Fresh Starts

The end of August and the beginning of September is often a time of fresh starts for people.

A new school year at every level is just beginning.  

The season is about to change from summer to fall.

This is one of those waypoints during the year when it makes sense to stop and think about what you're doing in life, and why you're doing it.

This is also a time to take stock of your year so far.  

How are you doing with your New Year's resolutions?

How close are you to hitting your big goals for the year?

Christmas is coming.  Have you started making plans for the holidays yet?

I don't know if you are effected by any of these things, but this year I have been.

Over the last month, my family has embraced a turning point in our lives and we are in the middle of a fresh start.

    My son has begun high school.  Not just any high school.  He is at a boarding school.  This school year he will live more than 100 miles from my wife and I.

    

    In June I accepted the call to serve as the Minister of Mission Support at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Downers Grove, IL.  That means three weeks ago my family and I picked up and moved more than a hundred miles from the area we have called home most of our lives.

Fresh starts come in all different packages.  They enter our lives for many different reasons.   They can be frustrating at times (moving certainly is).  They can be heart-breaking at times.  It's tough to put distance between yourself and people you love.

But, fresh starts can also be highly rewarding.  Fresh starts open us up to new opportunities.  Often, they are the result of taking advantage of an opportunity.  They also put us into contact with a whole new world of people.  People we would have never known had we not exercised the courage to make a fresh start.

I don't know where you're at in life, but I do know that sometimes a fresh start is exaclty what the doctor ordered.  It gets us out of our familiar zone.  It puts us in contact with an entirely new community of people.  It can help us wake to the life we are supposed to be living.  Not settling for the one we have settled for.

I won't tell you what to do with your life.  That's your responsibility.  I would encourage you, though, especially if you are frustrated with your current situation, to think about a fresh start.  

Maybe that means moving.  Maybe that means changing where you work.  Maybe it means changing your career field all together.  However, I am not talking about scrapping your marriage.  You need to fix that if that's the source of your frustration.  A fresh start could mean distancing yourself from negative and destructive relationships in your life.  

You know you.  I don't know you, or your situation.  You know what it would mean to make a fresh start in your life.  I encourage you to take the leap.  A fresh start today could make all the difference in the rest of your life.

God bless.

Jason Fredrick

Today's the Day!

Everyone is called upon to lead in some capacity sooner or later in life.  Some of the issues involved are big, some are small.  Sometimes the responsibilities requiring leadership last a lifetime, and sometimes they are needed only for a moment.  Leadership, then, is something each of us should strive to understand better and utilize more fully.  Whether in a corporate setting, a business of our own, a church environment, a volunteer organization, or in the home, improving our leadership abilities through the development process described in this book [Launching A Leadership Revolution] is key to unleashing the potential hidden within.  Helping to guide others through the same process is the secret to collective greatness and organizational victories.  (Launching A Leadership Revolution, Woodward/Brady, pp.XI-XII)

If you take a moment to stop and think through the premise that Woodward and Brady begin their leadership book with,  you will quickly realize that this statement is undeniable.  In many situations leadership boils down to taking responsibility.  As stated above, "Everyone is call upon to lead in some capacity sooner or later in life."  With that being the reality of life, the questions to answer then are: "Will you be prepared to lead when life demands it?" and "Will you have the courage to answer the leadership call in that moment?"

The sad reality is that most people will fail on both of these questions.  Most people aren't preparing for their leadership moment.  Most people don't want to take responsibility for anything in our society.  Many people are looking for "Them" to fix every problem.  "They" need to do this, and "They" need to do that.  Sadly, for most people, the answer is never, "I need to fix this."  It's much easier to play armchair quarterback and second-guess everything the person who steps up to the leadership challenge does.

In our dumbed-down entertainment-driven society most people are preparing themselves to be part of the mindless masses.  Few will actually turn off their electronic entertainment and read a book, an actual book.  One that you can mark up with a highlighter and a pen.  Reading is the foundation of leadership development because the only way to improve your thinking is by improving the quality of what you're puttig into your head.  Read-Listen-Associate.  That's the success formula.  That's the leadership developoment formula.  

