Category Archives: Blog/Vlog/Pod

Not Evangelists

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What do hair dressers, automotive dealers, day traders, and nurses all have in common? All  over the USA regular people, not evangelists or even people with a gift or flair for evangelism, are learning how to share the gospel. And truly it is yielding new disciples in ways not seen in my 20+ years in Christendom. And it is an organic movement that is actually leading to small house fellowships popping up all over the place. 

Now before we ask the whys and hows, it’s important that we recognize that there is a plethora of peripheral issues that are crying out for our attention, which ultimately distract from the great mission of the church. No doubt, issues of social justice, biblical justice, racial tensions, political unrest, and the engineered virus are worthy of discussion. However, these issues could easily serve as distractions from the Gospel, which intrinsically has the power to heal, to unite, and to set things aright. In fact, yes, I will unapologetically go so far as to state that it, the gospel, is the only hope for humanity. I’m not deliberately minimizing the other issues of our day, but rather underscoring the importance of the only real solution to the great of human dilemma of selfishness, sickness, and why not just call it what is at its core…sin.

And yet despite these other issues as great and pertinent as they might seem, God is at work through normal people that are choosing to invest their time and efforts into reaching people with the gospel message that actually saves people from their sin. I’m talking about people just like many of you, the reader of this article. Not super evangelists or seminarians or paid clergy (those people are not excluded either) but people that have the desire to live the book of Acts and believe that victory over habitual sin is reality through the empowerment that comes by knowing Jesus Christ. People are being born again; this is God moving. Regular people are making disciples; this is God moving.

So one of the fundamental questions that one should rightly ask is what is different about these people in contrast to the rest of the church/ institutional church. Refined down to the most simplistic elements of what is happening is that people are choosing to learn the foundations of the simple gospel and live them out. Of course orthodoxy is underscored but orthodoxy and orthopraxy were never meant to be mutually exclusive apart from one and other. Yes, right understanding must be accompanied by right practice. Learn the gospel and live the gospel. No, this isn’t just going to church on Sunday and Wednesday twice a month. This is living with the understanding that we aren’t trying to get people to join our club or trying to get them to agree with our checklist of faith tenets but rather incorporating Jesus and his ongoing mission into the routine tasks of life like going to grocery store, paying for your tags at DMV, or meeting with a coworker at lunch time. 

So this letter is meant to be an encouragement to you. If you haven’t shared the gospel lately with someone or baptized someone or seen someone get filled with the Holy Spirit or seen someone become born again, maybe there is more for you waiting just around the corner. There are opportunities to see God move everywhere. And again, please understand that learning to make disciples is not the job of only a few with that “gift.” It really is the work of every single person who names Christ as Lord and Savior. You can do this. But there may be some learning and unlearning necessary. There may be some new habits that need developing. Hebrews 6:1-2 speaks about the basic foundational teachings of Christianity. What is sad is that many of those teachings aren’t even found in many or our modern day churches. Sorry not sorry, but it is time to get those foundational truths down and apply them in our daily lives, then maybe we can talk about some of the other things like double predestination, flat earth, and prophecy let alone address social/political issues rightly in our day. Therefore, if you recognize that there needs to be some adjustments made in your own life, feel free to contact me and we can talk about it. 
Always with love steering the ship,
Jarod


The Secret to Empowerment for God’s Work

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Let’s start with a timeless truth: if you wait on the Lord you are going to renew your strength. 

Isaiah 40:31 But those who wait on the LORD Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint.

I want to start with this verse and tie it to mission. The mission of God is connecting to his divine plan and doing his work. In whatever sphere you are in, it’s vital to be mission/work conscious.  My sphere changes frequently since I do missions and evangelism in the USA and abroad. Start to think in terms of lifestyle rather than doing specific tasks. Maybe it’s better for me to say I live missions and evangelism rather than I do missions and evangelism. But whether you are a lawyer in an office, an airline stewardess, or a retail attendant, you have work to do for Christ in your sphere of influence. The above verse highlights the correlation between waiting and working because the strength or empowerment found to do the works of God is forged in the waiting on Him. Waiting on God is possibly the single most important key to empowerment in doing God’s work. So let’s see how this works out. 

Firstly, I just want to reassure you that there is a place of waiting on the Lord that produces a joyful impetus that dissolves fear and weariness in doing God’s work.  When you interact with God via waiting upon him it simply will make you strong in doing his work. There are a few reasons why this is key.

