Making Adjustments As Needed

“Nothing paralyzes our lives like the attitude that things can never change. We need to remind ourselves that God can change things. Outlook determines the outcome. If we see only the problems, we will be defeated; but if we see the possibilities in the problems, we can have victory.” – Warren Wiersbe. 

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you see/hear the word adjustment? Most people would define adjustment as a small alteration or movement made to achieve the desired fit, appearance, or result or the process of adapting or becoming used to a new situation. 

We want God to speak to us and give us an assignment, but we are not all that excited about making any major adjustments in our lives. The Lord uses adjustments to bring us back into alignment with Him and the plan He has for our individual lives. These adjustments might have to take place in friendships, relationships, school, or career choices. At times, these changes may make sense and seem easy enough. But inevitably, there will come a day when the Lord will call you to leave something or pursue something that may not make sense. A change that will leave you uncertain and honestly scared because it is unlike anything you have experienced. That is where faith comes in. When that time comes, a decision has to be made.

Every time God spoke to people in the Scripture about something He wanted to do through them, major adjustments were necessary. They had to adjust their lives to God. Once the adjustments were made, God accomplished His purposes through those He called. We have story after story in the Old and New Testament of people the Lord called to make huge, life-altering adjustments.

In Genesis 6, the Lord decides to destroy all of humanity due to their wickedness and during this, He calls Noah to build an ark. Verse 22 says, “So Noah did everything exactly as God had commanded him.” The New Testament is also riddled with stories of major life-altering adjustments. When Jesus encounters each disciple, they are going about their life. Matthew, the tax collector, is sitting in his office when Jesus calls him to follow Him. Simon and Andrew as well as James and John are in the middle of fishing when He calls them. Encounters with God can sometimes seem inconvenient and disruptive. As believers, we are continually being shaped and molded to be more like Christ. That process is hard and messy.  The adjustments He calls us to at times may seem impossible and terrifying. Making those adjustments requires obedience. If you refuse to make the adjustment, you could miss what God had in store for your life.

The Bible tells us that when God speaks to His people, He always calls for a decision about what you believe. Now that we see that, based on that belief, He challenges us to make major adjustments to our lives in order to allow Him to work through us.

Discussion Questions:

  1. What are ways God leads us to adjust to Him in how we think.  About people?  About issues?  About biblical principles that we struggle with?  
  2. Why does God lead us to adjust to Him? Why is this important? What is God doing when He asks us to adjust to Him? 

Is There Another Way?

“Father, if you are willing, please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.” – Luke 22:42. 

 Jesus did not want to do what God wanted Him to do. After 33 years of life and ministry, Jesus is nearing the completion of His mission. But reaching the finish line was anything but glorious. He was going to be named “King”, but the crown was a crown of thorns.  He endured pain and suffering with the weight of the world in addition to the physical pain, He was also going to endure betrayal and denial from His closest friends.  Loneliness, agony, and finally death. Imagine how He must have felt as He was just hours away from experiencing all that. He felt like just about all of us would feel. After all, who would want to experience that unimaginable suffering?  

So Jesus prays a prayer that makes a lot of sense: “Father, if you are willing, please take this cup of suffering away from me…” (Luke 22:42) Many of us can identify with that because we pray that exact same prayer. In that prayer we are asking the same question as Jesus, “Lord, is there no other way?” 

Take a few moments and consider what Jesus chose to do when faced with a task that God had given Him.  You and I are faced with many tasks, all are immeasurably less significant, but still, cause us the stress and strain of wanting to obey God, but also of not wanting to obey Him at the same time.  If obedience to God means that we will likely have to endure pain, change, give up something, or do something that we are uncomfortable with, we usually try to figure a way to do it, but in our own way. Or we simply delay.   

