Encourage Your Contacts

Recently when I was soaking I sensed that God wants me to take my contact list and hold it before Him when I soak, to see who He might direct me to encourage.

How often?  Maybe once every of weeks.  It takes time to follow through.

For me, this will include a lot of ministers because they are the people I work with as I travel and preach.  In effect, this will be a form of networking.  If your life is more in the arts than in ministry, your contact list will include producers, editors, other artists, marketers, etc.

But this kind of networking is different in several ways.  It is birthed in prayer, not in our own efforts to think strategically. The goal is not to advance professionally but to show the love of God to the people we contact.  We are daring to believe that God will send us to people at times that are more meaningful to them than to us.

I’m not going to say God can’t use these moments to advance our careers.  He can, but that isn’t the main thing we reach for when we read over our contact list as we soak in His presence. We’re saying, “Lord, send me to anyone You want me to encourage, not for my reasons but for yours.”

 

I’ve barely begun.  This week has been unusually hectic and as it began I wondered if I’d find time to encourage five people.  I did; the Holy Spirit overflowed out of me several times and somehow I ministered to six – I wrote about it at http://miraclelifestyle.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/use-the-cracks-in-the-sidewalk/.  But here are two more people, both from my contacts list, that God has led me to connect with.

The first is a pastor in North Carolina.  We talked about things going on in his church and in my ministry, and he asked when I was going to come minister at the church.  I said I’d get back to him and I will, but I knew in my heart that I hadn’t called to try to line up a meeting.

The other was a young minister in our church and I took him to lunch.  I asked him what was going on in his life and told a little of what was going on in mine, and we talked a lot about what God is doing in the church. He shared a very wise perspective – that the body tends to hunger for what it needs most – and I’m still pondering what he had to say.

There was one strategic issue I discussed with him, but I could have done this by phone:  I had asked him to serve on my board and was waiting for his answer. But that isn’t why I took him to lunch.  I needed to take time to thank him for the many times he has made CDs or copies for JoAnn and me, often on short notice, and always cheerfully and efficiently.  And I genuinely wanted to have a friendly visit.

 

God has designed us to need teamwork.  We can’t do it all, and we can’t do it alone.  We need one another.

If you look over your contacts list once or twice a month while you’re soaking, God will lead you to the people you need and to the people who need you.  But many people never get a call unless it’s from someone who wants something.  You can be the exception.

 

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com