I know this may come as a bit of surprise to many folks who read my blog, but I’m a bit of a control freak (insert laugh or no way here). Seriously, I like to know what’s going on and I love sitting down and thinking about how to “pull something off”. I love the idea of Vision Retreats where I can go away and just dream big huge dreams. I love putting together my little cue sheets that show me when piece b should end and what will transition us into piece c. It’s a sickness – I know!
With all this “love of order/vision/control” though comes a pretty big pitfall that I am becoming more and more aware of. See, I think in my energy to plan things, whether it’s for a worship experience, retreat, camping trip, family event, or whatever else is left, I have a tendency to rob the ownership of the event. I’m not talking about the inability to work on teams – I think I can do that, though I can certainly improve – I’m talking about robbing the ownership from the Real Owner.
If I preach, lead, write, talk about, whatever, that Christ came to inaugurate a NEW Kingdom and that He left us the very presence, breathe and energy of God in the person of the Holy Spirit, yet I refuse to let this impact my planning or visioning, I’m robbing the Owner. That’s control freak 101 right there. I get the opportunity and honor to lead each and every day, but I gotta be honest, sometimes I’m the one leading. I can do that for a while, but not only will I eventually crash and burn, but I’m taking the ownership of things that don’t belong to me in the first place.
Now, here’s the question though – it’s one thing to do this stuff as a leader in a “Jesus Community” but how often am I doing this in my own personal life? How often to I script out exactly what I think I want or need to do, ascribe it’s success or failure to God yet totally leave the interaction of the Holy Spirit out in the cold?
This Sunday is Pentecost – the Birthday of the Church – the moment we give thanks that this Holy Spirit is imparted to all who claim the name of Jesus. It’d be really easy for me to come with an agenda, and don’t get me wrong I’ll plan and pray, but I sure hope I come ultimately with an openness to what the SPIRIT want’s for me, not what I want for the Spirit to do in my midst. How about you? Are you a person who’s led by the Spirit, are we a church that is led by the Spirit? Can we actually not have any kind of personal agenda other than being with God?
For me this is a question of ownership – will I allow the ownership to be in the hands of the true owner or will I hijack and try to lead on my own?
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Oh my, it was like this was written with me in mind!! It has gotten a bit (tiny bit) easier for me to release it all to the HS because of Elizabeth…her needs and issues(I very quickly realized) are WAY bigger than me and although I admit to being a control freak, I had to look to something bigger than me…anyway, her disability broke me and I try, really try, to discern between my responsibility and His power and guidance in each day and in each way. Thanks for writing this and for being REAL Jim!!!
What words..