Just Do It

I received a very encouraging phone call today from a dear friend of mine. He was part of the very first group of people that were willing to submit themselves to my teaching when I felt that God wanted me to begin teaching leadership principles to those in my sphere of influence. At the time, it seemed a little "gung-ho" to some people since I was still so young and had only been leading for about 5 years up to that point. Even recently I've met people who don't understand why someone like me would try to "teach people to lead". They just don't get it...and that's ok.

Here's where the encouragement came from. This friend of mine told me about how this week is the year anniversary of someone in his family coming to know Christ as his Savior. He told me about a difficult, somewhat hostile, conversation that had begun with that person on the phone one day. Then he told me that after more than an hour on the phone with the person...who started out by throwing insults at Christianity and God...they were praying together to accept Christ as Lord and Savior. So I thought...what does that have to do with me?

Then he told me, "They way I responded to him on the phone in order to disarm the hostility and eventually unlock his heart to hear the Gospel was a direct result of the principles that you taught me years ago in our leadership class about the book 'How to Win Friends and Influence People'." He went on to encouarge me and let me know that ever since then he has continued to read and/or listen to audio tapes of Dale Carnegie's book as well as other materials that we studied during those training sessions. I was BLOWN AWAY.

See, this had nothing to do with me being some great teacher. That's not why I'm encouraged.
This had nothing to do with Dale Carnegie being a genious on relationships. This person coming to know Christ was a result of obedience. Simple obedience.

Even though people misunderstood my motives in teaching leadership, God had His own reasons for asking me to do it. Whether or not I ever get compliments about being a good teacher, communicator, or leader myself, I could care less. Hearing a story like this and seeing the evidence of God's grace through obedience makes me want to NEVER hesitate to do what God is telling me to do. No matter how "well accepted" my actions may seem to others.

God is good. He is faithful. He'll use you if you'll just be obedient.

I'm still a kid

So a couple weeks back, Nov 1st, I posted about patience. Let me just say that I realized then and still do today how hard of thing it is to be patient. I realize more and more everyday how much I'm just like my 2 year old. When he sees something he wants...he immediately goes after it full force with a huge smile of anticipation and every muscle in his body. He gets emotionally involved and is quick to verbalize to the world just exactly what it is he thinks he's about to obtain. Think "cookie". Or even better...one of those little dum-dum suckers. Oh man...patience is non-existent when Cooper sees a sucker. If I try to slow him down at all...it's ugly. It could even be that I just want to put his bib on before giving him the sucker...and it's still ugly.

So here I am with multiple desires in front of me. Some are simple relational things I want to see happen. Some are things that deal with our worship band gaining more opportunity to play. Some are just "life achievement" types of things. And it's really really hard for me not to lunge. It's even harder for me to not throw a sucker fit when God is simply asking me to hold on for a moment.

That's where I'm living. That's why I haven't posted for a while. I realize that there are a few people that read this and I've not wanted to send any kind of "sucker fit" message out that someone might misunderstand. God's just working in me big time about patience and trust. I'm finding it takes humility in order to live with both.

I'll try to post more often again. God is certainly doing enough in me to have something to talk about.

See ya,
Johnny