“Cage of Responsibility”
from the book “Wild Goose Chase” by Mark Batterson
Sunday, October 17, 2010: Nehemiah 1:1-11; Matthew 8:18-22
Introduction: If you have ever been to the zoo, you know you see lots of wild animals, but they are behind cages. While they are not tamed, by putting them behind cages, out of the wild, their wildness has been tamed some. I wonder if churches are doing the same thing to Christians. In a sense we try to tame the wildness from Christians in the name of Christ. We try and remove the risk, the struggle, the danger, and maybe we end up with caged Christians.
At the heart of what the Wild Goose Chase is about, is knowing that we long for something more; something a little less tame. It’s about entering into a relationship with Christ and then chasing after the Wild Goose so that we live our lives the way that God originally intended.
Today we start a 6-week series called Wild Goose Chase based on the book by Mark Batterson. This name, “Wild Goose,” refers to the Holy Spirit. It was the Celtic Christians who called the Holy Spirit this; An Geadh-Glas, or the Wild Goose. That’s a great description of what it’s like to live a Spirit-led life. We aren’t going to know where we are going most of the time, and this produces great anxiety in us. But there is another name for this, and that is ADVENTURE. A wild goose can’t be tamed or tracked. When we add the Holy Spirit into the equation of our lives, we won’t know who we will meet, where we will go, or what we will do. So this morning we start with the first cage: the ‘Cage of Responsibility.’
I. Irresponsible Responsibility- (Matthew 8:18-22)
a. Live life to the fullest- In the movie BRAVEHEART, starring Mel
Gibson, the main character is William Wallace. William Wallace has been fighting for freedom for his people, and he is captured. There’s this moment before he is about to be tortured and executed and he says this: “Everyman dies, not every man really lives.” With these words we realize an important truth: we need to try and live life with an ‘I have lived life to the fullest’ attitude. All of us are born, and all of us will die: we have a birth certificate and some day we will have a death certificate.
The sad truth is that many people die long before the date on their death certificate. That happens in lots of different ways: for some people, I think it is pain or brokenness or loss that robs them of life, the enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy, and life is taken away; I think for others, it is disappointment and failure and we just lose some of that life inside of us. But for many of us, it is more subtle, in that our day-to-day responsibilities numb us to the possibilities around us and the passions within in us. And it happens slowly, most of us don’t even know how or when it happens but at some point, if we’re honest, we stop living and we start dying. It’s almost like we’re buried alive by our pain or our disappointments or our failures or debt or our responsibilities.
There is nothing wrong with responsibilities. We all have responsibilities. I have responsibilities as a husband, as a father, as a pastor and I need to embrace those responsibilities. You need to fulfill your responsibilities. You need to take out the trash, you need to save for retirement, you need to pay your bills, but it is so easy to get buried alive by our day to day responsibilities and totally miss out on the opportunities for spiritual adventures that are all around us all the time. I think what I’m talking about is epitomized by one encounter that Jesus has with a man in the Gospel of Matthew.
b. Don’t make excuses- In Matthew 8, verses 18-22, Jesus gets into an
encounter with a scribe. The scribe seems to be moved by Jesus’ teaching because he says to Jesus in verse 19: “… ‘Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.’” This sets off the thinking of following Jesus, and one of His disciples puts a stipulation on his intent, as he says in verse 21: “… ‘Lord, first let me go bury my father.’ And Jesus said, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’” Now there are a few different takes on this by Bible scholars. It is possible that he was putting off following Jesus until his father died, maybe his father was sick and he was just waiting until that moment. It is possible that this young man didn’t want to follow Jesus to ensure that he got his father’s inheritance. It’s possible that he was afraid of leaving the family business while his father was still living. But I think part of us as we hear a story like this sympathizes with this young man? Like, what’s wrong with that? It seems reasonable and responsible, to look out for his family and bury his father.
But here is an important lesson I’ve learned in reading the Bible. When you are tempted to sympathize with someone other than Jesus, when something doesn’t make sense, there is a little dis-equilibrium, I think we need to take a closer look at what’s happening in the story. We need to get deeper into the scriptures and try to figure out what is happening here. You need to ask yourself: ‘Why am I feeling the way I am feeling?’
Here’s the line of thinking we need to have in regards to this passage: I think this young man was doing what many of us do. He was turning a responsibility into an excuse, and Jesus saw through this smokescreen. He was allowing a responsibility, the need to bury his father, to get in the way of his greatest responsibility and his greatest opportunity, which was following Christ. We do the same thing all the time. We turn our responsibilities into excuses and that is when our responsibility can become a form of irresponsibility. What happens is that our less important responsibilities begin to replace the more important responsibilities; and that’s when we’re practicing irresponsible responsibility.
