DMM: From the Inside Out

CPM/DMM: From the Inside Out

"Growing old, is for sure. Growing up is up to you!", read the local cigarette advertisement in our city. I am not altogether sure how that slogan has any connection with smoking cigarettes, but alas, I shall borrow the saying for the eternal perspective. 

In disheveled disarray bordered by a free-flow of tears before me sat one of our broader networks of national partners. Kati and I were meeting for CPM/DMM coaching of her 6 DBS groups along with encouraging her in member health growth areas. To launch movements spawned by spiritually and emotionally healthy catalysts provides the more holistic package of this effort among the SOLI/Sumbi Muslim UPGs. 

I shared that above advertisement slogan with Kati as related to her recent personal character challenges. She continued to pour out the tension she felt between the areas of desired freedom in the Lord and the pain of the longings unmet throughout her life. Years of suffering in a particular area have lead to a lifetime of start and stop patterns of doubting God's goodness in her life, made manifest in the pursuit of false intimacies. 

Character issues do not necessarily define a person, they simply provide the necessary road map which can lead to much needed healing from the Father's hand.

Francis Frangipane writes:

"I thought having a promise from God was the same thing as receiving a commandment from God. I did not understand what I personally lacked in character or what I needed to attain concerning faithfulness, becoming a bond-servant, and possessing a grateful heart. These things needed to be worked in me before God would truly begin to fulfill His larger promises and opportunities. What I became for God was more important than what I did for Him."

Being a disciple was never intended to be an “either/or” proposition. I have heard laborers be found to lament on seeing this or that season as just their time to “be” in Christ, to the sad exclusion of “doing” the work of His bidding. In the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, we are invited to see God’s beautiful tapestry weave of what it is to listen to His Word, hear His voice, and to love and obey His lead. We are to both “be and do” in Christ, as a daily embrace. That is the beauty of the Shema lifestyle found in Deuteronomy 6:4-9. To hear, love and obey Jesus, is the chewy center of every disciple. There are those who have been “in Christ” for many years who have never grown up into being reproducing disciple-makers. Being in Christ, practicing His presence, while walking out His promised freedom in the power of the Holy Spirit, is the process of living the reality of Christ from the inside out. 

Coaching our partners, be they international or local indigenous, must include this piece of careful loving affection for the sake of His glory being embraced and experienced as part of seeing His glory declared. 

To “be and do”, now, that is the question. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, now, that is the provision of the Father. 

CPM/DMM...From the inside out, for His glory.