June 12, 2007 - Let’s Keep the Focus

Have you noticed how many people around you need your help? Well, they need God’s help, but God put you in their lives to demonstrate His love and His concern for them through you. I realize that cannot happen outside of the move of Holy Spirit in your heart, but you do see the people around you who are in need of your help don’t you? I’m not talking about your family, immediate or otherwise. Too many people have bought into the idea that they need to focus on their family. So they allow their energies, their emotions, well just about everything they are and have, to focus on their family members and miss those around them.

Bonnie and I have a friend named Lori who lives in Everett. She is a prophetess, don’t let the word scare you. Her pastors are a husband and wife team who minister together. The wife is named Linda. Linda has come down with an illness that has been threatening her life for the past few weeks, literally at times the Doctors felt she might not make it through the night (reminds me of Psa 91:6). About 3 months ago Linda’s mother died, about 6 weeks later her sister died. Lori has 2 children of her own, is deeply involved in the administration of establishing a school district for the school her daughter’s are in by helping draw up the school district so that other schools of like teaching can work together – I believe a noble cause. Between her job and this large task of helping bring together several different schools to come together under one leadership team, she still sees how much Linda needs prayer and support. So this too, has become a large portion of her time.

It would be easier to focus on her family. But that isn’t what God wants, never has been, can’t find it in scripture, no matter how wonderful it sounds to us, focusing solely on our family is not scriptural. There are many people we know who, like Lori, are noticing how many people around them need their help - people outside their family. So they minister to those God brings along, giving words of encouragement, taking them meals, taking them out for coffee or tea, a Jamba Juice – to help the person with words of wisdom, love and concern. My point in bringing Lori’s story up is quite simple – everybody is busy. Yet even those who are busy must make time for those who are in need outside their immediate family. Family is important, don’t get me wrong – but anyone the Lord brings your way who is in need is important. We should be training our family members to depend more on God, to figure out how to handle their daily “crisis” without pulling us away from the people around us in need of our help.

You say, “Like who and how do I know they are in need if they don’t say anything?” Well that’s where your responsibility to listen to the language of Holy Spirit comes in to play. As you learn His language in life, those around you in need will suddenly show themselves. This past weekend, sitting with 2 other men in a raft on the Deschutes River in Oregon, Holy Spirit began to speak to me that we weren’t just in the raft for fun or to help with the river training of a trainee guide, but He wanted to speak into the life of someone on the raft. So I turned to one of the men and told him that he was going to speak into someone’s life while we were on the river that morning. Within a few minutes Holy Spirit made it obvious who, what the need was, and the conversation that began with a couple of well placed Holy Spirit questions ended up with deliverance prayer and exchanging of phone numbers. You see, God wanted to heal this young man’s heart so he would be able to effectively minister this summer with Jr. High and High School students who shared the issue of his heart. We were dangerously close to missing that opportunity. Why? Because we were caught up in everything else going on around us: listening to the commands of the guide, trying to stay in the raft when the rapids came, joking and enjoying each other, answering questions the guides were asking as practice for when youth would be in the raft instead of men. No matter where you are life is often busy, don’t let life become so busy that you fail to notice how many people around you need your help – and pray that I don’t either would you? Thanks, now go out there and live today with your spiritual eyes and ears open to Holy Spirit because He has called you to assist, encourage and point people in need to Him, because Jesus is the answer they really are looking for – Amen? Yeah, Amen!

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