Back in 2007 meditating on how to respond to questions asked to me in relation to what I would prefer to follow… the Heart or the Mind of God? I wrote several general comments on the subject.
I am reaffirming the concept of “general” because at that precise moment in time my spiritual parameters were the boundaries of the specific motivations that prevailed in the ministry I was involved with.
I have always been a systematic approach person in any endeavor in my life. My mind, my spirit work in unison seeking the natural expansion of the intended or set boundaries for the actions performed. I strongly believe in God being a God of order.
He sets the courses of actions for any ministerial objectives, and when He considers that the challenge to face goes beyond the orderly approaches set for every one of them, He places a longing, an itching for going beyond and a different set of circumstances.
He usually works in mysterious ways when He wants to expand the tent that covers a particular servant. If He visualizes other ways of expanding the horizons in a way that the understanding of the whole spectrum of needs of the particular society he places His servant becomes more integral and wholesome, He will instill in him unexpected longings, growing awareness, and unsettledness to get their servants depart on their way over different paths of thinking, actions and resolve.
I had been wondering for more than 2 years why the adolescents girls ply in my country and place of missionary action were a dominant concern in my spirit. We had adolescent boys and we tried to charter their growing so they would become the men and women that our society needs.
But time and time again, people used to tell that I sounded more passionate while telling to the girls to raise their self respect and self determination levels than when, with what I thought was the voice of experience for having raised 4 boys to real manhood, I insisted on emphasizing to the boys to be responsible, hard working and respectful men, so in the future they could be the spiritual heads and the material providers and protectors that the Lord wants as the rightful and indispensable foundation not only of a Christian family but any family as well.
Probably, and in a very unconscious and subliminal way I was analyzing the social spectrum of the nation. I do not know if by training as I was prepared to do so in my early young manhood years, or by spiritual leading so I could be ready to tackle, at the present time by presenting these thoughts about right-er or greater encompassing integral solutions, and who knows in what practical way in the future.
In my next posting, and after translating my past years comments on the Heart and the Mind of God into Spanish and posting them in my Sispanh Version Blog, I will refer to what I presently believe is a greater encompassing approach first of the adolescent girls and later on of the adolescent boys that are in such a dire need of leading, orientation, correction, disciplining and guidance.
But first of all, in order to set in a very clear way the accurate basis for my comments based on my past and present experiences, and with the humblest and real humility, that I was thankfully taught not to confuse with fake denials or subservient and kind of falsely submissive servile attitudes I, to reinforce the validity of my statements, will refer myself to some basic insights about my personal life that now have become the leading characteristics of my personality as an steady, enduring, uncompromising servant of the Lord.
At the beginning of my Christian walk, while on the Missionary Training School in Arkansas, back in the eighties, due some radical, extremist or narrow understanding by some of my group leaders, I had a great struggle as I was repeatedly told to despise my natural training and upbringing, and unconditionally submit to any appointed leader that were decided to place over me. I even thought about leaving because I could not agree in my mind that the Lord had made a mistake in giving me training, intelligence and resolve.
For a time I even asked the Lord to change me into a dumber and stupid guy if that was what was necessary to fit into what I was beginning to understand was a much worthier life than the one I had lived until then, despite the personal and emotional satisfactions I had accumulated through good, bad and even worst circumstances than any run of the mill person could imagine.
Thanks God, a seasoned and experienced teacher and counselor came to teach and counsel us. Doug Easterday, one of the leading YWAM International teachers! Thanks God, when I presented my ply to Him, he adamantly stated that the Lord never makes mistakes, and that he gives gifting to the ones he has ulterior plans of placing them in His service, and that I what to do was to submit them to Him, patiently endure the incoming and perennial Refiners Fire He would sent my way, so I could be His servant, His prophet, His witness, His uncompromising servant, and the bridge uniting the material and the spiritual worlds that would be walked on by many other servants to cross from one shore to the other.
He also told me that I should humbly accept the reasons why he had made me walk and accumulate so many peculiar experiences, so I could help, even if misunderstood at times, those who could not, even with their best resolve understand the bigger pictures of His master plan for the confrontation of the spiritual forces, the good and the evil ones, in this complex and fast changing present world.
