Day 77 – Calling, Ministry and Assignments

I cannot believe it, but my internship is almost over. I only have 3 more days left after today. Craziness! Dale has decided to take the last three days of class to talk about our calling, how God views work and how we can stand strong when we go home. Today, we discussed calling, ministry and assignments.

Calling:

Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. Deuteronomy 6:4-6

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. Mark 12:30

Dale presented the idea that this is our primary calling: to love God wholeheartedly. This really resonates with me. As much as I enjoy counseling, it doesn't satisfy me the way that intimacy with God does. My time here at IHOP-KC has deepened my certainty that I was made to love God and to be loved by God. When I sit in this room, I sing to God, I talk to Him and tell Him what I'm thinking and how I'm feeling, I study the Bible and ask God questions, and I ask Him to move in my life with provision, to bring healing, to share with me what He is thinking and feeling and to move in the lives and hearts of those that I love. My life is very simple and I am confident that this has been one of the richest seasons of my entire life. I am not literally rich, but I feel rich in my heart. God's love toward me is everlasting. It is driving out every single one of my fears. His peace passes my understanding and guards my heart and mind. Jesus is making His joy full in me. God is teaching me how to rest in Him and He is showing me that He restores my soul.

So, yes, I want to accept this life calling. This is nothing else that I would rather do FOREVER than to love my God with all of my time, all of my money, and all of myself.

Ministry: This is the context or physical place in which I live out my calling.

For me, at least in this next season of life, my ministry is in building the Rock River House of Prayer and counseling at The Glenwood Center. I am already wondering if I can block my clients in the afternoons and evenings to try and do an early night watch shift at our HOP. I have grown to love ministering before God in the night and would like to help develop more of a night watch in Rockford. I continue to ask God to equip me to do private practice counseling and to bring me the clients that He wants me to work with. Truly, the lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. I am very excited about this next season of my life and all of the ministry that God has for me in Rockford, IL!

Assignments: The specific individual tasks, jobs God gives you to do that are simple acts of love and obedience.

I continue to ask God for an anointing to partner with Him in His ministry of restoring hearts and for opportunities to minister to orphans. I hope that He will provide assignments for me to work with orphans in a greater way. I also think that He wants me to continue to partner with Exodus Cry in praying for the ending of Human Trafficking on a weekly basis. So, these are some of my assignments.

Day 74 – The Perseverance of Jesus

Wow, the Encountering God service was great tonight! I strongly encourage you to check it out through the archives. Mike Bickle preached on the Perseverance of Jesus as seen in Isaiah 49:1-7. He explained how perseverance is a characteristic that Jesus needed in His humanity, at His first coming. God does not have any obstacles and nothing troubles Him. But Jesus, as a man, experienced the same difficulties and troubles that we do. He needed perseverance to endure to the end and continue in obedience to God. I really enjoyed how Mike operationalized perseverance in our context and I want to share it here:

"Perseverance includes continuing to faithfully press into God and to serve in small things in the face of frustrating circumstances, lack of cooperation, and many other annoying issues which may include lack of finances, lack of appreciation, poor health, disappointing relationships, etc. It is a form of "hiding" when God's favor is seemingly withheld and things do not work right."

Isn't that encouraging?! I felt so affirmed when I read this statement on the notes. Mike went on to talk more specifically about how Jesus was hidden by God and how He persevered through seasons of hiddenness in His life. He also talked about how we see two different perspectives on Jesus' life and we have a similar choice to make with regards to how we will view our life in God.

