For the past 5 years, I’ve had one pie in the sky dream, ever since I came to know Christ I’ve wanted to preach and share his Gospel truth to millions. I’m not saying it’s something that I’ve gotten a ton of practice at or am even particularly gifted at it. However, nonetheless I’ve had a vision of me standing in a packed auditorium and sharing the Gospel as hundreds upon thousands surrender their hearts to Christ in a grand altar call.

I imagine the likes of Billy Graham moving hearts with the word of God. Looking at ministries like Joyce Meyer, I have decided that the trajectory of my life could actually lead to that being a possibility. I’ve determined to develop as a speaker, to get more comfortable with crowds, and to learn more and more about God’s word for the purpose of sharing the Gospel.

In doing all of this, I have slowly placed a piece of my heart and energy into building this dream. I mean, that’s what you do when you’ve got a goal, right? You plan for it, position yourself for it, and you make sure you’re ready when opportunity knocks.

However, here is where preparing for the future slaps Jesus in the face.

In prepping for tomorrow, where is your heart today?

Looking for the big Gospel payoff later, who are you ministering to today?

Your goal should not be the highlight reel of big stage ministry, without committing to a life of behind the scenes sacrificing.

In a conversation with my Pastor, he asked me a question which should be very simple to answer,

“What do you want?”

I was amazed at how hard that was for me to answer. It began to unravel in my heart some ungodly motives for the godly dream in me.

Months prior to that moment I would have easily said, I want to be a traveling evangelist but since then I’ve been called to have greater impact at home, in my house, with my family, with my friends, with my coworkers, neighbors, and church members.
I didn’t ever stop and look at that increasing calling in light of my goals and dreams.

I didn’t really have a response to the question. I only said,

“I want to be greater.”

That was true. I wanted to be a greater version of who I am today. A greater father, greater husband, greater pastor, greater friend, neighbor, and so on. However, that is not what I’ve been working toward in action or heart set. I’ve been building a greater platform, not building a greater me.

As I write this it reminds me of a quote of Truett Cathy,

“If we get better, our customers will demand we get bigger!”

What if I decide to plant my heart in the ground on which I stand and determine that I will simply be greater right where I am instead of simply digging a ditch for tomorrow and waiting for rain?

I believe this is a lure of Devil.

How do you keep the hard work of real love from happening today? How do you keep ministry from changing a community?
You keep the ministers and workers planning for greater ministry, waiting for a bigger stage.

When I examine my former dream even further, I recognize that I desired a self centered, very non-Jesus version of ministry.

Jesus was a healer.

Jesus was a friend.

Jesus was a teacher.

More obvious than all of these, Jesus was a lover of people not an evangelist.

He didn’t plan for crowds, he started speaking and crowds gathered. He was about his father’s business wherever he found himself and fruit followed. Chasing fruit was not his game, he loved hard and often and fruit resulted.

Evangelists don’t help people.

Lovers of people help people.

Today sounds like a great day to focus on full time loving people and let God build tomorrow’s ministry as He sees fit.

Time to stop trying to get bigger, and just love people better.

How can you re-imagine your dream to better love others?

In the past month or so, God has been at work in so many major ways.
I was really blessed by a weekend away with the @torchchurch staff enjoying a Vineyard church hosted “Extend Conference” to discuss Multi-site.
My biggest take away from that weekend was actually something that God spoke to me on the way there. He watered a seed that has been continually reaffirmed since and as I look back was planted some time ago. He put the impression on my heart that at my core, I am a church planter. Let me clarify to the best of my ability what I feel is true and maybe not true about that.

Why is this true?

1. The Beauty of the Body

I want with all of my heart to see the church of Christ expand locally and globally. I believe that the local church has such a great importance in the spiritual life and health of ALL believers. I see it as basically essential to complete spiritual growth.

I know from my past, having grown up in the church, that any extended period of time spent without a connection to a local family of believers can significantly stunt spiritual growth. It did not cause my falling away from the faith, but definitely left a void in my life that rather than being filled with truth as shared by believing friends and loved ones was filled with the lies and false promises of the world.

To that end I desire that the world be filled with thriving churches. I remember growing up in a small village, South Holland, that touted being a community of churches. What if that were the world’s claim? A world of churches? How amazing!!

2. Location, Location, Location.

As I travel from town to town and city to city, it warms my heart to see what looks to be a thriving local body, and saddens me when I find unkempt locales and crumbling facilities. I am not saying that God does not live and breathe in places that aren’t spectacular but I rarely find thriving life within places that look to be dying. We all know that the house of the church family does not need to look thriving to be thriving as well as we know that churches that look thriving can be the deadest of places. What I also know is that when I see a location that is well kept I think of a growing gathering that prioritizes the well being of their gathering and is healthy enough to be able to be warm and inviting. This is the church that pulls me in if I know nothing else about them and that is the church that I would send a new comer to as opposed to the run down place that might indeed on further inspection be high in faith and love. Call me superficial. The sad part of those places is that due to the exterior most of those needing God might not find Him there because they are turned off before they hit the door.

