You Can Make a Difference

This collation of insights from various sources and authors stems from recent discussions I have been involved in about (a) do we take action or simply ‘pray and let God’ and (b) how do we discern God’s guidance in our lives and answers to our prayers and questions and (c) do we need to work or rather only be in full time ministry?

I include my brief summary at the end, but you will need to persevere through all posts in this series to get there. This is part 1 of 4.

From ‘The Power of If’ by Mark Batterson

You are called and commissioned by God and are right where God wants you to be [to make a difference], even if you’re not where you want to be.

God doesn’t call the qualified; he qualifies the called. There is a high likelihood God will call you to do something you are not smart enough, good enough or strong enough to pull off. By definition, a God-ordained dream will always be beyond your ability and beyond your resources. Why? So that you have to rely on God every single day!

1 Corinthians 10:31 says “So whatever you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” Whatever you do. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things. And when we are, we put a smile on God’s face. Taking mundane tasks and figuring out how to transfigure them as Jesus taught us – that is what what if is all about.

I want to be taught by God what I need to learn in my situation [at work, in life generally]. What you do isn’t as important as how you do it and whom you do it for. Whatever you do, don’t settle for what. Imagine what if.

From ‘Spark’ by Jason Jaggard

You have to start somewhere, and starting always involves risks.

Taking risks is like exercise. When you trust that the first step will lead to something good but as yet unseen, you are flexing your ability to let go of outcomes. You are now trusting something greater than yourself.

To be fully alive is not simply to drink deeply of life and to be satisfied. It’s to become a well, offering Life to the world around you. That is what it means to be fully alive.

To drink deeply of life requires us to be humble, courageous, generous. It demands the best from us and more. It demands the Divine. We need moments that wake us up from our reliance on escaping from the world, from our propensity to become apathetic.

Jesus taught that all who desire to be extraordinary human beings must serve others. Mastering self-investment and self-leadership is one of the most powerful ways you can serve the world and those around you. It’s one of the best risks you can take.

A jerk happens to you. A spark is something you make happen. Jerks are God’s gifts to us. Sparks are our gifts to the world.

There is one trait in the human spirit that unlocks more opportunity than any other: personal responsibility. People can’t grow unless they are willing to take personal responsibility for their lives. You won’t grow until you are willing to take responsibility for your own growth. You have to want to grow.

What we expect from an environment will shape how we assess the environment and what we get out of being there.

You can’t improve your life or make the world a better place without change.

When we only see what we always see, it makes seeing new possibilities nearly impossible.

The reason so many people fail when they work hard to clean up their lives is that they fixate on expelling negative influences, but they don’t fill their lives with anything beautiful. Good is not the absence of evil; it is the opposite of evil.

God almost never pushes. His overwhelming preference is to guide. So, if you’re always ‘on the move’, ‘wait’ might be God’s message for you right now. Yet, if you’re always ‘on the wait’, then ‘move’ might be a little more relevant.

In the scriptures, when God was calling people to holiness, He was calling them to lead inspiring lives. This is the will of God: for you to live an inspiring life - a spark to become a light in the darkness.

Devote your attention and energy to things that are inspiring, because those are the things of God. And when you do this, you’ll be experiencing God in ways you never would have predicted.

Spreading good in the world is the life that most fully expresses what it means to be alive.

Submitting to ourselves is the only form of submission that requires no humility. And that is probably what makes it evil.

Submitting your personal desires and feelings to the task of accomplishing something greater is an act that builds your character, and your life, in amazing ways.

You don’t have to wait until you’re confident you’re making the perfect choice. At any given moment there are countless choices and opportunities that exceed whatever it is you have settled for so far.

The unseen can’t be seen until you begin moving into the spaces that you already see.

Risk requires you to use what you already have to get what you don’t currently have. It requires you to be who you already are so you can become the person you never thought you could be.

James’ writing assures us that faith and risk are intertwined, and one without the other is worthless. Divine faith always involves risk.

That’s what happens when we risk: we experience God in a way we couldn’t otherwise. When we risk, we jump into the night and into the arms of God, come what may. It doesn’t always go the way we’d hoped, but it always goes in a way God can use to create hope.

