Preparation

I think there is an important part of life that precedes all great advances. It is a preparation phase. Usually one has a great deal of hope and trust before a surprising work of God. Being of Wesleyan persuasion I believe all dynamic advances are part of the healing aspect of salvation. We must be healed before each step ahead. We are for sure lost sufficiently but there is still some good awaiting redemption in all. But the good has to experience a healing for it to be complete in God.

We need to be healed to advance. Preparation isn’t always something we easily invest in. We too often like to jump in and get it done. Laying the ground for next steps are vital.

I have been glancing through my high school yearbook for fun lately. It isn’t easy to miss that those who spent more time in preparation to face life had more successful lives.

Life is best lived with continuous seasons of preparation. I have heard a number of times that it’s a good exercise to write out 100 things you want to do before you die. Three years ago I thought why not. I hate doing things other people do. But it seemed a great idea.

I have my list set for my 85th year. I am not sure what I’ll do beyond that so it might require a new list. I have twenty-eight years to go. I want to master Spanish and German in that time. But I learned I have to save the money for the courses first. And I have to have to carve out the time. Both are going to take some preparation.

I have actually done beyond what I thought I would by this time in my life. I now have a new set of experiences to see God work out. I have learned that a necessary preparation for any successful venture is stimulating a great hunger inside to see it happen. I am giving every ounce I can wisely expend to see a new leadership venture in a church I have grown to love explode with positive fruitfulness. I was sitting in our staff meeting the other day and thought man I wish I had this group before. I have been investing in making pictures in my heart of what a church would look like that transformed our city and beyond. I am always preparing.

I went to see a Clint Eastwood movie last Friday Night. It was a fabulous flick. And right on the screen appeared an actor I had baptized and prayed with when he started his career. He was maybe eighteen when he came to my office and said he was going to be a stand up comic and actor. I didn’t know quite what to say, but it seemed far-fetched. It wasn’t many months later, he was hot on the comedy scene. And then he had two specials on HBO. And then was an actor in the movie Always with Molly Hunter and John Goodman. I lost sight of him for a while and now he is back and living in New York.

He was able to announce what he was hungry for without fear of criticism and it paid off. The problem with wisdom sometimes is it stops success. Living trying to not experience pain or do anything wrong will spell death on any dream.

My spiritual preparation for what I see is going to determine how effective the work is. I am seeing things now. I am seeing them big and small. I have found that a dream for the smaller stuff can be as rewarding as the big stuff. Small acts of preparation reap great things. I think leaders should be paid to sit in rooms and see things before they happen. We have too many leaders that are too busy to do the heart preparation to see anything great happen.

I have known guys in there eighties who were younger than many thirty-year-olds. I want to be there. But its hard work. Sometimes you have to tell your mind what it thinks it knows probably isn’t right. And it takes humility. If you are going to prepare for more of life you have to be humble enough to learn from others. I try to stay humble. I have never met anyone that didn’t have something to teach me. I like to listen. I like to listen because I am always preparing. One of my new inspirations is a guy 29 who has been leading a church for four years. I want what I am seeing. And if I have to admit ignorance or need to do it I will.

I also want to have seen 100,000 people profess Christ because of my spiritual efforts. I have no idea how to measure that. I know of at least 22,000 that can be confirmed. And I have learned it will need to take advantage of every opportunity that comes along to see this achieved. I have many friends who think it’s egotistic to want such things. And that’s fine by me but they have found their life’s work helping those directed to Christ by other people. It’s kind of like a friend who wants our church to stay no larger than it is….yet she has invited 12 friends that have signed on for the journey. I pointed out the lack of logic to her.

If you don’t know where your headed how can you prepare for it. And if you can’t prepare for it how are you going to succeed at it. I have real problems with what I call “arrival theology.” I am sure the Holy Spirit continues to fill us with “good discontent.”

I probably won’t tell you if I hit my mark. I will need new vistas by then. And in the end it really doesn’t matter. I honestly think the only important element of any successful ventures is, “did you have fun seeing it happen?”

Times are a stretch for us all right now. But I was thinking of Y2K the other day. Remember when all the computers were going to fail at mid-night Jan 1, 2000. The world was going to go barbaric. Atomic bombs were going to fly, fortunes would be lost, and the anti-Christ would take advantage of the whole scene. My son who is a computer expert told me it was a bunch of hogwash. But Christian publishers were making a lot of money out of the fear so why not pump the fear. Nothing happened we just flew right into 2000.

I think sometimes you just need a break from increasing prosperity. I see what we are experiencing is more like a break. I can’t help but feel that a lot of the same people who were selling books at 2000 aren’t at work now. And then if you can also make things sound really bad any progress looks good. There is pain for many people, which ought to be unacceptable to us all. You never know if you might be the one hurting.

Bad news has a way of creating bad news. Good news brings good news. Preparation for us all right now has to include learning to create and pump up good news. And helping others by showing them good news does exist.

I had a woman come to me this last Sunday in tears. She didn’t have any food. I was broken. I was mostly broken because my own fears about my life actually made it hard to hear hers. Amazingly I had had another person give me a gift for anyone who was hurting. We all got good news. But it all takes some hard heart work to stay in the game.

I wonder what would happen to business people who made it their patriotic duty to create all the jobs they could for others. Good news-makers think of such things. I actually wished I had prepared better for this time. And that is what got me thinking about all this preparation stuff to begin with.

I am planning for my next run at being highly effective and I just can’t find the weakness to give up just yet. I am preparing for the best. I am preparing to see great stuff. My mind isn’t always fully cooperating but I am the boss, not my thoughts.