S03E10 - With Jonathan Dunning Deverloping your ministry not discovering it

4:27PM Apr 17, 2023

Speakers:

Ian Banner

Voiceover

Jonathan Dunning

Keywords:

god

pause

restless

church

podcast

life

ministry

christian

talk

sermon

augustine

christine caine

jonathan

develop

prophetic word

pastor

phrase

call

anoints

pray

Well, good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. It's another podcast from those strange, strange, strange people at the School of safe and humble.

Hi, and welcome to this podcast brought to you by the School of safe and humble profits. Our crew consists of really experienced leaders from different nations who work and operate with churches locally and internationally. Our aim is to bring you the most up to date thinking and teaching on how to use prophetic gifting safely and with humility. Let's join our host Ian for another episode of the current series.

Well, thank you very much, Mr. Man. Nice to be back with you. I'm still sitting in fairly sunny Sheffield with my good friend Jonathan. Hello again, you've

got more faith than me about the sun.

We recently completed a podcast about humility and an arrogance and confidence, which is really useful. And as we finished it, Jonathan was praying and I found her a bit of a ministry word hit me and I just asked Jonathan, if he could pause getting on with other things he got to do today and just spend a few minutes talking this through with me. What it is, Jonathan is I think, what sometimes happens with with young people with talent gifting rather than is that they Christine Caine is an Australian preacher. She has a fantastic sermon on this, if you've never heard it, and if you if people listen to this, and they want to get hold of a great sermon on the kind of thing I'm about to talk to Christine Caine sermon on developing, not revealing is really, really good. And partly, I'm just going to summarize that, that talk for a big gap. And it's this and she, she she gives you to worship conferences where she goes, the problem we have in our society is we think all we really need to have happened to us, for us to have ministry is for us to be discovered. For us to be somebody seeing you girls, all that young, 22 year old is brilliant, aren't they? Let's give them this platform. And I she has a whole talk about you know, these days, people take pictures on a vote on a camera, and there it is instantly put it up and you have filters on it. And she talks about her. She's not allowed to put any picture of her daughter on because it was you know, this Sharon ting problem where. But she talks about in the old days, instamatic cameras, you'd take a picture, and it would going to be developed over time. Yeah. So she she compares and contrasts people who want to be discovered, versus God's plan for people, which is develop them over time development. And I think there's a key in that towards this. How do you keep yourself humble?

Yeah. Well, everything's so instant and so quick these days, transport life, everything's visual, everything's instant, you know, text, mobile phones, you name it. And, and I was wondering, it's quite interesting. I sometimes smile about this and say, you know, it says in Scripture that Jesus came at just the right time. I mean, obviously, it's talking about the time in history that's that was appropriate with, actually, with the Romans and everything. It was just a good time where there was a there was a stability in society to allow the gospel to really, really, really move quickly. But if Jesus was doing ministry today, I can't assume he's walking around. He'll have mobile phones, you know, it would just have so many interruptions to to his life or potential interruptions. That will be so, so difficult. I think, I think we are, we are forced to want everything to grow quickly, everything to appear quickly. You know, whether it's crops we do what we can to speed up the process, everything in life is speeded up. And actually, there's an awful lot of things that take time to develop. Well, I've got

two thoughts on this, that I think are relevant. One is there's not much in the Christian life, there is instant access, instant forgiveness from God, and instant forgiveness from us to other people. Whereas to do that instantly, yeah. The truth is, if you've got a call of your life of any kind of ministry, the gap between when you hear the call, and when God anoints you to follow it to do it, that gap is your training period. Yeah. And,

and it's restless, isn't it? So So for me, I, I became a Christian in my late teens. And within two or three weeks, I was on a river side in North Yorkshire where I got baptized at this church on a farm, which was a place where there's loads of miracles and God doing amazing things. And I spoke to an American who was living in America at the time and said, I believe that God is calling me to be a pastor and I, you and I are going to work together in the future. That was only a few Few weeks I was a baby Christian. The day I got baptized and said that to him, he moved from America came to England, we lived in a house together. And I was restless to get on with ministry. I was working in a secular job. I was restless to to some stats that I was serving in the church, I was cleaning toilets. I was, I was doing ministry, I remember the first time we went out as a team. And I would be doing quite a lot of the music. And it was decided that another guy from the youth group would do the sermon. And I must say, I was so disappointed, really wanted to preach for the first time. Yeah. And I hadn't been asked to do it. And some of this is really good lessons in life. But it took time I, I went to Bible college, I served as a youth leader, I served as a worship leader. I served 10 years as an administrator in a church where to all intents and purposes I was, I was really number two to the pastor. But I was never given a title as assistant pastor or anything like that I was preaching and teaching the rest of it. But it was 30. Plus, it was it was 1015 years later, after that word I'd received, that I became a pastor in this church in Sheffield, where I've been for 30 years.

