The International Mission Adventures Circle of elders is having a virtual retreat this week. We’ll be meeting Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday to share, pray, and be in the presence of God. What follows is a devotion for our time together today.
Hmmmm… What to Say?
All weekend I’ve been asking the Lord for a plan for our time together today. I didn’t really feel like I had much. I mentally went through what I’ve been reading and thinking about lately, but that didn’t seem to resonate.
On Saturday, I realized that I at least ought to send out an email with a Zoom link and a bit of an agenda. In typing that up, I thought of the two questions we just went through… Yet when it came time for my to type up what devotion I was going to give, I still had nothing. Thus the title, “A Devotion from Craig”.
Early this morning, I was deleting spam and looking at the news when I saw Stephe Mayers leadership letter. If you don’t already subscribe to this, I highly encourage you to do so. Here is a link to his blog.
Sacred Moments
This month’s letter is about Sacred Moments. While reading it, I felt like I should do a quick rehearsal of some of the Sacred Moments in MA History. Here are a few that came to mind:
1st Passion Play
Invention of the Commitment Service
1st MA Gear Kit (Victory in Christ)
January ‘97 in Tijuana
Running as waves of young people across the meeting hall at the hotel in Anaheim circa 2000
Frank Naea’s Message, “Who Are Your 12?”
Pile of Wallets in Chico
Carrying Houser on our shoulders during DJ Servo’s Worship Rave in Chico
Can you think of any others?
Wet Cucumbers or Pickles?
All of these are experiences. All of these had a strong sense of the presence of God. All of these were transformational for many of those who were there. There is a difference between a wet cucumber and a pickle. A cucumber may experience some sort of change when it is wet, but the change is incomplete, and not necessarily lasting. Take the cucumber out of the water, and it is still a cucumber. But a pickle is transformed. It’s another thing entirely. There is no going back to being a cucumber. The experience of being in the brine, in the vinegar, in the spices makes for a permanent change.
In the same way, right thinking does not always lead to right actions. I think we think that thinking is enough. But it can’t be. We know this because seminary trained pastors and intelligent leaders fail. We know this from AA. Addicts go back to the bottle even after being sober for a long time. We know this from the Bible. Paul writes:
“… For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do…”
A Belief Isn’t a Belief Unless…
Instead it is belief that changes our behavior. And belief is only partly intellectual. Here’s the difference: thinking does not have to result in action. But a belief isn’t a belief unless actions back it up. Now belief can spring up from faith — Jesus was looking for this in the gospels. And there’s a relationship between belief and experience. We can believe if we’ve had experience. The centurion knew that people tend to follow the orders of an authority. And that allowed him to believe that Jesus could heal from afar with a word.
And this is why Mission Adventures is important. It is experience for youth groups. It’s the birthplace of belief. The experiences we give our participants are opportunities for belief that can bring lasting change. We can make pickles, and not just wet cucumbers.
Digging Up Our Addictions & Encountering God
All of us need transformation from our sin. We are all addicts. If nothing else, we are addicted to our own selfishness. And many of us are addicts to more difficult things. Our egos and our flesh demand comfort from the realities of existence.
So God gives us the challenging task of digging up our addictions, of exposing them, of understanding them. It is like digging up a toxic boulder that’s entangled in the roots of the tree of our life. And when we’ve fully exposed it, done all we can to face it, to own it, and be real about it, there is the terrible revelation that we are powerless to remove it.
Here we must rely on God. Our only hope is an encounter with the all-powerful living God, who at a word, can free us from our entanglements.
Not Just Information, Even Past Information, All the Way to Impartation
Now, I’ve been speaking of addiction and selfishness and sin. What does this have to do with Mission Adventures, and with our iMAC? I say this — it is our job to create experiences, to find opportunities for sacred moments for our partners so that:
They can believe that God can build a ministry through them
They themselves can be transformed into greater Christlikeness
I think these two things are linked. I think God is at least as concerned with who they are becoming as he is about the ministry they are creating with him. I think as they do one, they are also doing the other. Somehow the goal of becoming more like Jesus and creating ministry with him is the same goal. And our role in this is to light the fuse. Our job is to create space for those sacred moments when God shows up and goes beyond information, past inspiration, all the way to an impartation of Spirit.
We do this primarily in two ways.
Our events and gatherings for our partners. Even our online seminars, workshops, and meetings can have space for impartation.
Our mentoring
Let’s make sure that we create room for experiencing God in our events. Let’s make sure that when we gather, that it’s more than fellowship. Let’s make sure it’s more than information or even inspiration. Let’s create space for that impartation that makes all the difference. When there is teaching, make space for application. Knowledge might make change, but it knowing alone can’t make pickles.