Jesus didn’t delay.  While He did share His true feelings with His father, He doesn’t say “I’m not doing this.”  He doesn’t procrastinate. He simply asks God if there is another way.  Jesus prays, “Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.”  That is an intense prayer.  A prayer of commitment.  It is not just adding an obligatory “God-willing” at the end of the prayer.  It is a representation of a heart, mind, and will that is submitted to the Father.  Though He knew that it would be severe and painful, He was still willing to go through with it because that’s what God wanted Him to do.  Jesus placed His life in His Father’s hands and is basically saying, “Lord, you know best.  Though this thing you are asking Me to do will be agonizing, I trust that You not only have my best interest in mind, but You also have the best interest in the world in mind.”   

We need to remember that we’re not working for God. We’re working with God. We are working with a God that can do anything. But He chooses to work through us. Or as Oswald Chambers said, “work out” what God “works in” you. When God wants us to do something we don’t want to do, we can pray for another way, but we must also pray that we are willing to do what God wants us to do. 

Discussion Questions:

  1. Do you think God has unrealistic expectations for us?
  2. What do you think God wants to do through you?  What can you do this week to accomplish what God wants to do through you?

Small Steps

“We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.” — Chuck Swindoll

We worship a big God with a big mission that will one day reach this whole big world. We live in a culture that gravitates to the big things. In an age where everyone seems to be longing for attention and approval, what better way to garner it than with something big. We think that someday you will be able to do something great. Maybe you will write a huge check to your favorite charity or possibly fund a program to feed the hungry. Perhaps you might start a needed ministry at church. 

We, as Christians, can waste so much time waiting to do something big that we miss opportunities right now. As always Jesus serves as our example; He took simple things from ordinary folks and turned them into resources beyond imagination.

We always start the year with big intentions. Becoming more consistent with my walk with God.  We long for God-sized encounters but believe we are more qualified for smaller things. Small steps.  Small progress. Small steps of progress in parenting, marriage, character traits, loving people, and so on.

But smallness is not the issue because smallness is not a problem for God. For spiritual success consists of everyday small steps of consistent obedience to Him. Small, everyday steps of loving the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving our neighbor as ourselves. Small, everyday steps of staying faithful to reading His Word and allowing His Spirit to change our hearts.  Small, everyday steps of faithfully administering God’s grace in the lives of those around you on a day in and day out basis.   

The reality is we can experience God in the small things as well. God can speak to us in the small moments of stopping to receive God grace’s and presence in a time of scripture reading and prayer.  

One day a little boy overheard the disciples of Jesus trying to figure out how they were going to feed 5,000 families. The boy offered his lunch of five loaves and two fish to help. When Jesus received it, He multiplied it into enough food to feed 5,000 families – with leftovers.

This same Jesus can turn the simple things you bring to Him, those deeds of service day by day, and multiply them into great blessings for you, as well as for others. As small as it may seem, He is looking for people who will give Him all they have, and trust Him to do the rest.

Discussion Questions:

  1. What are some small things you can do well?
  2. What can we do this week to be better at the small things?  

Faith requires action

“No unbelief or distrust made him waver (doubtingly question) concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong and was empowered by faith as he gave praise and glory to God” – Romans 4:20 (AMP).

It can be said in many different ways, but the mission of the church is to challenge and inspire believers to activate their foundation of biblical faith into bold, outward expressions of their inward transformation.

Faith is often thought of as a thing we have—a belief in something or someone. But in scripture, faith is more than a passive possession—it’s a firm confidence that results in action. In the Bible, actions follow faith. Noah took that first step when he started building an ark to survive the flood–and they’d never even seen rain. Can you imagine how crazy that must have seemed to everyone? David was just a young lad when he faced Goliath. But he took that first step of faith and walked out to face him. Abraham took that first step of faith when God told him to travel to find his inheritance–and he didn’t even know where he was going. God gave orders to Joshua to march around the city of Jericho for seven days. Imagine how ridiculous that must have looked while they marched for seven days before the walls fell. It was a step of faith for the children of Israel to walk into the Red Sea–but God provided dry ground for them to walk on. Shadrack, Meshack, and Abednego had to take a step of faith to walk into that fiery furnace. I can only imagine how overwhelmed a young orphan girl felt when God told her to stand before the king and beg for the lives of her people, but the Jewish people were saved because Esther took those steps of faith. 

