, He could say to His Father, “I have completed the work You gave me to do” (John 17:4).
A) Completing the Work
What an astonishing statement by Jesus! He knew His life was going to be brief, but He didn’t heal everybody, feed all the hungry, or personally forgive every sinner. How could He say, “I have completed my work”? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to say that at the end of your life! Jesus did not let the urgent crowd out the important.
B) The Most Important Thing
The most important thing is love. Love is supreme. Love is in such limited supply and you will not always reap love where you have sown. Love is not easy, for people can make life miserable.
To set priorities means to decide in advance what is important to us. If we are hoping to be a success in the ministry, we must decide how to spend our time based on our priorities, not our pressures. “Never let your ministry have a higher priority than your family.”
Jesus knew the secret of priority living. Mark tells us that “in the morning, a great while before day, He rose and went out to a lonely place and there He prayed” (Mark 1:35). Jesus got marching orders each day through His prayer life. He kept an eternal perspective, an empowered purpose, and He waited prayerfully for His Father’s instructions as to the essential priority. That is how He put off the urgent and concentrated on the important. That’s how He came to a decision about His future.
Make Christ’s method of facing and deciding the future your method. When you arrive at your decisions through this threefold security system — Perspective, Purpose, and Priority — you will make good decisions and you won’t find yourself blaming overseers, or the system, for your circumstances.
Paul wrote in Ephesians 5:15-17 (NASB): “Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men, but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil. So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.”
INTRODUCTION
Part 2
You have come to a very significant turning point, or crossroad in your life. You have committed yourself to go all the way for God in the ministry calling you know to be on your life. You may have started this journey a long time ago or a short time ago. However, your commitment to the ministry now takes on a new depth of intensity.
Committing your future to God requires self-examination on a regular basis. In order to commit your future to God now you must re-evaluate your life. You not only explore your outward lifestyle to make sure that this is in order but you also journey inward and reevaluate your motives, emotions, and attitudes.
Most of the time people follow their own thinking and choose their paths. You quickly begin to realize in the ministry that you cannot choose or control the consequences of your decisions. You also realize that, as you sincerely obey God and follow His will and direction, you cannot plan or predict where you will be or exactly which direction your life will take.
Committing your future to God is a step of faith and obedience. As you learn to trust God and abide in His care and will, you become fruitful and effective. As you yield yourself to God, you will find that He begins to knock off the rough edges. Your self-confidence will grow and your uniqueness and ministry gifts will shine forth. You will feel more humility, contrition, and tenderness. A sincere attitude of repentance and submission will grow in your mind. You will see more clearly than ever that you do not have all the answers; so clearly, in fact, that it will be embarrassing at times.
The walk of faith will bring a new found humility and Christ-like perspective from which to search the deep things of God. Humility brings maturity. Spiritual maturity is no longer content with the trite, clever slogans or methods, but seeks the real meat and substance of truth.
One of the great dangers in living committed to the will of God is that we can get off track and lose our focus. Having the right focus and perspective is essential. The devil is skillful at causing us to get side tracked and focus on the wrong things. It is then that we try to grab the reins from God and end up taking control of our lives.
I sincerely want to be a man whose heart is fully committed to God. It is the deepest vein of desire in my soul. In the inner, hidden place of my heart where no man has ever been, in the secret place where only God has been, there I yearn to really be a man after God’s own heart. I want to be a real, Biblical Christian. No fluff. No canned answers. No self-centered ambitions. I want to slay the flesh. I want to live in the power of the Holy Spirit.
If you want to make your commitment stick and you want to live your life for God, then press on today. Learn self-control and self-discipline. Learn the secrets of success and a life of joy.
God has a plan for the rest of your life! Commit your future to God. Keep probing, poking, penetrating, and striving to find God’s plan for your future. You will never walk in God’s will by standing still and doing nothing. Do all you know to do! Get going and believe God for miracles and answered prayers.
The secrets of living our life for God are found in John 15:1-17. Christ makes it clear to us in the ministry that we are the branches and He is the vine. We must abide in Him. Jesus said, “He who abides in me, and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from me, you can do nothing.”
1) The Secret of Living is Fruitbearing
We are to be fruit bearing branches. What is the fruit that God wants us to bear? It takes many different forms.
A) Winning others to Christ and helping them grow is fruit
“He who is wise wins souls” (Proverbs 11:30). “Follow me and you will become fishers of men” (Mark 1:17). It is a joy and privilege to win others to Christ. It is the result of allowing Christ’s life to flow through us and bear fruit.
B) Another kind of spiritual fruit is practical holiness of life
Holiness is nothing else but the beauty and character of God displayed in our everyday lives (Romans 6:22; 2 Corinthians 7:1). We cannot manufacture holiness. It must come from within.
C) A third kind of fruit we bear is the sharing of what we possess
Giving to God and in His name is not something we do, it is the result of what we are. When God is flowing in us, we cannot help but give. Giving and living are synonymous when we abide in God.
D) Christian character is a fourth kind of fruit
Galatians 5:22 tells us, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control …” These are qualities produced in us by the Holy Spirit and we cannot create substitutes for them. Only the life of Christ within can produce this fruit.
E) "Bearing fruit in every good work"
We are saved by grace… through faith (Ephesians 2:8, 9), but the result of salvation is always service. “Let your light so shine …” (Matthew 5:16).