If you are thinking to yourself that you're not a leader, and no one cares what you think about anything, it's time to go to work on yourself.  It's time to start the development process.  God has created you to do great things and influence people.  You need to get to work to develop the gifts that are already inside of you.  This will take time.  It's a process.  But it will never happen if you don't get started.  Get started today by clicking on the "Let's Read Together" page in the menu bar.  Get the first two books on the reading list and get to work.  

The time to start preparing for you leadership challenge is right now!  Get the books.  Start reading.  Start growing.  Turn off the electronics and don't look back.  Your leadership journey begins today!

God bless 
Jason Fredrick

Josua Defeats Jericho: They Never Saw it Coming

 

Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand.  Joshua went up to him and asked, “Are you for us or for our enemies?”

“Neither,” he replied, “but as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come.”  Then Joshua fell facedown to the ground in reverence, and asked, “What message does my Lord have for his servant?”

The commander of the LORD’S army replied, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.”  And Joshua did so.

Now Jericho was tightly shut up because of the Israelites.  No one went out and no one came in.

Then the LORD said to Joshua, “See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men.  March around the city once with all the armed men.  Do this for six days.  Have seven priests carry trumpets of rams’ horns in front of the ark.  On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the trumpets.  When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have all the people give a loud shout; then the wall of the city will collapse and the people will go up, every man straight in.”

Joshua 5:13-6:5

            It is probably safe to assume that Joshua had a plan for how he was going to approach Jericho.  It is also probably safe to assume his plan looked nothing like the plan the Lord gave him after his meeting with Jesus (the commander of the army of the LORD [5:14]).  There is no way Joshua would have ever come up with the plan the Lord gave him on his own.  There is no way Joshua could have even conceived of something like that being an option.

            As crazy as God’s plan must have seemed to Joshua and the Israelites, Joshua didn’t hesitate.  He gave the command and instructed everyone what they were to do.  He carried out God’s plan exactly as God gave it to him, and because Joshua and the Israelites completely submitted to God’s plan, they experienced a total victory.  The walls came crashing down.  The Israelites completely slaughtered all the inhabitants of Jericho, except for Rahab and her family.  They burned the whole city and “put the silver, gold, and articles of bronze and iron into the LORD’S treasury.”

            It is only God who can defy the odds.  It is only God who knows what his plans are and how they are going to be realized in our world.  God’s plans usually do not make sense to us.  If they did, we would not need faith to submit to them and carry out his directives.  Like Joshua, our responsibility is to make plans and get moving.  Then, when God intervenes to give us a new direction or adjustment it is our job to listen and do what he is telling us.  Unfortunately, God does not speak to us directly like he did with Joshua.  He speaks through people.  This is why it is so important to respect and submit to the guidance of the people God has placed in our lives to give us wise council.  This is why taking a contrary approach to everything, and everybody, is actually a sinful act of defiance against the Lord. 

If we have called men as God’s representatives to give our churches spiritual guidance, why do so many of our members refuse to trust them and listen to them?  It is okay to disagree with called workers and give them push back.  It is not okay for that to be the default mode and automatic attitude of a congregation.  When Joshua revealed the Lord’s plan to the rest of the leaders and community, people just accepted what he said.  We are not told that anyone questioned Joshua or God about this plan.  That attitude displays unity and trust.  The Israelites trusted God and Joshua, so they were united in their common belief (faith).  Too many of our churches today are divided because of a lack of trust, both in God and in the church leaders.  Weak faith leads to selfish sin, rebellion, and division.  Unfortunately, the attitude of Americans today is: “Prove it!  I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Jesus already has proven his faithfulness, and he answers this demand this way: “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign!  But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah” (Matthew 12:39).  Jesus fulfilled this sign on Easter morning, and he fulfills all his promises to care for us every day (Matthew 6:25-34). The last words of Jesus Matthew records for us as Jesus was ascending into heaven reaffirm this promise one more time: “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20b).

Stop doubting and believe!

