Wisdom, Courage, Kindness

I have a word I want to bring to you today out of the Bible. I thought I’d share something that happened over the last couple of years and what it means. Two years ago I would have thought it had application to only Jan and me, but the Lord has shown me that it goes far and wide and is a principal idea for our movement.

Three Prayers

When I was 16 and first became a Christian, I was invited on a mission trip to minister to drug addicts and prostitutes in Brazil. I’d been a Christian for ten minutes. And I said, “Sure, I’ll go.”

The man who led me to Christ became a wonderful spiritual mentor to me. His name was Earl Tygert. He was an incredible man. He did his undergraduate work at Penn State University and his graduate work at Princeton Seminary. He ministered all over southeast Asia. He was a giant of the faith.

Every time I was with Earl that first summer of 1974, and he prayed, he would always say something like this: “Make my life a demonstration that you hear and answer prayer.”

And he would pray that with his wife — [bctt tweet=”Make our lives, our marriage, a demonstration that you actually hear and answer prayer.” quote=”“Make our lives, our marriage, a demonstration that you actually hear and answer prayer.””]

I loved the way he prayed. I was a new Christian and was awkward about prayer. So I asked, “Can I have that prayer?” I thought I could make that my life’s prayer too. I didn’t feel like I needed to reinvent anything. That sounded like a good one. So in 1974, I adopted it. I was going to pray that the rest of my life.

I also started praying it with Jan when we got married, and we prayed that prayer every day until 1987.

I know that sounds exaggerated, but it’s a true statement. It was on our tongue every day. “God, use our lives in a way that shows that you actually hear and answer prayer.” We lived in a way where we would get in some pretty desperate situations. And the people around us knew, and we knew, that the only way out was going to be God answering our prayers! I’ve gotten us into more trouble through the years just to give God the opportunity to get us out.

We’ve taken some really crazy steps. We’ve moved to countries with two suitcases and two little children and a hundred bucks in our pocket. We were going there to live, and we didn’t speak the language. There were some crazy things happening during these four decades.

But what that has demonstrated to me is that God actually does hear his children’s prayers. And he does answer them. It’s not hypothetical or theoretical.

In 1987, the Lord gave me a second prayer. I remember the day. I was studying, and the Lord said, “Phil, it’s graduation day. You get your second prayer.” Some of you have been praying beautiful prayers your whole life, but I’m sort of slow. It took me 13 years to get to my second prayer.

We lived in Santiago, Chile at the time and were planting a church there. And the Lord said, “This is your prayer: “Anoint me to the measure you can trust me with, and put your finger on anything that impedes that trust.”

In other words, I was thinking, “God, I want to be used by you, but I don’t want to be used by you outside the formation of my character if that’s going to blow this thing up.”

After 13 years in ministry, 13 years of being a follower of Jesus, 13 years of missional work and a high level of involvement in church, I had seen firsthand what happens when leaders blow up. There is so much collateral damage, so much disillusionment, so much damaged trust that is sometimes irreparable short of divine intervention.

So I just prayed, “God I do not want this to happen to my life. I don’t care if this is the ceiling. I don’t want you to do more in me than you have actually developed me to handle. I don’t want that. But at the same time, don’t leave me here. If there’s something in my life, put your finger on it. If it impedes a further step with you, scream at me. Or tell Jan; she’ll tell me!”

I was so careful to keep friends who could ask me any question on any subject at any time. And now, being a leader of leaders and pastor of pastors, I ask other pastors all the time: “Hey, do you have people in your life that can ask you any question at any time on any subject?” If I get the deer-in-the-headlights look, I know something’s wrong. That’s dangerous.

So this prayer came about in 1987 because I didn’t want to see any more damage done to the body of Christ from personal burnouts and flip-outs and crashes.

Then, on September 12, 2012, the Lord gave me my third prayer. That was the night I was told that we had been asked to become the national directors of the Vineyard.

We had just had a week of board meetings, and the decision had been made. Jan and I were laying in bed in Houston and giggling like a couple of teenagers — not from excitement, but from bewilderment. I looked at Jan, and said, “Really, Jan? This is what it’s come to? The Vineyard is this desperate?” We were a couple of young people from a mill town in Maine. And we just busted out laughing.

I apologized to her. I said, “Jan, I’m sorry. I’ve done it again. We’re in over our heads. We don’t know what we’re doing, and I don’t know how to do this job.” She looked at me and said, “Oh, I know.” So assuring. So affirming.

Sometime overnight or in the morning when I was journaling, I felt the Lord say, “Phil, I have something that I want you to ask me for for the rest of your life. Ask me for wisdom. Ask me for courage. And ask me for kindness. Interact with me on these three things every day of your life. When somebody asks you what to pray for, tell them you need wisdom, courage and kindness.”

Wisdom

Wisdom. My first thought was, “Isn’t that just something that comes with age?” You know as well as I do now that the answer is … not necessarily. As God began to talk to me about it, he clearly said, “You don’t know where you’re going. You don’t know what you’re about to get into. You don’t know the lefts and the rights, the ups, the downs. So, Phil, you’re going to need wisdom.”

I had spent many years talking about intimacy and the care of the soul and building of the interior life with my spiritual mentor. That question, “How is your soul?” has long been a part of my language. And God said, “You’re going to need every ounce of that, because you’re going to have to depend on me for wisdom.”

I also know that James says, “If you lack wisdom, ask God for wisdom!”

