Whether it’s in a flurry of family joy or a day of quiet, cold calm, my prayer for you on this day is that you would experience deep connection to the faith that calls you to rest, the hope that calls you to aspire, and the love that calls you to serve.

I pray that in believing you find an abiding place for your anxious or distracted thoughts. A place to believe that God is still good, and that the riches of His grace are forever inexhaustible.

I pray that in the midst of your uncertainties and insecurities, your fatigue and your failures, you find your way back to the Still, Small Voice.

I pray that just as the sun rises faithfully on even the cloudiest of days, whether you can see it or not, that even in the gloomiest seasons of your life, that stubborn, delightful hope would pierce the darkness in your world.

I pray that in the coming days new dreams would take shape that call you out to expect more, do more, to advance boldly in new directions that would stretch your (and even my) wildest imagination.

And I pray that through all the joys and sorrows, feats and frustrations, you would be fueled and compelled by the one commodity the world needs more desperately than ever – a sincere heart of love.

Merry Christmas!

The post Faith, Hope, and Love – My 2022 Prayer for You appeared first on LifeVesting.

With the passing of another year of joy mixed with sorrow, clarity colliding with uncertainty, and satisfaction dancing with longing, I pray that you would know in beautiful new ways how grace works.

I pray that you would find delight in being chosen by a Heavenly Father for a plan no less significant than Mary or Joseph, and that you would discover this year what the continuous unfolding of that plan can mean personally.

I pray that you would find the personal care of a God who orders your steps and is far more aware of the details of our lives than you or I could recognize.

I pray that in the trials and struggles that await in the coming year, you will find that Patient Friend who sticks closer than a brother and makes intercession for you at that right hand of the Father ever and always.

I pray that in the waiting seasons, when glory seems lost and grace wears thin, that you would experience those little “kisses from Heaven” that remind you never to forget His love.

I pray that in the mountaintop experiences of joy, when momentum is easy and blessings abound, that a heart of wisdom lifts your gaze draws you to gratitude.

I pray that in the challenge seasons, where it’s jump-or-get-left-behind, you find the courage and faith to seize the opportunity, and when you lack confidence yourself, you can borrow my faith instead.

Finally, I pray that in those times you are going about the day-in and day-out of duty and responsibility, that somewhere in the boredom or grind your night would be flooded with joy, love and wonder.

Merry Christmas!

The post The Unfolding of Grace – My 2021 Prayer for You appeared first on LifeVesting.

Some people are supposed to live forever. I know better in my head. But my head isn’t the space where I’m roaming at the moment.

Since 1972, when I first heard him preach, I have looked to Fred Wolfe as my pastor. Over time he became much more than that. He was mentor, friend, and profound encourager. A discipler in his own way. A mentor and coach of preachers, including the dozens of men whom God called into vocational ministry out of his.

I was one of those.

You could always tell when I had spent any time with him – I came away talking just like him. Other people, me included, try to shed the accents of their childhood. Not Brother Fred. He was as true to his South Carolina roots last month as he was when I first heard him. In my eighth-grade reckoning, to me he sounded like Jerry Clower.

I was mesmerized.

But it wasn’t his unique accent. Something else kept me captivated by this preacher – the first I had ever heard who kept my attention throughout the “trial sermon” he preached in January 1972. I would later learn that he was a man of prayer, who lived and taught something called the Spirit-filled life. That was his not-so-secret.

One of my favorite pictures of him, that captures the essence of who he was, shows him kneeling beside the pulpit behind which he would soon preach. That was Brother Fred. Preacher second. Prayer warrior first.

Encourager in Chief

For me, he became much more.  Brother Fred was one of the most extraordinary encouragers I have ever known. In fact, when he left Cottage Hill Baptist Church he started a ministry called “Barnabas – a Ministry of Encouragement.” When he started a church a few years later, he named it Luke 4:18 Fellowship – a reference to Jesus being a healer of the brokenhearted.

At a time when my own ministry crashed and I was steeped in shame and failure, he offered something I didn’t know was available – grace for preachers. “Andy,” he said, “God knew all this would happen before He ever saved you. And He saved you anyway. And God knew all this would happen before He called you to preach. And He called you anyway.”

His words were like oil to my wounded soul.

Later, when I had lost everything that meant anything to me, he found me. He actually got the number to a pay phone near where I was and called it, seeking me out.

“Andrew,” he said.  I knew immediately who it was.  “This is Brother Fred.”

“Hey!” I replied, already tearing up. Other than my own family, there is to this day no one I want more to be proud of me.

This was no day for pride.

“Well, I’ve heard,” he began, “you’ve lost everything.”

“Yes sir.”

“Lost your job.”