Like a muscle, faith grows the more we put it into action. We will all have those moments in our lives when we are asked to step out in faith. And we all have concerns about that first step because getting out of our comfort zone can produce stress and worry.  Our initial inclination is to question whether we are ready to put ourselves out there. On the other hand, you are excited about what God wants to do through you and you can’t wait to see what that is, but…you don’t have it all worked, figured, or factored out. 

That is where faith comes in. God responds to our actions, not our concerns. So step out even if you have that unsettling combination of wanting to step out in faith but not feeling completely prepared. God didn’t ask you to get ready to go; He just asked you to go. You can get ready along the way.

Hebrews 11.6 famously says, ”And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.” At Northstar, we believe that God is who He said He is and as a result, we trust Him to do everything that He has promised. He is worthy of our faith in those “crisis of belief” moments.  

Discussion Questions:

  1. What are the barriers to putting our faith into action?
  2. What can we do this week to overcome those barriers?

God Sized Encounters

But David persisted. “I have been taking care of my father’s sheep and goats,” he said. “When a lion or a bear comes to steal a lamb from the flock, I go after it with a club and rescue the lamb from its mouth. If the animal turns on me, I catch it by the jaw and club it to death. I have done this to both lions and bears, and I’ll do it to this pagan Philistine, too, for he has defied the armies of the living God! The Lord who rescued me from the claws of the lion and the bear will rescue me from this Philistine!…” – 1 Samuel  17: 34-37. 

One of the most iconic stories of the Bible is the battle between David and Goliath. It has been used in everything from Sunday School lessons and sermons, to athletics and business. The story is simple in detail and powerful in its ending. The physical giant Goliath, a champion Philistine soldier, is challenged by a boy who was just delivering lunch to his big brothers. A shepherd boy takes on a seasoned warrior. David’s life was on the line. He knew it. King Saul knew it. Goliath was sure of it.  

At the end of this story, we learn that it is not about the size of the enemy. It is not about the passion of the boy soldier or how well he slung that rock. As David unsheathed Goliath’s sword to relieve the giant of his head, it was a complete interruption of what should have normally happened. David should not have been on the field as Israel’s champion. The giant should not have been killed by a rock launched by a kid. God intervened and saved David’s life and sustained the covenant with His people. God delivered miraculously once again. David got to participate where God was already working and working in miraculous ways. 

Most Christians know the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Thrown into a fiery furnace they walked out without their heads being singed and their cloaks were not harmed and no smell of fire ca me upon them. Which is pretty miraculous considering how you smell if you have even been close to a campfire. Yet, they didn’t even smell like smoke.

They had faith and God delivers them. God had no obligation to honor the stand that they were taking, but they believed. If God doesn’t show up, they’re dead. Encounters with God will always be God-sized. I think as a church and as individuals, we should have dreams so big for our life that if God doesn’t show up it fails. Christians will have those line in the sand moments: this is the kind of encounters that God is looking to give to His people, but only when we are willing to trust Him and put our faith into action. 

What you do reveals what you believe about God, regardless of what you say. When God reveals what He is purposing to do, you face a crisis—a decision time. God and the world can tell from your response what you really believe about God. Your trust in God will determine what you do and how you live.

Discussion Questions:

  1. Have you ever sensed that God wanted you to do something big and you faced a crisis of belief? Yes or no? 
  2. What can we do to recognize God-sized opportunities?