II. The story of Nehemiah- (Nehemiah 1:1-11)
a. Nehemiah’s sad news- If you have a Bible I want you to open it up;
or if you didn’t bring your Bible you can use a pew Bible. We’re going to look at the passage in Nehemiah, chapter 1, on page 424. As I said earlier, we are going to talk about six stories and six cages over these next six weeks. This week I want to encourage you to read the whole book of Nehemiah. I think if you take this time and spend some time in the Book of Nehemiah this week, what will happen is, you’ll begin to apply God’s word to your life, you’ll begin to get insights all the more about what we are talking about this morning. Nehemiah 1:1-11: “The words of Nehemiah son of Hacaliah. In the month of Chislev, in the twentieth year (referring to the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes’ reign), while I was in Susa the capital. One of my brothers, Hanani, came with certain men from Judah; and I asked them about the Jews that survived, those who had escaped the captivity, and about Jerusalem. They replied, ‘The survivors there in the province who escaped captivity are in great trouble and shame; the wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been destroyed by fire.’ When I heard these words I sat down and wept, and mourned for days, fasting and praying before the God of heaven. I said, ‘O LORD God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments; let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and night for your servants the people of Israel, confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against you. Both I and my family have sinned. We have offended you deeply, failing to keep the commandments, the statutes, and the ordinances that you commanded your servant Moses. Remember the word that you commanded your servant Moses, “If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples; but if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts are under the farthest skies, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place at which I have chosen to establish my name.” They are your servants and your people, whom you redeemed by your great power and your strong hand. O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant, and to the prayer of your servants who delight in revering your name. Give success to your servant today, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man!’ At the time, I was cupbearer to the king.”
b. What is the passion?- Now there is no way I can tell you the whole
story during our time together this morning, that is why I encourage you to read the whole book of Nehemiah this week. To get into it though, let me give you a little bit of back-story. In 586 B.C. King Nebuchadnezzar invaded Judea and took many of the Jewish people captive back to Babylon. In 538 B.C. Zerubbabel lead the first remnant back to Jerusalem, about 43,000 Jews. In 458 B.C. Ezra returned with a remnant of about 18,000 and Nehemiah picks up the story at around 445 B.C. The bottom line is this, the Wall of Jerusalem is in total disrepair and the significance of that is this, for an ancient city, a wall was it’s first and last line of defense, so the city of Jerusalem is defenseless. So it’s a cup-bearer in Babylon, Nehemiah, has this passion to go back and to rebuild the wall. Against all odds, he goes and in 52 days, he rebuilds the wall of Jerusalem! He then goes on to serve as governor of Jerusalem for more than a decade. But here’s what I want you to see. It all starts with a single desire. Somehow this cup-bearer gets it in his mind, in his spirit that maybe God is calling him to do something about this problem. He doesn’t let the fact that he is not qualified to do it deter him. As far as we know, he has never even been to Jerusalem. As far as we know, he has no education, no experience that would qualify him to go and do this. Why is it a cup-bearer in Jerusalem who makes this happen? It doesn’t make total sense to me, but I know this, the people that God uses are the people that receive God-ordained passions, that sometimes seem crazy, that sometimes seem irresponsible, but in the midst of what might be a crazy idea, they run with it and truly make a difference.
When God puts a passion in your heart, you need to take responsibility for it. That’s where God’s people struggle to advance God’s Kingdom. So often the kingdom doesn’t really advance because we don’t really live that spiritual adventure because we don’t act on the passion that God has put in our heart. But you’ve got to act on it, whether it be human trafficking in a third world country, or inner-city education or helping to minister to the homeless, whatever that passion is, you need to take responsibility for it. You need to own it. You need to see the problem and then become the solution to it.
III. What do you want?- (Nehemiah 2:1-5; Psalm 37:4)
a. Identifying our God-passions-In Nehemiah, Chapter 2, the story
continues: the king sees that Nehemiah is sad and asks what is wrong. Nehemiah tells him about how his city, the city of his ancestors has been destroyed. The king asks Nehemiah what he wants, and Nehemiah tells the king he wants to rebuild it!
