When God places a move on your heart as a leader…and it just won’t go away…you’ve got to go for it!
Yesterday here at NewSpring Church for us was a GREAT example of this…
All week long I knew I would be challenging the church on taking “a next step.” I also knew that we were doing baptism on each of our campuses…and on Friday I actually began to feel prompted by the Lord that we should offer baptism at the end of each service as a practical way for people to take their next step.
BUT…I talked myself out of it as I had the following thoughts…
- “It’s too late to pull off something like this.”
- “The people I work with might get mad at me because this really would take a lot of extra work.” (Which is stupid because the people I work with are the most “extra mile” people on the planet!)
- “I will look stupid if I offer this opportunity and no one responds.”
- “Some people might not think this is a good idea.”
I could go on and on…the point is that I talked myself out of it.
While on the way to church I felt that prompting again…but dismissed it. (Mistake…I should have gathered my team around me, told them I really felt the Lord was telling us to do this and then unleashed them to go and make it happen.)
In short…I was disobedient. BUT…God, in His mercy, kept pursuing me…and after the first service I felt like my heart was literally about to come out of my chest. SO…after our evaluation I asked a couple of reference questions and then told my assistant and our creative arts director, “I want to baptize on every campus at the end of this service…do whatever you guys can to make it happen.”
No one got upset! No one offered 15 reasons why they thought that was a bad idea. No one began to say that they didn’t think anyone would respond…
In fact, quite the opposite is true…excitement went through the roof, people began calling people on their cell phones, others took off to various parts of the Anderson campus to round up volunteers…Michael Brown, our Florence campus pastor, went shopping to buy clothes and towels…and the results were AMAZING as God prompted HUNDREDS of people to follow through in baptism after our services.
When God says to do it…we’ve got to do it.
I believe that there are MANY Kingdom wins that will never be experienced because too many times leaders ask “what about…” rather than focusing on WHO it’s about!
God retaught me a powerful lesson yesterday…that He’s bigger than me, smarter than me…and my job as a leader isn’t to rationalize with Him…but rather to fully obey Him.
SO…when God says to “go for it” (and we KNOW it’s God) then to NOT follow through is both foolishness AND disobedience.
I’m SO glad He didn’t give up on me yesterday. SO…just curious…any leader out there that He’s pressing in on? Anyone out there that you KNOW what you need to do…you’ve just lacked the courage to do it? (See Hebrews 11:1 and Hebrews 11:6)
When God says to do it…we’ve GOT to do it. Leaders…we can’t tell others to follow/obey Christ if we aren’t willing to demonstrate what that looks like.
When God says to “got for it”...then GO FOR IT…and HOLD ON, HE will BLOW YOUR MIND! (Ephesians 3:20!)