Recognizing the Impact We All Have

So it's good to hear there are a few readers of this blog. Posting here is a sporadic thing for me. There is just something that is too self-indulgent for me personally to write about myself. My goal has always been to write down ideas, prophetic visions, dreams and teaching ideas here if for nothing else but for an exercise in organizing my ideas and giving people a place in which to I can refer them if discussions on tithing or other issues emerge. So in this post I might just be breaking my own rule, writing about myself.

So to those who have been reading, thanks.

So we've been going to a neat fellowship called "Eastgate Creative Fellowship." The pastors and many of the people who worship there are kindred spirits, and many I have known since I first moved to Nashville in 1997. I love the outlet they have for artists, prophecy and worship. They also have a grasp on something that has been so lacking from charismatic churches: a strong emphasis on the Word! So we are going through the gospel of John, systematically, which I love and also digging into Ephesians.

I have an "orange" personality type and can take input very quickly. Most messages, though well done, do not come at a fast enough rate of input. Though riveted on the inside, I may be fiddling with my phone or looking up another scripture while listening. In the past this has been pointed out to me as if I was doing something wrong and was distracting the speaker. Don't know what to say about that, other than I can relate. I would hate to be speaking in a service only to have me sitting in the congregation playing with my phone looking bored. I can assure you, it's the opposite. I just require faster input. Especially since I figure I've been in over 1200 services in my lifetime and each message is generally about the same subject, I'm not hearing most of this for the first time.

One thing I have realized over the past week is the impact we all have. I remember one day in the late 90's, maybe 1998, the teenage son of a friend seemed as if he was at the crossroads and I felt a strong leading to go over pick him up and take him to lunch. This was a very unusual thing for me to do. However, I saw so much of me in him at that age, I could see the wisdom in God's leading.

Like many teenagers, he had earrings, but had the ones that stretched the lobe out to the point where they were almost a half-inch in diameter. I wondered if, when he got older, if they would ever heal and not look like Dumbo.

I don't remember anything that ripped the sky open for either of us during that lunch, but sometimes it's just showing up that makes the impact. The fact that out of the blue I came by picked him up may have been all that the Lord was looking for. I recently ran into him (now at least 12 years later) and saw a man of God, walking in His fullness as a husband and father, who married a woman full of faith and seems to be heading in a direction pleasing to God.

Another friend whom, though the effort was so small on my part, sent me a note on Facebook saying what an impact I've had on his walk with the Lord. I have to shake my head because there are people I've fasted and prayed for, labored in the flesh and Spirit for and would seem to have gotten nowhere, but someone whom I invited to a ministry mountain bike ride in which 4 people showed up seems to have made life changes based on that one encounter.

I guess Paul summed it up best when he wrote in 1 Corinthians 3:5-9 "What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. ⁶I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. ⁷So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. ⁸The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. ⁹For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building.

So I say all this to say, been enjoying life lately. It's one of those wonderful times where the bills are getting paid, kids are good, job is good and life is good. However, I'm sure it's just a calm between storms. Blessings