“Yes sir.”

“Lost your ministry.”

“Yes sir.”

“Lost your wife.”

“Yes sir.”

“Lost your kids.”

“Yes sir.”

(Note:  He was calling to encourage.)

“But I want to remind you there are two things you still have.”

“Yes sir?”

“You still have Jesus, and you still have a choice.”

He continued:  “You can go out from there and live any way you want, and nobody will ever say another word.  But I know you’re going to do the right thing.”

There was more – much more – to be said.  But those words – You still have Jesus and you still have a choice – formed the foundation for one of the most remarkable healing and restoration experiences I have ever seen… and I saw it up close and personal… I lived it.

Then there was that time just over a decade ago, when I sat in his office, burned out and fried, facing another season in which my life, work, and calling would be redefined. “Maybe I should just hang it up,” I said, or something like that.

His reply still rings in my heart today:

Funny (one of the funniest humans I have known in the right setting), thoughtful, and always a leader, there is only one time I can remember him being a little out of sorts. When the “Wolfepack” – his preacher boys and former associates – threw him a 70th birthday party and retreat, after a couple of days of that, he was done. He didn’t like all that attention being on him.

There are many others who were much more a part of his life than I was. But for 49 years there has never been a time when my father-in-ministry wasn’t a part of mine. Until yesterday.  COVID may have  claimed his body, but his heart belonged totally and completely to Jesus. And now he’s home.

But this man of prayer, this Son of Encouragement, has a reward that continues to multiply, long after his days on earth are done. His legacy lives on in the thousands of lives he has touched as a husband, father, grandfather, preacher, pastor, and friend of pastors everywhere.  When my wife counsels wounded marriages and hurting children, a part of her extraordinary work is built on foundations he laid in her life. The coaching, teaching, or preaching I do is the same. Brother Fred showed us what it looks like to invest your life in someone else and trust God for the results. Now we get to pay that forward.

When I had the privilege of ghostwriting his second book, It’s Not an Easy Road, but Jesus!, Brother Fred included a brief acknowledgement in the front, thanking me and referring to me as one of the “Timothys” in his ministry. Now I think I may know a little of how Timothy felt when Paul wrote these words:

I solemnly exhort you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; correct, rebuke, and exhort, with great patience and instruction…. Use self-restraint in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; in the future there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing

(2 Timothy 4:1-8).

Farewell, my father, friend, and faith-keeper. For 63 years you have loved His appearing. Now you have seen it in person. In the meantime, I still have more chapters to write. But because of you, I won’t give up.

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As the curtain descends on another year and we pause to reflect on the true meaning of Christmas, my prayer is that we can discover in new and meaningful ways how the coming of Jesus all those years ago can speak to you and I still today…

I pray the experience of Anna, the prayer warrior widow in the Temple, will remind you that regardless of your outward circumstances, you are never, ever alone.

I pray that the calculations and seeking of those astrologers from the East will alert you to miracles and possibilities that may be available to you beyond what you ever may think or expect.

I pray that the shock of the shepherds, turned to great joy and a message worth sharing, will give you something (and Someone!) to talk about as well.

I pray that in your reminders of an ever-present government, with its taxes, censuses, and loved or hated officials, you can find even there the faithfulness of a God who arranges all things according His plan, even in this crazy year.

I pray that like Simeon, you can see your days as a purposeful, living waiting on another more glorious, promised Day to come.

I pray that like Joseph, as the Lord speaks wisdom, wonder, and warning to you, you dare not make choices without His direction.

I pray that like Mary, you present yourself as God’s servant, willing to be used by Him, even at the expense of a broken heart, in order to satisfy the world’s longing for hope.

I pray that like the angel armies, you demonstrate the spiritual power of declaring the glory of God for all people.

And I pray that like the Baby lying in that manger, crystal-clear about His purpose to save us all from sin and sorrow, you, too, would discover and live the purpose for which you were created.

Merry Christmas!

The post My 2020 Christmas Prayer for You appeared first on LifeVesting.

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
Will abide in the shadow of the Almighty (Psalm 91:1)

Imagine a storm. Ruthless and destructive, it has compromised the safety of your own home.

You need a shelter. You need a refuge from the storm.

You need a safe place. One that is reliable and steadying until the storm passes by.

Good news – there’s a shelter close by. Closer, in fact, than you think.

To enter the shelter, you’ll either have break in or knock on the door and ask for entrance.

Either way, you’ll have to be intentional about it.

Assuming you don’t intend to be a squatter, you have to pay the price of admission to enter the shelter. Most often that just means being willing to humble yourself, knock on the door, and ask for help.

You would have to call on the shelter-keeper.