The king asked Nehemiah a very pointed question, what is it that you want? If I asked you that same question, what would you say? What is it that you want? Can you identify, what your God-ordained passion is? I think most people don’t get what they want because they really don’t know what they want, especially pertaining to their God-given passions. They’ve never really defined what they want out of life, never set any goals, never identified what those passions are, never defined a dream, and they have no idea what they want. Really, we are out of touch with the heart of God.
So how do you identify those passions? And how do you know they are from God? And how do you act on them? To discover our passion, we have to discover where the connect is between us and God. We have to look at what makes us sad, and/or mad, and/or excited. This helps us to figure out our passions, and then leads us to our God-ordained passions.
This is where the sovereignty of God comes into play. When you start trying to put a connection between who God made you to be, the passions of your heart, and the passion that God wants to give you for His Kingdom, God will get a hold of your heart, and lead you on a wonderful, fulfilling journey! Psalm 37:4 says, “Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” The bottom line is that you need to really look at what excites you, angers you, saddens you… Then as Nehemiah was moved by the sadness of his city being destroyed, and asked God to help him carry out the vision God put in his heart, so we need to ask God to help us carry out the vision God puts in us.
b. Getting out of the cage- Nehemiah had to leave where he was living and
go to the city of his ancestors to carry out the vision he had been given by God. Often times our God-ordained vision will lead us out of our cage of responsibility. That doesn’t mean we become irresponsible, or leave our family, or our jobs. But it probably does mean that God will take you out of your comfort zone and give you something new to do.
Illus. You might be familiar with MADD. M-A-D-D: Mothers Against Drunk
Drivers. The goal of this non-profit organization is to stop drivers from driving drunk, and even more, to stop under age drinking by pushing for a stricter alcohol policy. The Irving, Texas–based organization was founded in 1980 by Candice Lightner after her 13-year-old daughter was killed by a drunk driver. She became so passionate against drunk drivers that she was led to start MADD.
Before this Candice was not necessarily a person who sought to make national policy changes; not a person who spoke out in public. But this event, and her God-passion took her out of her comfort zone, and helped to make some important changes in the law.
It is easy to feel this emotion, through which God is trying to speak to us, and then let it go without acting on it. God is going to reveal something in our hearts if we just seek to be connected with God. When we delight ourselves in the Lord, God begins to download new desires within us. He begins to get a hold of our heart. Or He conceives those things within us and they birth these new desires. They are almost unexplainable and inexpressible but something makes you mad, sad or glad and you don’t really have a handle on it, but you feel like God is doing something in your heart that you can’t explain and that’s how it starts. Then we have to act on it. Listen, it was irresponsible for Nehemiah to give up his position, he had a great job, cup-bearer to the king, part of the administration and in a sense, it seems like he is throwing all of that away, but I think Nehemiah knew something that so many of us have to learn the hard way—if you succeed at the wrong thing, you fail. All of us know successful failures don’t we? People that are really successful and really unhappy. And they succeed at things that just don’t really matter.
Stephen Covey once said: “You can climb the ladder of success
And then realize it is leaning against the wrong wall.”
Conclusion: We need to identify what it is that God wants us to do. Here’s a word of caution. I think figuring out what you want could be a very selfish endeavor. So you better make sure that what you want is what God wants. How do you do that? Unfortunately there is no set formula. I wish there was, but there isn’t. The way it happens is that we just let God’s Spirit work within us, and we seek to live a Spirit-filled life. Then God will stir up in us certain desires/passions.
Illus. I’m learning this along with you, so let me give you a personal example. Ever since our Focused Living Training, a few years ago, I have been moved by mentoring others. There is almost nothing I enjoy more than walking with people and helping them to find their God-given passions, and then finding ways to live them out. I wish I could do this even more than I do, and maybe in time God will give me that opportunity. As I open myself to God, God gives me more and more opportunity to do this, for His glory!
It starts with us being obedient with the little things. If we are obedient with the little things, then those desires that God conceives in our hearts will become reality. The Wild Goose, the Holy Spirit, will show up in wild places at wild times and He will take you places you never imagined going by paths you never knew existed, if you are open to Him conceiving those God-ordained passions in your heart. You never know how God is going to conceive a passion in your heart; it might take the form of sadness or anger or joy, but once that passion is conceived in your heart, you need to do something about it. Imagine a church full of people pursuing God’s ordained passions. If all of us came out of the cage of responsibility and actually took responsibility for the things that made us mad or sad or glad, we would turn this city upside down. To do this we must chase the Wild Goose. I hope you will do this, starting today. Amen.
from the book “Wild Goose Chase” by Mark Batterson
Sunday, October 17, 2010: Nehemiah 1:1-11; Matthew 8:18-22
Introduction: If you have ever been to the zoo, you know you see lots of wild animals, but they are behind cages. While they are not tamed, by putting them behind cages, out of the wild, their wildness has been tamed some. I wonder if churches are doing the same thing to Christians. In a sense we try to tame the wildness from Christians in the name of Christ. We try and remove the risk, the struggle, the danger, and maybe we end up with caged Christians.
