The God who comes looking

In my last post I talked about the mission of God and how I understand it. One of the themes of my preaching over the last 20+ years has been this idea of the God who comes looking. The gospel is a story about incarnation. God becomes human, lives among a people and can be touched, heard, and seen. It is a cornerstone of the good news.

But it's not just a theological truth. It expresses something of the heart and passion God has to be amongst his people, the people he loves. It starts in the garden of the early chapters of Genesis and runs through to the later chapters of Revelation. God comes looking for Adam even though he knows he's broken the commandment not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge. In Revelation, the final stages of the unfolding story are described in terms of the new city. A place where God "dwells among the people and they will be his people and he will be their God."

But this isn't just a neat literary device, neatly drawing the two ends of a long narrative together. It's fundamental to the whole story and woven throughout it's pages. God is seen regularly making special excursions into the lives of individuals. He speaks directly to some and does extraordinary things in the lives of others. I think God's great desire to live amongst his people is most clearly exemplified in the building of the Tabernacle. When you read the description of the tents and the design and layout of the Tabernacle, you might think it's designed to keep the people out. Clearly demarked areas and processes to be followed, threats of imminent destruction and judgement for failure to follow the rules might make you think that God was excluding them rather than including them.

But shift your perspective for a moment and ask yourself how does a holy, perfect God live right in the middle of an unholy and imperfect people without destroying them? If the natural outcome of an encounter between the unholy and holy is that the unholy is judged and with that judgement comes destruction, then the Tabernacle becomes the only way God could achieve his desire to be among the people without destroying them. Mercy does indeed triumph over judgement.

Ultimately this passionate desire to live in close connection with humanity is seen in Jesus Christ as the holy God becomes flesh and blood. Amazing isn't it, to think that there was a time in human history when a person could touch God without dying a sudden death. When God comes looking, it's because he loves you.

Yes, there are those salutary moments when judgement breaks out, when the holiness of God seems no longer to be able to dwell with the unholiness of humanity. But the overwhelming narrative of the Bible is that God comes looking for us and does so because in some way heaven is incomplete without us and he can't stand the idea of us not being there. He will do and has done whatever it takes to make it possible for us to live with him as he desires to live with us.

For as long as I get to keep preaching, I'll keep talking about the God who comes looking.

An extract from Sunday's notes

Here's an extract from my notes from Sunday. There are some qualifications needed, but I simply present it here to try and spark some thinking for you. 

The world is not the enemy, and it’s not the fault of the world that it finds itself as it is. Let me explain. 

Darkness is by its very nature dark. The problem is not the darkness, but the lack of light. When light shines, darkness disappears. Darkness does not overcome light, but where there is no light, darkness will rule.

Field of dreams: We all seem to buy into the principle of Kevin Costner’s character in the film. The famous line from the film: "If you build it they will come”, has become the subconscious mantra of the evangelical movement.

But the truth is they won’t come. At least not in the numbers we think. Church works for church people. Bigger and better won’t change that. 

Our structures also bear little relevance to the world beyond the bricks and mortar. I have a Masters degree in theology. If I wanted to teach in a theological college I've been told I would need a doctorate or at the very least a published book! But neither of these qualifies me for anything in the wider world. Outside of the church these degrees and diplomas mean nothing. They means very little to very few people.

What does matter is that I'm there when a member of the family passes away. What might matter is that I'm there to cheer them on when everyone else has given up on them. What could matter is someone being available when they need friendship. And you don't have to be a well-trained, over qualified minister or pastor to do that!

Perhaps the gospel looks like the community we say it is but often fail to live out in any real sense. Like everyone else we've become too busy in our individual world to be connected to anything beyond ourselves. 

When we look in the mirror we see and army of ordinary people totally committed to Christ and the cause of Christ, declaring the gospel of God with a passion, against a backdrop of hostility and apathy from a world spiralling away from God. What the world sees is a group of out of touch, bible bashing, hymn singing, moralising hypocrites that are more concerned about who uses the car park than how to love their neighbour. 

Something has to change. 

Reflecting on preaching

Preaching on Sunday reminded me of a few things that I'd probably allowed to drift out of my line of sight in recent months. When I preach these days, and it's not very often at all, this was only the second time this year, I tend simply to share my heart rather than do a good old fashioned expository sermon. That's not because I don't think such an approach has no value, but at the moment because I guess it's just about trying to share what has been the concern of my heart for the last few years. Plus the fact that I wasn't given a topic or theme or text, so it seemed an appropriate approach. Little did I know that it would be so pertinent to where the church finds itself at this moment in time. Reminder number one: God knows what he is doing!