I say all this to say, for the past 3 years, I have found myself inspired by vacant areas, praying over abandoned buildings, dreaming as I drive by “For Lease” signs. I constantly imagine the church that could be born and bring others to Jesus in that location. When it first started happening, I thought it was simply a heart for one specific location. Then it expanded to almost every spot I passed, even some that were currently occupied. I actually know nothing abut building structures and renovations, but I am constantly imaging how rooms could be converted to sanctuaries, and how strip malls could be converted into places of worship.

3. Called to Leadership

As I write this portion I want to be clear that in no way do I feel that I am a great leader. I think of myself as an intentional leader, a loving leader, a driven leader, and often a fearful leader. However, I would never hold myself up as a model of leadership. In spite of that fact, I can say without a doubt that I am called to leadership. In all of my past experiences, either intentional or unintentional I ended up in a position of some sort of leadership. This fact has brought me to pour more and more focused effort into growing in that calling. Leadership is one of the most amazing things that I get the opportunity to be a part of, be it in my family, at church, in the office on occasion. However, it is also one of the hardest, most fear developing, and possibly stressful undertakings when the focus is off point.
As of yet, I haven’t had a ton of learning in what it truly means to be a church planter, but it seems to be that leadership is central. To take something from a God inspired idea and vision and to be used by him to bring it to pass, in some way must involve a great deal of leadership.

Gathering the right people, casting God’s vision for the church, building a team, inspiring…all these draw from a well of leadership depth that is either innate or learned but seems obvious that it must be present. And so…I press on toward developing as a leader.

4. Knowledge of the Darkness

Another reason I feel I  am called to be a church planter is because I am acutely aware of the knowledge of the growing culture of darkness in this world. There are way too many people who live in darkness and separation from Christ for me to do nothing. Sitting around and blogging about my faith is simply a commentary on what I need to be daily living out. If this is the extent of my action toward getting the love of Christ out to His people, then I am a grossly deceived believer who needs a firm kick in the pants. But God is steadily awakening me to the spiritual illness of His people and calling me to greater steps of action in cooperation with His Spirit already at work.

I recently listened to the “Exponential” conference this past week and felt convicted to my core to take moves to get out of the comfort zone and engage the darkness with the light of Christ. A most compelling speaker, @Neil_Cole, said something so true that it stuck to my ribs.

We will never know the power of the Spirit unless we go to where the wolves are.

I think this firm foundational truth must be at the core of the belief of a church planter. The purpose of planting a church, in my mind, is not that you collect disappointed believers to a cooler body, but that you go into darkness and rip souls from its clutches. Neil also said something that I love. He spoke of bringing the Light of Christ to darkness and compared it to a light bulb in a dark room. Light will attract moths, and cockroaches will flee and hide. This is not to subtly call non believers cockroaches , but to make the true statement of some being attracted to the gospel and ready for the message and others not yet being drawn by the father and still hiding from the light. He simply says, collect the moths.   That is the call of the church planter. We collect the moths.

5. Great Change Catalyst

I have a history of starting things and getting people excited. I can often inspire others and get them on board with something well. I hopefully am not sounding arrogant, because there are big areas in which I fail hard, disciplined leadership being one. However, I find it fun to take a blank canvas, create something and then rally folks to participate in it. I also have a way of interacting with people that God just uses mightily. That ability can often lead to an easier time motivating people as I have a skill of empathizing with individuals and understanding what makes them tick.

Why this could all be FALSE?

1. I’ve been wrong too many times before.

I can’t even count the amount of times that I’ve felt that God was telling me something and I was wrong. Thankfully God is a faithful leader, shepherds me the whole way, and leads me to where he wills before I go one mistake too many off course.

2. I can’t pretend that I actually heard His voice.

I have never actually heard the voice of God. Know that this is the experience of some in the faith. It is just not mine. I constantly get impressions, but God has made me very excitable and impressions often spark the excitement.

3. I am often prideful and arrogant.

There is always the fear that decisions like those to build and create something from scratch are falsely rooted in pride or a wish for people to celebrate my accomplishments. The whole “look at what I did” mentality really shaped much of my life. Pride is the biggest area that God has been working on me as I’ve grown closer to him.