Since then, in many places, many churches, by pastors and many other individuals, many prophecies have been given to my wife and I in relation to our changed missionary lives. Since then, and in the following order... Habakkuk 1: 1-4 (a dialogue between the prophet and The Lord); then Habakkuk 2: 1-4 (The final answer from the Lord and His mission assignment to the prophet); and then Isahiah 32: 1-8 (what the Lord envisions for His people and his sent ones) and 15-20 (the outcome of His desire for His people)... These prophets have been a vital part of my life, even if subliminally, in the times when in the prominent and worldly scenarios my professional life gave me a lot of emotional satisfactions that led me to self-sufficiently think and proclaim that the world belonged to the strong and the daring.
I did not know at that time that those precise adjectives or qualifications were also required in the Christian realm, but an strength and a daring based not on our human understanding and belief but in our recognition of our personal weakness and will submitted to the Lord who would turn them into the strength and the daring required to go as his bearers of His Good News over the hills and the swamps and even the well intentioned efforts of those who are really serving themselves while stating they are serving the Lord.
When I was young my fellow men and superiors used to call me “the brain” because of what they and I thought at that time was a peculiar characteristic of my personality and upbringing. They also use to call me the “non adapted one” because I never bent to material or social incentives, bribing or financial misuse, flattering recognitions or oportunistic behaviors.
Even my President, in whose closer circles I moved asked me several times what my price was, as he said he could not understand me, going to the point that once told me he would appoint me as one of his personal aides which I refused, telling him that I could not adapt to the idea of being a personal servant.
I never imagined at that time that I would find such joy and satisfaction in becoming a servant, but this time of The Lord. “Lord“ is the greatest concept I have of Him!
A God and a Savior, but more than that… A Lord and A Friend! And above everything else, the sublime combination of these 4 divine characteristic! GOD! SAVIOR! LORD! And FRIEND! What else a human being could desire?
Only by submission and uncompromising endurance you can become his instrument and show the way to others. Not to become their human leader, nor their boss, nor their master, nor their employee, nor their representative in their human, even if well intentioned devised endeavors, nor their promoter of their human kingdoms on behalf of God.
In this rightful spirit, after the translation of the comments I have promised I will resume my understanding of the more integral ways to really heal and restore the physically but more than that, spiritually wounded and distorted lives of the younger than I generations of my country, and any country as well, as the spiritual damage and evilness is also rampant everywhere.
I am reaffirming the concept of “general” because at that precise moment in time my spiritual parameters were the boundaries of the specific motivations that prevailed in the ministry I was involved with.
I have always been a systematic approach person in any endeavor in my life. My mind, my spirit work in unison seeking the natural expansion of the intended or set boundaries for the actions performed. I strongly believe in God being a God of order.
He sets the courses of actions for any ministerial objectives, and when He considers that the challenge to face goes beyond the orderly approaches set for every one of them, He places a longing, an itching for going beyond and a different set of circumstances.
He usually works in mysterious ways when He wants to expand the tent that covers a particular servant. If He visualizes other ways of expanding the horizons in a way that the understanding of the whole spectrum of needs of the particular society he places His servant becomes more integral and wholesome, He will instill in him unexpected longings, growing awareness, and unsettledness to get their servants depart on their way over different paths of thinking, actions and resolve.
I had been wondering for more than 2 years why the adolescents girls ply in my country and place of missionary action were a dominant concern in my spirit. We had adolescent boys and we tried to charter their growing so they would become the men and women that our society needs.
But time and time again, people used to tell that I sounded more passionate while telling to the girls to raise their self respect and self determination levels than when, with what I thought was the voice of experience for having raised 4 boys to real manhood, I insisted on emphasizing to the boys to be responsible, hard working and respectful men, so in the future they could be the spiritual heads and the material providers and protectors that the Lord wants as the rightful and indispensable foundation not only of a Christian family but any family as well.
Probably, and in a very unconscious and subliminal way I was analyzing the social spectrum of the nation. I do not know if by training as I was prepared to do so in my early young manhood years, or by spiritual leading so I could be ready to tackle, at the present time by presenting these thoughts about right-er or greater encompassing integral solutions, and who knows in what practical way in the future.
In my next posting, and after translating my past years comments on the Heart and the Mind of God into Spanish and posting them in my Sispanh Version Blog, I will refer to what I presently believe is a greater encompassing approach first of the adolescent girls and later on of the adolescent boys that are in such a dire need of leading, orientation, correction, disciplining and guidance.
