Faith, Wisdom, and Dreaming
A heads up…the post today is just me thinking out loud:
I’m a pragmatic guy. Make it practical and I’ll listen. Add value and I’m in. Help me see how it will actually work and you have my attention. Thoughtfully challenge my thinking and I can’t wait to talk about it, learn something, and figure out how to leverage this new understanding.
Please don’t waste my time with fanciful visions and ideas that aren’t reasonable to implement. You lose credibility fast with me if you didn’t put some effort into prudence…thinking something through yourself before you ask me to embrace it. Not every detail has to be in place (in fact…I don’t really even like details), but it does have to be reasonable. Lots of times, I think people in church use faith as an excuse not to think. It’s not a good excuse.
That’s me. That’s my world. No one who knows me well is surprised by any of that, even though they might be frustrated by it (sometimes with good reason)!
Which creates an interesting place in my world for the Holy Spirit and dreaming about anything significant. I still have a streak in me that is a sucker for imagination…especially wondering what God could do through us when we do our part. Being a pragmatist doesn’t mean we have to think small. In fact, to me the most beautiful things in the world are when we see things coming together that are accomplished with both wisdom and faith as essential ingredients.
A couple things that have me thinking about this.
Take last Sunday night. We had our first meeting for the Highland Campus Leadership Team. It was a surreal experience for me because I know that meeting will be the “genesis” of lives changed in the future. I know that 18 months from now I’ll shake someone’s hand who found faith because of what began Sunday night with 8 of us crammed in my office listening to Jared Mehrle describe the plans coming together.
Take today. 14 people from Suncrest will land in Liberia at about 9am our time. Lots of planning and preparation go into sending a a team like this to the other side of planet earth, where some of life’s basics are in short supply. There have been a couple travel hiccups already, but ultimately I can’t wait to see how God is going to re-shape hearts through this.
Tackling big things for God takes both faith and wisdom. And they aren’t in conflict (or even tension) with each other…they actually reveal the beauty of God when they are in sync with each other. At least that’s how this pragmatic pastor sees it…
.Real.Greg.Lee. 