4. I am not a great listener.

I tend to talk twice as much as I listen by nature so must be intentional to shut my mouth down often in order to restore that thing to balance and to learn something from others and for The Lord. As a result I am sometimes concerned that God’s leading and mine get mingled and that flesh may out weigh spiritual guidance.

5. I often change my mind.

As much as a church planter is a great starter or catalyst for change, I worry that I am simply flighty and lack the discipline to stick with something. This makes me think that maybe I am feeling called to planting because it is less maintenance heavy  than watering and growing as long term pastoring. Planting may be simply building and securing the foundation for those who will follow behind you to grow and water. That attracts me.

Why neither matters?

It doesn’t matter because developing the skills I see necessary to plant a church can ONLY make me a more valuable tool in the hands of our mighty King. If I never plant a church it won’t be because I didn’t want to or because I wasn’t devoting my heart to it, but because it was not what God’s plan was for this season of my life.

I keep learning… While I prepare for God’s calling, He often uses what I’ve learned to achieve an even greater thing. Praising him for how he blows my mind.

What are you absolutely positive that you are unsure you are on your way to becoming? Clear enough right?

Yesterday, My little brother Rafael moaned and made sounds for the first time in two months.

God is not dead he is alive.

The doctors said Rafael would likely die a week after his incident due to extreme brain swelling.

The doctors said he had no chance of recovery if he survived.

The doctors said that he would be in a comatose state for the rest of his life.

The doctors offered the option of taking him off of life support.

But God…..

BUT GOD…..

God has not said that it is over.

We stand in agreement that Rafael WILL recover.

We stand on that hope that we find in Jesus…

the one who resurrects lives from the dead.

the one who caused the blind to see.

the one who heals sickness.

the one who saves souls.

the one who restores marriages, including mine.

We stand in the hope of His mighty power to be shown in Rafael, even today.

“But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:25-28 NIV

We wait patiently for Him. We wait patiently for His healing power.

God encouraged me so through this passage. I was reminded at the thought of Rafael’s groaning that if no one else stands with me, Holy Spirit does. He groans with us. He groans for us. With sounds that cannot be understood, wordless groans.

The Spirit intercedes for God’s people.

ALL things work together for the good of His people. God WILL be glorified!

Where in your life can you use the encouragement that Holy Spirit groans with and for you?

Leave a comment and let me know so I can join His intercession.

For more on Rafael’s Struggle

“So I find myself on my knees and gathering up grain for the day of need.”

It seems that all around me, friends, family members, all sorts of loved ones are going through a myriad of painful situations. There is so much hurt surrounding me. I have been called to prayer in a such a stronger sense these days. I have been reading books like, Becoming a Prayer Warrior trying to strengthen my ability to intercede on their behalves. However, I am struggling with the sense that I must be doing something wrong. I am not seeing the type of fruit in my prayers for others.

So my focus is to get more of the word in me so it can find its way out of me at the precise moment needed in prayer.

I am also currently in a time of great abundance. I am experiencing the fruit of many hours invested in training up team members. I am experiencing the margin that results from having trained others to do ministry. It is truly an amazing feeling to be able to float above the ministry and strategically think of legitimate ways that we as a team can improve it, ways that we can move the ball forward down the field. In so many ways for so long I have been simply a fierce doer of ministry. Now I can honestly say, that there is a team in place that knows enough to do the ministry to an acceptable level without further training.

Good thing that I don’t feel the least bit satisfied with where we are with things. We will continue to grow and strategically advance this mission.

As I type this, I realize that the current fruitfulness that I experience in ministry leadership might teach me a thing or two about my struggles in the realm of intercession. Could it be that my current level of abundance as a result of heavy time investing without fruit, is to teach me to persist, to invest, to pour into today what I plan to reap tomorrow?

So I find myself on my knees and gathering up grain for the day of need.

I feel as though I need to wisely plant seeds, shrewdly store grain, and with guided hands precisely take steps forward.

The seeds I am being called to plant now are in the spiritual.

Seeds of prayer.

Seeds that I must, with trust, believe will one day produce a harvest greater than I can imagine and one that will fulfill the ultimate plans of the Lord.

“I would have lost heart, unless I had believed
That I would see the goodness of the Lord
In the land of the living.

Knowing that the Lord, Jehovah-Jireh, will provide for me, a question that I am learning to continually ask myself is, “What can I do today to better prepare for tomorrow?”

When you look back at the events of your past and stare closely at the situations of today, can you see similar patterns that show you how God might have you respond to better prepare for your tomorrow?

It is the story of a friend and colleague of mine who is on staff at my church, Torch Church. Heather Venuti has a wonderful story of how God can work and might work on behalf of our loved ones. It might be a slow process, but it speaks to the faithfulness of a loving God.