The second reminder was more personal. It was the reminder that this is what I do, this is part of the shape God has given to my life and that ought not to be ignored or rejected just because I'm no longer leading a church. I don't have to preach, but I ought not to avoid it just because it's no longer a regular part of my life. That means taking the responsibility seriously when I get asked. If I get asked!

The third reminder was about the things for which I have a passion. I may have no idea how to start whatever it is we're starting or supposed to start in South Ockendon, but I do have something in my head and heart that is not just a frustrated outworking of my concerns about the legacy model of church.

The truth is that our society is accelerating away from us and we are failing to keep pace with it. We are more out of touch than we were a year ago and getting further out of touch as I write.

There many other reminders yesterday. Things like preaching is not always, if ever, about how good you are, but about how God uses you; that the bigger the church, the harder change will probably be simply because getting everyone to reimagine things isn't easy; it's okay to do what we do "in" church, but if that doesn't translate into something we do beyond the building amongst the people of our communities, then what value does it have?

And to the people who took the time to speak to me afterwards and encourage me, a big thank you. I know that the folk that didn't like what I said, or didn't approve of the way I said it, won't usually come to speak to me afterwards, so I know that the positive response was not the whole church's response, but that's okay.

Off to preach at the weekend

In this odd world of ministry without church that I now inhabit, I don't preach or speak publicly much anymore. Sometimes I miss it, most times I don't. I don't miss staying up late on Saturdays trying to figure out if I've got it straight, and I don't miss getting up a few hours later on a Sunday morning to completely rewrite everything because it just doesn't sit right in my head. I never envied those folk who had Wednesday as sermon preparation day and seemed to be able to sit down at the desk and turn out the finished article by the end of a single day's work. For me, sermon preparation was a week long process of walking with the text, exploring it from a range of angles, reflecting on its context and generally letting is all coalesce in my head. Mind maps and sketchy notes were my route to a Sunday presentation.

So it's rather odd to be in a place where I don't have to do that on a regulars basis.

But this weekend I am preaching. Now I know that I've been asked because all the main stays of the church are at the BU Assembly. I also know that it's almost a racing certainty that it will be a one off invitation. So I could go in with the attitude of nothing to lose, but that would seem to be a somewhat arrogant approach. The truth is that I still believe that the local church is the hope of the world as Bill Hybels would say. And yes, I know it's the message that carries the hope, but the church remains God's chosen vehicle.

Having said that, it would be unwise to assume that the church as it presents itself in our times is somehow sacred to the purposes of God. We ought to remember the salutary lesson of those who believed Jerusalem could not possibly fall because it was God's chosen city.

So I will preach, and I won't go out of my way to upset or alienate anyone, but I won't hold back either in presenting a challenge to change. We shall see how it goes!

The Great Commandment

I was preaching this last Sunday on "The Great Commandment" from Luke's Gospel. Jesus is approached by an expert in the law who asks about the greatest commandment. Funny how religious people can be preoccupied with what the most important rule might be.

By way of an answer we hear words that would have been very familiar to the religious community of the day. Put simply: Love God wholeheartedly and love others in the way you want to be loved. this precipitates a further question about neighbours and the parable about a good Samaritan.

What intrigues me about this discussion between our expert in the law and Jesus, the fulfilment of that very same law, is that he never asks Jesus about how to love God. He has no question about how to love God wholeheartedly.

He has no questions about what to do with the philosophical questions that he faces or the temptations he conjures up in his imagination and what that has to do with loving God with all your mind. He seems unconcerned about how you keep loving God even when you reach the end of your physical, emotional and spiritual capacity to do os. When you’ve used up all your strength.

None of this worried him. He’s just bothered about who his neighbour might be.

Is that you? Is it me?

Are you so concerned to make sure that you limit the measure of your grace towards others so that it is manageable but still honouring of God that you’ve forgotten that the primary commandment is to abandon yourself into God’s hands?

Surely there is a missing the question that this expert ought to be asking: How do I love God that fully?

Paul gives a clue about how he saw it working out in the lives of Christ-followers:

#1 Root your faith

So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. (Col. 2:6-7)

#2 Focus your heart in the right place

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. (Col. 3:1-2)

#3 Serve God in everything

Whatever you do, do it wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord (Col. 3:23)

What are your missing questions? Are you more concerned with making your faith manageable? More concerned about fitting Jesus into your life than building your life around him?



