The father balances so much. Joshua would never IN HIMSELF have been able to guide that many different people-with that many different roles in the drama-over the jordan. God did that! Nor would he have been able to win any of the battles. All of that was letting God father. The church will have to allow God to father in this coming season, for the movements of God are that complex and multifarious.
I had a dream the other night.
In one room, There was a board (also bored) meeting. This meeting was taking place at a dinner table, but no one was eating. It was solemn and serious both, and concerned. What it was concerned with was having a serious meeting about church budgeting. This was a church growth meeting.
I was in the living room which adjoined this meeting room. I was opening a glitter-filled manilla folder which had some money and some disorganized papers. I was playing with the folder and sprinkling the glitter onto the well vacuumed floor. The envelope was filled with schedules and money.
This dream symbolized the Church. In this dream, I was dealing with finances and budgeting in a playful way. It was imperfect and not overly concerned with perfectionism.
The meeting had great people in it. I saw that in the spirit some were giraffes and birds-ie some people in that meeting were not so serious in reality, but had come under a certain form of perfectionism which equated seriousness with responsibility.
I felt God saying, I need an imperfect people who are willing, more than I need a perfect people who are not willing.
We recently attended a prophetic conference. At it, the leaders spoke of overcoming a spirit of perfectionism in the church. Many are not stepping out into what He has because they feel they have to be in a perfected state before He will use them. At this gathering, God was releasing imperfect people into new levels of their callings.
I think that this is a time when God is saying it is ok to be messy, or not ready, but it is not ok not to step out.
We are unable to parent the amount of things which He is revealing and doing in our midst. We cannot be perfectionistic about this stuff. We cannot grab one area of what He is doing and make it an idol of our own ability to harness it. He is moving on too large a scale, and that is part of the point. We must turn over parenting to God, and pray for His Wisdom and a revelation of His Ways of managing so much.
Double mindedness comes when we are holding or gripping one thing which he has given us, and cannot quickly yield to the next. The church enters double mindedness when it tries to control one element it has been given to the excusion of fresh others. In fact, this element can become an idol-you see this in the house church movement when leaders are asked to move on to fresh works but tarry in order to be ³faithful² to the work they started.As spiritual parents the church must be flexible and open-ready!
There is no way to parent and stay in control of all the elements involved. The church will not be able to parent by gripping in control in this coming season. We must let God do it-in the area of finances, planning, missions-we must let Him move as He wishes, and partner with that. Very few churches are fully open to this. But I think in this hour He is humbling many in order that she might release control. This is his parenting intervention, for churches will not be able to handle the level of movement that is fixing to happen on the earth. So there is this necessary loosening.
There is this Psalm 91 call back up into the shelter of the bosom of God-to abide in that secret place from which He parents the nations and those being saved. If we leave that place and start parenting in our power, we will once again build our idols out of the things we have ³mastered². The old models of accountability won¹t hold in this new season; neither will our programs for discipleship. This is a larger move than that, and though they may have been born for other seasons, they will be unable to hold what is on the horizon! To parent is to bestow what He is bestowing when He is bestowing it. Let us pray for the release and wisdom to let Him do it!