This is a story a friend of mine tells us which is really good about this idea that you get this call, and then you've got to be molded by God into the shape. Yeah. And you know, you go through all the molding and everything's got to happen. And you know, first of all, it isn't instant. Now, there's a process that you've talked about your process I could talk about my God's timing requires God's training. Yeah. And the second thing is this, this friend of mine said to me once he said, here's the problem that happens in which is even when you had the training, and you're the pot that God wants, he can put you on a shelf, and leave you there for 15 years, if you want to do this is then the thing. He said, that really struck me. He said, Here's what a lot of these pots do. They go, Well, this was a call from God over my life, and they jump off the shelf. And they try and start them industry and it falls apart. And then you know, pastors, get the pieces and glue it all together. And you know, restore them and put them back on the shelf ready for God's plan. And they just do it again. They go. They almost they must go. You know? How, how dare these, these leaders just keep me back. They're holding me back.

I've got this prophetic word, and they jump off again. And I think the key to all of this is you, you said at the start that you've just got to trust God's timing and grace. And you had the phrase, frustration was restless, restlessness, restlessness, this phrase. Yeah. I mean, where I rest is in God. So Friday night, last week, I was at another church, and I really felt had a word for them. It wasn't a church that we used to actually sort of prophetic ministry. But I've been asked to speak there. And I just felt for some people in the church. God was saying, I know that your life feels like it's on pause. But I'm in charge. I'm in control. And it might be some people listening here feel that their life is on pause. But if you look through the Bible, Moses life was certainly on pause. You could even argue David's life is on pause. There's a gap between him being anointed as king and becoming a case. You know that there are real there are real pauses throughout Scripture, even the the Easter story has a pause in it, between Jesus's death on a cross, and his glorious resurrection on Easter Sunday. And we don't know what to do with pauses. We're restless in that we struggle with the idea of waiting. And yet sometimes there is that verse that says, you know, wait, wait for the Lord Habakkuk. You know, if even if this, this thing, Terry's, you know, wait for it, it will surely come if God has spoken over our lives, almost anticipate a pause. It's part of the process of developing us for what God has in store for us.

Brilliant, brilliant, I think I'm going to pray about that pause in a moment. And if I'm honest, because I felt God say this to me, just as we were recording, I wanted to quickly pause, get this, this particular message out, because I think some people need to hear it immediately. And you want to tell one story. And then I'm going to pray about that pause thing that you said, which is I was doing a conference once in Africa with a bunch of people and I prepared a sermon. And I knew I was going to do some at some point during the day. So you know, I didn't quite know when no problem with that. So I sort of turned up at the start and joined in and someone else started I don't mean yet and I've probably got a couple of hours. And then you know, the next person's trouble, but it wasn't me again. I probably got another couple of hours. And in the end, the whole day passed that I didn't preach at all. And there was a moment when I thought I stayed up of an idea like sure this sermon was right for this, that God, what's going on? I'm really actually, what am I doing? You know, all of that was happening in me. And I had the grace the following morning, a friend came up to me in New went, how are you doing? He said, Actually, we were testing you. We wanted to know if you had the grace to live with that. And you did. And that's good. Brilliant. And I thought, Oh, they weren't testing me. God was testing here. Excellent. And of course, as my wife famously said, Once, when God test you, he's revealing to you what will happen. He already knows you. He already knows you're doing it. So I think there's a there's a thing here. I think what we've discovered it's not going to be long podcast is this. There's almost a prophetic word to pass out here to do with God's pauses are not things that mean you can be restless. Yeah. And that phrase you used about restlessness versus Resting in God is brilliant. Brilliant. Okay, so I'm going to pray on this now unless Jonathan, you want to add anything before we get there. Now I'm very happy with Father God, this. This is a short. This is even an experiment for us. I feel you said something to me. And we wanted to put a podcast out super quick on this. I believe people need to hear this this specific, almost sharp message right now. And so we're putting this message out. God's pauses after you expect the pauses is the phrase Jonathan used. We just want to leave that with you expect these pauses. Don't be restless, but resting God. Father, we just pray for everyone hearing this podcast again. Thank you for all the people that listen across the world to this we are blessed to be given this platform by you, Lord, help us all. To take the pauses that you put in our life in our journeys, and understand that they are for our good. Everything works with God for those who love God. Amen. Amen.

This just something came to mind as you were praying in just the sorry, but just it's a famous statement of a Christian called Agustin. So very famous Christian from the early church. And he one of his wonderful phrases was this. You have made us for yourself or Lord, and our heart is restless. until it rests in you.

Wonderful, wonderful. That's Augustine sagas quickly tell us Augustine, who is a Augustine of

Hippo, he was a he was basically an early church. chosen leader. Yeah, but a rock quite a lot of very cold confessions. But But But what a wonderful thought, to say that you know, we find our rest as a Christian in in, in Jesus, we used to sing a song many years ago. Let me have my way among you do not strive, do not strive. It's an English chorus. But But God is wanting to have his way among us. He doesn't want us to strive to be restless. There is there is a time of waiting, and a time of longing, and a time of anticipation or creation. You know, the Scripture says he's groaning and is restless for this revelation of God. But it is part of the process of life. Trust in God, you find your rest in him.

Yeah, I mean, no, no flower grows faster because it struggle. Absolutely. Can you just read that out again, as we finish? After after Jonathan? Yeah, just go straight to the exit bit but in case

it's St. Augustine states you have made us for yourself, oh, Lord, and our heart is restless. until it rests in you. Yeah. African Christian. He was North Africa. All right. Yeah.

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