And We're Off!

Well, we’re off!

Tuesday was our first Young Leaders Gutsy Faith lunch discussion. It was fantastic. We’ve got a sharp group of young leaders. They are hungry for God, and they want to dig deep. I trust this next six weeks will begin taking them deeper in their journey with God.

This week we dug into the first three chapters of Gutsy Faith. The chapter synopsis are as follows:
Ch. 1 - Raising the question of what it means to have a gutsy faith.
Ch. 2 - It is never God’s desire to say no to His children. On the contrary, it is God’s desire to answer yes to our requests.
Ch. 3 - The Father always gave Jesus everything He asked for.

A couple of interesting thoughts that were brought up during our discussion:
- There was some skepticism over these two statements
*God always gave Jesus everything he asked for.
*God desires to be able to say yes to us all the time.
For the time, however, those members that were skeptical chose to put their doubts in the statements aside.
- One great statement that was made by Jennifer: “What’s so wrong with God telling us no? Why is it that we always think we have to have a yes?”
- Jesus knew God’s will all the time because He was God. Is it really possible to know God’s will all the time like Jesus did? It’s doubtful. But then near the end of His time with them, Jesus did say to His disciples that they’d be able to accomplish more than He was able to accomplish. How does that factor in?
- Some were really anxious to get to the crux of the book to begin seeing what God might have in store for them.

It was a fantastic foundation to move forward with.

In reading through Gutsy Faith, just because I wrote the book, I’m not exempting myself from going through it again myself. Some of the thought questions really challenged me.

Two in particular asked what five people during the course of my life do I consider to have a gutsy faith, and what characteristic do these people possess that I would like to see developed in my life? While I won’t identify all of the people, two people in particular that I named were my old boss, and pastor, Kerry Willis, and my dear friend, Susie Shellenberger. The one characteristic that I admire the most about these two mentors and colleagues is that despite how busy they get, they never lose track of their quiet times with God. They don’t miss a day.

I wish I could say the same always holds true for me. But the reality is that lately, I’ve been missing my quiet times too often. When I do I justified it because I’m busy, and I’m busy for the Kingdom. I have to re-face the reality that no matter how busy I am for the Kingdom, I’m not really working for the Kingdom if I haven’t had my daily connection with the Kingdom’s King. What good is a Kingdom worker if he doesn’t know what the King wants him to do? Without those quiet times I miss too much.

My question for my readers is, you’re probably every bit as busy as I am. So how do you make sure you carve out your time with the Father daily? It’s tough sometimes. How do you do it?

Join me in praying that God would help me make sure I carve out time for Him daily. And please pray that during those times, and especially over this next six weeks with this group, that God would open my eyes to what His next job is for me to tackle for the Kingdom.

If you’re interested in reading what some of our group has to say about this study, I’ve listed their blogs in the right-hand column. Many of them are on Myspace.com. If you’re not a member of it you will likely not be able to read those blogs. But since membership is free, do yourself a favor and get up an account. It’s worth it alone just to read what some of these brilliant young leaders have to say.

Grace and peace!

-jeff