He (God) has made My (Jesus) mouth like a sharp sword, in the shadow of His hand He has concealed Me; and He has also made Me a select (or sharpened) arrow, He has hidden Me in His quiver. He said to Me, "You are My Servant, Israel, In Whom I will show My glory." But I said, "I have toiled in vain, I have spent My strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely the justice due to Me is with the Lord, and My reward with My God." Isaiah 49:2-4

From man's perspective, Jesus' life and ministry was unimpressive. He spent the first 30 years of His life in complete hiddenness, presumably living an extremely normal life as a carpenter and loving and obeying God through His faithfulness in small things. Jesus has 3 ½ years of ministry at the end of His life which are impressive, but this ends with Him being killed and only a group of about 120 people who remain His faithful followers. From an earthly point of view, it looks like Jesus "toiled in vain and spent His strength for nothing." But, God's perspective is completely opposite. Before Jesus even entered into ministry, God said that Jesus was His beloved son and that He was well-pleased with Him. (Matt 3:17) God saw how Jesus loved and served Him well and faithfully cared for the small things that God had given Him to do during His season of hiddenness. And, God was well-pleased! His heart was moved by Jesus' obedience and the way that Jesus' heart responded and yielded to His leadership. Jesus, for His part, recognized that His reward was with God and He had confidence that His Father was pleased with His life. He decided to live for God's approval alone and endured the difficulties that He must have faced in knowing who He really was, but having to live life as a normal man. He allowed God to raise Him up at the appointed time and did nothing that He did not see His Father doing.

This really challenges and encourages me because I get frustrated when I encounter difficult circumstances and the other annoying issues like lack of finances, lack of power and lack noticeable results. I pray for people and they aren't healed. I ask God to break through in my life or in someone else's and nothing seems to happen. I want to live a life that is significant to God, but my love and my faith seem so incredibly weak and feeble. I experience my daily struggle with sin and think my offering to God is so small. But, I don't want to quit. I want to love God forever. So, I commit again to be a faithful servant, no matter how small or insignificant the things that He has given me seem to be. And I pray 2 Thes 3:5, "May the Lord direct MY heart into the love of God and into the patience of Christ." I need the patience of Christ to be faithful to the end, as He was, and I need the love of God to fuel my heart along the journey. So, even if the things that God has entrusted to you seem small, be encouraged. God's eyes are on you and He is watching the secret movements of Your heart. If we persevere until the end, then we will also have our moment to hear:

Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. (Remember, we still have the millennium to really rule and reign with Jesus!) Enter into the joy of your Lord. Matthew 25:21

Day 70 – Proximity to Jesus

Dale is teaching us about the Millennial Kingdom this week. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this, it is the 1,000-year period in which Jesus will rule the earth in righteousness. He will literally be King of the entire earth and will rule from a throne in Jerusalem. And, we will rule and reign with Him! (Revelation 5:10 and 20:4, 6) According to Mike Bickle's notes, "At this time the Kingdom of God will be openly manifest worldwide affecting every sphere of life (political, social, agricultural, economic, spiritual, educational, law enforcement, family, media, arts, technology, athletics, environment, social institutions, etc." During this 1,000-year period, we are going to partner with Jesus to restore the earth so that God can come and dwell with people on earth once more. Resurrected saints will serve in all of these spheres to bring Jesus' leadership and restoration to the entire earth.

I'm still studying all of the Scriptures that accompany these notes, but the Millennium and ruling and reigning with Jesus sounds pretty great to me. I have already been praying a lot more about what it looks like to partner with Him in my work as a counselor. I am just a few weeks away from going back to work. One of the things that I have learned that I really, really want to hold on to is that God loves me and I love Him. This is my primary life calling. I really enjoy the work of counseling, but I know that helping people is my secondary calling. I can only do it well out of the overflow of my primary calling: being a lover of God. And, I have been asking God to anoint me to partner with Him even more in His work of restoration. I want to be able to work with those who have been the most broken and crushed and see them encounter Jesus and be restored to wholeness. I believe that this kind of healing can only come through Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit, and I am asking Him to let me partner with Him and to teach me how to do this kind of work. I know that will not be possible outside of a lifestyle of prayer and fasting.

But today, we listened to a teaching about eternal rewards. Mike said that there will probably be a few billion believers in God's eternal family. It will be impossible for Jesus to be in close proximity to everyone. We will all have the Holy Spirit, so we will always have access to God. But, we will not always have access to Jesus. I felt slightly shocked at this realization! When I imagine Heaven, my favorite part is seeing Jesus face to face, hearing His voice and actually doing things with Him. I never thought about the fact that I would have to share Him with a few billion other people. I want to have as much proximity to Jesus as I can possibly have in Heaven. How can I start pursuing this now?

