Being God\u2019s hands, restfully available, but instantly obedient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From the sermon \u201cAvailable\u201d by Ian Thomas: The Illustration of your hands\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Do you expect your hands to have a committee meeting when you get up, to tell you what their plans are for the day\u2026 and to tell you what they consider would be a very good idea for the occupation of the next 24 hours.\u00a0
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I expect my hands to be restfully available, but instantly obedient
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I don’t expect them to demonstrate their enthusiasm or show me that they are busy the whole time.\u00a0Life would be an unbearable burden if my hands behaved like that.\u00a0All the time I am speaking, my fingers want to impress me and impress you that they are really on the job.\u00a0\u00a0how exhausting\u2026 how many Christians have you met who live like that? Whose activity is totally unrelated to the purpose of the head.\u00a0\u00a0They think the whole criteria for spiritual activity is to be busy.\u00a0I don’t want your activity to be like that.\u00a0I simply want you to be restfully available.\u00a0
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If I don’t happen to have anything for you right now, then get where you belong\u2026 in my pocket, and just rest, but when I need you and want you\u2026 there you are instantly available.
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If you will act on this basis, you will find all the stress and all the strain will go out of your Christian life.\u00a0It won’t mean that you will be inactive\u2026 rather you will be Christ active
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He directs you by his holy spirit\u2026 he is the Lord of the Harvest and he puts you where he wants you to meet the need at that moment which is priority number one for you.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nA couple concepts that undergird the orientation program are living as an elder, and simplicity, and by simplicity we mean being singularly focused where everything we do, say and are, is filtered through that single purpose and focus. We will be talking more about these concepts in the coming days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We can become so distracted by many things. Like Ian Thomas\u2019 illustration of our hands; pursuing their own agenda, trying to demonstrate their enthusiasm, busy being busy, trying to do things to impress\u2026 Can you relate to any of those things?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As our students think about embarking on this task of church planting, we asked, “What are some things you think may cause you to not be restfully available?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
team conflict\nparenting\nmarriage\nwork \/ ministry becomes your god<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\nWhat may be warning signs that reveal that you are becoming \u201cGod\u2019s hands\u201d like Ian Thomas described?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Living as an elder is one of the themes we will talk about often during our time together. When they get out there, they ARE GOING TO BE the first elder, the founding pastor of that church, and their disciples, the future church will take on their characteristics. We challenged them to ask themselves, “What kind of disciples do you want?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Take a minute to look up the verses below, and observe Jesus’ example. Jesus lived as the ultimate example of this!\u00a0How was Jesus restfully available, and instantly obedient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
John 4:34; 6:38 \nJohn 5:19, 30\nJohn 7:17-18\nJohn 14:9-11 \n\nThe final verse is related to us. How does Jesus expect us to live?\nJohn 15:5 <\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\nWhat is God challenging you with? What kind of hands are you for God today?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Being God\u2019s hands, restfully available, but instantly obedient. From the sermon \u201cAvailable\u201d by Ian Thomas: The Illustration of your hands\u2026 “Do you expect your hands to have a committee meeting when you get up, to tell you what their plans are for the day\u2026 and to tell you what they consider would be a very […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":172,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[130599],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1324","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-e2-devotions","7":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1324\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}