(This is the fourth installment of a series of posts reflecting on Dave Gibbons book The Monkey and the Fish. You can find early posts here, here, here, and here.)
What if the question you are asking is the answer you are looking for? What if following God is a matter of knowing the right questions and not knowing the right answers?
Dave Gibbons suggests that one of the most radical shifts that occurred in his understanding of following Christ and how to be the church came when he stopped searching for answers and found the right questions.
Third Culture living requires questions that lead to fluid answers that are shaped by our individual experiences, local context, and by God’s tendency to use surprising means to accomplish his will. Dave offers three questions that have transformed his ministry and his pursuit of God.
Where is Nazareth?
What is my pain?
What is in my hand?
Where is Nazareth? This is a question about where are the forgotten or marginalized people in your area. God chose Nazareth, of all places, to be the launching place of the Messiah. People couldn’t believe the Messiah could come from Nazareth. Who is forgotten where you are? Who is left out of leadership? Who do you dismiss off hand as having something to add to the direction of the church?
What is my pain? We want to always look at our strengths and celebrate our gifts and talents as the ways in which God will use us. But we are reminded that the gospel of Christ is foolishness to the world and that has chosen the foolishness of this world to humble the proud and the wise. It is quite often our pain that the world will respond to instead of our success. It is our moments of loss and failure that allow the broken of the world to most clearly see the love of God.
What is in my hand? When Moses was convinced of his failure as a leader, that the Israelites would never believe he had talked with God, God told him to use what was already in his hand. God took his simple shepherd staff and turned it into a symbol of God’s power and a tool for Moses’ success as a leader. Maybe everything we need we already have. Maybe it isn’t money, or staff, or a building, or some other desperately desired mark of success that is holding us back. Maybe God is ready to use what you already have to accomplish his plan.
These are three great question. What do you think? Do they provide you with any answers?
January 27, 2010 at 5:35 pm
My first thought is that Moses lost the chance to enter the land cause of what he did with what was in his hand. We need to move with great care, seek to be humble and remain obedient. I began reading a book today called Leading with a Limp. It begins with an honest look at the life of a leader. The author recommends being open to accept the role as the chief sinner of the organization and tells of the importance of being open about our shortcomings.
I will ponder the 3 questions in light of my limp.