That could be even harder on your pride than pulling out a credit card and acting all self-sufficient.

You would also have to MAKE that shelter your refuge. In other words, you would have to believe that you would be safe IN the refuge and make it your dwelling place.

If this were a business transaction, like a hotel, you would simply pay your money and take your chance. But in sheltering relationships, something more is required. You have to set your love, to some degree, on the shelter keeper. That could be as simple as saying “thank you.” Or it could mean kindling or rekindling a relationship or deep friendship.

If you’ve done that in advance, BEFORE the storm arrived, something wonderful has happened. You’re now living continually in the shadow of the shelter. When you need it, the shelter-keeper will make your refuge a no-brainer.

All this and more are what it means to dwell in the shelter of the Most High. It means you keep the relationship fresh and the love flowing before the storm arrives. Then when the storm is raging, you’re resting peacefully in His shadow.

Have you set your love on the Ultimate Shelter-Keeper today?

The post The Shelter appeared first on LifeVesting.

(Originally published in February 2013, with the last stanza added in light of yesterday’s tragic news.)

The post Farewell TaB appeared first on LifeVesting.

It’s a common question – What is God’s will for my life?

Here’s a starting point to explore that… What is God’s will for EVERY life? Re-reading what Jesus had to say in Matthew 6 about prayer, here’s what I see…

He wants to reward me. For my giving, my praying, and my fasting. But He will only reward me when I do what I do for the right reason.

He wants my quiet time. My solo time. That time when no one is looking. He wants me to talk to Him then. When no one else would notice but Him.

He wants to meet my needs. He already knows what they are, and He wants me to trust those needs to Him. Explicitly. But simply. Not a lot of nonstop babbling. Not an open show of “prayer noise.”

He wants to be hallowed. He wants me to set Him apart from all other loves – to revere His name above all other names.

He wants to advance His Kingdom and to use me to do so.

He wants to accomplish His will, and to use me to do that, too.

He wants to provide for me, even in the simplest of details. But he wants to do so in a way that I acknowledge comes from Him. He wants me to ask for the big things and little things.

He wants to forgive my sins and for me to forgive the sins of people who have wronged me.

He wants to empower me to avoid temptations in the first place and to prevail in spiritual warfare.

He wants to openly reward me for what He sees me doing in secret.

Pursue that – what HE wants – and your unique way will appear.

The post What in God’s Name Does He Want? appeared first on LifeVesting.

What Every Leader Needs to Succeed

It’s one thing to lead people or a team. It’s another thing to lead leaders. What do you do if you’re in charge of an organization and have developing leaders who answer to you? It’s the difference between leading people directly and leading through others. And often those leaders have great potential and are in the process of development.

One thing that is helpful to me is to see examples of this in scripture. Jesus, for example, did more than lead disciples. He developed them to lead others as He prepared them to advance His kingdom.

Another great example is the way the Lord prepared Joshua to advance into the Promised Land. After 40-plus years of floundering and wandering, it was time for a new day. But before the Lord prepared the nation, He prepared the leader!

In the Lord’s instructions to Joshua, He addressed issues every leader needs to succeed. Some of those issues are personal; others are organizational. Take a look:

Now it came about after the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, that the Lord spoke to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ servant, saying, “Moses My servant is dead; now therefore arise, cross this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving to them, to the sons of Israel. Every place on which the sole of your foot treads, I have given it to you, just as I spoke to Moses. From the wilderness and this Lebanon, even as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and as far as the Great Sea toward the setting of the sun will be your territory. No man will be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I have been with Moses, I will be with you; I will not fail you or forsake you. Be strong and courageous, for you shall give this people possession of the land which I swore to their fathers to give them. Only be strong and very courageous; be careful to do according to all the law which Moses My servant commanded you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, so that you may have success wherever you go. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

Joshua 1:1-9

What may we infer that Joshua needed to lead effectively, based on what the Lord told him here?

1. Clarity of next steps.

Long-term vision is one thing. Next-step clarity is another. It takes both. In Joshua’s case, he was replacing the only leader the Israelites had ever known. For 40 years he was Moses’s assistant and a battle-tested warrior. He spoke and heard in the language of “marching orders,” and that’s exactly where the Lord met him. Every leader needs a clear sense of “what’s the next right thing to do?” The leader of leaders should help provide that clarity until they can create their own.

2. Clarity of Vision

The Lord gave Joshua a clear sense of identity for His people. He promised that every place the sole of his foot walks is a place He had given them. This speaks first of their identity, then of their mission. These people were landowners, and they were about to possess their possessions. Joshua’s role was to lead them into their property inspection. All leaders lead out of a sense of identity of who they are and whom they are leading. The leader of leaders helps provide that.

