• Life Update: Called to Counsel
There I was at Northwoods Chapel, preparing to preach the next day. The churches had called me the week before and asked me to move up the date of my second visit, so they could come together for a question and answer session after the service at the second church. The text for that week’s sermon was Ephesians 2:10, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” My sermon idea was that we are each created uniquely by God in Christ to do the works He has planned out for us. As I finished going through my sermon for the second time that afternoon, I sat down there on the steps leading up to the pulpit and prayed for guidance. I still had so many questions about how it would work for me to come up there and serve as their pastor. Amidst all my uncertainty and confusion, came a still small voice in my heart. I heard God saying, “Mike, My child, I created you to counsel, not preach. To share your heart, not your mind.” He said a lot more that I won’t go into right now, but that was His essential message. That He was calling me to walk along side His people, to counsel them and share my heart with them; not to preach to His people, to lead them or share my mind with them. As I share this message with the churches, some were disappointed, yet they all understood that I must do what God was leading me to do.
• Sharing My Journey: Sowing Grace (in brief)
So I know God has called me to counsel, yet how am I to do this? As I have been pondering that, I have found myself reminded of that life lesson I posted on the web just last week; that lesson that God is still working out in my own life; that lesson of Sowing Grace. I know some of you find my newsletters too long already, so I won’t lengthen this month’s by re-quoting that article verbatim. Instead, let me just condense it.
God is helping me to see that the way He is calling me to reach out to His people is not by telling them how I think He wants them to live their lives for God, but helping them to grow in their own relationship to Him, so that they can learn from Him, on their own, how to live their lives for His Glory. One of the ways of doing this, as He is showing me, is to learn how to feel and stay attuned to the rhythms of His Grace throughout my life. To see how He is seeking to develop in me the fruits of His Spirit. To see how His Spirit is at work in my life and cooperate with His leading. For more on this, you can read the article right here. It's entitled, "Sowing Grace: A Life Lesson in progress." Thanks!
As I have been pondering all this the following poems have come to mind. Both of them, my own. One speaks of the world to come, the other of how we are today:
There is a White
There is a white for this black of ours.
It will show itself in its hour,
But we who hold it in our hearts,
No ray of dark can penetrate our parts.
But what of this light?
What use is it, if it cannot shine bright!
Too often we turn away its source.
We take out our swords,
Made by the hand of Satan,
And slash it into oblivion.
But this light cannot die.
It cannot be swept away.
There are those who have claimed it
And the light lives on in them.
The light has a place in all of our hearts.
Every single one must play its part.
Through them this world will change.
Through them it will exchange
Its darkness for the EVERLASTING LIGHT!
The Inner War
I woke up this morning and there you were in my face
The mirror your eyes, my soul your home
My worst enemy, my best friend
Everything I used to be, everything I might be again
Come back into the dark you whisper
But I’m yearning and fighting for the light
It’s so much easier and more comfortable there
Yet I know here is where I must remain
Hide yourself, it’s so much safer
No, I must be true to the world
I cannot don the mask of security
Cannot fake the act of sincerity
When everything I do and say is just a lie
Truth is more powerful than lie
And more powerful still when backed up by life
I know the life I should live
And I pray one day
It will be the life I do live
It will show itself in its hour,
But we who hold it in our hearts,
No ray of dark can penetrate our parts.
But what of this light?
What use is it, if it cannot shine bright!
Too often we turn away its source.
We take out our swords,
Made by the hand of Satan,
And slash it into oblivion.
But this light cannot die.
It cannot be swept away.
There are those who have claimed it
And the light lives on in them.
The light has a place in all of our hearts.
Every single one must play its part.
Through them this world will change.
Through them it will exchange
Its darkness for the EVERLASTING LIGHT!
The Inner War
I woke up this morning and there you were in my face
The mirror your eyes, my soul your home
My worst enemy, my best friend
Everything I used to be, everything I might be again
Come back into the dark you whisper
But I’m yearning and fighting for the light
It’s so much easier and more comfortable there
Yet I know here is where I must remain
Hide yourself, it’s so much safer
No, I must be true to the world
I cannot don the mask of security
Cannot fake the act of sincerity
When everything I do and say is just a lie
Truth is more powerful than lie
And more powerful still when backed up by life
I know the life I should live
And I pray one day
It will be the life I do live
Thanks again for joining me as I have reflected back on how God has worked in and through my life during the past month. I pray your eyes were opened to the ways He has been at work in yours as well. His work in and through our lives is always going on, even when we are not aware of it. May you feel His many blessings upon you and the love He is always showering your life with abundantly.
In His Grip,
Michel Jon Willard
P.S.,
I should be around the St. Paul area during the weekend of July 15-17. If any of you wants to get together with me, even for just a bite or eat or something, please let me know. I’ll be glad to see what I can work in. Thanks!
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