BELIEVE WILDLY

The purpose of this writing is to encourage you to be you. Moreover, I encourage you to be you and let God be God around you. Meaning? How we do try to do good things (right things) for God toward people; yet, we find our plans and ideas have great lack. God works anyway.

Two years ago I was sharing with my elders a plan to create a Click-it-Forward message by creating a colorful minute and a half video which could be passed to the masses from email to email. The theme would be to draw people to Jesus. I was working on developing multiple messages with various languages to be drawn up and spread around the world in a click.

While I was working on that concept, I responded to my son's (Tim's) blog. I wasn't blog savvy and in commenting on his I inadvertently set up my own. It had 184 hits in the first day and there were no words as I didn't know I had a blog. Today 138,500 hits later, you read it. I find myself talking to the whole world; the very thing I dreamed of but in a different format. Readers are on many continents. Just last week a native from India informed me he is translating this blog into their language and sending it out. God works ahead of us....even when we think we are being visionary.

Some of you would remember the story of my friend, Richard Haley. We were classmates growing up. He never went to church...ever. He was found to have a brain tumor and in reaching to him, God converted this man. I told him when I baptized him that he would be used by God to reach the world by me simply telling his story. He wept in sheer joy. That thought stuck with my friend all the way to his death a short few months later.

This week I received a letter from one of his sons. I've not heard from the family since Richard's death a few years back. His son wants me to help him with his faith. Wouldn't it be something if one of the people Richard reaches is his own boy? Having mixed my tears with Richard's over such a concept, the thought of this possibility fits into a region where I have no words. Wow!

Yesterday and today I spent part of the time helping a preacher in Virginia (who I don't know) help a terminally ill member figure a way to make it to Yankee Stadium while her health is stable for just a few more weeks. Yes, there are many things important to think about and right now this (unknown to me) woman has a family and a minister trying to offer a few days of earth joy. Therefore, she is most important. People need and deserve encouragement.

Be encouraged. You think you are working on specifics when He may have something entirely different in progress. Don't get tied up in knots over your dreams and plans and schedules. Give stuff a shot and relax. Our God knows how to use our fumblings and confusions. He knows how to use our half plans and dream-wishes.

Peter and Co. had fished all night; but Jesus instructed him to try it from one more angle. God had a better idea. Peter was in jail and his house church was praying for him. Angels let him out but Rhoda wouldn't let him in. God stymied those praying by delivering beyond their wildest imaginations. Believe wildly!

God is a God of surprise. Be surprised! Give ministry your best shot day after day. Then rest most assured God has trumped our play and will display results which will shock and thrill us all.