Faith In Time Of Crisis

“If all the time that I have spent praying for faith was put together it would be months. I thought that someday faith was going to come down and strike me like lightning. But faith did not come. One day I read in the tenth chapter of Romans, ’So then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.’ I had closed my Bible and prayed for faith. I now opened my Bible and began to read God’s Word and faith has been growing ever since.” – D. L. Moody.  

How important is faith? 

Most believers would quickly answer that faith is very important. Faith is a necessary ingredient in the Christian life. Faith is trust. Faith is belief. Faith is confidence. Faith is surrender. Faith is certainty and assurance. Hebrews 11:1(TPT) says, “Now faith brings our hopes into reality and becomes the foundation needed to acquire the things we long for. It is all the evidence required to prove what is still unseen.”

When God speaks to us, but it seems illogical or impossible to us, we need to choose faith. We see this in the story of Joseph, David, and many others. Like us, they experienced a season in life that their direction seemed to be going in the wrong direction, but their faith remained in this time of testing. And over time their tested faith turned into trusted faith.

When God calls a person to join Him in a God-sized task, faith is always required. Obedience indicates faith in God. Our major problem, however, is our self-centeredness. We think we have to accomplish the assignment on our own power and with our current resources. We think, “I can’t do that. That is not possible.” We forget that when God speaks He always reveals what He is going to do—not what He wants us to do for Him. We join Him so He can do His work through us. 

We don’t have to be able to accomplish the task within our limited ability or resources. Jesus indicated that what is impossible with man is possible with God. Mark 10:27 tells us that ”…Humanly speaking, it is impossible. But not with God. Everything is possible with God.” The Scriptures bear witness that this is true. When you encounter God, it may bring a crisis of belief, a crisis that requires faith.  

Choose faith when God speaks to you. Choose faith when you experience a crisis of belief. Choose faith when you face an uncertain future. Choose faith because God will do what He said He would do.

Discussion Questions:

  1. What matters most? The size of our faith, or what God is doing?  When it comes to following God in faith, what is the most important thing for us to know?

Crisis Of Belief

“When God invites you to join Him in His work, He has a God-sized assignment for you. You will realize that you cannot do it on your own.  If God doesn’t help you, you will fail. This is the crisis point where many decide not to follow what they sense God is leading them to do.  Then they wonder why they do not experience God’s presence and activity the way other Christians do.” – Dr. Henry Blackaby,  Experiencing God. 

God speaks to people today. First, God speaks to us through His Word (2 Timothy 3:16–17). Isaiah 55:11 tells us, “It is the same with my word. I send it out, and it always produces fruit. It will accomplish all I want it to, and it will prosper everywhere I send it.” God can also “speak” to us through events—i.e., He can guide us through arranging our circumstances. God allows events to occur in our lives to direct us, change us, and help us to grow spiritually. God also speaks through prayer. So yes, God does speak to us. But when He does, what do we do next? 

In Experiencing God, author Henry Blackaby refers to this moment as a “crisis of belief.” For Blackaby, a faith “crisis” is not necessarily a traumatic event or a life/death emergency but is rather part of the ongoing process of us continually giving ourselves over to God’s plan for our lives by trusting Him for not only the proper provisions for doing His will but also believing that He can and will do through us what seems, at first glance, humanly impossible.

When God speaks, we will face a crisis of belief. Do we trust God enough to follow Him to where he’s leading us when we have an uphill climb? This could happen every time we hear God speak. No matter if you are taking your first steps or you’re taken thousands of steps, every step of faith still is going to take faith. It’s still going to have a little bit of a risk factor involved in it that we are going to wrestle with and ultimately make a decision. The decision is am I willing to let it go in order to take hold of this next thing that I believe you’re leading me to?  I’m going to have to decide what I believe about God.  

