Holy Spirit and Mission, part 1

Another school year is coming to a close.  Perhaps you have taken some time to “build a memorial to the Lord” as I wrote about last week.   Some of you were very encouraged as you reflected on all the things you saw God do through you this year.  Perhaps others of you were a little disappointed that it didn’t seem that God was working as strongly as you had hoped.  Perhaps you will be encouraged by the uncertain situation that the early disciples faced in Acts 1.

The disciples had been given the charge to take the gospel into all the world…but were then immediately instructed by Jesus to wait in Jerusalem until they had received God’s power for His mission (Acts 1:8-14).

  “Go…but wait first…”  Jesus’ instructions to wait seem contrary to His instructions to go, but the disciples obediently waited.  They didn’t know what else to do, so they prayed – this is a great principle in ministry:  when you don’t know what to do, pray!

“Prayer marks the beginning of most the significant Christian movements ever begun.  The beginning of this movement [in Acts 2] would begin in Jerusalem on Pentecost, when crowds from all over the world were gathered.  The disciples, praying and waiting, did not know the reasons for the delay, but continued to devote themselves to prayer.” (from the commentary on Acts by Charles Erdman)

God didn’t tell the disciples the ‘when’ and ‘how’ of His plan to get the gospel out to the nations.  He generally doesn’t give us His detailed plan either.  The disciples waited together and prayed together.  God was at work gathering everything needed to ensure that the gospel would indeed be taken to every dark corner of the world.  In this situation, He was waiting for the most strategic and effective moment to work: the moment during the holiday of Pentecost when there would be a representative from every tribe and nation gathered together in one place who would hear the gospel in an amazing work of the Holy Spirit that made it obvious that this was a work of God.

After that, the disciples were free to travel about carrying the gospel to world as commanded.  The rest of the book of Acts records how God built this great movement through the working of the Holy Spirit.

Where are you in this process?  God has called you to bring the gospel to your campus.  Perhaps you have been praying and waiting for a long time…but still have no clear indication of when God is going to start building a movement on your campus.  What has He promised?  Do you really believe that He is already at work preparing to start a movement?  Have you stayed together devoted in prayer?  Keep reminding Him through prayer of His promises to work at your university (which means you are reminding yourself of His promises).  Keep believing Him and keep waiting, keep being devoted to prayer.  He is indeed at work gathering together all the strategic elements needed to begin a great work of God on your campus!  When it happens, you will know that it is the work of God.

MEMORIAL TO THE LORD

“In the Old Testament God had His people build a monument

 every time He performed a great miracle in their lives.  The

monument was to remind them of God’s presence and power...of

God’s love and concern for [them].”    Ken Green

*Joshua 4:1-7

1 Samuel 6:18b (last part of verse only)

*1 Chronicles 16:12

*Psalm 145:5-7, 10-12

Psalm 103:2

Isaiah 55:12-13

Psalm 138:5

At regular intervals in your life and ministry (end of school years, end of summers, etc.) take some time with the Lord to reflect over what He has taught you, what He has done in your life and what He has done through you. 

In your journal list those things as memorials to the Lord, as testimonies to His faithfulness.  These lists will serve as written reminders of His presence and His power in your life, of His love and concern for you -- especially when you find yourself doubting Him.

I often do this this as a group of people who are trusting Him together as a team to work through us.  We often go on a prayer walk at the end of the school year and I look for stones in a ‘flat’ surface on one side which we will use at the end of a time of reflecting and ‘building our memorial’ to the Lord.   

After we individually spend time in reflection, then I have us come together as a group to share the things we want to remember that the Lord did for us during the past year.  Then I ask each person to choose one thing that most represents for them God’s power or provision or presence or work or care…and write that in a short phrase on their rock.   

We then place the rocks together in a pile, representing our ‘memorial’.  

Later, if you don’t want to keep the rocks piled together, each person can take their rock with them to serve as a reminder of what the Lord has done.  I have several such rocks on my bookshelf which are memorials to what God did over the years.  I strongly encourage you to do this exercise to help you keep your eyes on what God has done in response to your faith.

5 x 5 prayers

A few years ago the Holy Spirit had been convicting me that I had grown into some bad habits in prayer.  I had been focusing on praying blessings into my life all the while “praying away the sin in people that bothered me”.  I had become an ‘advisor’ to God in how He should be working in other people’s lives in order to make them easier for me to get along with.  Then I read an article on prayer in the Discipleship Journal magazine which broadened my prayers for others.  Here is an excerpt from the article:

“When Johnny Jones, living in a middle-class suburb in central California, made a commitment to pray, [he prayed]:

-5  blessings on

-5  neighbors for

-5 minutes a day for

-5 days a week for

-5 weeks,

[and] surprising things began to happen.

-One neighbor asked him how she could have a personal relationship with Christ. When Johnny shared the gospel with her, she accepted Christ as her Savior.

-A drug-dealing neighbor asked Johnny to pray for him and help him turn his life around and get out of the drug business.

-A Buddhist couple from across the street asked if they could go to church with Johnny's family.

