There are good ideas and there are God ideas - ideas that originate with the Spirit of God. But there is nothing more compelling or inspiring that a God-ordained idea!
Victor Hugo said, "An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come."
I thinkback ten years and the idea of 5 Ps to Community-Taking is a great example of an idea whose time has come. It gave us a sense of direction. It came from the story of the fall of Jericho. It was taken up and adapted by many churches doing community penetration. It was a God idea whose time had come.
Isaiah 43:19 says, "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up, do you not perceive it?"
God is always doing a new thing. But if we're too focused on the past we miss out on the "new thing" God is doing. So yesterday's God ideas may not be good for today. We tend to do ministry out of memory instead of ministry out of imagination. We keep doing what we've always done.
Andy Grove of Intel says, "There is at least one point in the history of any company when you have to change dramatically to rise to the next performance level. Miss that moment and you start to decline." The same holds true for churches. We have diligently hear the call of the Shepherd to graze the next tableland or we just stay at the sma level on barren land that was once of great grazing potential. We need new God ideas!
I'm more and more convinced that God ideas are the thing that makes ministry fun and exciting. It's also the key to exponential impact. I'd rather have one God idea than a thousand good ideas.
I believe everybody has great ideas but most of us never do anything with them. Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari, once said, "Everyone who's ever taken a shower has had an idea. It's the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference."
We've got to be good stewards of God ideas!
There is an old proverb: the shortest pencil is longer than the longest memory. Abraham Lincoln had a creative way of capturing his ideas. He put them in an idea drawer. He said, "Often an idea would occur to me which seemed to have FORCE...I never let one of those ideas escape me, but wrote it on a scrap of paper and put it in that drawer. In that way I saved my best thoughts on the subject, and, you know, such things have come in a kind of intuitive way more clearly than if one were to sit down and deliberately reason them out."
You never know when you're going to get a God idea. Suzanne Langer says, "Most new discoveries are suddenly-seen things that were always there." The illustrative use of two dolls to push a point about relational clashes in the series STAY TILL THE END is an example. It was a "crazy idea" I got driving home from the office one evening. But it gave me an adrenaline rush. I came alive with the idea.
Another time, I got this idea of using a life-size wooden cross at the Free-Me Weekend where people could write down all their sins and using actual nails and hammer, they could nail their sins to the Cross. The effect was phenomenal. People felt such a release of God's forgiveness.
Habakkuk 2:1 says, "Write down the revelation." When God gives you an idea that comes with a force, write it down. Record it on your phone.
For what it's worth, Leonardo Da Vinci, who might be the most multi-talented person who has ever lived, never went anyplace without his notebook. He was constantly recording ideas and observations. Even on his deathbed he took detailed notes about his symptoms. We still have seven thousand pages of Da Vinci's journals. In 1994, Bill Gates purchased 18 pages for $30.8 million!
Your ideas may be worth may than you think :)
A few years ago, Catherine Cox did a study of 300 of history's greatest minds. She found one thing in common: All 300 geniuses recorded their thoughts and feelings, their ideas, insights, and observations, their reflections and questions in a journal of one kind of the other.
Dave Goetz, founder of CustomZines.com, says, "For me, when an idea hits me, it strikes fire, almost like God speaking. I know that sounds heretical, but there it is. The more time that passes after the idea strikes, the less heat it gives off. I forget parts of it, it doesn't seem as great. Ideas have a short half-life."
When God reveals something - anything - you need to write it down. Then you need to pray it back to God It's idea stewardship!
Tomorrow, the staff and I enter into the new season of planning for 2010. It is a long process that begins end of August and ends at the end of November. But it is also a season of God ideas. Hearing God through one another; refinement those ideas so that they become powerful when implemented; watching the impact of God at work through the ideas inspired by the Spirit - all these and more makes serving the Lord such an adrenaline rush!