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Summer series

We began a short summer series looking at four great themes through Luke's gospel. Interestingly we started withe great commandment from the Good Samaritan story, which happens to contain great compassion, great commission and great commitment too!

The artwork was the easiest thing I could think of doing!

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Prayer and Preaching

Here's a useful article about the importance of prayer in the process of sermon preparation.

It's true that prayer often features as a perfunctory step in the process, even as an act of desperation as Sunday morning approaches. But we all know that payer ought to be a central feature not a peripheral part of the process. As the author of the post says:

We need to regain a theological vision in which prayer becomes the posture of the preacher, for before our people can hear from God through us, we must hear from God ourselves. And hearing from God through his Word is the fundamental work of prayer.

But not only is prayer about hearing from God, it is also about something more fundamental too:

The point of prayer is realignment, as our hearts assume a posture of dependence and humility before God. Prayer places our needs in the perspective of God's sufficiency, our problems in the perspective of his sovereignty, and our desires in the perspective of his will. Prayer is not a monologue. Rather, prayer invites God to have the last word with us, and for his Word to shape and define us.

This is true whether you are praying as you prepare to preach or whether you are praying as you prepare to live out your daily life for the glory and honour of God.

Preaching from Isaiah

So, I took on the challenge of preaching through Isaiah as the result of a conversation with a small study group we have at church. It's a big book, but that doesn't mean we should shy away from it just because of its length. Neither should the complexity and span of history put us off either.

I decided to try to take a fairly broad approach and pick up about a dozen themes and ideas from across the whole book. One of the things I keep saying to both the study group and the church congregation is to look for echoes. Echoes of both the New Testament in the Old and of the Old in the New. For example, when Isaiah speaks prophetically about the gathering of the nations in worship and discipleship in chapter 2, where does that echo in the New? Possibly Paul's declaration that every knee shall bow and every tongue confess or when Jesus speak of making disciples of all nations.

As I work through I'm also reading an interesting book about Preaching Christ from the Old Testament by Sidney Greidanus. It has quite an interesting survey about how the early church did it, and it lays out a method with examples of a Christocentric model. I'm also using Motyer, Goldingay, Webb and Oswalt's commentaries and a very useful book by David Jackman called Teaching Isaiah. It's a guide to developing sermons and series.

What have I learnt so far? Well a few things come to mind. Firstly I guess it becomes very clear very quickly that the nation, indeed the nations, have a case to answer before God, but while God's judgement is inevitable so too is the hope that comes from God's eternal purpose of redemption. In fact you can quite easily see why some of the church fathers looked to Paul's faith, hope and love triplet as a basic hermeneutical method.

Secondly, there's the challenge to choose your story. Chapter 7-9 express it clearly as Isaiah paints the picture of the present reality, the near future and the distant future to come. You can choose to live by the story of gloom and distress or you can choose to live by the story of hope and redemption.

There is so much more that has direct relevance to our present-day situation that Isaiah cries out to be preached. I just hope we do him justice!

Who's to say?

I've been quietly annoyed ever since I read a comment about someone being a challenging preacher even though they hadn't had any formal training in preaching. I remember the times we had some apparently very good preachers come to college to show us how it's done. I'd like to think that it was the artificial nature of the circumstances that made these events less than inspiring!

Maybe one day we will describe someone as a challenging preacher despite their formal training.

Rant over.

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Missing notes

Something very odd happened at church this morning. For the first time in 20 years of ministry, my notes disappeared at the end of the service. Now I've had times when someone has asked if they can have a copy of my notes and I've happily given them away, but I've never known anyone help themselves without asking!

Very odd.

The thing is, that for the most part, my notes make sense to me, but they might not make sense to anyone else. While I don't write shorthand notes, I don't always include every detail. And there are often typing errors and syntax errors that I correct as I speak. Then there is all the extra stuff one adds as one speaks.

This morning my notes included a whole page of stuff I didn't even use. So I wonder what whoever took them has made of them. I hope they've found them helpful.

What kind of preaching do we need?

I came across this quote in Countdown to Sunday by Chris Erdman. Not  name I recognised, but the subtitle of the book caught my eye: A Daily Guide for Those Who Dare to Preach.

"But what I think we need most is for the preacher to get away from the notes, look us in the eye and help us see."

