Dancing To His Rhythm: A Guest Post From Jim Branch
A guest post from Jim Branch, author of The Blue Book.
Well, it’s that time of year again. The time of year when school starts back and
the pace and the activity level seems to pick up once again. There is simply something energizing about
this time of year, although it has occurred to me that, sadly, we keep shaving
days and weeks off of the summer–much to our detriment, I might add–but
that’s a subject for a whole different set of posts altogether.
Anyway, since it is the time of year when we begin to pick
up the pace a little bit, I’ve been thinking about the implications of that
increase on our lives and our ministries.
It is easy to get swept away by activity if we don’t see it and
anticipate it and begin to adjust our spiritual rhythms accordingly. The reason for that is that the quality of
our lives and our ministries is always determined by the quality of our inner
lives with Jesus. Ministry, in order to
have the power and the authenticity God longs for it to have, must be
organic. It can’t be manufactured. In other words, it must come from a place of
living reality within us. In order for
ministry to be organic it must come from something growing deep inside. And for something to be growing deep inside,
we must be consistently making time and space for God to be planting something
deep inside. Apart from that work of God
in us, there will likely not be the work of God through us that he really
desires there to be. Unless we are
consistently encountering Jesus in a way that is transforming us, how can we
ever hope to have anything of value to offer those to whom God is sending
us?
So it might be a good idea to spend some time in the next
week or so asking Jesus what he wants our lives with him to look like over the
next several months, and adjusting accordingly; walking at his pace and dancing
to his rhythm rather than dashing and thrashing madly around to our own. May his peace be with you. -Jim
Read more of Jim’s writings on his Blue Book Blog.