But first of all, in order to set in a very clear way the accurate basis for my comments based on my past and present experiences, and with the humblest and real humility, that I was thankfully taught not to confuse with fake denials or subservient and kind of falsely submissive servile attitudes I, to reinforce the validity of my statements, will refer myself to some basic insights about my personal life that now have become the leading characteristics of my personality as an steady, enduring, uncompromising servant of the Lord.
At the beginning of my Christian walk, while on the Missionary Training School in Arkansas, back in the eighties, due some radical, extremist or narrow understanding by some of my group leaders, I had a great struggle as I was repeatedly told to despise my natural training and upbringing, and unconditionally submit to any appointed leader that were decided to place over me. I even thought about leaving because I could not agree in my mind that the Lord had made a mistake in giving me training, intelligence and resolve.
For a time I even asked the Lord to change me into a dumber and stupid guy if that was what was necessary to fit into what I was beginning to understand was a much worthier life than the one I had lived until then, despite the personal and emotional satisfactions I had accumulated through good, bad and even worst circumstances than any run of the mill person could imagine.
Thanks God, a seasoned and experienced teacher and counselor came to teach and counsel us. Doug Easterday, one of the leading YWAM International teachers! Thanks God, when I presented my ply to Him, he adamantly stated that the Lord never makes mistakes, and that he gives gifting to the ones he has ulterior plans of placing them in His service, and that I what to do was to submit them to Him, patiently endure the incoming and perennial Refiners Fire He would sent my way, so I could be His servant, His prophet, His witness, His uncompromising servant, and the bridge uniting the material and the spiritual worlds that would be walked on by many other servants to cross from one shore to the other.
He also told me that I should humbly accept the reasons why he had made me walk and accumulate so many peculiar experiences, so I could help, even if misunderstood at times, those who could not, even with their best resolve understand the bigger pictures of His master plan for the confrontation of the spiritual forces, the good and the evil ones, in this complex and fast changing present world.
Since then, in many places, many churches, by pastors and many other individuals, many prophecies have been given to my wife and I in relation to our changed missionary lives. Since then, and in the following order... Habakkuk 1: 1-4 (a dialogue between the prophet and The Lord); then Habakkuk 2: 1-4 (The final answer from the Lord and His mission assignment to the prophet); and then Isahiah 32: 1-8 (what the Lord envisions for His people and his sent ones) and 15-20 (the outcome of His desire for His people)... These prophets have been a vital part of my life, even if subliminally, in the times when in the prominent and worldly scenarios my professional life gave me a lot of emotional satisfactions that led me to self-sufficiently think and proclaim that the world belonged to the strong and the daring.
I did not know at that time that those precise adjectives or qualifications were also required in the Christian realm, but an strength and a daring based not on our human understanding and belief but in our recognition of our personal weakness and will submitted to the Lord who would turn them into the strength and the daring required to go as his bearers of His Good News over the hills and the swamps and even the well intentioned efforts of those who are really serving themselves while stating they are serving the Lord.
When I was young my fellow men and superiors used to call me “the brain” because of what they and I thought at that time was a peculiar characteristic of my personality and upbringing. They also use to call me the “non adapted one” because I never bent to material or social incentives, bribing or financial misuse, flattering recognitions or oportunistic behaviors.
Even my President, in whose closer circles I moved asked me several times what my price was, as he said he could not understand me, going to the point that once told me he would appoint me as one of his personal aides which I refused, telling him that I could not adapt to the idea of being a personal servant.
I never imagined at that time that I would find such joy and satisfaction in becoming a servant, but this time of The Lord. “Lord“ is the greatest concept I have of Him!
A God and a Savior, but more than that… A Lord and A Friend! And above everything else, the sublime combination of these 4 divine characteristic! GOD! SAVIOR! LORD! And FRIEND! What else a human being could desire?
Only by submission and uncompromising endurance you can become his instrument and show the way to others. Not to become their human leader, nor their boss, nor their master, nor their employee, nor their representative in their human, even if well intentioned devised endeavors, nor their promoter of their human kingdoms on behalf of God.
In this rightful spirit, after the translation of the comments I have promised I will resume my understanding of the more integral ways to really heal and restore the physically but more than that, spiritually wounded and distorted lives of the younger than I generations of my country, and any country as well, as the spiritual damage and evilness is also rampant everywhere.
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