I was sitting down at breakfast this morning with one of our staffers, Ray Allen. Ray is a retired pastor who now heads up ministry and staff development at Sweetwater River Church. We were talking about how some problems are spiritual in nature and other problems are practical.
In ministry, we tend to fall back into default mode when it comes to problem solving. Our default setting tends to be either spiritual or practical, depending on our background and what has been modeled for us.
If your default setting is spiritual- you will tend to think that every problem can be solved spiritually. More prayer, more Bible reading and everything will work out fine. If your default setting is practical- you’ll believe that problems can be solved by working harder, using a better plan, doing better marketing, etc.
The reality is- you can’t solve a practical problem spiritually nor can you solve a spiritual problem practically. Wisdom comes in knowing what kind of a problem you have and responding appropriately. Some problems require prayer…believing God to work to save a marriage or provide financially through a recession. Other problems require action…waiting for God to help you prepare a better message or fix up your facilities when you aren’t putting in the time and effort won’t work. God can’t take the blame for what you aren’t doing.
I’ve always believed that God will do for me what I can’t do myself. If I can do, I shouldn’t ask God to do it for me and if God needs to do it, I shouldn’t try to take care of it without him.
Often, after praying and seeking God about a situation, He has given me the wisdom to know what to do. Then it was up to me to follow through in action. The sooner we learn to distinguish between spiritual and practical problems, the sooner we will see the right kind of results happen in ministry.
Filed under: Ministry, Personal Tagged: | Ministry, problem solving
