Desire

What would it feel like to lay your head on your pillow at night and say, “You know what I did today? I teamed up with God to change the world”?
The desire to be a world-changer is planted in the heart of every human being, and that desire comes directly from the heart of God. We can suffocate that desire in selfishness, silence it with the chatter of competing demands, or bypass it on the fast track to personal achievement. But it’s still there. Whenever we wonder if the daily eight-to-five grind or our round-the-clock parenting tasks are all there is to life, that divine desire nudges us. Whenever we feel restless and unsatisfied, the desire whispers in our soul. Whenever we wonder what a life of real purpose would feel like, the desire calls us to something more.
--Bill Hybels, The Volunteer Revolution

Taks this seriously and listen more carefully to the deeper longings of your heart.

The Mind of God

The story is told of St. Augustine that one day as he was walking along the seashore, his mind deep in thought, his reverie was interrupted by the sight of a little boy running to the water with a seashell in his hand. The little boy filled the shell with seawater, then poured it into a hole he had made in the sand. “What are you doing, my little man?” Augustine is purported to have asked. “Oh,” said the little boy, “I am trying to put the ocean in this hole.”
Augustine immediately “got it.” “That is what I am trying to do; I see it now. Standing on the sands of time, I am trying to get into this little finite mind, things which are infinite.”
--Leonard Sweet, Summoned to Lead

It is possible to get a sense of what God is up to. However, if you think you understand the mind of God, you had to shrink God seriously to get the Lord to fit your thoughts..."Now playing at a mind near you: 'Honey, I Shrunk God!' (sic)"

My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are my ways your ways, says the Lord. Isaiah 55:8

Vision and Passion

Vision is derived from the passion of a leader who has a prophetic fire burning within the soul to accomplish something significant for God. Groups may take this vision, help produce congregational ownership, and delineate its implementation, but, without prophetic fire to begin with, there are no images of preferred futures that produce systemic change. If pastors are not clear about either their role or that of the Church, most congregations will remain dormant, irrelevant to life change, and in decline.
--Paul D. Borden, Direct Hit