Listen to the podcast on this topic here: https://bit.ly/31epr4u

You see, when you wait on God it allows him to work in you. To change you. Inspire you. Waiting is the action that secures the place at the table for the Lord to sit and dine with us. It is out of these encounters that one’s heart comes alive providing the impulsion which all work for God rightly flows. 

I will never forget the forty-day water fast and the subsequent word I received from a young man. I was sitting in a prayer room a couple of days after my fast when a young man was bursting with a word for me. He was traveling through the town and decided to stop in for a little while before heading back out on his journey to his destination. He stated that he felt God would not let him leave until he declared what he felt God was showing him. He said that when he saw me, he saw missions and adventure written over me. That was encouraging since much of my time had been spent praying about missions during the fast. He went on to pray for me and said that he saw that I was like a boxer. During the rounds, I would go out and box. But in-between the rounds, I would need to come back to the corner to rest and be attended to by God.  I had to chuckle because he talked about me returning to the corner bloody and bruised. Not sure I like that image of what my ministry is gonna be like but I knew exactly what he was talking about. Returning to the corner represented waiting on the Lord. It was in the place of waiting that God could patch the wounds, give encouragement, and delineate instructions for the next round. 

I know it sounds so simplistic but God is the vine from which all the work of the branches must flow. And waiting on Him allows that heavenly life’s blood to begin to flow. You may not notice it at first but you will begin to see, as you look back, that God is affecting your momentum. 

We know that God acts on behalf of those who wait on him (Isaiah 64:4). Therefore, seeing this promise manifest is contingent upon our part. God has chosen to cooperate with humankind. We can do the works of God but waiting on Him for that Spiritual fervor is a requisite! And if we sit and seek, He will still and speak.

However, let us never be those that simply wait on God to the point of never acting on behalf of Him. Now is not the time to become lethargic in our work for God because we’ve become enamored with the waiting on Him. Yes, He is lovely. But revelation of Him was never meant to be kept to self. Let’s wait on God, then with a burning heart let’s participate in his missional mandate to bring the nations to Him. 

Please don’t misunderstand me, waiting is on God is noble, a necessity, and one of the highest exercises of the Christian life. But we miss the point if we think that the waiting is endgame. I know that many would present Mary and Martha at this point. But that is an unnecessary contrast since we have the whole word of God that certainly underscores the work of God in relation to waiting upon him. Waiting on God results in humility, purposefulness, and surrender as a vessel of his purposes. As we wait upon him He is actually equipping us in the innermost parts to take up his missional mandate, to be strengthened for a purpose. Grace is poured out in waiting. The Spirit is stirred in waiting. Resolve is fortified in waiting. Nothing I am saying here minimizes God’s enjoyment of us or our enjoyment of Him. Love swells in waiting. But if love does not compel to do, then it should be, no it must be recognized that there is more. What a terrible predicament we would be in if the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit had not been compelled to expand the parameters of their mutual perfect love by including humanity in Christ. The greatest story ever told has love And mission as its theme.  So we can regard waiting as having work as its objective in season. And it is only in working that waiting achieves its full blessedness. 

Many Christian spheres have lost the sense of working for God as the highest honor on the planet. If real working for Him is rooted in Him then the truest revelations and knowledge of Him must be shared. 

Conversely, we would never want to be numbered with those that work for Him yet know little of waiting on Him. Listen, I’m actually not talking about being balanced here. I’m actually talking about radical seeking and radical action. The way that looks is different for each of us. For some, being radical might be stepping out and talking to someone in the taxi about Jesus. For others, it might mean lifting up a zeal filled petition to the Lord for an extra ten minutes. The point is that each of us must begin to go hard after Jesus in waiting and shaping our efforts in his work. I understand that there are ethereal seasons of seeking, healing, and prospering while waiting. Yet again, those seasons are meant to preface lives of action. It’s a beautiful thing to recognize that God has given his body general objectives and goals to achieve. Grab ahold of it and make it personal. Yes, you have a mission and it is glorious. 

If we work without waiting we are in danger of being given over to impulse without divine unction.  God’s work is done in and with God’s strength. I’m not saying that nothing good can come from just setting one’s heart to do something for God. But in this day and age, it is imperative that we are rightly partnered with Him in our missional efforts. The world cries out for independence, that is to do things in one’s own strength; God cries out for dependence, to do works in His power. After all, Jesus told us that without him we can do nothing. 