 The life of Gideon illustrates what we are talking about. Gideon was a frail, weak, and relatively unimpressive person in the book of Judges whom God would use to deliver the entire nation out of the oppression of the Midianites. What is encouraging about Gideon’s story is the way in which God continuously accommodated Himself to Gideon’s fears and insecurities by patiently and graciously stretching Gideon’s faltering faith. By the end of the story, Gideon goes from being a self-conscious and unassertive individual to the head of Israel’s army. There are some rich lessons we can learn from Gideon when we face a crisis of belief.

There will be proverbial forks along the road of life, forks that continuously challenge and encourage us to trust in God and not ourselves. We can’t limit ourselves to only attempting things that can be accomplished by relying on our own ingenuity and resources because we have a crisis of belief. The people around us may be impressed but will take little interest. But they will take notice when we live lives that can only be explained by the fact that God is who He says He is. 

Discussion Questions:

  1. Do you agree with the “crisis of belief” principle? (Decision point requiring faith when God invites us to join Him).  Why or why not?
  2. What can you do this week to more effectively deal with the “crisis of belief” moments? 

God Speaks Through Prayer

“Our prayers may be awkward. Our attempts may be feeble. But since the power of prayer is in the one who hears it and not in the one who says it, our prayers do make a difference.” – Max Lucado

Have you ever wondered if God still speaks to us today? Or have you wondered if what you’re hearing is really God speaking to you, or just your own thoughts? If you’ve wrestled with these questions, you’re not alone. Hearing God can be one of the most elusive parts of our walk of faith, but it doesn’t have to be that way.  John 10:16 (TPT) says, “…And I, their shepherd, must lead them too, and they will follow me and listen to my voice. And I will join them all into one flock with one shepherd.” 

Jesus longs to have an intimate, joy-filled relationship with each of us. It is difficult to set aside hours each day dedicated to studying scripture and praying. The good news is that He is always there, in your commute, in your workplace, in your family time, in your home, and even on your vacation. Jesus Himself said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5 ESV)  He not only wants you to share your heart with Him but He also wants to share His heart with you. Prayer is an important part of hearing the voice of God. 

Most of us picture prayer sort of like a monologue: We talk to God, sharing our heartfelt thanks and offering up our petitions and requests. But prayer shouldn’t be a one-sided conversation.  Do you also listen to His voice?  He may answer yes, no, or not yet.  Sometimes He whispers. But we won’t hear Him if we’re constantly talking. Prayer is really more like a dialogue, where we speak with God and the Lord speaks to us.

Listening in prayer centers around a clear request for God’s guidance. Then we need to hit the pause button. We wait on God in a time of silence, giving the Lord opportunity to speak to us. We focus our time of prayer on intentional, purposeful listening and let God do the talking. This is really important because as followers of Jesus, we are constantly being bombarded with the noise of the world all around us. There are lots of voices telling us very different messages, and too often we find ourselves challenged and confused.   

We need to think like David: “Let me hear of your unfailing love each morning, for I am trusting you. Show me where to walk, for I give myself to you.” (Psalm 143:8) Read your Bible and pray to hear His voice. A.W. Tozer reminds us, “with the idea that it is not only a book which was once spoken, but a book which is now speaking.” While it would be awesome to have God’s audible voice whispering in our ears each day, Paul reminds us “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.” (Philippians 4:6) God is listening when we pray, but are we listening to God?  

Discussion Questions:

  1. How does one go about listening for God’s voice when we pray? 
  2. What can we do this week to become more attuned to hearing God’s voice?  

God Speaks Through The Circumstances

“ From one man he created all the nations throughout the whole earth. He decided beforehand when they should rise and fall, and he determined their boundaries.“His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him—though he is not far from any one of us….We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps.” – Acts 17:26-27, Proverbs 16:9. 

Every Christ-follower wants to hear from God. We want to know if this is God and is this what He’s telling me to do? Sometimes when God speaks to us, we clearly recognize that He has spoken. Other times, however, we wonder if God spoke or if the messages we heard were just thoughts in our imagination.

