SHUT UP AND WALK!

     It's an old indian tale where the mother bear had three little bear cubs that were new born.  Two of the cubs learned fairly quickly to bounce and scammper around.  The last little cub was watching the other two and it's mother and finally asked it's mother,

     "mamma, when i start to walk, should I put my left front foot out first, or should I put my right front foot out first, or should I put both front feet out first, or when I do start to walk should I put my right hind leg up first, or should I put my left hind leg up first, or should I put both my hind legs up, or when i do start to walk, should I try to start with both my left legs at the same time, or should I try with both my right legs at the same time, or......"

     This is when mamma bear interjected, "SHUT UP AND WALK!"


     JAMES 2:17 Says "Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone."

     The church has almost so restricted and confined itself (and canibalized itself) that if you don't have everything studied out, figured out and pretty much gauranteed to succeed...you better not even try.  Why not?  Because if you mess up, there are vultures waiting to attack.  No, they have never done any better.  No, they haven't figured out a way to do it either.  But being as though they haven't accomplished much either, the only way that they can get any higher is to step on someone else.  So they wait for someone to stumble and fall.  Because a person down is easier to get up on. 

     Friend, don't fall for these fear tactics.  Pray through, get a burden and a vision.  Talk to men and women with wisdom.  Then get out there and try your best for God.  What if you fail?Then do the thing that the vultures can't stand.  Get up.  Admit your faults.  Apologize and repent for them.  Then learn from your mistakes and try again.  You will end up far more successful than those who do not.  I do not consider myself an expert at much of anything except failure, but a brother asked me here while back, "Why does so and so call you our expert on outreach?"  I said, "because I have made more mistakes at it than anyone else."  I's the truth.  I know more about certain things because I have learned more about what not to do, thus narrowing down what to do.

     I'm all for education and planning as long as it is educating you to eventually DO something and it is planning on actually DOING SOMETHING.  I have helped over a dozen churches start some very large outreaches. Often times the biggest job that I have when I get there is to convince them to start.   It happended at Bethany Holiness in Sand Spngs, OK, in Jersey, GA, in Toledo, OH, (re-start), in Perryton, TX, and on and on...Sometimes all that education and planning really does is give you the courage to believe that you now can try.  But you can try either way.

     Some of HMA's biggest failures were more successful than many ministries' successes.  Listen, we have reached drug addicts and drug dealers and not been able to keep them in church, and they walk away from God and years later we find out that they never did or sold drugs again because of things they learned at church.  That was the success of our failure.  A ministry that won't even get out there and try to reach them but thinks that their greaterst success is preaching a Sunday morning sermon extravaganza against drugs, feels successful if the sermon goes over with the people, but it didn't do anything at all to clean up the drugs from our streets.  I say again, some of our failures have been more successful than some other minstires' successes.

     These types of practice on the congregation ministries remind me of a man that was once referred to as the greatest surgeon of all.  In his day he was often reffered to as that.  He performed thousands of surgeries that had never been performed before.  He was greatly successful in areas of  human operation that the best of the best before him had little success at.  One problem.  He never performed a surgery on a LIVING person.  He insisted on only performing surgery on corpses.  When asked why one day toward the end of his career, he replied "I was so afraid of losing a patient, I just couldn't bring myself to operate on a living body.  This way I can now say that I have never lost a patient."  To which the man replied, "I can now also say, that you never saved one either."  OUCH!
But true.  Many of our greatest ministers continually perform surgery on the same old dead corpses.  And it may be true that they have never lost one, but could it be said, they have never saved one either?  OH help us dear Jesus, to step out in faith.  Not faith in us and our abilities, but rather faith in your desire to save others, that you will make a way to use us and bless our feeble efforts.  Friend don't be affraid to fail.  Regardless what you have been taught.  Failure is one of the greatest tools of ministry.                 

     You don't understand brother Todd...I'm so weak against the big evil influences of the world!  Listen to me:

     SNOW FLAKES ARE VERY VERY FRAIL, BUT IF ENOUGH OF THEM STICK TOGETHER, THEY CAN STOP TRAFFIC!!!  What does that say about you and I?

So...from the bottom of my heart.  If you know something that can be done to the benefit of the kingdom of heaven and you have looked at it 37 ways to Sunday.  You talked about it, told some about it, asked others about it and talked about it some more...SHUT UP AND WALK!!!