This is a discipline that has been instilled in me as a leader and became a critical life line for me for sanity, solace, and even creativity. Choosing to take time as a leader that is a follower of Christ, and make that time for sitting with God in prayer, offers profound dividends. I have found for some of my other friends in leadership that it can be hard to do this. I believe many of us already talk to God all day long whispering heart praises, prayers erupting over circumstances and sights, and prayers intentionally spoken over needs and His response to those needs. Pausing to refocus on Him through a time that is specific for prayer takes on a whole new color of talking to Him as you walk along. It holds an even heavier weight when people follow you as you do that walking.
Prayer time became essential for me as a servant-leader to be able to come back to the heart of the work I was tasked by God to do in that season. It was easy to get distracted and lose my center or true-north. That time also became a place for Christ to call me back to the central truth that He is able to do immeasurably more than all I could ask or imagine if I would simply come to Him. I had a lot I was asking and imagining, so specific prayer time became my place with Jesus to pour out and be poured into. That time deeply affected my leadership and my connection to Him in those places of leading and serving. That is still true for me today.
Back to this one particular Friday...I sat down to offer Him everything. I had so much I wanted to say and that I needed. My people needed a lot too. We had growth needs, financial needs, staffing needs, and so on. Big stuff for any team and organization. But my spirit felt like if I rushed head long into the "ask," there was something I was going to miss about being with God. I felt compelled to truly thank Him first. God calls us in Philippians 4:6 to come to Him in prayer with all of our requests and personal needs, but to do it with thanksgiving. I believe that giving thanks resets our minds to what He has already accomplished and drives our hearts to a different kind of prayer and asking when we see how much He has already done. That truth was calling out to me, so I began to pray and thank Him. He had given us such a feast of abundance (Ps. 36:8). It was like a table full of plates. My reality looked like a Thanksgiving feast!
When I have prayer time I sometimes draw out my prayers. I am not artist, so it's really more words and simple shapes. I drew a table with plates and filled them in with words that expressed all that He had given me and our staff. There were things about people, provisions, relationships, new paths and new unity and so on. All things that had profoundly affected me, the team, and how we served together. All of it came from His hand. It was so rich to stop and thank Him! I could see God and praise Him! He had called me to gratitude first and I found Him to be so near and generous. He is good!
Honestly, I almost felt guilty that I had anything to bring Him and ask Him for. He had been so amazing and had done what only He could do. Yet I knew that not only had I been invited come to Him in prayer, but I had been invited to ask. Philippians 4:6 is housed in a section of scripture that are on the rigors of ministry. People, needs, conflict, hearts that are torn, minds that need reframing, a hunger for the nearness of God: those are all ministry or leadership needs. Many of those things were making my own list. I came to God, trusting that He was near and that He was eager and willing to answers my prayer just like I had seen Him do in the past. I looked out over the landscape of my needs and it felt like the story with Christ and the 5000 (Jn. 6:1-15). He was there teaching and the multitude became very needy; needy in a practical way. They were hungry. How often I felt like the disciples wondering how in the world I was going to meet the vast and varied needs of so many people. Sometimes the needs of leadership or ministry can feel like 5000 people getting hungry all at once. I ran to Jesus with all of my practical solutions, most of which, like the disciples, met no real needs at all and only disconnected people from Jesus. (Remember the disciples suggested sending them away?) In the same stroke of my prayerful pen, I told Jesus that I also felt like the boy that Andrew brought to Jesus. (Andrew was always so faithful to bring people to Jesus and then see what Jesus could do.) The boy stood and offered to Jesus what he had with everyone wondering how far it would go in the neediness of the people being served by Christ's ministry.
I had so little to offer for such needs and demands. None of it could compare to that feast of abundance that came from Christ's hands that we had celebrated earlier. Knowing that all that I have comes from His hands, I simply asked if I could tell Jesus about my five loaves and two fish. I expressed to Him all that I was bringing that might help the needs I was prayerfully identifying with Him. I had spiritual loaves, practical loaves, emotional loaves, experience loaves, and gifted fish. It wasn't in pride that I offered these things. I was terrified of that as I laid them in front of Jesus. I simply was there and knew I was partcipating in the neediness of my people and had something to offer, however little it was.
What God opened my eyes to was His hands. His hands had prepared and provided the feast of abundance. His hands had given me my daily bread as an individual and as a leader. His hands had given me my loaves and fish to offer back to Him. In the miracle of feeding the 5000 the multiplying of the loaves and fish happened in His hands. It was in the giving of thanks and then the breaking of what was offered that all the needs were met. Loaves and fish have to be broken to be shared and multiplied. The multiplication and the meeting of the needs happened in His hands.
Jesus offers the feast. He can easily feed the 5000. I must, like Christ, give thanks in the breaking. He would break every single thing I would offer in order to multiply it. I looked at my loaves and fish, the ones He had given me from His hand, and I could see the breaking. As I led and served there were places of spiritual breaking, situations where my practical suggestions were being broken. Emotionally I had seen fractures, and my experience was cracking in the midst of exponential development work. Breaking is not always bad or negative, but breaking is not necessarily easy. I was having to be broken, humbled, sacrificial, open-minded beyond my preferences and views, generous, silent, vocal, part of a team, accepting, patient in waiting, and a servant in change and newness. That's just a taste of the breaking. But God could use it to bring about something filling and glorious if I would put it all in His hands.
I sat prayerfully before the Lord and saw Him point out all the areas of breaking. He showed me that it was His hands that were doing the breaking. Not mine or anyone else's. There was no "fault" to identify in the breaking, only humble glorying that a God so good could cause such a breaking that it would multiply instead of disintegrate. How gentle and miraculous! I was drawn to thank Him for breaking what He had given me, trusting that He would meet whatever needs as He saw best to His glory through what little I offered.
Being broken by His hands. Thanks in the breaking.
Fortunately, thanks in the breaking doesn't come without a promise. He promises that He will give us everything that we need at all times (2 Cor 9:8) and that He has given us everything we need to live godly, fruitful lives (2 Pet. 1:3-9). Both of those promises are sealed in the grace that comes through Christ, the One Who was broken for me. All, everything, abundant, Jesus. So, instead of relying on my fish and loaves, even though they are part of my daily provision from Him, I must rely on the God of the feast, the God of abundance, the God of the humble and needy, the God of those being served and those serving in ministry, the God Who allowed His own Son to be broken to multiply grace, life, and sonship. I must trust Him to multiply in His hands what He has given me, miraculously, to His glory. They become in His hands a part of His miracle of provision, focusing everyone in need on Christ and His ability to meet our needs. My fish and loaves disappear in the miraculous abundance of His hands. God will gloriously match His promises of all, everything, and abundant. With some leftover!
Being broken in His hands was not an easy lesson in leadership. It is easy to recognize in the midst of need how little we can offer. It's harder to realize He wants to break us to bring His glory. His lesson for me that day in prayer was how much His hands have already done and can do when I place myself and what He has given me in them, then give thanks, and prepare to be broken.
As a leader, what are you trying to offer that you recognize is simply not enough to meet the need? Do you see areas where you are "breaking"? Would you be willing to explore with Him the needs and your loaves and fish? Would you be willing to give thanks in the breaking knowing that God has promised to give all, everything, abundance? Would you look for how He plans to use you to bring Him glory? Will you trust Him to provide not just enough to fill, but enough with leftovers?
Thanks in the breaking.
Just another seed of my faith,
Ginny