At the heart of what the Wild Goose Chase is about, is knowing that we long for something more; something a little less tame. It’s about entering into a relationship with Christ and then chasing after the Wild Goose so that we live our lives the way that God originally intended.
Today we start a 6-week series called Wild Goose Chase based on the book by Mark Batterson. This name, “Wild Goose,” refers to the Holy Spirit. It was the Celtic Christians who called the Holy Spirit this; An Geadh-Glas, or the Wild Goose. That’s a great description of what it’s like to live a Spirit-led life. We aren’t going to know where we are going most of the time, and this produces great anxiety in us. But there is another name for this, and that is ADVENTURE. A wild goose can’t be tamed or tracked. When we add the Holy Spirit into the equation of our lives, we won’t know who we will meet, where we will go, or what we will do. So this morning we start with the first cage: the ‘Cage of Responsibility.’
I. Irresponsible Responsibility- (Matthew 8:18-22)
a. Live life to the fullest- In the movie BRAVEHEART, starring Mel
Gibson, the main character is William Wallace. William Wallace has been fighting for freedom for his people, and he is captured. There’s this moment before he is about to be tortured and executed and he says this: “Everyman dies, not every man really lives.” With these words we realize an important truth: we need to try and live life with an ‘I have lived life to the fullest’ attitude. All of us are born, and all of us will die: we have a birth certificate and some day we will have a death certificate.
The sad truth is that many people die long before the date on their death certificate. That happens in lots of different ways: for some people, I think it is pain or brokenness or loss that robs them of life, the enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy, and life is taken away; I think for others, it is disappointment and failure and we just lose some of that life inside of us. But for many of us, it is more subtle, in that our day-to-day responsibilities numb us to the possibilities around us and the passions within in us. And it happens slowly, most of us don’t even know how or when it happens but at some point, if we’re honest, we stop living and we start dying. It’s almost like we’re buried alive by our pain or our disappointments or our failures or debt or our responsibilities.
There is nothing wrong with responsibilities. We all have responsibilities. I have responsibilities as a husband, as a father, as a pastor and I need to embrace those responsibilities. You need to fulfill your responsibilities. You need to take out the trash, you need to save for retirement, you need to pay your bills, but it is so easy to get buried alive by our day to day responsibilities and totally miss out on the opportunities for spiritual adventures that are all around us all the time. I think what I’m talking about is epitomized by one encounter that Jesus has with a man in the Gospel of Matthew.
b. Don’t make excuses- In Matthew 8, verses 18-22, Jesus gets into an
encounter with a scribe. The scribe seems to be moved by Jesus’ teaching because he says to Jesus in verse 19: “… ‘Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.’” This sets off the thinking of following Jesus, and one of His disciples puts a stipulation on his intent, as he says in verse 21: “… ‘Lord, first let me go bury my father.’ And Jesus said, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’” Now there are a few different takes on this by Bible scholars. It is possible that he was putting off following Jesus until his father died, maybe his father was sick and he was just waiting until that moment. It is possible that this young man didn’t want to follow Jesus to ensure that he got his father’s inheritance. It’s possible that he was afraid of leaving the family business while his father was still living. But I think part of us as we hear a story like this sympathizes with this young man? Like, what’s wrong with that? It seems reasonable and responsible, to look out for his family and bury his father.
But here is an important lesson I’ve learned in reading the Bible. When you are tempted to sympathize with someone other than Jesus, when something doesn’t make sense, there is a little dis-equilibrium, I think we need to take a closer look at what’s happening in the story. We need to get deeper into the scriptures and try to figure out what is happening here. You need to ask yourself: ‘Why am I feeling the way I am feeling?’
Here’s the line of thinking we need to have in regards to this passage: I think this young man was doing what many of us do. He was turning a responsibility into an excuse, and Jesus saw through this smokescreen. He was allowing a responsibility, the need to bury his father, to get in the way of his greatest responsibility and his greatest opportunity, which was following Christ. We do the same thing all the time. We turn our responsibilities into excuses and that is when our responsibility can become a form of irresponsibility. What happens is that our less important responsibilities begin to replace the more important responsibilities; and that’s when we’re practicing irresponsible responsibility.
II. The story of Nehemiah- (Nehemiah 1:1-11)
a. Nehemiah’s sad news- If you have a Bible I want you to open it up;
or if you didn’t bring your Bible you can use a pew Bible. We’re going to look at the passage in Nehemiah, chapter 1, on page 424. As I said earlier, we are going to talk about six stories and six cages over these next six weeks. This week I want to encourage you to read the whole book of Nehemiah. I think if you take this time and spend some time in the Book of Nehemiah this week, what will happen is, you’ll begin to apply God’s word to your life, you’ll begin to get insights all the more about what we are talking about this morning. Nehemiah 1:1-11: “The words of Nehemiah son of Hacaliah. In the month of Chislev, in the twentieth year (referring to the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes’ reign), while I was in Susa the capital. One of my brothers, Hanani, came with certain men from Judah; and I asked them about the Jews that survived, those who had escaped the captivity, and about Jerusalem. They replied, ‘The survivors there in the province who escaped captivity are in great trouble and shame; the wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been destroyed by fire.’ When I heard these words I sat down and wept, and mourned for days, fasting and praying before the God of heaven. I said, ‘O LORD God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments; let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and night for your servants the people of Israel, confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against you. Both I and my family have sinned. We have offended you deeply, failing to keep the commandments, the statutes, and the ordinances that you commanded your servant Moses. Remember the word that you commanded your servant Moses, “If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples; but if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts are under the farthest skies, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place at which I have chosen to establish my name.” They are your servants and your people, whom you redeemed by your great power and your strong hand. O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant, and to the prayer of your servants who delight in revering your name. Give success to your servant today, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man!’ At the time, I was cupbearer to the king.”
b. What is the passion?- Now there is no way I can tell you the whole
story during our time together this morning, that is why I encourage you to read the whole book of Nehemiah this week. To get into it though, let me give you a little bit of back-story. In 586 B.C. King Nebuchadnezzar invaded Judea and took many of the Jewish people captive back to Babylon. In 538 B.C. Zerubbabel lead the first remnant back to Jerusalem, about 43,000 Jews. In 458 B.C. Ezra returned with a remnant of about 18,000 and Nehemiah picks up the story at around 445 B.C. The bottom line is this, the Wall of Jerusalem is in total disrepair and the significance of that is this, for an ancient city, a wall was it’s first and last line of defense, so the city of Jerusalem is defenseless. So it’s a cup-bearer in Babylon, Nehemiah, has this passion to go back and to rebuild the wall. Against all odds, he goes and in 52 days, he rebuilds the wall of Jerusalem! He then goes on to serve as governor of Jerusalem for more than a decade. But here’s what I want you to see. It all starts with a single desire. Somehow this cup-bearer gets it in his mind, in his spirit that maybe God is calling him to do something about this problem. He doesn’t let the fact that he is not qualified to do it deter him. As far as we know, he has never even been to Jerusalem. As far as we know, he has no education, no experience that would qualify him to go and do this. Why is it a cup-bearer in Jerusalem who makes this happen? It doesn’t make total sense to me, but I know this, the people that God uses are the people that receive God-ordained passions, that sometimes seem crazy, that sometimes seem irresponsible, but in the midst of what might be a crazy idea, they run with it and truly make a difference.
When God puts a passion in your heart, you need to take responsibility for it. That’s where God’s people struggle to advance God’s Kingdom. So often the kingdom doesn’t really advance because we don’t really live that spiritual adventure because we don’t act on the passion that God has put in our heart. But you’ve got to act on it, whether it be human trafficking in a third world country, or inner-city education or helping to minister to the homeless, whatever that passion is, you need to take responsibility for it. You need to own it. You need to see the problem and then become the solution to it.
III. What do you want?- (Nehemiah 2:1-5; Psalm 37:4)
a. Identifying our God-passions-In Nehemiah, Chapter 2, the story
continues: the king sees that Nehemiah is sad and asks what is wrong. Nehemiah tells him about how his city, the city of his ancestors has been destroyed. The king asks Nehemiah what he wants, and Nehemiah tells the king he wants to rebuild it!