Fasting and Worship?

On Sunday I've got an away fixture. I don't preach elsewhere very often, mostly because I don't get invited! Or maybe my reputation precedes me? I also suffer from what yo might cal "I'd like to preach that one!" syndrome. You see, every time I put a preaching plan together I look at the topics and think to myself "I'd like to preach that one!" So it can be quite hard to give a topic away.

Plus you are only supposed to have four Sundays a year free to preach in other churches, and I'd rather have Sundays off to be honest. It can be quite hard to go to another church. If it's a fairly traditional Baptist Church, they will want you to lead the service, but I don't want to do that. I'm trying to get other people to lead services at my own church, I'm not about go running off to another church and lead theirs!

Anyway, back to Sunday. The topic I've been given is rather interesting. It seems everyone is doing the Sermon on the Mount at the moment. We've just finished, my previous church is in the middle of it, and the one I'm visiting is working their way through it too. The subject I've been given for Sunday is "worship and fasting" or is it "fasting and worship"? I'm not sure it makes a big difference which way round it is. The reading is possibly the shortest every reading in the whole of church history. Three verses. So I guess we don't have to worry that people will forget what the reading is about!

But the topic is interesting. When Jesus talks about fasting in Matthew 6, the context isn't worship, it's prayer. We most naturally associate fasting with prayer, and understandably so. But what might the link be between fasting and worship?

So that's my task. To think outside the box a little about the purpose of fasting and where it fits in the context of worship. There aren't too many clues in the three verse reading, but there may be more to this than meets the eye.

It rather reminds me of the somewhat odd title I got in January when I was asked to preach for the united service for Christian Unity. Actually the title was fine, hospitality as witness, as I recall, it was the reading that was odd. It had so little to do with the theme that it took a while to figure out how to do justice to both the reading and topic.

Preaching Deeper Sermons

What is it that we want from the Sunday morning sermon? Do we really want to be taught three things we already know about a text we've read before or do we want something new every week, as if Sundays is some form f religious entertainment?

Well of course we would never reduce Sundays to entertainment, but I've been in many churches where I've heard people say, "We need more teaching," and I've often wondered what they mean by that. In many ways the church is over taught and under experienced. Our lives don't live up to our knowledge. Except they do if our knowledge is only shallow.

So, maybe what we need is not more teaching but more depth. Depth not in the sense of more information about original languages and building layers of supporting Biblical references, but in the sense of a deeper connection with a growing spiritual life. A deepening of the soul, if that's a valid concept.

In thinking about this I was interested in an article that appeared on the Christianity Today website about deeper preaching. The article suggests five kinds of deep sermons:

• Biblical depth
• Intellectual depth
• Experiential depth
• Cultural depth
• Applicational depth

Several things strike me. First you can't do all of these, and maybe you shouldn't try to them all, in a single sermon. Second, why would you try to them all every time. It's interesting to think about all the factors that come into play when you are both preparing to preach and actually delivering a sermon.

Personally I find that I write more notes these days in order to keep myself on track. Sometimes I develop my sermons a little like a mystery story. Trying to find the question that a text or theme raises and then seeking to unfold the answers. Other times it's more about presenting the flow of an idea that runs through the passage and the context. I'm keen too to connect the small things with the bigger picture. It's easy to forget the big theme of the bible in order to focus on the small thing. How does grace impact on how we interpret passages about discipline, about divorce and about a thousand other things?

Anyway, the article is worth a read and something to which I will return and give some more thought.

Incremental Preaching

Here's an interesting article about preaching.

Incremental Preaching | LeadershipJournal.net

I actually read quite a lot about preaching and about how different churches approach building series and planning programmes. I still believe that there is a place for the sermon, but it has to be part of a wider, and maybe deeper, commitment to living transformed lives. I worry that we have we invested so much time and effort in teaching truth that we've lost our ability or even desire to implement that truth. We simply don't do application very well.

It isn't that we don't strive to find the application, it's just that we rate clever alliteration and sound doctrine above the actual life changing application of the message. We prefer intellectual stimulation over the uncomfortable challenge to live differently.

I know I don't always succeed to do this, but when I preach my intention is to inspire us to see the bigger picture, to grasp the amazing possibilities of what a life lived in the hands of God might look like, and then to pursue it with everything we have. I am, I will confess, less interested in teaching a group of people stuff they probably already know, and much more concerned with how we are being transformed into the image of Christ.

