Trust: Don’t live life without it

When God speaks, you should listen. When He repeats Himself, you should understand. If He appears to be “stuck” on a constant theme, you better change.

Occasionally, people ask “what is God saying to you now?” I don’t always have an answer but if you were to ask me now…I would tell you this.

Through events in the past three months God has been pushing His agenda in the ministry of The Community Crossing. We know He calls us to disciple. The “great” in the great commission speaks for itself. Yet, what if we feel we are not worthy of duplication? We have a perfect original in Jesus but what if the copy (us) is not close enough to the original? We all know that a copy of a copy is not as good as the original. We need the church body to equip us and keep us accountable in order to overcome our individual weaknesses. We have good copies on our staff but none of us are called to be Lone Ranger missionaries. We were called to be a unified Kingdom force in God’s plot to transform this planet for eternity. It is true that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. An athlete does not train just one part of his body, he trains all of it. The body is interconnected and dependent on each part to be strong.

As a fan of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, I found a book by the author’s son that I liked. In the Speed of Trust, Stephen M. Covey lays out 13 ways to build trust. Ironically, several of those ways we have heard God speak to us in the past 3 months. Here is the list:

Talk Straight
Show respect
Be transparent
Right wrongs
Show loyalty
Deliver results
Get better
Confront reality
State expectations
Be accountable
Listen first
Meet commitments
Extend trust

All 13 are important in building trust. The 7 marked in green are the ones that I believe God has pointed out to us this year. All of these speak to our character as individuals and as a team. We want to be faith-filled and we want to be a part of God’s plan to draw our neighbors to Himself. Can we be faith-filled and not trust-worthy? Can we show a dying and hurting world Jesus if we are not trust-worthy? There is strength in numbers if those numbers are unified. Can they be unified if there is no trust?

In Ephesians 4, Paul pleads for unity and interdependence for us to become good copies of Jesus:

But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into Him who is the head—Christ. From Him the whole body, fitted and knit together by every supporting ligament, promotes the growth of the body for building up itself in love by the proper working of each individual part.

Ephesians 4:15-16

So that we can carry out our mission!

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Matthew 28:16-20