I've posted about this, in a very general way, a little in the recent past. I do it again...with more focus and vigor.
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Most of last year was a bit of a loss for me.
From the time Evie's health began to decline, through the meetings with cardiologists and the surgical team, through the wait for the actual surgery and the touchy moments in her first days and weeks of recovery, through the lengthy, still ongoing recovery, I became spiritually disoriented.
I struggled to maintain focus, but mostly failed.
For much of the time, the best I could achieve was, "I will fear no evil, for you are with me."
And, I've been fighting to get my prophetic, well, groove, back. It's been a battle. It continues to be a battle.
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Last night, in my nightly insomniac moment, I had what I hope will be a continuing breakthrough.
My most prayed prayer is my plea that the Lord will help me to be faithful to my very specific sense of my calling. Sadly, it's a prayer that I'd not been praying very faithfully lately.
The plea is exactly 71 words in length. Often, when I pray it, I'm overwhelmed by it and can't complete it because I become lost in it.
Last night, as I wasn't sleeping, I prayed it repeatedly...
...and, I've never been so profoundly overwhelmed by it.
The prayer incorporates Jeremiah 1:10, Romans 1:1 and Ephesians 4:11. To pray it is, also, essentially, to meditate on those Scriptures.
I've stated what I believe to be my calling several times in the past.
The calling, but not the prayer, is:
To uproot and tear down and to destroy and overthrow the church's pastor-dominated leadership culture and to build and to plant a servant community in which apostles, prophets, evangelists and shepherds and teachers are all empowered to live within their callings and, therefore, to prepare the saints for works of ministry.
Last night two thoughts reoccurred several times.
1. This is very much about what Christendom theologians call the Doctrine of the Priesthood of all Believers. It's not about parish priests providing religious products and services for a consuming laity but about equipping all disciples to be priests.
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And,
2. It is precisely and very directly opposed to the central idea in Brandon Kelly's curiously uncompleted series of articles in both The CHURCH ADVOCATE and the CGGC eNews on APEST.
Brandon, and assumedly, Lance and the whole gang in the CGGC headquarters building, hyper-emphasized the absolute centrality of "the pastor-dominated leadership culture."
Brandon's last articles, on the shepherd gift, made that vividly clear.
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I've had this sense of calling and I began to pray this prayer, I believe, before Brandon was even a CGGC parish priest and certainly long before Lance was CGGC CEO and before Brandon assumed the position of being a General Conference mountaintopper.
It struck me how powerfully prophetic...
...in the sense that prophets foretell, i.e., predict, the future...
...this is.
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The Spirit was actually leading me to stand up against, and to pray for the failure of, what Brandon and CGGC staffers were promoting, with clear intentionality, for nearly all of 2018.
I was praying against it since long before what Brandon was preaching could have been a twinkle in his theological eye.
I'm certain that Brandon, Lance and the other boys in the band hadn't yet had the idea but the Lord knew they would have it and He was calling me to pray against it years in advance.
That's powerful to me.
I couldn't have guessed that Brandon, Lance, and the gang would preach the sort of pastor-obsessed doctrine they were touting last year. I myself don't have that good of an imagination! But, the Lord of creation knows. He knew.
And, the Spirit had me praying in reference to it YEARS ago!
This moment of realization has been one of the sweetest gifts the Spirit has ever given me.
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Have you ever wondered how Moses could stand so confidently before Pharaoh or Isaiah or Jeremiah against the Kings and High Priests?
I think this is how.
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