Vision For Your Life And Ministry

Sometimes the only way we can get ahead is to begin to look back and see how God has brought us through. One of the things I do is I do a lot of journaling with my quiet time and write down the things that God is doing in my life and that's a faith builder for me. There are times when I get discouraged and there are times when I want to give up and I want to quit. And there are times I ask, "God, are you really here? God, are you really with me?" I really do ask that sometimes, that really does happen.

And you say, "A pastor says that?" Well, you know, we say a lot more than you guys. And when I'm saying it, God brings me back to these quiet times and I am looking at those journals. And I see how God has taught me through this and how God did this in me and taught me this. Let me tell you, that's a faith builder. I can look back at what God has done and that builds my faith because when I move into the uncertainty of future, when I need to know God is with me when I go. Looking at the past gives me the confidence to move into the future. That is why I said this over and over again: REMEMBER WHAT GOD HAS DONE.

Exodus 13:3 says, "And Moses said to the people, "Remember this day in which you went out from Egypt, from the house of slavery; for by a powerful hand the LORD brought you out from this place.'" What Moses is really saing here is "remember!"

And this particular phrase is used at many times. Look at Deuteronomy 5:15. "And you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD Your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm." Then again in Deuteronomy 7:18, "You shall not be afraid of them; you shall well remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt." It is saying, as you go take the land that God has given to you, remember what he did to Pharaoh. Remember what He did to Egypt. Don't be afraid of those people. If God can do that to the Pharaoh of Egypt, what do you think He can do to those people?

Then there is Deuteronomy 8:18. "But you shall remember the LORD your God, for it is He who is giving you power to make wealth, that He may confirm His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day." In other words, I will be your provider. I will make a provision. You have all that you need.

God wants us to remember things. He wants us to remember what He has done. When we remember what He's done, that brings faith to us. That brings confidence. That brings strength. We need that to go into the future. Looking at the past gives us confidence that God will be with me; that God who began a good work in me will complete it until the day of Christ Jesus. He promised that He would and looking at that, helped me to believe that would be true. King David put it this way in Psalm 143:5, "I remember the days of old; I meditate on all Thy doings; I muse on the work of Thy hands."

We need courage to move onto to the future. Courage. As they were getting ready to go into the Promised Land, these stones were not to be a place to worship the past. Rather, they were a place to simply worship God and remember that He's the one and He's the source of strength.

He told Joshua in that first chapter: "Everywhere that the sole of your foot treads, I have given it to you. Just as I have been with Moses, remember what I did with him, I will be with you and I will do it with you." He promised that.

When we go to the New Testament, we see some of the very same affirmations there in Hebrews 10:32-36. The author says, "Don't forget those early days." In other words, remember when you first learned about Christ. Remember how you remained faithful even though it meant terrible suffering. Sometimes you were exposed to public ridicule and revealed. Some times you helped others who were suffering the same things. You suffered along with those who were thrown into jail. When all your own was taken from you, you accepted it with joy. You knew you had better things waiting for you in eternity. You remembered why. Do not throw away this confidence in the Lord.

Remember so you don't throw away your confidence and trust in the Lord. No matter what happens remember the great reward it brings you. Patient endurance is what you need now so you will continue to do God's will and then you will receive all that is promised. Be patient and continue. You need this. You need to remember. You need this so that you don't throw away your confidence so that you hang in there so that you can complete and do the will of God. See, God has an inheritance for us. That's a part of God's plan. And we know that we can obtain that inheritance. We know when we know God is with us and we know we can have it whenever we are on the right course that God would bless and part of determining that course is looking in the past.

And we can learn from what we remember. Remembering the hardships of the past can be a teacher to us, so we don't repeat it!

Unfortunately, not everything that we remember is good. Some things are bad. Some things are really bad. And it's those experiences that we learn from, but know this. The past is the past. The past is not the present and the past is not the future. The past is the past and we can praise God for that. God doesn't want you to stay in the past and that is one of the problems. One of the reasons people can't move on to the future is because they are hung up in the past. God wants them free of the things of the past. And sometimes that is a process. Sometimes God will do that very quickly and sometimes God may take a little time about that in order to secure the things that he is doing in you. But the past is the past and we don't need to be staying there. I mean, can you see the Israelites going, "Remember when we used to live back in the wilderness. Yea, you know, we didn't have tents back then. We slept out under the sun. Yea, I can remember sitting around the campfire frying us some manna. Yea, those were the days. You know, it just doesn't get any better than this. Yea. Sort of miss that manna."

We can't really picture them doing that. I think that once they got past the manna they were thinking, "Thank You, LORD. Real food, finally!"

God teaches a lot from the past. Deuteronomy 8:2 says: "And you shall remember all the way which the LORD your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that he might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not."

God brought them through. He taught them and he revealed a lot through that testing was a hardship for them. It was a hard thing for them. They made some mistakes and they don't desire to repeat those mistakes. God said, "Do you want to take the land" and they said, "No". So God gave them 40 years to reconsider. He asked them again 40 years later, "Do you want to take the land" and this time they said, "Yes". Otherwise, my guess is that God would have given them another 40 years in the wilderness and then repeated the question to the next generation. He would eventually get a generation that wants to go into God's fullness. There are some lessons and there are some tests in my own life that I don't want to retake. There are some things that God has put into my life that I don't want to have to go through that process of learning again. And I am sure that all of you have some of those things as well.

My own church went through one of those difficult times. A couple of years ago we re-carpeted the offices. This necessitated moving everything out of one office into another as we carpeted each room. It was a very hectic thing in order to put everything back in its place. So, I decided to go through all these records to see what I could throw away. I came across a file that was about four inches thick. It contained the minutes of the Church business meetings for about a three or four year period. They were from few years before I came here as pastor. That was a season where this church went through a "conflicts resolution" period. It was a period of time in which my church went through some very great trials, very great tribulations. It was an incredibly difficult time.

I read through these minutes and saw some ugly things that went on at that time. Boy, it was an very ugly time. I almost could not believe some of the stuff I saw in the minutes. People were arguing and fighting about some of the dumbest stuff. The people who came here at that time (and are still here today) told me that they didn't invite any friends to church during that period of time because things were "too unsettled." It was a very brutal time to be a part of this church. They brought in an outside arbitrator to deal with the issues of this church. And during this season, people began leaving in droves. I don't fault anybody who left. Some people were chased off by interpersonal ugliness. Some people just offended away. Some people thought that they needed to leave for the sake of their kids. But in the midst of all that craziness, there were people who felt God had called them to be in this church. They did not know why He wanted them here, but they stayed. They were a part of the remnant of God that kept here through an incredibly difficult time for our church.

But that was also a very important part of our history. A lot of people counted this time as a "black period" or the "middle ages" of this church. They they don't like talk about those times very much. They shove it under the rug and cover it over and try to ignore that part of their history. But who we are as a church today today is directly related to what happened back then. How we conduct business today is greatly effected as to what happened back then. We turned inward to heal. It was an intentional choice that we made. We said, "As a church we're not ready to reach out." We had all these outreach programs not producing anything because God wasn't blessing anything, because we needed to heal. So we took an intentional turn as a church, made a decision, took an intentional turn in and said, "We're going to heal and when God's ready, He'll move us out."

And a lot of the healing ministries that are going in this church today are a direct result of that time. For us to get to what we do today, we needed that time. During that time, a lot of our values and convictions were shaken. Our belief systems were determined in this "crisis". This church had to go through all that pain to become who we are today. But we came out on the other side. And God has blessed us richly. We had to learn some things that we didn't want to receive. We've learned some lessons that we don't want to have to go through again. And so hopefully we have learned a lot of those lessons, so that we won't have to repeat them.

I have shared about the painful growth period from my own church. But just about each person has some sort of equivalent painful growth period in their own lives. God allowed us to go through these for a reason. We are to remember the things God has done in the past. We are to remember the painful lessons that God has allowed us go to through to shape us into who we are today in Him.

God has given us a heritage and a inheritance, and we will do well to keep this in mind as we move towards our future. God wants us to remember as we move towards fulfilling our calling and destiny. Our past is not an accident; it is something God carefully used to help shape us into who He designed us to be.