Anyway, I found this article interesting and helpful and challenging.

Testimony tells the truth

I was just thinking about Sunday's theme in the light of Andy Stanley's book that I've just finished reading. I guess if I were doing it all again and looking for the one crucial idea that might be memorable it might be this:

Testimony tells the truth about who you really are

As Paul urges his readers to live a life worthy of the gospel (1:27) and tells them about all the benefits of being in Christ (2:1-4), he challenges them to adopt the same attitude as Jesus so that they might continue to shine like stars. Our testimony, the story we live and tell is what makes us shine and ultimately this testimony tells the truth about us.

It's just a thought.

Is Preaching Dead?

Having spent the day on Saturday listening to a series of speakers stand at the front of a large group of people and say, "This is not the best way to learn," you'd have thought that the obvious answer would be that preaching should be scrapped and a more interactive, group focused style adopted. 

But that rather assumes that the primary role of preaching is to teach, and I'd want to question that assumption. It seems to be that we've actually reduced preaching to teaching rather than allowing it to be something rather more inspirational. Maybe aspirational is a better word, given that we tend to think of inspirational as leaving us with a good feeling and a pumped up level of expectation. 

By aspirational I mean that preaching is not necessarily about presenting new information but sometimes about presenting old information in a way that encourages us to aspire to become better followers of Jesus Christ. Yes, there are times when the information will be new, but I've too often heard the phrase that we need more teaching in church if we are going to produce more commitment and deeper devotional lives. 

But how well taught do we need to be to do that? Do we not have more resources available to us now than ever before, but our devotional lives are possibly more shallow on a general scale than they were decades or centuries ago? It's not teaching we need, it's practice!

I found Saturday's conference really challenging and, dare I say, inspirational when it comes to thinking about how we learn and how we do that in church. These unconnected ramblings are my emerging thoughts about all of this. So much of my early Christian life was focused on getting the right answers to the questions. Even when I was baptised I felt that it was more important to the church at the time that I understood the theology and practice of baptism than that I had a deepening and growing relationship with God. But being a follower of Jesus is not about preparing for a Bible Quiz. forgive me, but I don't think God is going to check to see if I know all the books of the Bible in order before allowing me access to heaven.

And as for preaching? Well I will continue to preach and my goal will remain what it has always been: to challenge and inspire us all to better connect with God and to walk in his ways. It's not about trying to impress people with a wide range of theological vocabulary or an extensive reading list. There will always be a teaching element, but teaching is not the only goal.

Anyway. I'm rambling a bit again and there are snowmen and women to be built!

Why are we here?

I'm just about to go off to church to our first celebration of 2009. Part of what we'll do is to renew our commitment to God and to each other as the local church. We're going to use a piece of video that we've used before about "Our Church". It's not specific to us, it's more challenge about church in general. you can find the video at the Worshiphousemedia website, just search for "Welcome to our church" and it's the one by Floodgate productions.

After the video, I have a question to ask: Why are we here? This is what I plan to say next!

If you had to choose a word to describe the church would it be “dangerous”? Comfortable maybe, complacent sometimes, busy, confusing occasionally, but rarely dangerous.

And yet the story we share is a dangerous story. It’s a story about revolution and transformation. It changes lives and it can change the world. 

Our story challenges the status quo of perceived normality and proclaims that another world is possible. Not a world of Utopian dreams but of kingdom realities. Our story is one where blind people see, lame people dance and deaf people hear. A story in which those who are trapped and trafficked find freedom and hope, where the socially outcast become members of the family.

It is a truly dangerous story. But somehow we seem to be able live it as a quite suburban afternoon.

Me and mission

On Sunday coming my preaching theme is "We believe in the mission". Now I don't know if I'm unusual or not, but throughout my Christian life I've been torn between figuring out what it means to be a follower of Jesus fully committed to fulfilling his missionary mandate, and yet not being an evangelist. Of course some are immediately wondering why I should actually feel compelled to link these two in this way, whilst others immediately identify with the sense of being torn over the question.

When your heart is to see people discover the deep and life-changing love and forgiveness that you have experienced, you can't help but see the evangelistic process as a large part, if not the larger part of a mission priority.

So, as I struggled to integrate and broaden my understanding of both the missionary mandate and the evangelistic challenge, it was inevitable that I would seek to understand what exactly mission meant to Jesus and the early church. I'm not sure I worked that one out yet, but I still keep trying!