Don’t do nothing. Sometimes doing one imperfect but beautiful thing can lead you to more beautiful things later on, if you are listening for God. Contrast that with doing nothing. Most of the time doing nothing leads to more nothing.

There is a huge difference between caring about outcomes and being controlled by outcomes. We can’t control what we get out of life; we can control only what we put into it. We can’t control the outcomes of our taking risks…we can only control if we risk.

Intentionality and risk are the ways we develop a greater capacity to obey.

The art of self-challenge is when you challenge yourself for the purpose of developing your capacity to be comfortable doing what’s uncomfortable. Personal progress hinges on your ability to challenge yourself.

God’s favorite gift to give people is the ability to serve others, because when we engage in the adventure of servant-hood, we get a glimpse of what it means to be like God. This is the movement of God.

According to Paul’s writing, three words express what he sensed were the themes to be fully alive – to be connected in a life-giving way to God – faith, love and hope. These can also be expressed as Risk, compassion and optimism. Risk is where faith meets life. Compassion is the gritty word for love. Optimism is the energy that sustains risk.

Compassion means ‘to suffer with’, but compassion isn’t sympathy, as it has less to do with your feelings and more to do with your actions. Compassion is risk lived out in community.

When we have the courage to take risks of compassion that produce optimism in others, we create space for God to move and work.

From ‘’Legacy Now’ by Phil Munsey

Living just for ourselves and in the present is the lowest denominator of one’s drive for success. When our lives are viewed from that one-dimensional perspective, we can become deceived, discouraged, and distracted and can even diminish the purpose God has for us.

Thank God the Holy Spirit will always re-route me when I get off course. He will find me wherever I have drifted off to and make a way to get me to my destiny.

The amazing thing is that when we don’t listen, God takes our mistakes and makes such good use of them that you will think they were in the original plan. So perfect are His ways that our sinful or stupid ways (sometimes both) can be turned into something good for His purpose.

Faith expresses itself with works, and isn’t just a passing thought.

Faith expands each time it is practiced.

What is Faith? There are four facets – truth, action, commitment, and supernatural force.

Your legacy built on faith can be pictured as a three-legged stool. The top of the stool is the base of truth, which represents your belief system. The three legs that hold up those beliefs are the actions that express your belief, the commitment to stick to your belief, and the supernatural force that you are counting on to see what you believe come to pass.

There’s a thin line between a man fishing and a man standing on a riverbank, holding a pole and looking like an idiot - a very thin line. In our lives, faith is that thin line. The fish – your provisions –are not going to just jump into your boat! You will have to cast your line of faith and catch what God has ready and waiting for those who dare to believe!

Our role is to walk in obedience and be open to the bigger plan that may not always fit in our schedules.

The very wind that can push you down can push you through; it can become the force that moves you in the direction God intends for you to go. Let the winds of grace change your sins into wins – for you and for everyone that is linked to your life.

Dreams are in fact the property of God. He is the giver of dreams. They carry not only divine power but also divine purpose. Dreams are meant to connect you to the eternal. Dreams are heaven’s hints of God’s desires for your life, a life created for His purpose.

The victory happens first in your prayer of faith. See it and seize it now.

Live your life with a deeper meaning than just for the moment. Live for a cause that taps into the needs and opportunity that make a difference for our world.

If you have been hurt, you may need to turn your hurt into an instrument of healing for someone else. It may be the legacy link you have been searching for. Turn your wounds into weapons. Learn to turn what the enemy meant for evil into good for the kingdom of God. Choose to let your hurt be for good.

Remember, you don’t get in life what you want; you get what you are, and you are the secret ‘issues’ of your heart.

Only a pure vessel can carry the blessings. Character counts when it comes to wealth – not just in what you may gain but also in what you give, and not just what you give but why you give. Learn, earn and then return. Principles will attract principals.

Growth for growth’s sake, without regard to the intent, is the goal of cancer.