Each one of us has our own ministry to fulfill. We have our own future to commit to God. No Christian is competing with any other Christian in the will of God. In the Christian life there is no such division as “secular” and “sacred.” All we do is a ministry unto the Lord. The Lord makes it clear that this fruit bearing is to be a continuous experience: “fruit … more fruit … much fruit” (John 15:1-8).
The secret of living is fruit bearing. If our future is committed to God, we will bear fruit. We will get involved in our calling. Whatever God wants us to do, we will be willing. If it means being a missionary — even a home missionary in America — we will be fruitful.
2) The Secret of Fruitbearing is Abiding
Commit your future to go! Walk through the doors He opens and abide in faith. How do we abide in Christ and His will? Remember Philippians 2:12-13, “… work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.”
- Abiding involves keeping in fellowship with the Vine so that God can work in us.
- Prayer is part of abiding.
- Confession is a third factor in abiding.
- A fourth factor is a desire to do His will (John 15:10). Let God have His way.
If we are abiding in Christ, there will be evidence in our lives that we are in contact with God.
EVIDENCES OF ABIDING IN CHRIST
- The first evidence is fruit.
- If we are growing in holy living, we will overcome temptations. The absence of temptation is not proof of abiding; the presence of temptation and testing is the proof. Bearing “fruit unto holiness” (Romans 6:22) is a daily process not a finished matter.
- We will find ourselves developing new values and wanting to invest our life in God’s will.
- We will not have to be bribed into working for God. We will discover and develop your gifts to go to work in His church as He leads us.
- We will find ourself praising the Lord as we abide in Him. We will praise Him for the blessings and the burdens as well. The Christian who does not abide in Christ gives thanks occasionally for some things, but the abiding Christian gives thanks always for all things.
If we do not commit our future to God and abide in Him, we do not bear fruit; if we do not bear fruit, the Father who is the Vinedresser, must deal with us! As John 15:6 states, we are then dried up branches thrown into the fire. We can get swept away into a wasted life. We can become disqualified — a castaway.
The last thing God wants to do is to take away our opportunity to glorify Him in fruitbearing. But a fruitless branch is a disgrace to the Vinedresser. If we are abiding, there will be times of pruning. This is the process of cutting out of our lives the things that hinder us from being more fruitful. God always wants us to reach our greatest potential. This explains why abiding Christians are often suffering Christians. We experience the Father’s pruning, and it hurts. God wants to cut away the excesses, the hindrances. He even cuts away things that we think are good. Yet He gives us something even more precious in return. Expect to be pruned if you abide in Christ.
3) The Secret of Abiding is Obeying
(John 15:10,14)
Obedience leads to abiding. When the child of God obeys the will of God, everything in the world works for him, but when he/she disobeys the will of God, everything works against him.
In the universe, only man questions and disobeys God’s will, because man (by God’s grace) has a will of his own. He was created to make decisions, and he can decide to disobey God.
You and I will do everything possible to avoid obedience. Yet, obedience is the very key to God’s blessings. There is no substitute for obedience. The blessings are not a reward for obeying, they are a result of abiding. Therefore, we must never bargain with God. Our obedience to His will and our commitment of our future to Him must be complete and unconditional.
If you want your ministry to be more fruitful as you now face this significant crossroad in your life, you must abide in Him. But remember, the secret of abiding is obeying.
As God’s children, we should want to obey Him so that we might abide in Him. The blessings we receive come from abiding, just as the abiding comes from obeying. It is obedience that releases the power of God in us but obeying is one of the most difficult things in the world. There is something perverse and selfish in our nature that tells us, “Do it your own way!”
Successful ministry requires that we understand the secret of obedience to God.
4) The Secret of Obeying is Loving
There are three levels of obedience.
A) We can obey God because we have to
This is the first level of fear. Fear can rob us of the real joys that God wants us to experience because we obey Him. Fear builds walls instead of bridges.
B) The next level of obedience is selfishness
We do not obey because we need to, but because we get something out of it! Many Christians live on the bargain basement level. Their obedience is measured by what God gives them; and if they do not get what they want, they often turn against God. We obey God because we know He deserves it and it is the right thing to do no matter how hard it is to do.
C) The highest motive for obedience is love
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). Why is love the highest motive for obedience?
- Love centers on the giver, not the gift.
- Love does not measure sacrifice. If we love God, we do not measure the cost of obeying His word. We simply obey. A love that calculates is not true love.
- There is no fear in love. “…but perfect love casts out fear…” (1 John 4:18).
What does God require of His people?
“And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require from you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways and love Him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul” (Deuteronomy 10:12).
CONCLUSION
The more we love God, the more we will obey Him. The more we obey Him, the more we will abide in Him. And the more we abide in Him, the more we will bear fruit.
Let us seek to know Him better as we commit our futures to His will. Successful Christians have learned the secrets of living. These secrets call for a loving, obedient, and disciplined life of prayer, study, and worship.
Paul advises us in Romans 12:1, 2 that we should:
- give God our bodies.
- give God our minds.
- give God our wills.
- give God our hearts.
When we surrender our heart, mind, and will to God each day, we will be able to abide in His will and draw upon His power.
In order to keep our futures committed to God, we must watch out for enemies. We must watch out for the little foxes which spoil the vines. It takes diligence and dedication to bear fruit for God. Once we become lazy and careless, we cease to bear fruit.
We need to search our hearts and confess our sins to God. We must totally commit our futures to God’s will and to a life of fruit bearing, abiding, obeying, and loving God with all that is in us.