You need also to understand that central to my call to ministry was my personal heartache over the church as I perceived it back in the late 1970's. At that time I saw contemporaries giving their hearts and lives in God's service in some of the toughest countries of the world. My heart was broken because I wondered how connected these people would be able to remain with the church that sent them out as missionaries in the first place. At that time I saw a church that was disengaged from what I've always believed was it's primary purpose for existence–fulfilling the missionary mandate of Jesus. I wasn't sure how much it cared about the mission let alone the missionaries.

So here I am 30 years later and I'm still wondering how connected to that core mission we are in the local church. What journey have we made? Despite all the innovative thinking and all the emerging theology and terminology, are we any closer to being a truly missional church?

Very interestingly, and it wasn't planned this way, we're going to pray for a group of folk who are planting a new church in Marston Vale in the coming weeks. They already been hard at work developing links and serving the community in one of the villages and now it's time to take the next step towards establishing a church.

Perhaps this will inspire the rest of us to look at the opportunities God is putting right in front of us. I hope it doesn't have the opposite effect of making people complacent, believing we are somehow involved in mission because these church planters are involved.

We cannot do mission vicariously through others.

A thinking break

I'm currently trying to get my head around all the things I want to say on Sunday. It's Pentecost and that always seems to me like a good time to talk about vision and purpose and the amazing power of God to transform people and communities.

As I prepare, I know that what I must do is make the vision as clear as I can, as compelling as I can, and as Christ-centred as I can. I guess that all too often, when we get up to preach, we've spent so much time preparing what we want to say that we forget what it is that we want everyone to take away. I'm often guilty of that, and the end result is that probably very few people take away anything that really sustains them or challenges them over the long haul. On the other hand maybe I'm doing myself a disservice and God too for that matter! Anyway, there is always room for improvement and things to learn.

So, as I look at my confusion of notes and thoughts, I keep asking myself what is it that we should be doing or reflecting upon as a result of this Sunday's topic.  Perhaps I need a list of questions to ask before, as, and after I've done my preparation (assuming the preparation is done in good time, and therein lies another sad truth for many a preacher!). Here are some possible questions that come to mind:

• What should we be doing as a result of this message?
• What should we be doing differently as a result of this message?
• What should we be praying faithfully about as a result of this message?
• What question do we need to consider as a result of this message?

I'd just like to qualify this by saying that the main imperative is to let God speak, so these questions have to be seen to sit in that context. Thinking about it, it would be interesting to know what questions others ask when they are preparing talks and sermons.

The one that got away

We recently finished our series on characters in our Sunday morning celebrations. We looked at Abraham, Joseph, Sarah, Ruth, Jonah, Peter, David, Esther and Joshua. We finished with Zacchaeus. But there were a lot of others we could have done. A long time ago I did an A-Z of Bible characters, I remember that 'F' was Philip and I think 'Q' was probably Queen someone. Anyway, this time I chose a mixture that made sure I included some of the strong female characters on my list. But there's always one you wished you could have found space for in the series, probably more than one.

Of all the characters I could have chosen, the one that got away this time was Elijah. I think Elijah would have made a good 21st century minister. He's passionate, he's committed, he's faithful and he feels totally alone! He has high highs and low lows. He prays powerful prayers and runs away at the first sign of trouble. He knows when God is going to make his presence known and keeps getting back into the game. He even works on discouraging anyone from following him into ministry!

I think, if Elijah were around today he would understand the frustrations of leadership. He'd understand when you told him that if things don't change you're out of here, and he'd understand that when they don't you're still around. Not because you can't leave, but because you know that God has called you to stay and stick with the programme.

When God finally gets Elijah alone on the mountain, and when Elijah is ready for the biggest question of his career, God asks him: "Elijah, what are you doing here?" God asks Elijah this question twice, and twice Elijah gives the same answer. Perhaps God was hoping for a different answer the second time around. Perhaps Elijah was so convinced of his aloneness that not even encountering God was going to change how he felt about his situation. 

Whatever the purpose of the exchange, God simply says to Elijah: "Go back the way you came and..." And what? Continue to serve me, continue to do what I ask you to do. Ministry is not known for it's glamourous side. Outside of the church, very few people will ever know who we are, even inside the church few will know. But God knows.

God knows how you feel, he knows what is going on in your life, in your ministry, in your church. And he still wants your wholehearted devotion. In the end of course it is God whom we serve. We might feel like Elijah felt, but like Elijah, we are not alone because God is with us.