All dreams begin with hope. It has the stubborn capacity to believe the impossible and expect the intangible. We must never let go of the rope of hope that God has placed in our hearts. Once we drop anchor and secure our position, we can cast our net into the improbable to capture the impossible. If your life has become so overwhelming that the rope of hope has been cut off, pray, like Abraham, that God will give you the hope to hope – again. Hope will not disappoint. Cast your anchor one more time into the ocean of opportunities. Give hope a chance to latch onto a rock that will secure a place for you to once again dream.

Faith not only anticipates what could be, but it also draws us into action to make it so. Faith will cast out the net. Faith engages us to take ownership of what we desire. Faith writes up a contract and insists that we sign it. Faith is hope in overalls and with tools in its pocket. We live by one of two choices – fear or faith! When one is under the influence of faith, the line that separates imagination from reality disappears. The reality gap is merely a small detail that will be closed by the results of faith; it’s just a matter of time. Faith is not bothered by the facts of why it can’t be done; truthfully, it is quite bored by what we call our reality. The ‘not yet seen’ is where our faith resides and rejoices.

Faith calls that which is not as though it is!

Love is the driving force behind all godly dreams. When love is not fueling your dreams, you have nothing more than ambiguous ambition, power without purpose, and deceitful desires. Without love, hope and faith become slaves of precipitous passions that manipulate emotions for self-serving excess that has little resemblance of a true dream’s success. It is God’s love that moves us to dream. It is love that will bear and believe all things. Love will hold your legacy together when the scavengers of greed and control attempt to devour it. Love will keep all egos in check.

‘Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evl; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails…And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.’ [1 Corinthians 13:4-8,13].

Don’t become disheartened - You are moving God with your prayers and acts of obedience. Nothing wasted. Everything counting. Accumulation.

Don’t worry about time, either. God can do in one moment what would be absolutely impossible or take years of effort on your part.

From the ‘New Life, New Lifestyle’ series on the GodFirst website (part 1)

Sin has darkened our hearts to the extent that we have a deep ignorance of the ultimate reality of a calling to Christ-centeredness, i.e. not understanding the true meaning of the Gospel. Our heart is hardened to the salvation grace of God. Ephesians 2:1-2 says that we were ‘dead’ to God because we were so caught up in our sinfulness. If there is no dramatic transformation in you when coming to Christ, you have not found true salvation and have not opened up your heart and mind to it properly. Paul makes it clear in the early chapters of the book of Romans that this hardness of heart towards God is a universal condition, and it is the crux of the problem. This hardness of heart leads us to sensuality, which is an excessive indulgence in bodily appetite. When a person is ignorant of reality, the true meaning of things, i.e. of creation by God, that person starts to look for other things that can be idolized, to look to that created thing to give the ultimate sense of meaning, purpose, self-worth, significance or security - looking to indulge in created things excessively, and completely missing the Creator. This affects people differently, e.g. focusing on sex, intellectual pursuits, relationships – anything but God. Paul says that there is a continual lust for more when people do this – it doesn’t get any better, it just gets worse!

Per Paul, the prescription to heal this damaged heart, and the escape from this futility of life, is to hear and receive the truth about Jesus (John 5:25). Jesus’ voice is what breaks through the darkness, hardness and ignorance of the human heart. We need to respond to Jesus’ voice to receive the prescription. The point of life is not morality, it is not to be good, it is to know God, to love God, to serve God.

Romans 6:6 When I put my faith in Christ, my old nature is ‘put to death’, and God looks at me as being righteous. That is justification – a judicial proclamation of my new position before God, and this happens instantly. The process of becoming what God has declared us to be – right in Christ – is called sanctification (embracing your new self). Justification = death of old self. Sanctification = putting off of old self. Some old habits cling to you, so you need to consciously shed them. Leave the old you behind and embrace the new roles, rights and responsibilities of the new you. Stop acting like the ‘old’ self is still alive – he is dead. Changing to being more moral is good, but, without that proclamation of justification, that change of position before God that only God can do, you are still your old self, and are ‘unsaved’. Morality does not change your position before God, but putting your faith in Jesus does.

The Holy Spirit engages us to change into our new self, but never with us as mere spectators, but rather with our engagement, with our full participation and involvement in the process. It is our work to eagerly participate and co-operate with the Holy Spirit as he does this work within us.

Check in next week for the next instalment of this 4-part post.