God's Ways Are Not Our Ways: Abraham

 Abraham: Faithful Obedience

“I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem.  At that time the Canaanites were living in the land.  The LORD appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I give this land.”  So he built an altar there to the LORD, who had appeared to him.

-Genesis 12:2-3, 6-7

            When Abraham received his call from God, he had no idea what God had in store for him and Sarah.  God told him to go, and he went.  He trusted God.  He trusted that God had a plan, and it would be revealed to him whenever God chose to reveal it to him.  When God told Abraham to leave his country, his people, and his family (Genesis 12:1) there is no indication that Abraham questioned God and pushed for an explanation.  We are told, “So Abram left, as the LORD had told him…” (Genesis 12:4).

            Abraham simply picked up and left, trusting God’s promises from vss.2&3.  Abraham had a lot of reasons to question God, but he did not.  Those questions would arise later when God’s promises were not being fulfilled in Abraham and Sarah’s timing, but initially Abraham obeyed God’s command and picked up and left trusting God would show him where he was to settle.

            Abraham’s life demonstrates that our timing is not God’s timing.  God revealed his plan to Abraham.  He directed Abraham throughout his life.  But God never told Abraham the timing of the fulfillment of his greatest promise: The promise of a son.  The son which was necessary for Abraham to become a great nation and through whom “all nations would be blessed”.  It is reasonable to think that Abraham would have expected Sarah to conceive shortly after God gave this promise.  After all, they were both already old and well past the age of having children: Abraham was 75 and Sarah was 65 and barren.

            It was only after Abraham and Sarah had made several mistakes trying to “help” God fulfill this promise that God revealed the timing of the fulfillment of the promise, 24 years later.  Sarah would give birth to a son one year later, when Abraham was 100 and she was 90 (Genesis 16,18,21).  God’s timing is not our timing.

            Abraham began to question God’s promise because he had placed his own arbitrary timeline and expectation on God for when this promise should be fulfilled.  This is the same mistake that we so often make.  We know that God has promised to care for us and provide for us, but we want to dictate to him how that promise should be fulfilled and what the timing of our demanded fulfillment should be.  When we place demands on God we display a lack of faith, and we demonstrate that we do not trust him to live up to his promises.

            Abraham was given an incredible promise from God.  And then he faced decades of testing before that promise would be truly fulfilled.  The time in which Abraham received his call and promise from God to its fulfillment on Mt. Moriah, where he was in the process of sacrificing Isaac to God, spanned more than 40 years. 

            Abraham lived for 175 years.  Genesis 12-25:11 tells us about ~60 years of his life.  That is a little more than 1/3 of his life; yet these six decades are clearly the defining years of Abraham’s life.  God’s plan for Abraham did not play out over days or weeks.  It took decades for everything to come together.  Abraham could only really understand God’s plan at its completion when he could look back over time and see how God worked everything out.  That is how it is for us, as well.  When we are in the beginning or middle stages of carrying out God’s plan, we cannot reasonably expect to know exactly how it will come together.  We just need to trust that God will bring it all together.

            Also, it is foolish to think that anything in life will come together in a few days, or a few weeks.  Even a few months is an unrealistic expectation in most situations.  Any worthwhile endeavor in life will take years to bring to fruition.  It is our responsibility to keep working and trust that God will bless our efforts and make them work out exactly how they need to, to bless his church and the world.

            God’s timing is not our timing!

God's Ways Are Not Our Ways- Introduction

 (The following is the introduction to an essay I am writing on patiently letting God reveal his plans in our lives. The coming weeks will feature each section of the body of that essay.)

I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony.  I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?  No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man.  Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.  Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.

John 3:11-18

            This is God’s plan of salvation.  This is also sinful man’s great difficulty: It does not make sense.

            No human being would ever devise a plan for saving the world from sin by punishing someone who never sinned, for the sins of everyone who ever lived.  God’s plan of salvation is a plan no human being would have ever devised or even imagined.  It just does not make sense to our sinful, limited thinking and understanding.  That is why God’s plan of salvation is the perfect place to begin the conversation about how God’s ways are above our ways.

            “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD.  “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9)