My good buddy Rick Reynolds from my Lighthouse 21 days (“This is Jerry Jones“) has packed up and moved to Reno to “get away from the buckle of the Bible belt.” Those may not be his exact words but he’s moved to Reno to focus more on ministering to the lost and is doing counseling now at a drug and rehab center.
He’s shared a message he gave last week on “God’s plan for your life.”
It’s about 30 minutes or so in length so I haven’t had a chance to watch the whole thing – but what I have watched has been good.
Check it out….
It’s interesting that he focused on that. I see myself spending more and more time thinking and praying about that over the last couple years, and now months and weeks.
I can’t wait till I hear, see and/or feel what God has really called me to.
In the mean time I’m just trying to be patient and follow Him whenever and wherever He places me.
In that line of thought, here are some great thoughts on our Holy Discontent (or Passion Groove as we call it at encounter) from Bill Hybels’ book of the same name:
- “What is it that motivates people to work where they work, volunteer their time to the groups they serve, and donate money to the causes they support? Simply put, why do people do what they do?”
- “‘That’s all I can stands, and I can’t stands no more!’ – Popeye… What happens when we reach the point where we can’t ‘stands no more?’… What is is that you ‘can’t stands no more?'”
- “The trouble with contentedness is that, when lived out in isolation, it can be lethal! If you’re not careful, you will become lulled into a state of satisfaction, safety and serenity, and you’ll altogether neglect needs in the world that should elicit deep discontent when you see them going unmet.”
- “‘I refuse to accept the idea that the ‘is-ness’ of man’s present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal ‘ought-ness’ that forever confronts him.” (- Martin Luther King, Jr) Friends, this is what it looks like to live from a place of holy discontent – where ought-ness simply overtakes is-ness.”
- On MLK: “The holy discontent that had taken up residence inside him simply wouldn’t allow him to give anything less than his entire life.”
- “Have you ever wondered why, when you turn your life over to God, you don’t get express-freighted right to heaven? Or, to put it a little more crassly, if you’re so heaven-bound, then why are you still sucking air down here?” — I love that question. It really makes you question why we’re here. What is it that God has placed us here for.
- Eph. 2:10 says that “we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
- “If you’re alive and kicking today, then there is a specific work that you are expected to do. There is a set of tasks with your name on it that God has given you to accomplish.”
- “The goal is to cultivate your soul’s soil so that this doing-of-good-works process can unfold in your life.”
- “None of your tears or anguish will be wasted; I (God) plan to use every ounce of what you’ve been through for good in this specific area.” — can I make that first part any bigger. Go back and read that one again. Think on it. Trust in it. Believe in it. That’s one of God’s greatest promises to me and one that I hold to day in an day out.
- How will you know when your one thing shows up? “It will be the pesky preoccupation that vies for your undivided attention during the day and keeps you wide-eyed at night as is captures your heart and ignites your imagination. It will be the thing to force you to the floor, heaving sorrowful tears the whole way down. It will be the thing kicking and screaming inside of you, squawking for all it’s worth to be addressed.”
- “My applecart got completely overturned by the thought of seekers going to hell simply because Christians refused to break out of their holy huddles long enough to embrace them… Seekers matter! And people far from God deserve better local church options that the ones available to them today!”
- “When you find your holy discontent, feed it!” — don’t run from it. Move toward it. If poverty is your holy discontent, don’t move to the suburbs to avoid it – move to the inner city where you can see everyday and night how it affects people until your blood simply boils over.
- “The pastor described how gut-wrenching an experience it had been to be told blatantly who mattered and who didn’t at church … and then to realize that his family was part of the ‘who didn’t’ category… racism in churches is not acceptable.”
Well that’s all I have for now – hey, I’m only halfway through the book. I just started it on Saturday night. 🙂
What is your holy discontent? What is the injustice or problem you see around you that makes your blood boil, makes your hair stand on ends and makes you say, “That’s all I can stands, and I can’t stands no more!”? What are you doing about it?