3. Clarity of Mission

The Lord also gave Joshua clear, unmistakable boundaries. He defined the extent of their inheritance. He made it clear what Joshua was to do first, then how the leader would know the mission was accomplished.

Mission grows out of identity; it’s a task or series of tasks to get done. Leadership takes place in the context of a mission – what are we to DO? The leader of leaders helps keep the mission front-and-center so others can do the same.

4. Confidence in the desired outcome.

“No man will be able to stand before you all the days of your life,” He told Joshua. This was a march toward possession, not protracted fighting. The Lord knew the success of the people would be a reflection of the confidence in their leader. And no leader can survive in the role long without that confidence.

This is NOT “self-confidence” the way we typically understand it. It’s confidence in you direction, vision, steps, and source of strength. The leader of leaders knows what it takes to launch and sustain massive action. He or she then consistently speaks confidence into the lives of leaders.

5. Confidence in God’s (and the leader’s) presence.

The Lord promised Joshua that just as He had been with Moses, He would also be with him. The Lord wasn’t sending Joshua and the Israelites to Canaan, He was leading them. Their success did not depend on anything other than the faithful presence of God with His people.

The operative word here is presence. Every leader needs the awareness that he/she is never alone. The leader of leaders serves as an ever-present reminder of that. They do that in person, of course. But they also point leaders toward God’s faithful presence as well.

6. Courage

The Lord saw fit to tell Joshua three times not to be afraid. This was obviously not a slam-dunk in the making! This mission required strength and courage.

It takes courage to lead people toward a new identity.

It takes courage to remain true to your mission when distractions abound.

It takes courage when the size of the resistance threatens to seize your heart with fear.

Every leader rises or falls based on the courage to take the next right step. The leader of leaders summons courage in the hearts of leaders who are tempted to tremble.

7. Strength

In this passage courage and strength go hand in hand. You don’t have one without the other. In the three-fold call to strength, the Lord reveals three sources in the spiritual realm. First, Joshua’s strength was found in the certainty of God’s promise. When you know who you are and what you possess as a team or people, you find strength. The clearer you are about the faithfulness of God’s promises, the stronger you will be.

Second, his strength was found in the book of the Law that God had given Moses. To the degree he kept the faith, he was promised success. Power comes from keeping the principles of success provides. More on that in the next point.

Third, his strength was found in the certainty of God’s presence. The biggest strength Joshua needed was the power to resist his own fear or dismay. God’s presence was the solution to that. No leader is stronger than his or her sources of support and encouragement.

The leader of leaders calls out and helps develop strength in those they lead.

8. Success Principles

The Lord referred Joshua to a guidebook and encouraged him to obey it, speak it, and meditate on it. The “map” was to be his constant guide to prosperity and success. God had already given the keys. To the degree they remained faithful to the covenant, they would flourish.

Often later the people would not see the connection between God’s law and their success. But the Lord still made it clear.

Every successful leader follows a code. The leader of leaders helps provide that code when needed. Then he or she relentlessly points other leaders back to it.

ACTION, VISION, MISSION, CONFIDENCE-BUILDING, PRESENCE, MOTIVATION, STRENGTH and PREPARATION. These are the gifts that leaders can give their people today. They are the gifts that God gave Joshua as he led the conquest of Canaan. And they are the tools every leader of leaders uses to raise up a new generation of leadership.

The post What it Takes to Lead a Leader appeared first on LifeVesting.

It’s easy to believe Jesus can do it Himself.

Not quite as easy, but certainly doable, to believe Jesus can do something for somebody else.

It’s another matter to believe Jesus can do something for me.

And quite another matter still to believe He can do something for me when my world’s being rocked.

Yet the call remains: “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.”

When the wind blows, the waves pound, and He calls me out to walk on the water with Him, even then the issue isn’t the storm.

The issue is, will I trust Him?

The post The Issue in the Storm appeared first on LifeVesting.

Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the second time, while he was still confined in the court of the guard, saying, “Thus says the Lord who made the earth, the Lord who formed it to establish it, the Lord is His name, ‘Call to Me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know.’ (Jeremiah 33:1-3).

God doesn’t stop being God just because I stop feeling strong.

He doesn’t stop being creative when I run out of ideas.

God doesn’t stop being mighty just because I have exhausted the strength to press forward.

He doesn’t stop chain-breaking just because I’m wrapped up in mine. 

There in the abyss of my sorrow, weakness, bondage and blindness, He issues the Ultimate Dare: 

“Call on Me!

I will show you great and mighty things, even in your weakness.

Things you have yet to discover.”

The only thing missing is my courage to see past the pain and ask boldly.

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