-And a Hispanic couple living next door asked him to start a Bible study for the neighborhood.

I was immediately challenged to adapt this idea in my prayer life.  I listed out the people in my life who I had been praying that God would change.  Instead of praying “sin out of them”, I began to pray God’s blessings on their lives.  Five blessings on five people for five minutes a day, five days a week for five weeks.

I can’t list out such amazing results among my ‘neighbors’ as what you read above, but I can tell you that my perspective transformed toward the 5 people I had been asking God to make them easier for me to get along with!  Instead of being frustrated with how their personalities bothered me, I began to enjoy thinking about them and about what blessings I could pray for them that day.  I looked forward to being with them as it gave me clues what kinds of blessings to ask God to give them each day. 

I also began to see the sin better in my own life and started to pray for character changes in my life.  I prayed for the fruits of the Spirit (Gal.5:22-23) to be exhibited in my life when I interacted with my 5 friends (some of the things I had been praying for others to exhibit when they were around me!).  I think it became easier for my friends to be around me when I changed my perspective and started praying blessings on others and sin out of my life!

God is working among students!

I have been very encouraged to hear from you.  You have been sharing stories about what God is doing in you and through you as you walk in obedience to His calling to bring His light of salvation to students on your campus who live in darkness.  I wanted to share with you what Alyana and her ‘team’ learned about themselves and about God this year as they serve Him on their campuses.  I know you have similar stories – I hope we can continue to encourage one another with accounts of His faithfulness and grace in our lives!

From Alyana:

In this letter I don’t want to tell the entire history of the ministry, but just to share what God has given us and what He is doing in us.  I hope I can do it.

This past year we have various moments when our plans have not always worked out, but always there remained an ache in our hearts for ministry.  In many respects your coaching tips have helped in strengthening the spirit of our team.  The tips on unity of vision and dedication have helped.... We even discussed some of the themes during our leadership meetings.

For example, the topic of unity of vision helped me personally to better think about and to pray for unity of the Spirit amongst us, about whether or not it is visible in our ministry that we all are headed in the same direction?!

I am also glad that James is our leader [a volunteer who helps with the student ministry there].  He is an excellent leader.  He has many times discipled us, and what is cool, he often reminds us that we are all valuable to God, valuable to Him even if we don’t serve Him – that He stays in our hearts and we always have a personal relationship with Him.  As well, James motivates us to ministry, to evangelism, taking us to places in the Scriptures where God talks about how His desires for our service/actions not to be service just for the sake of service (actions for the sake of actions), but that ministry should come as an overflow from Him.

Not long ago, at the time of James’ leaving, we met together as a team for planning (someone else led the meeting).  We didn’t even pray, we just planned.  We did not evaluate the past unsuccessful moments, our misses in things we recently planned.  We did not even ask for God’s perspective on these things.  We just talked about how to entertain the students for the coming month, just to plan for the continuation of ministry…just for the sake of planning…

It was an unpleasant moment, but the Lord convicted us in many respects about it later.  We talked by phone and discussed this meeting and came to the conclusion, that this is service to the Lord and we should not do it only because we ought to do it, we should do it because of God’s call, because of our commitment to Him.  We became convinced of this through this situation.  I think this situation is good a testimony for others so that they will not make the same mistake we did)))

I also wanted to say something about our general vision – I think it’s good from time to time in the general meetings to talk about vision – what it was in the beginning and how the Lord wants to develop it, to move the team in one Spirit in the same direction. 

And also it’s an excellent idea to entrust to a few people the responsibility to pray specifically for the ministry.  It gives us more confidence knowing that someone is continually praying for the ministry.  Of course this does not mean that others shouldn’t pray who aren’t part of this focused prayer.  It is just to give us confidence to know that there is someone who is faithfully praying for the ministry and its goals.

And also I remain of the opinion that it is necessary to give more time in meetings directed to our training and encouragement because there are those among us who are students who come to the meetings, but seldom go to church. They only hear about God in our meetings. So I think that it’s important for them, just as it is for us, that our meeting be a time of building rather than just sharing. Therefore we made a decision to spend more time in teaching and building.

Now we have begun to practice inviting some seeking students to discussion groups where we can pray together, participate together which allows us to build a better relationship with them so they can see our spiritual lives.

At the beginning of March we went to a conference for non-believing students and it showed us really well how we can work together.  Everyone was responsible for something.  James and other leaders led the conference.  All went very well, praise the Lord.

Coleen, I think that this year has been a time when we came closer together as a team - as the Body of Christ.  It probably always happens like this, but at the same time we see encouraging things in the ministry from students.  Some of them, after many discussion groups, MovieClaps, Stories of the Soul, etc [evangelistic strategies] are starting to search more for God and are asking more about Him.

We do not see a concrete number of new believers from our ministry, but we are not discouraged as our hearts still ache in our passion for ministry to students.

This is pretty much everything that I wanted to share.  It’s an overview our ministry for this year.  I hope that it becomes a good lesson for other teams in Russia!