But Jesus called them to Himself and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It is not this way among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave; just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many." Matt 20:25-28

If I want to be near to Jesus forever, then I need to be great in His kingdom. I need to become like Jesus, as a servant, to become great in His kingdom. I want to cultivate intimacy with God this side of Heaven so that I can enjoy more face time with Jesus in Heaven. So, I commit myself to loving and obeying Him daily. I want to learn how to submit to Jesus' leadership in the small details of my life now so that He can entrust me with greater responsibilities during the Millennium. I want to agree to God's discipleship plan for me, even when it involves difficult circumstances and confronting the ugliness of my heart, because I want to be great in the kingdom of God. I would love to be given a position in the Millennium that would allow me to work with orphans or people rescued from human trafficking during Jesus' 2^nd coming. I think that it would be incredible if my life and training now was preparing me for a much greater ministry later. Plus, I know how God feels about widows and orphans. I'm hoping that this kind of work will also give me more face time with Jesus in the Millennium. I just want to be as close to Him as I can possibly be forever and I am realizing that how I live now impacts how I will live then.

Day 67 – Blessed is he who is not offended because of Me

Now when John, while imprisoned, heard of the works of Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to Him, "Are You the Expected One, or shall we look for someone else?" Jesus answered and said to them, "Go and report to John what you hear and see: the blind receive sight and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who does not take offense at Me." Matthew 11:2-6

Jesus was referencing messianic prophecies found in the book of Isaiah. He knew that John and his disciples would recognize these references and understand that He was the Messiah by fulfilling them.

Then the eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped. Then the lame will leap like a deer… Isaiah 35:5-6a

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners. Isaiah 61:1

Jesus finished His explanation to Johns' disciples by saying, "And blessed is he who does not take offense at Me". Isaiah 61 clearly states that the Messiah will "proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners". John was in prison. Jesus knew that John would not be released from prison and that he would shortly be put to death. This would be a great opportunity for Johns' disciples to feel offended at Jesus. I can imagine a list of reasons why they would have thought that Jesus, as the Messiah, would set John free from his captivity. Jesus, John is your cousin, he prepared the way for your ministry, he has lived his entire life as a faithful Nazirite and setting prisoners free is one of your most important responsibilities as the Messiah. Johns' disciples must have been shocked and hurt when the news came that King Herod had put John to death. Hopefully they remembered what Jesus had said about "he who does not take offense at Me."

This has really impacted me this week because Jesus has been revealing some areas of deep offense in my heart. I have discovered that my offense is also related to things that God has not done in His leadership of my life. Let me give you a few examples:

• I have been offended that God has not always healed me physically, despite LOTS of prayer for healing. More specifically, I REALLY didn't want to have surgery in July and I felt deeply offended at God that I had to have the surgery and pay for it when He could have healed me supernaturally.
  
• I have been offended that God has not let me get married yet. I have wanted to get married and have kids since I was a little girl. I'm 30 now and God is increasingly stirring my heart to care for and adopt orphans, but God has not given me a husband yet.
  
• I have been offended that God has not brought my brothers back to pursuing relationship with Him despite the fact that lots of us have been praying for them for years and God has spoken all kinds of prophetic promises over them for years.
  
• I have been offended that God has not been growing the House of Prayer in the Rockford region faster, even though a faithful group of us have been contending.
  

I could go on and on, but I hope that you get the point. In summary, I have discovered that my heart is easily offended by Jesus' leadership and I feel extremely unblessed or unhappy when my heart is offended at Him. So, I am confessing and repenting every time I discover offended feelings. I remind myself that it is written, "Just as the Father has loved Me [Jesus], I have also loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full." (John 15:9-11) I remind myself that Jesus wants His joy to be in me and for my joy to be made full. He knows that this will only come through obedience and an unoffended heart. I set my heart to love and obey Him again and I ask Him to help me keep my heart unoffended. I confess and pray until my feelings change, "Jesus, I love your leadership in my life. The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places. (Psalm 16:6a)."