I have shared this many times before, but for quite some time now I have felt like I was supposed to share again. The Lord is so good, and He is even now working all things together for your good…even if it doesn’t seem ike it. Facebook wouldnt let me share the original note again, but here it is written in 2008.
acebook is great isn’t it?! You can find people and friends you used to know way back when. You can get a peak into their lives with absolutely no commitment. I’ve been thinking about this ever since I first started on Facebook. If this is the only look people, old friends, loved ones, co-workers ever get into my life, what does it say about me? Can you look at my page and know that I am passionately in love with Jesus? Does it convey the message that there is nothing in this life worth living for other than Jesus? How could it point you to Him without coming across preachy or religious or fanatical?

I thought I would just tell you a story, a true story about a girl whose life maybe a lot like yours. A girl who died, and lived to tell about it.

Heather asked Jesus to be the leader of her life when she was 15, and for the next 4 years she tried everything she could to take it back. She was the world’s biggest hypocrite! She really did love Christ, she really did, but her words, actions and attitude told a completely different story. She went away to Marquette in the fall of 1999 and it only got worse. Her life was a constant party, she would tell people they needed Jesus in their heart or they were going to hell, with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. All along she knew the truth and she felt the conviction in her heart that what she was doing was not right. Instead of having the time of her life, she was left broken and empty. On October 12, 1999 she cried out to God in her prayer journal. She told Him she hated the girl she had become, and that whatever it took, she wanted to live only for Him. That was the last entry in her prayer journal….2 days later….

Heather was in a car accident that changed her life for ever.

I woke up in a hospital 2 ½ weeks later. 

Let me say at this point, that there were two other passengers who did not survive the accident. Brooke, the most beautiful girl in the world, both inside and out who I was blessed to have as my best friend for 13 ½ years and Pat, my boyfriend, an amazing man whose gentle spirit and contagious smile made everyone who knew him, love him. The memory of them, their love and their friendship is still very fresh in my heart. The pain of their deaths is more real today than it was 8 ½ years ago. This story is by no means meant to down play or diminish the loss of two very special and loved people, but is meant to show how God can even use what Satan means for harm, for our good. 

Amongst many other injuries, I had a traumatic brain injury that left me with absolutely no memory of the accident, or a lot of my life for that matter. A brain injury is kind of like a hidden disability, no one can see it, so it would appear that you are just fine. And I guess you are other than, your personality completely changes and you are no longer the person you used to be. Not only are you not that person, but every memory you have of that persons’ life is like reading a book, you get the details, but there is no emotional attachment to people or events. 

Traumatic brain injuries vary greatly, in my case the injury was diffused axonal meaning that damage occurs over a more widespread area and can affect many different skills. I had the hardest time with my memory, concentration, and emotions. I couldn’t remember anything for one minute to the next, I could ask you a question and you could completely change the subject and I would go right along with you. I couldn’t express sadness, I could know in my head something was very sad, but I couldn’t cry. I would laugh uncontrollably. Great you think right? No, try explaining to your friends why you are not crying over the death of your best friend. Try being social with other 18 year olds and pee your pants because you are laughing so hard, neither of which you could control, but mentally you know both are inappropriate. To this day I still suffer from the effects of this injury, although my brain has healed tremendously.

That fall night in October of 1999 I lost everything, I lost my best friend, boyfriend, intelligence, dancing ability, and my memory. Eventually, over time I lost a lot of friends too because I wasn’t the girl they remembered. But I found my prayer journal, and I remembered my promise to God. What ever it took…I think I got the message loud and clear. It was a very long hard road to “recovery” . School was impossible, dealing with my past mistakes was difficult, and emotionally healing is still an unfinished process. But through it all, my Jesus, my sweet Jesus never left me. He kept all His promises to carry me when I couldn’t walk anymore, and He held me when I finally could cry 6 years later, and continues to walk me through now.

An old friend of mine asked me shortly after I went back to Marquette, she said, “ I don’t get it Heather, your whole life fell apart and you are still ok?” My answer, the only answer I got, the best answer, JESUS. 

8 ½ years later, I am still just a girl living in a fallen world. I still have bad days, I still screw up, life’s still not perfect and I am still learning how to follow Him. But now I have a hope that is Jesus, and that’s all I need.

So if you don’t know or don’t remember anything else about me, what I really want you to know is that I love my Savior, Jesus Christ, with all that I am!

Grace is still real. Grace is still free. Grace awaits us all.

I wonder what story of grace God is weaving in your life now. I can’t say that it will be one of tragedy and recovery like Heather’s, but I can say that it will be yours and part of your quilted story that no one can ever take away. When the enemy begins to play over and over in your head tales of woe, doubt, and shame…

You simply hold on to SONGS OF GRACE!