Tuesday, March 13, 2012

The Greatest Thing

Over the past three decades of "Equipping God's people to minister Wholeness to others We have trained Pastors and Lay Leaders all over the planet. Our students have come from every denomination, faith group and theological persuasion. However, they are all eager and impatient to learn how to change people. The feel a great urgency to " get going" and set people free.

For example, some of our young, eager students in Asia who wanted to hurry up and learn how to "Heal the broken hearted and set the captives free" as Isaiah 61 instructs us. Their engines of mercy and "Get Er done" had no time to waste on learning about themselves or learning to listen to others. They wanted to immediately get to power prayers and magical words of change. As one Bible teacher asked, "When do we get to 'Sock it to them time?'"

We teach in a systematic, sequential manner. The approach is to facilitate each student to better understand his/ her own heart. We call that being Genuine, so "Each student first understands her own heart, her own mind and her own feelings." The process of 'self knowledge' and 'self control' is the very opposite of impatience, hurry up syndrome and "Sock it to them" because the Holy Spirit nearly always socks it to us first so we quit wanting to sock it to others.

We recently had a student that dropped put of our class when we got to the importance of listening to others. It was, he said, " Too shallow!" He wanted something deeper so he could immediately heal and deliver wounded people. We laughed out loud. Listening is too shallow?! Showing the Fruit of the Holy Spirit to others is too easy. It reminds me of the pop tune from long ago, "What the World Needs Now is Love, Sweet Love". The text goes, "Lord, we don't need another mountain..."

In Christianity we do not need another person who is impatient, hurried, grim, anxious and pushy. We need people with "Faith, hope and love" because they are the greatest characteristics needed for the Care of Souls. Faith, hope and love are foundational for Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors and Teachers. These fruit are always built on self understanding, self management and self control. We call that Genuineness.

An overview of developing these traits can be found in Hope and Change for Humpty Dumpty and Power Christian Thinking which can be downloaded from our bookstore at www.sweetenlife.com

No comments: