Focus

"But a degree in anything from anywhere does not take precedence over God's Voice."

THE CHURCH feels like a giant gameshow wheel. Constantly spinning, made of millions of parts, the ball bouncing around the circle. It’s become less focused on JESUS, and the story of Jesus, than on people displaying Jesus. Everyone’s the next thing or the latest thing, and there’s projects, projects, projects in every wing. The sermons are all wrong. None is completely right. But all are filled with opinions and criticisms and misspoken statements. The truth is: God is kind. God is patient. And so He continues working in us, putting up with us. I am aware no one person is correct on everything, myself included. No man is perfect except Jesus. And I see God’s tolerance of us in this. He is so very generous to work from us when we are slipping this way and that. My mind aches to think of how He has to keep us with us. And I flinch when He turns something off which I began to hear. That He wouldn’t let me hear it is huge. In the other shoe, sometimes it is that “I simply can’t right now, God,” and He gives a silent okay, which makes me love Him that much more.

Today I quoted John 3:16 and put my name in the verse. “For God so loved Suzanne that he gave her his only-begotten Son, that because she believeth in him, she has everlasting life.” It made it more meaningful to me. I’m done with wholesale Christianity where we’ve become an educational system to promote individuals to new heights in the church. We send our kids to college to get a degree and be ordained as ministers. All fine and good. But did they learn to walk in the Spirit there or are they fighting worldly knowledge and church habits which have become standard? My mother learned the Spirit sitting at His feet and reading the Word and putting it into her heart. She listened to anointed teaching and listened to it again and listened to it again. Her mentor was God. Now, I follow in her footsteps. Kudos to those like Andrew Wommack and Todd White who God has called to teach and to provide how-to knowledge. But a degree in anything from anywhere does not take precedence over God’s Voice. And what we want to say in the pulpit doesn’t trump what the congregation needs to hear in the simplicity they need to hear it and in the anointing of the Spirit. I’ve seen it said. One anointed man prayed for another, who pastored a church, saying he’d grown way beyond his congregation. That pastor spoke things they did not understand and so the Holy Spirit, in that moment, asked him to make things easier for them. I may love a towering cake of delicate fruited layers but if I’m feeding an infant, I need to open a jar. I may be eager to be “in the ministry” to have my say. However, it could be God needs me to listen and not speak at all. Can you do that? In your urge to hold a pulpit, big or small, can you be Mary, who sat and didn’t serve? Jesus was her focus, the very beat of her heart, and He should be ours.

Paul didn’t picture the church as a pinwheel, forever spinning in the wind. Nor mega-apostles with infinite stature, but instead, he described us as body parts, reliant on each other, and bathed all of his words in the love of God, both from him, and as he said on repeat, from us. We are one body. Not millions of people. Not thousands of denominations. Not the plethora of educational systems. But we are individuals born to John and Harriet Smith of Good Old, USA, who got saved at age nine, or fifteen, or thirty-three, and work at the Go-Mart. We must see ourselves that way and not as The Reverend Doctor Bigwig, graduate of Theological University with fifteen degrees in talking. No calling of man trumps the calling of God, and unfortunately, many hear themselves first and assume the Word of God second.

“For God's gifts and calling never change.” (Romans 11:29 ISV)

This morning I read seventeen translations of one verse and fifteen of them were wrong. The Spirit pointed out those two. He talks to me. Yet, this isn’t about the Spirit upon me nor about those fifteen that were wrong, except in that only two of them heard His Voice. In another passage, from the gospels, I’ve heard men and women teach it from the wrong perspective, applying a phrase to a meaning it has never held. These same men and women lay hands on the sick in boldness and see great miracles. And another example: Minister Benny Hinn had over 60,000 attend his meetings in Uganda. Compare that to Jesus’ where he had 5,000 and see now, today, a greater work (John 14:12). I’ve heard stories from others, Marilyn Hickey, Reinhardt Bonnke, who also had large congregations. But of interest is Minister Hinn’s remark about unity. Unity in the congregation through worship is what brings the Spirit in greater visible manifestation, we feel Him and see His hand. God isn’t looking for perfect people but willing ones, who hear Him correctly, and when the goof it up, ask for forgiveness and change.

I long to see One God and One Spirit and One Savior be honored as the foundation which upholds the walls we should become, and for our personal pleasure in the church to fade to giving Him pleasure in only the footsteps He asks of us and not those we add to Him. To see a man of God, and I know of several, whose heart is for the people they are set over more than it is for their own well-being, with them reliant upon God for every breath. These God will promote in His own timing, and they will be abundantly blessed. The church an ocean and not a gameshow, water whose height and depth, length and width, unites us where men see one sea and not individual waves whose froth and foam send them backwards instead of beckoning them in.

“For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:13)

“Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time,” (1 Peter 5:6)

Image by reenablack from Pixabay


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com