The PF Women Team at our Annual Team Retreat ~ 2018 Today on Seth Godin's blog, he said: It's tempting to decide to make a profit first, then invest in training, people, facilities, promotion, customer service and most of all, doing important work. In general, though, it goes the other way. Yes, it does. If you are waiting to make a profit before you do these things, in my experience you're not going to make a profit. So many organizations, ministries and churches are struggling with financial issues. I know your pain. As anyone who follows our story knows, our ministry was in a ton of debt four years ago when I came on as director. Since that time, we've gotten out of debt and turned a profit every year. God has done amazing things through out team, for which we give Him the glory! I find that what Seth is saying here is absolutely true, with one disclaimer. For Christian leaders, spiritual disciplines must always be first. Before we started i...
Two weeks ago in preparing for my message for Sunday morning in our "Revolution" series, I began to feel that what the church needed during this month was something to keep us on the same page every day. The Lord prompted me to write a devotional to go along with the message - a "31 Day Revolution" devotional. So on July 1 we started the devo as a church. I wrote the devotional and Pastor Lindsay made it into a book that she printed for each person to take home with them that Sunday morning. My God-inspired goal was to get the people to fall in love with God more than ever, and to crave the "secret place." I wanted them - each of them - to grasp the joy and refreshment of the life-giving, rich and full things that God speaks to me every day in the secret place. I am believing that our people will come into the fullness of God such as they have never experienced before.
As soon as we started on the 31 day revolution journal July 1, my time in the secret place seemed to become blase. I still spent time with God, it was just that during that time it seemed nothing revolutionary happened.
As the writer of the 31 day journal, I've already gone through it personally. However, as part of "staying on page" with the rest of the church, I'll do it this month and in addition to that also continue with what I normally do. As I said before, I haven't really had any revelatory things to share the past week or two as what I have been reading, pondering and praying has not been all that enlightening. It has been, rather, a time of steady plodding. However, steady plodding is good. I've learned we shouldn't fear the mundane, for the miraculous at times comes as we stay faithful in the mundane. What should be feared is a slipping away - a failure to plod in what we see as the uninteresting times, because that is what causes everything to eventually unravel in our lives. Well, today I transitioned from that which seemed banal to that which became a revelation, or should I say - a vision.
Today is my day to work from home. I get more done on Tuesdays than any other. The majority of my church work gets done on Tues, as does my home work unless the church work is just over the top that week. Being away from phone calls and office life lends itself to me getting most of my written church projects done. I started doing that when I was the only one at the office in there answering the phones at one time, and took Tuesdays at home and let the other pastors answer the phone so I could get my computer work done without hindrance. Once we hired people for the office once more, I kept doing this because I saw how valuable it was. Anyway, this morning I did as I usually do on Tuesdays. I got up, bathed, dressed and got ready for the day and then began getting all my computer stuff done. Took some phone calls (I still get them even though I'm home but I only have mine to deal with and no extra calls, meetings or walk ins), and after getting that work done I cleaned the bathroom and did a load of clothes. Finally when I had wound down from all that, I decided to have some "secret place" time early (I usually do it at sunset or late night) because my house was still quiet.
Today as I opened the Word, I began reading I John where I am this week. Then reading Secrets of the Secret Place, and then Come Away My Beloved. Through all three, God gave me a new perspective on being HIS CHILD. I had some new thoughts on this that I can't even truly articulate yet (maybe future posts I'll have it nailed down enough in my brain to expound) but suffice it to say God got through to my head and my heart just how perfect of a parent He is. How He would do anything to save me (and did), to help me, to lead, guide, direct me.
A passage I read today in Come Away My Beloved says this:
"For you are precious in My sight, O my child. I know you by name, for you are not the child of a stranger."
"You face each new day with me at your side. Never forget I am there. You meet every circumstance that you face with my arm outstretched to fight for you."
"It is not your cooperation I have asked for, but your submission..."
"...and if I bring you through the river in summer, you shall not fear to trust me in flood time."
Okay, without getting too mystical on you here, I was laying outstretched reading this and getting ready to go before the Lord in prayer and suddenly he gave me a vision. He doesn't do that too much - rarely if ever. But before I could even utter a word in prayer all of a sudden I see in the spirit a huge arm (I mean huge) above Tampa, above America, above the earth and it is so huge but yet it can come down upon the earth and do intricate things without knocking anything over it doesn't want to. It was like a hand coming down on a board game in progress. You know how sometimes in Monopoly or whatever you knock over pieces? Well, this hand did not do that. It could bring itself down on Tampa, America and the world, and do exactly, intricately whatever it wanted to do. With just the slight touch of it's finger, something would move out of the way and nothing else would move. It was huge arm yet not clumsy. And then suddenly I saw some very particular things (things only I would know about my life and what concerns it) and with some of those things I saw God just literally "pinging" things out of the way - mountains in my way, obstacles. When he zapped them away by the touch of a finger it didn't take out anything else around it - it was like it was perfectly moved out of tight spaces. There was no such thing as "between a rock and a hard place" to this hand. And then there were things that God gathered in, and delivered to me with the strength of his hand. Whereas I would have had to work and work (and probably never get most of them because in my own strength only but a few of these things would have been attainable without the supernatural) yet God in a moment's time gathered up everything I needed, and succinctly delivered it to me. As I saw that in my spirit, and His hand so perfectly came to rest upon me, I sensed Him say to me, "...and that, my child...is how it works." WOW.
From now on when I see concerns of mine in my mind's eye, my next picture that I am going to call up will be that giant arm coming down wherever I'm at, and the huge hand, going forth to work on my behalf, moving some things out of the way, gathering other things to present to me...His child. His daughter.
God has given me a new picture. A prophetic picture. I love when God does things in His prophetic photoshop. 
Today I've gone from blase plodding to revolutionary revelation.
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