Soil of Surrender
Soil of Surrender
A calling begins with a stirring in our hearts. A sense, almost like the way one can feel when the weather is about to change, that our season of life is about to change. It’s followed by a burden. Often God raises our awareness for a group of lost sheep that the Shepherd, who is willing to leave the 99 to go after the one, graciously calls us to.
This stirring began happening in our lives about a year and a half ago. We could sense a change was coming. We asked a few people to pray for us that we might be sensitive and wide-eyed to where God was leading. Prayer support during the stirring stage is vitally important. We need grace to see and hear clearly and grace to be patient. “For the vision is yet for the appointed time; it hastens toward the goal and it will not fail. Though it tarries, wait for it; For it will certainly come, it will not delay” (Habakuk 2:3) During this time of deliberately seeking God, a dear family member was in prayer for us when God showed her a picture of my husband and I’s hands joined together and before us was a sea of broken chunks of concrete. She saw us reach down to grab what was in the crack and when we set it down the foundation became joined together and smooth. She realized that what we were reaching for in the cracks were people. What she didn’t know is at the same time God was revealing this to her in prayer, my husband was having a growing burden for church planting and the millennial generation. We knew from research that 60% of the millenials that were raised in church had left the church and with further research we learned our little town of 20,000 was made up 55% by millennials (20-40 year olds). Research shows that what millennials want in a church is to have a sense of belonging, connection, family, a safe place to ask hard questions, a place for vulnerability, and that’s what our hearts desired to. We live in a society where most of us feel lonely and isolated and the enemy will use the isolation to bring further hopelessness and discouragement. The vision was for building a strong foundation on God’s word and love but doing it joined together unifying and using each person’s gifts. After God brings the call (the stirring) and the burden we are left with a decision: Will we be obedient to the call?
Obedience requires surrender. Jesus says, “Unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels-a plentiful harvest of new lives” (John 12:24). To be obedient, we must be willing to lay some things down. To be obedient to God’s call to church plant, we had to leave the love and security of the church we’d served at for 7 years. Since we had the privilege of being ministers in an established church, we had to lay down financial stability, ministry teams and partners, mission trips and ministries that we had helped build and shape, meaningful relationships built over the years, plenty of resources and a beautiful facility. I’m an I/S on the DISC assessment which means I like steady, not change. Laying down the predictable, the safe, and the secure for the unknown is hard for me. There will be many seasons of life where obedience will require surrender, sacrifice, and laying down the things we love. By God’s grace and empowerment, we took this step of obedience last spring. I quickly realized I wasn’t going to be able to keep up with the work of starting a church from the ground up, working part time, speaking various weekends, carpooling and mothering 3 busy teenagers and also keep up with writing. So I laid writing down for the last 9 months.
Obedience requires faith. Faith that where God leads-He will follow, where He guides-He provides, and where He calls-He enables. We must have faith that God is good and that He’s good to us. He’s not calling us to surrender out of harshness or meanness but out of love, and what will ultimately lead to our faith growing. We grow weak muscles through exercising them. We grow weak faith by exercising it. God has come through for us at every turn, at just the right moment (usually the last possible moment) and in just the right way. Through a divine connection we found out about a church planting organization called ARC (association of related churches) that has a heart to reach the lost through life-giving church plants. They provide coaching, resources and financial assistance. Our home church sent us out with much love and a generous gift to get us going, and God provided another partnering church in Indiana to walk beside us. After much prayer the perfect mobile location opened up at the Ozark Community Center just days before our ARC deadline. We have received multiple financial gifts, some even anonymous, at the exact time of need and in direct answer to prayer. When we started in April, we had 4 committed team members and my husband and I were one of them. We saw God call and burden other’s hearts for this same mission and by September, we had the 45 launch team members ARC requires. When I stood up to do the welcome with my husband on launch Sunday, September 22 and I saw over 250 people sitting before us, I remembered the promise of John 12:24, the promise of laying down and letting something die is that of harvest. “Its death will produce many new kernels-a plentiful harvest of new lives” (John 12:24b). Whatever God is calling you to lay down in surrender know that He’s faithful to his promise: from the soil of surrender comes a plentiful harvest.
2019/11/22 at 1:54 pm