When God Seems Silent

Have you ever prayed and prayed for something and nothing seems to happen.  I mean, no direction, no sign, no voice, no nothing.  What do you do when it seems like God is silent?  Let me give you 5ome things I do to help me through these times:

1. I sit and listen.  I know, I just said that I am not hearing anything, but sometimes we don’t hear because we don’t slow down enough to listen.  Sometimes I sit and stare out a window or I go outside and sit in a chair and listen for God to enter my thoughts and I listen.  Take a notepad, sometimes things kind of “flood” in.

2. I fast.  A lot of people do this at different times, but I try to fast with no purpose other than God’s purpose.  Fasting for answers or direction is important but I think sometimes we need to fast for the direction God has in mind.

3. I relax.  Sometimes we get so intense and nervous about finding God’s voice that we find no rest.  God wants us to rest and perhaps He isn’t talking because he wants you to slow down.

4. I read.  I need to remind myself of the promises and hopes of God.  It’s easy to forget.

5. I podcast.  I often listen to pastors preach and teach.  I like people like Erwin McManus at Mosaic; Pastor Gary Hamrick from Calvary Chapel; Pastor Mark Driscoll at Mars Hill; and My buddy Todd Hudson at Southeast Christian in Parker Colorado.  Sometimes what they say applies directly to me and my situation.

Take care,

Rod

Church Planting

I found out this week in Boise that I am not planting a church…rather I am planting churches. The whole design of church planting is to have planting churches in your DNA. It makes sense. Why go through the work and effort for just one more church to be located somewhere, doing the same thing all the other churches are doing? Part of the DNA of Journey Community is going to be that we are going to plant churches as well.

I heard this week that:

If your vision is for a year—plant wheat

If your vision is for ten years—plant trees

If your vision is for a lifetime—plant people

If your vision is for eternity—plant churches

Journey is a partner in ministry with Hope Community in Reno. In the future we will begin the process of planting another new church somewhere in the U.S. or even internationally. It will be the second for Hope (Journey being their first) and it will be the first of many for Journey.

Pray for this opportunity…it’s going to be an incredible experience.

Take care,

Rod

P.S. By the way, I am planning on “Blogging” a little more frequently at the request of some friends. Keep an eye out.

Annoying

Do you have certain things that annoy you?  For me things like people leaving their shopping carts in the parking lot instead of walking them 10 feet over to the corral. I mean, come on people its ten feet! Another one is that guy Billy Mays…you know the guy who does all those infomercials about “KABOOM” and cleaning stuff.  Man is his voice loud and grating or what.  I also get annoyed with cell phone companies.  Their rules and regs are absolutely brutal.  They have contract obligations for everything.  It’s the modern day Gestapo.   A slow foursome on the golf course is another thing that annoys me.  In fact I am getting a little fired up just thinking about it.  (If you’re a golfer, you understand).

Being annoyed! Can that really be a sin? Or is it merely a slight personality flaw?   Being annoyed usually stems from being offended when people say or do things that do not suit us.  I am not sure it’s a sin, but I know it can lead to sin.  Anger is usually a result from allowing things that annoy us to take root and grow.  

Truthfully most things that annoy me are pretty small and petty.  When I learn to let them go and try to focus on more positive things my life seems to go pretty well.  So why do I hang on to them?  Because it doesn’t suit me, it doesn’t make me happy, it rubs me the wrong way.  I hang on to them because at those times I am self-centered.  Selfish might be more accurate.  

Now I am getting annoyed at me for getting so easily annoyed!  I’ll try to get better.

Take care,

Rod

Relationships, not religions

I was reading an article yesterday in the USA Today online version.  Its headline was, Most Religious Groups in USA Have Lost Ground, Survey Finds.

Listen to how it starts out:

“When it comes to religion, the USA is now land of the freelancers. 

The percentage of people who call themselves in some way Christian has dropped more than 11% in a generation. The faithful have scattered out of their traditional bases: The Bible Belt is less Baptist. The Rust Belt is less Catholic. And everywhere, more people are exploring spiritual frontiers — or falling off the faith map completely.”

Now I don’t know about the accuracy of the data or if the interpretation is correct, but it is sad to say the least.  In this time of crisis in our country, I would hope that people would run to God and not away.  I wonder what the church should gather out of this survey.  It says that there is a higher percentage of people claiming no religious affiliation (almost doubled since 1990) at all.  

I am not sure what all this means but I am sure of what the true need is.  More people need to hear and understand what the desire of God is for their lives.  As most of my readers already know, God is not about religion and affiliation either.  He is all about relationship and fulfillment.  

Journey Community is on a mission of helping people find a relationship with God through His Son Jesus.  We want people to find an eternal purpose and day-to-day purpose for their lives.  We do not desire a religious experience…we want a real one.  Something to grab hold of everyday of our lives so when the times get tough, like they are right now, we can stand under the downpour…like the house built on the rock.

Take care,

Rod

Our first love

Gay and I went to a church yesterday where the message was about the church at Ephesus.  The message was from Revelation 2 where God speaks to the church and tells them that they were good at discerning false prophets but they forgot their first love.

I thought how easy it could be for a church to lose sight of their first love.  My first love is Jesus.  Unbelievably, it is not supposed to be the Bible, worship, or even evangelism.  My first love is supposed to be that I know Jesus in a real and intimate way.  Sometimes I can get so busy with doing the things that a church pastor is supposed to be doing that I can allow those things to be a substitute for my first love of knowing Jesus.  

Now, don’t get me wrong, all those things are great and important.  However, I want to make sure that Journey Community and Rod Idle do not forget our first love: Knowing Jesus Intimately.  I hope and pray that when people come to Journey or when they encounter Journey in town, they see that we are people who desire to know Jesus intimately, because to get to know Jesus you have to spend time with Him.   The more time you spend with Him the more you look, act, and speak like Him.  You simply reflect Him and that is when all those other good things I spoke of in the second paragraph, happen.

Let’s get to know Him.  Take care.

Rod

The First Blog

I have never blogged before…so this is my inaugural blog.  I, Rod Idle, do solemnly swear to keep each and every blog short, sweet, and to the point.  

I just got done reading a book by Robert Lewis called “The Church of Irresistible Influence”.   In it he talks extensively about building bridges into the community.  How the church has the main responsibility of helping the community SEE the love of God and not just hear about it.  He calls it I².  I love the idea of being an externally focused, missional, meet the needs, “out there” kind of ministry.  I want to be a church of Irresistible Influence from the very start.  I² is going to part of the DNA of Journey Community Church in Fernley from the beginning.   

This is a matter of the heart and prayer first.  I am fasting and praying each week and asking God to increase my burden for the people of Fernley.  I want to see needs and be sensitive to the Holy Spirit in order to meet those needs.   So in order to be effective I need your help as well.  Gay and I are looking for people who are willing to be a part of the Journey Prayer Team (I’ll try to be more creative for a new name real soon).

The commitment is simple: Pray daily for the work of Journey Community Church of Fernley; pray for the specific prayer needs shared each week through the e-mail updates we send out; intercede when needed because spiritual attacks do happen and will happen; and finally be willing to fast periodically with a concentration of prayer for this community.

If that is your desire and you are willing to be a VITAL part of this work, then simply send an e-mail back to Gay at gayidle@att.net and she will get you on the list.  We hope that this list will grow continuously.

Thanks for all your love and support.

Rod