A Season of Faith: The courage to lead

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

The courage to lead

As I spend my time preparing to lead my family somewhere I don't even know, I find myself spending a lot more time alone with the Lord in prayer. As I do I am refreshed, renewed with vision, and empowered by courage. As I contemplate about my own journey of leading courageously I have to stop and reflect on other great men of faith who also had to spend time in the presence of God for their courage.

I think about Joshua who was preparing to take over for Moses. Moses did great and mighty things as God's leader over the Israelites and, though Joshua was Moses' young assistant I can imagine how Joshua must have been feeling. Am I good enough? Will these people follow me like they did Moses? Well, God made sure that Joshua knew this was his mission to fulfill and that He would be with Joshua as He was with Moses. "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go" (Joshua 1:9). A couple observations from this passage. One was that God referred to himself as the Lord of Joshua. He said, the Lord, your God is with you. It wasn't the God of Moses that was asking him to lead. It was the God that he knew and loved. The second thing was the first question God asked him, Have I not commanded you? In other words, God is affirming Joshua of his call. It was God who chose him, appointed him for this task, and it is God who will do great things through him. That is a great reminder to me in this time as well. God is directing me, and it is not I who am ultimately responsible to make sure that my family is taken care of, that our needs are met, and that ministry happens. God has commanded us, therefore, He will provide us with opportunities to serve and the resources necessary to do so.

I think About David, who's courage to fight Goliath came from his experience with God. David was a worshipper. He spent time inventing ways to worship God. Look at what he says in 1 Samuel 17: "But David said to Saul, "your servant has been keeping his father's sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me I siezed it by it's hair, struck it and killed it. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear, this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defiled the armies of the living God." (1 Samuel 16:34-36) I love that passage of scripture. David was motivated by courage to defend the name and honor of God. He was ready to protect the flock of his father, and to remove any threat that sought to harm them. His courage came from spending time in God's presence.

I am also reminded of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. He prayed for so long that Jesus' disciples kept falling asleep. He knew the assignment that was ahead for him. He knew that he was about to be betrayed, mistreated, abandoned and ultimately forsaken by God himself. In his humanity he pleaded with His father. "Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, 'My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will" (Matthew 26:39). Jesus prayed to His father for the courage to face what he was about to face.

So as I prepare to take this journey, I too have to spend time everyday in the presence of my Heavenly Father. As often as I need reassurance, He is quick to give it to me. As often as I need to sit with Him and deepen my dependence on Him, He welcomes me and gives me wisdom and insight. And, as I know I have a wife and three children who look to me to lead them, and the pressure I feel to make sure they are taken care of, the more I am dependent upon the Lord, MY God to be my strength. As Joshua was getting ready to lead his people into the Promised land, he told them that they were going somewhere that they had never been before. Then he instructed them to follow the priests who were carrying the arc of the covenant. This was symbollic of God's presence among them. In other words, since you don't know where you are about to go, follow the presence of God. As a Christian every journey or assignment set before us by God must start by spending time in His presence. For spending time with the Lord is where courage is birthed.

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Background: what led up to this adventure?

This has been about three years in the making. Three years ago, while attending a conference in Houston, Jean and I both sensed the Lord was telling us to begin to get ready for something. We didn't know what but we knew we had to start doing things differently. I started restructuring Community of Men and had a renewed passion for empowering leaders to take more of a leadership role in things. We sensed God was telling us to be ready in the fall of 2012.

Later that year, I began to get the nudging by the Holy Spirit to go and pay a visit to a friend in Alabama. I didn't know why and I began to pray for him. The more I prayed, the more I sensed I was to pay him a visit. Finally, in January 2010 I made the twenty five hour drive through all the elements nature can throw at you to see what God was doing. We had no money, but said we couldn't afford to be disobedient. It turns out God used me to confirm some things in him and I was blessed with the money needed to cover the cost of the trip.

Later that year, we took our first Family Ministry Trip. We left home with $500.00 in our pockets as we began our three and half week road trip that took us to Iowa, Nebraska and Colorado. God used every member of our family to serve other believers who needed some encouragement. I had received a vision from God. He showed me a map of the United States and told me that every place I saw a town, he had a remnant of people who loved Him and served Him. That was our mission, to be a support to the remnant of God's people. And it was awesome to see the opportunities that opened up to us and the ways in which God provided for our financila needs the whole way.

The next year, we sensed we were to take another Family Ministry Trip. The Lord had impressed upon my heart to go to Cody, WY, a town I had lived in when I was a boy. I had a vision of a mobile home park and the words "an overlooked people" in my head. So we hit the road, along with another family to see what God would do. He miraculously used us to draw people to Himself. And when we got to Cody we met a man who did ministry in a mobile home park where he told us, he and his wife ministered to the overlooked people in Cody. It was amazing to see how God had made that connection. He and his wife were doing a form of urban ministry but had no skill set or experience to do so. They had been praying for God to send them some help, and then we showed up. We ministered alongside them as well as doing outreaches in the local parks.

Which leads me to the latest thing. God had begun to impress upon my heart back in the spring of 2011 to resign from my current role at Minneapolis Believers In Christ and to begin to prepare for the next season of ministry. After going back and forth about it all summer, I finally decided this was God's will and I did so in August. That same week God spoke to me and said "Pack your family and get ready to move. I will show you where you are going when you are on the way." I consulted the scriptures and found a similar call God had given to Abraham. He packed up his whole family and left on a promise that God had a place reserved for him and that he would make him into a great nation. The Lord showed me that just the same as He led me to do all the things mentioned above and that lookinhg back I could see the evidence of why He did, this time will be just like all those others.

We do not know the full details of what God has prepared for our family. He has showed us glimpses of what we might be doing, but we don't want to get ahead of ourselves and try and figure out God's plans. We are excited to discover them as they unfold.

As I write this I reflect back to the time frame that we had always thought of and the time of fall 2012. That is a time when some obligations that we have to fulfill would be completed and always made the most logical sense for when God would open up the next chapter for our family. But faith defies logic. And often God's purposes for us require us to go by faith and not by sight, because He knows better than we can ever imagine what is in store for us. Please return to this site regularly as we update you on what God is doing, showing, and using us to do in the coming months. And pray for us as we take the biggest adventure we've ever embarked on. God Bless!

Brad Peglow
bpeglow@gmail.com
612-388-5320