A New Work
I shared with all of you last week that God is doing something new in my life. I won’t be ready for some time to share the details of the revelations that I’m receiving, but I can begin sharing some of my thoughts about why God is giving them.
If the Good Shepherd steps into the life of one of his under-shepherds and does a tremendous work, so that he replaces that man’s stony heart with a new heart of flesh, then it must be true that he intends to do the same in the lives of that man’s flock.
The Lord has done just that sort of work in my life. He has unstopped my ears, so that I am hearing his voice more clearly than I can remember. My eyes are being opened to see marvelous kingdom realities that I have long overlooked. My mind is being renewed to understand the principles by which God’s grace operates. I am being transformed in a most remarkable manner.
If he has chosen me for this profound gift, then he has also chosen you. I do not know where he intends to lead us, and don’t even expect to know in the immediate future, but I am nevertheless confident that he has prepared us for a journey that we are even now beginning. In that confidence, I am at peace, trusting God with your hearts and your future as well as my own.
Hearing me speak this way is unusual to all of you, because I have not been “on fire for God” in all the years you’ve known me. The fire is burning now, however, and I may be saying quite a lot of things that I’ve neglected to say before, and doing things I have left undone. Several times in the past ten days, I have driven through the neighborhoods north of our location, praying “Lord, I don’t know what I’m looking for, but please let me know when I see it.” Do I need to say that such an activity is unusual for me? My heart has been so hard, but God is digging up the stones within me, and I sense that he will soon begin using my life in a new way.
I expect that some of you may, for the next few weeks, look at me “like a cow looking at a new gate.” You may even feel the sort of uneasiness one feels when he knows that a change is coming, but not what sort of change it will be. Join the club! I am much more comfortable with my familiar mediocrity than with taking risk to fulfill my potential. God, however, does not alter his plans for us because we prefer comfort and mediocrity; he is requiring that we see more than we have seen, and become more than we are, which entails risk taking and hard work on our part.
We have not yet understood all that God wants to do through our humble lives, but he is about to show us. If you will look with “new eyes,” I think you may see that God is working all around us to arouse his people, to awaken his slumbering saints for a grand task which we have not imagined. Whatever he is doing in our little part of the world, it must be awesome, considering the weight of the revelations he is giving me through his word. I invite you to join me in listening for his voice.