The king asked Nehemiah a very pointed question, what is it that you want? If I asked you that same question, what would you say? What is it that you want? Can you identify, what your God-ordained passion is? I think most people don’t get what they want because they really don’t know what they want, especially pertaining to their God-given passions. They’ve never really defined what they want out of life, never set any goals, never identified what those passions are, never defined a dream, and they have no idea what they want. Really, we are out of touch with the heart of God.
So how do you identify those passions? And how do you know they are from God? And how do you act on them? To discover our passion, we have to discover where the connect is between us and God. We have to look at what makes us sad, and/or mad, and/or excited. This helps us to figure out our passions, and then leads us to our God-ordained passions.
This is where the sovereignty of God comes into play. When you start trying to put a connection between who God made you to be, the passions of your heart, and the passion that God wants to give you for His Kingdom, God will get a hold of your heart, and lead you on a wonderful, fulfilling journey! Psalm 37:4 says, “Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” The bottom line is that you need to really look at what excites you, angers you, saddens you… Then as Nehemiah was moved by the sadness of his city being destroyed, and asked God to help him carry out the vision God put in his heart, so we need to ask God to help us carry out the vision God puts in us.
b. Getting out of the cage- Nehemiah had to leave where he was living and
go to the city of his ancestors to carry out the vision he had been given by God. Often times our God-ordained vision will lead us out of our cage of responsibility. That doesn’t mean we become irresponsible, or leave our family, or our jobs. But it probably does mean that God will take you out of your comfort zone and give you something new to do.
Illus. You might be familiar with MADD. M-A-D-D: Mothers Against Drunk
Drivers. The goal of this non-profit organization is to stop drivers from driving drunk, and even more, to stop under age drinking by pushing for a stricter alcohol policy. The Irving, Texas–based organization was founded in 1980 by Candice Lightner after her 13-year-old daughter was killed by a drunk driver. She became so passionate against drunk drivers that she was led to start MADD.
Before this Candice was not necessarily a person who sought to make national policy changes; not a person who spoke out in public. But this event, and her God-passion took her out of her comfort zone, and helped to make some important changes in the law.
It is easy to feel this emotion, through which God is trying to speak to us, and then let it go without acting on it. God is going to reveal something in our hearts if we just seek to be connected with God. When we delight ourselves in the Lord, God begins to download new desires within us. He begins to get a hold of our heart. Or He conceives those things within us and they birth these new desires. They are almost unexplainable and inexpressible but something makes you mad, sad or glad and you don’t really have a handle on it, but you feel like God is doing something in your heart that you can’t explain and that’s how it starts. Then we have to act on it. Listen, it was irresponsible for Nehemiah to give up his position, he had a great job, cup-bearer to the king, part of the administration and in a sense, it seems like he is throwing all of that away, but I think Nehemiah knew something that so many of us have to learn the hard way—if you succeed at the wrong thing, you fail. All of us know successful failures don’t we? People that are really successful and really unhappy. And they succeed at things that just don’t really matter.
Stephen Covey once said: “You can climb the ladder of success
And then realize it is leaning against the wrong wall.”
Conclusion: We need to identify what it is that God wants us to do. Here’s a word of caution. I think figuring out what you want could be a very selfish endeavor. So you better make sure that what you want is what God wants. How do you do that? Unfortunately there is no set formula. I wish there was, but there isn’t. The way it happens is that we just let God’s Spirit work within us, and we seek to live a Spirit-filled life. Then God will stir up in us certain desires/passions.
Illus. I’m learning this along with you, so let me give you a personal example. Ever since our Focused Living Training, a few years ago, I have been moved by mentoring others. There is almost nothing I enjoy more than walking with people and helping them to find their God-given passions, and then finding ways to live them out. I wish I could do this even more than I do, and maybe in time God will give me that opportunity. As I open myself to God, God gives me more and more opportunity to do this, for His glory!
It starts with us being obedient with the little things. If we are obedient with the little things, then those desires that God conceives in our hearts will become reality. The Wild Goose, the Holy Spirit, will show up in wild places at wild times and He will take you places you never imagined going by paths you never knew existed, if you are open to Him conceiving those God-ordained passions in your heart. You never know how God is going to conceive a passion in your heart; it might take the form of sadness or anger or joy, but once that passion is conceived in your heart, you need to do something about it. Imagine a church full of people pursuing God’s ordained passions. If all of us came out of the cage of responsibility and actually took responsibility for the things that made us mad or sad or glad, we would turn this city upside down. To do this we must chase the Wild Goose. I hope you will do this, starting today. Amen.
posted by Logan's Blog at 4:45 PM
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