Just a bit of clarification. When I speak of waiting on God, I’m not necessitating some sort of opulent divine encounter all the time. Those can happen, and you have a real one you are blessed. But often the imprints of the Holy Spirit cannot even be perceived as we perform the act of waiting. Yet, the results, often long term, are the flowing life of God that truly is the sine qua non of all impactful works. Why? Because as you exercise your free will to wait on God he graciously responds via the life of the Spirit. 

So yes, I’m truly concerned that so much of the world suffers in darkness because not only is the church not working for God, but when it is, it is often working without waiting on him. Now you may be thinking all this is well and fine but how can I afford the time to wait upon God. I truly state this as my experience. The works of God seems to be multiplied via waiting. In other words, you will accomplish more having waited on God than you would without waiting on Him. I believe it. I love the push me pull you effect of waiting and working. Simply put, waiting pushes us to work as the heart of God is made known. And working certainly unveils our great need for God’s power in what we do under his banner.

Listen there’s no condemnation here. I’ve gone from waiting on the Lord for just a few minutes to waiting on the Lord for hours, and back again. We will talk about consistency and discipline elsewhere. The point is that the more you wait on the Lord the more you’re girding yourself up, the more you strengthening yourself and the more you’re igniting your inward flame to do the works of God. It’s like a coal-burning engine… you have to feed it to get the output. And the funny thing is, when the pressure of life is bearing down, this is often the time when I’ve found that I want to wait on the Lord the least. When the things that are mentally and emotionally difficult, it’s almost like that thing makes me want to be lethargic in my waiting on the Lord. But the truth is that in those times when the pressure of the world and circumstances is coming down on us, that is the most important time to wait on the Lord. So I do. Sometimes after a bit of wrestling with the flesh, but I do. Then it’s back out to the ring for the next round. 

In conclusion, one of the most distinguished examples of waiting on God to accomplish His will and work occurs in Matthew Chapter 26. It is there we find Jesus in immense anguish for the soon coming task is most difficult! In the darkness of Gethsemane, Jesus was watching and waiting on God as his disciples capitulated to the weariness of the day. At least two times Jesus exhorted them to watch and pray. Notice what Jesus states in verse 41. “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”  Do you see it? Watching…waiting in prayer leads to empowerment. The correlation here is that waiting on God empowers one to resist temptation which otherwise thwarts the work. The spirit of man is willing but we must not acquiesce to the weakness of the flesh, which desires not to wait on God. And precious Jesus sets the example here. In the most difficult hour of time, when the weight of the world was on his shoulders and the hordes of hell surrounded him like wild raging bulls, he succeeded in pressing through the anguish while in waiting unto the glorious work of the crucifixion. Waiting prepared him for the work ahead. He fully succeeded in his incarnational mission. Truly those who wait not the Lord shall renew their strength. Glory!

The super-duper practical:
1. Get away from people and wait on God (leave your cellphone in the other room).

2. Allot an amount of time that challenges you a bit. (If you are not used to waiting on him start with 10 minutes and grow from there. 

3. Do it every day and maybe a few times a day. 

4. Jesus said could you not keep watch with me for one hour… maybe that is the standard? 

5. After you’ve waited on him, look for a way to engage people as you go about your day. 

6. As you observe the sheer volume of needs, injustices, and evil of the day, let it compel to wait on the only one that can change hearts. And he will do it through you. 

We used ask, WWJD, what would Jesus do. But now we need to see what Jesus is doing and get to work. 

  • Original Word: קָוָה
  • qavah: wait
  • Part of Speech: Verb
  • Transliteration: qavah
  • Phonetic Spelling: (kaw-vaw’)

Definition: to wait for [קָוָה] verb wait for (probably originally twist, stretch, then of tension of enduring, waiting: 

  1. wait, or look eagerly, for, with ל of thing 
  2. lie in wait for, followed by 
  3. wait (linger) for with ל of man

    Some translations have it as hope or trust in the Lord rather than wait on the Lord but wait here encompasses both of those ideas with a more robust sense of a potential encounter with God. There is certainly tension in waiting as the flesh tends to search other more tangible and easily attained interactions.