Category — Observations

The Scriptures use the word Quickening to refer to the living presence of the Holy Spirit in Believers – and the Apostles Creed (“he shall come to judge the Quick and the dead.”) To be Quickened is to be enlivened with the touch of the Spirit. This is exciting. We can actually walk through in a living sense of the presence of God. True, sometimes we feel little or none of the Spirit upon us, at least that’s true for me. At other times there is a strong sense of the Spirit on us (tactile response). The question to is this: Are you willing to allow God to make you aware of his quickening today? If you are he will re-ignite the quickening in short order.

You are quickened whether you feel anything today or not. He wants you to know his likes and dislikes, not mentally only but through a vital, dynamic connection with his Spirit. He has assignments for you to accomplish today that require your quickening. Walk in his quickened presence and go change everything.

There is nothing more powerful on earth than an idea that is carried out over the long haul. Our great shortcoming is that we lack the emotional fortitude to tease ideas out for the long haul. We tend to convince ourselves that we are boring others with our ongoing talk on a given topic. In reality we are unfocused, bratty or we are playing to the applause of the crowd. Just at about the time that we are absolutely, insanely bored with the 17th iteration of the topic and are looking to blow our brains out in frustration…it is then that the crowd begins to get what we have been saying all along. To carry out an idea rightly requires humility more than intelligence. Fortitude more than forcefulness.

There are many more great ideas yet to be discovered than all of us together have stumbled across. As I tally it, there are 300 plus outreach projects to date. Some of them are really cool, but the best ideas are yet to be found. The iPhone 5 is coming out in a few weeks. It will blow away all cell phones to date, but In technology the coolest things are still to come down the pipeline (thank you Steve Jobs and friends).

All inspiration is ultimately from God whether the receiver of that acknowledges it or not. Of course he needs our willingness to take the kernel he provides and work our tails off in order to get that idea in shape, but all seminal ideas originate with God.

He wants to birth an idea through you. He says, “Open your mouth, and I will fill it.” Open up wide. Here it comes.

A while back I ran into a guy at church who looked a lot like someone I had seen on some album covers so I told him that with a little chuckle. He said, “That’s because I am that guy.” Turns out he was a part of the Eagles. One day not long after becoming a Believer he woke up and God told him he had to drop out of the band.
I thought, Did he really need to quit the band? Couldn’t he have stayed there and been a witness, and continued to collect millions a year? I thought, Too bad I wasn’t his friend when this was all going down. I could have counseled him with some wisdom and he could still be collecting millions in concert revenues. His tithe could come in handy (the things pastors think of…) I asked him Couldn’t you have just stayed in the band as a Christian Eagle (you’ve heard that line of thinking before). His answer floored me. “God told me to quit and follow him. I didn’t know any better than to just obey him.” God give us that brand of profound obedience.

It is common that as we get involved in changing the world that every once in a while we want to throw in the towel. I’ve been there numbers of times. Fortunately that desire usually goes away after a few hours or days. But it’s worth thinking through – what are we to do when we can’t get over the desire to quit. Instead of listing a ton of practical steps (which you could probably write yourself) it is enough to say this: we can’t quit. When we believe quitting isn’t an option we change the game entirely. Here’s some wisdom – just stop dwelling on this as an option. When MJ (Mary Jane) and I got married we decided that no matter how crazy we made each other we would never use the D word in conversation or as a threat. We’ve stuck to that for over 32 years now. You do the same with the Q word.