Acts 17:26-27 assures us that God orchestrates His plans through the events, the decisions of life, and all the people and places we encounter. Proverbs 16:9 reminds us that the Lord determines our steps.  And Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV) indicates that God has a definite plan to prosper us and give us hope. When we look at our lives over time, we will be able to see what God has been doing for us and how God can use our circumstances to speak to us. Going through certain circumstances in our life doesn’t always mean God caused it, but it does mean He can speak to us through it. 

Remember the story of Joseph. His brothers threw him in a pit, plotted his death then sold him into slavery. Yet, through all this, Joseph stayed faithful to God and eventually through a series of circumstances became the second in command in Egypt. When his brothers came for grain this is what he said, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people.” (Genesis 50:20) Genesis 39:2 says, “The Lord was with Joseph…” God has a way of working things out for His glory. Even when things are not going as planned in life and all seems to be going wrong, we can trust that God will use those circumstances to make us better. When life deals us circumstances that we don’t understand we can choose to allow God to speak to us through our circumstances and become better or we can become bitter.

God can cause certain circumstances to take place in our life to communicate with us. We can’t choose what happens to us but we can choose what happens in us. We need time to pray over our circumstances to ask God what lesson He is teaching us. 

Experience is not always the best teacher. Experiencing something doesn’t mean you learned from it. If that was true, we would not have to experience the same thing again and again because we didn’t learn our lesson the first time. We can learn a great deal from our circumstances when we hear what God may be trying to tell us through those circumstances. When the circumstances of life become challenging don’t be afraid to ask God what is he trying to tell you through what is going on in your life. Our mission is to learn how to hear His voice.

Discussion Questions:

  1. How does God speak through His church? 

God Speaks Through His Church

“At that same time Jesus was filled with the joy of the Holy Spirit, and he said, “O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, thank you for hiding these things from those who think themselves wise and clever, and for revealing them to the childlike. Yes, Father, it pleased you to do it this way..”  –  Luke 10:21. 

The assumption in this passage is that God reveals things to some people and hides things from other people. That assumption makes you wonder “Who does God speak to?” and “Why?” This week we have been trying to answer those questions. There are several main ways God speaks to us: There is the Holy Spirit, scripture, prayer, circumstances, and the church.  

One of the ways we hear God speak most clearly is through the church. God places us in a church as a part of the body where Christ is the head, and we are the parts. The parts are interdependent, and God speaks through the parts to benefit the whole.  Ephesians 3:10 says, “God’s purpose in all this was to use the church to display his wisdom in its rich variety to all the unseen rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was his eternal plan, which he carried out through Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Every one of us has arrived at church with a heavy heart at one time or another. It could be a relationship that soured. Or a loss of a loved one. Or a job difficulty. Feelings of sadness and grief overwhelm you but you walk into church and your outlook begins to change. The worship songs soothe your soul. People in your small group tell you they are praying for you. Some recite scripture and acknowledge what is happening in your life. God uses the body of Christ to speak words of support and comfort over you.  You suddenly realize that God is in the midst of this group of people.  

And then you listen to the message and the words are just what you need to hear that day. God always speaks through the church.  Sometimes it’s a message from the pastor or a kind gesture of a friend, but it all points you to God’s voice.  As much as the church is maligned and judged today for its failures or misstep, it is also a beautiful place. God created the church to be the redemptive tool of the world, with Christ as the Head and the body, with all its different parts working together to bring redemption to the world.

Henry Blackaby, in Experiencing God, says this about the church:

“A church is a body. It is the body of Christ! Jesus Christ is present as head of a local church and every member is placed in the body as it pleases God. The Holy Spirit manifests Himself to every person for the common good. The whole body is fitted together by the Father. Members are enabled and equipped by the Holy Spirit to function where the Father has placed them in the body. The body then functions to build itself up into the Head and every member comes to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.  God made us mutually interdependent. We need each other.  What one lacks the other will supply.”

Discussion Questions:

  1. How does God speak through His church?