A passage in Joshua sprang into my mind: chapter 3. The Israelites are about to go into the promised land, and verses 1 through 5 say this:

God told them, “You haven’t been where you are going.”

And look at verse 5: “Then Joshua said to the people, “Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders amongst you.’”

It’s an amazing thing here: You can see that when the Israelites broke camp, they went to the edge of the Jordan, which was overflowing its banks. It was flood season. And God could have enabled them to just break camp, go to the bank and cross the Jordan in his power. But they didn’t. Instead, Joshua brought them to the edge and made them camp there for three solid days.

Why? I believe they had to be convinced there was no way across.

Sometimes, I believe the Lord brings us to places and lets us dwell there until we’re convinced there is no way we can fix the problem.

Some of you are in a situation, even this morning, that you know darn well there is no way across. Maybe you are praying, and the Lord is saying this: “Just sit there. I want you to be convinced that you can’t cross this.” So you do. Maybe it takes you three days, or three weeks, or three months or three years … or three decades … until you finally become convinced, and you call out to God.

And he says, “Okay, you’re convinced? Well, watch this.” And then, BOOM! You’ll never forget it.

Wisdom is needed because of the way life compounds itself. Proverbs always talks about wisdom crying out daily. Why daily? Because situations change.

I’m not talking about the accumulation of cognitive skill. I’m not talking about who lasts longer. There are people who live on the earth for 70, 80 or more years, and they’re not wise. There are people that are 25 years old, and they walk on the earth, and they are wise. Wisdom is really not attached to age, although it can work in that direction if we’re being fair and being honest about it. But I know people that are 75 years old and still doing foolish things, still walking in foolish ways.

Wisdom is something that is born in you. It’s divine. It’s not the accumulation of who reads the most books or who has studied the most ideologies or who’s got the most degrees after their name. [bctt tweet=”Wisdom comes from listening and responding to that which cries out.” quote=”Wisdom comes from listening and responding to that which cries out.”]

You know what I love about wisdom? Wisdom has a voice. Wisdom is communicative. Wisdom makes herself known to the recipient. Proverbs 8:1 says, “Does not wisdom call out? Does not understanding raise her voice?” I love that. Wisdom doesn’t have a mute button. And for he or she who wants wisdom, wisdom is available.

Proverbs 2 says very clearly, “My son, if you accept my words and store up my words within you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding, and if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, if you look for it as for silver and search for it as hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.”

There’s something there about going after this. This isn’t, “You put a nickel in, you get wisdom out.” You go after this thing. You pursue it.

Solomon asked for wisdom, understanding, discernment. People say they don’t know how to find wisdom, don’t know where to find it. Well, cry out for it! Ask for it! Dwell around wisdom. You want to be wise? Hang out with wise people.

I had a teacher early on in my biblical training who, during class one day, said, “Let me just tell you something.” He opened his Bible and thumbed through Proverbs. Then he said, “There are 31 proverbs. For the rest of your life, whatever day of the month it is, why don’t you read that proverb?”

And I thought, “Well, that’s an intelligent thing to do.” So 34 years ago or so, I started reading the proverb of the day with all the other reading that I do. I don’t study it; I don’t over-read it; I don’t have anything else open; I’m not doing exegesis. I’m just reading it. But I can clearly see that wisdom is crying out.

You get in situations where you want to rise up, man up and tell someone what’s what, but then the proverb comes floating to your mind, “Greater is he that controls his spirit than he who takes the city.”

Or take raising children. I’ve raised two children. Now they’re adults, and they’re married, and I have six grandchildren. Have you ever raised children? You’re going to need a hurricane of wisdom! And then you’ll need more wisdom on how to parent your grown children.

You cannot parachute into wisdom! You cannot say, “Someday I’ll be a wise person. I’ll buy a new wisdom software program. I’ll go to a seminar. I’ll pay top dollar, and I’ll bring a notebook and take notes, and I’ll be a wise person.” Wisdom cries out daily. And our response is: Left foot. Right foot. Left foot. Right foot. Get the picture? Wisdom cries out, and we must say, “I hear you, wisdom!” And then walk toward it.

We in the Vineyard don’t know exactly where we are going, and we don’t want to believe we do, either. We do know we want to be obedient to God and be used by God. We want to enjoy and join God in his mission to the world. And we want to sow across the world people who can be engineers and doctors and technicians, and people who can go into the lab and come out with a cure for cancer and AIDS.

But also, I’m quite sure that what God would really want to do with you as a person, as a family, as a church family, is simply to guide you step by step.

Even if you’ve been around 30 or 40 years and think you know where you’re going because you know where you’ve been, you still have to take a humble position: “God, you have to tell me the future.” Or you’ll just shoot off left and right based on what you already think you know. That’s not a good posture.

Courage

The second thing God said I was going to need to ask for is courage. I said, “God, give me courage. Okay … now can you tell me why I need courage?” This got hard. This part of the assignment wasn’t very fun.

I wrote something down that I downloaded that night, and I’m going to read it. I asked why I needed courage, and I got this:

To which I replied, “Really? Do you have any, like, encouraging words?” I heard, “This isn’t about making you feel good. This is about preparing you for your assignment, and if you don’t ask me for courage, you will flee.”

And I said, “Okay, God. Give me courage.” He said I should ask for a lot of courage. Which is what he told Joshua. In the book of Joshua, chapter one, there’s this conversation: