Day 3 - Pliableness

**fmckinnon** · 02-11-2009, 10:27 AM

Today's discussion is on "Pliableness".
How do you feel when plans change at last minute - are you pliable? Flexible?

Share your thoughts on today's lesson.

Did you do the "shouting of praise" exercise? How did you feel?

**Wannabe a Worshiper** · 02-11-2009, 05:01 PM

When you serve a small church, you learn to be pliable. The pianist gets sick on the way to church; I learn about it 20 minutes before the service; my back-up pianist only plays by ear, and doesn't know some of the songs I have chosen-- yes, I learn very quickly. (At least we still have those relics from the 20th century, hymnals, and we still know how to use them.)

Seriously, I long to see some spontaniety in our worship; and I feel like our church could handle it if it came. Actually, there have been a few of those moments, when God moved someone to do something unplanned, and yes, God was in it.

Lord God, as your people at my church learn more of what biblical worship is, as they see it being modeled, grant us the priviledge of seeing you move in unexpected ways. We see your hand at work among us in so many ways- let our worship of you be genuine, and from the heart. May we as your people learn to listen for your voice. But first, Lord, let these things become real in me. Amen

**Rogenia** · 02-11-2009, 10:40 PM

Wannabe A Worshiper, thank you for that prayer. I believe and feel that you were praying for us both. Over the years I have learned how to become pliable and flexible to change. I welcome change, at one point in my life, I was crying out to the Lord for a change to take place; and He answered my prayers. One of the reasons that hinder us in our lives is our inability to be flexible. Being too rigid in our thinking tends to make us difficulty in adapting to change. Adapting to changes in our lives sometimes can be easy and at other times can be difficult. We are in the last days; and prophecy will take place; so I believe that we as children of God; must be ready for spontaneity movement of God to take place.

I believe that God is about to release an out pour of His anointing upon His children for the purpose of bringing in a great harvest of souls. It is imperative that we discern these divine outpourings ahead of time and prepare ourselves for them. If we fail to discern and prepare, that which was intended for great blessing can end up causing devastating destruction. We must be ready for unusual and extreme things to happen. To do this we must understand the relationship between structure and spontaneity. I said last night, that “You can count on what the service was going to be like and almost the time frame it was going to take place in.”

God corrected me on that. I have no idea what God is going to do in His service; and I just better be ready for what He is going to do in my life. God is a God of both structure (order) and spontaneity. The spontaneity of God is seen clearly as He spoke creation into being. But not only is God's creation diverse and colorful, it is also incredibly structured.

In relation to God's end-time harvest of souls the church must focus on both the spontaneous movement of God's Spirit and the structures order of discipleship leaving us to follow Christ - which mean that we should be adaptable and flexible.

The scripture that come to my mind right now is: “Isaiah 55: 8-9" "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

**Mike S** · 02-12-2009, 12:17 AM

Yup, there was a time when flexible looked like condoning excuses for not executing the plan. There was a sense of "ownership". As God molded and shaped these fell on the floor by the wheel.

Now, being open to the hands of the Potter, you feel that much closer.

I am not sure if any one person has ever been so moved in the gathering to suddenly get up and speak. I do know leaders who observed and then spoke.

Thank you for the prayer WaW!

**yod1948** · 02-12-2009, 02:27 AM

Blessed are the flexible for they will not be bent out of shape!

proverbs 32:1

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**RuthABraun** · 02-12-2009, 09:52 AM

You got me, YOD! I went to grab my Bible to see that verse for myself and I was starting to flip to Proverbs when I said to myself, "Hey! There is no Chapter 32 in Proverbs!" LOL!

Flexibility in worship -- two weeks ago we had the whole song set ready and the last song we were to do was "The Big One", the one that we felt would really bring down the presence of the Lord. Hah! Little did we know -- the Spirit had His own schedule that morning, arriving in power during the song before The Big One. The pastor just jumped up and started praying and the congregation joined in purely verbal worship of the Lord. If we had continued our plan it would have fallen flat and interrupted the moving of the Spirit in our midst. We ended up doing the song the next week and, as we had expected the week before, it really brought us into God's presence and became a beautiful offering to Him. Twice the benefit for us just because we allowed ourselves to be "interrupted" by the Spirit!

Jeremy Camp voiced my prayer for today perfectly -- "Holy Fire, burn away my desire for anything that is not of You and is of me. I want more of You and less of me. Empty me. Fill me with You." Amen.

**MimsiGal** · 02-12-2009, 02:29 PM

To be pliable takes a greater amount of faith and trust... especially for those of us who are list makers by nature.

We have to trust that the promptings we feel are from God.
We have to trust that acting upon those promptings is following the will of God.
We have to trust that our team will not only be able to follow, but will choose to.

I pray that God will strengthen us so that we will be sensitive to His leading, and have the faith to follow through on those promptings. As we are more open to His leading, we will lead our teams in that as well.

Our team will be starting this bible study in the next 2 weeks... I am looking forward to hearing their thoughts on this - and to them looking forward to following Him more closely each day.

** the pixie dust ref. was for my daughter... she loves Tink!**

**fmckinnon** · 02-12-2009, 05:41 PM

You know, the main thing that I think of, in regard to being pliable - is the simple, yet profound reminder ... "it's not about me".

**MandoRon** · 02-12-2009, 07:35 PM

I agree that we need to be pliable and flexible to let the Spirit lead.

The problem that we've had from time to time is lack of planning. The pastor or associate pastor wait until the last minute to write their sermons and suddenly have the best idea for a song...

To me, that's lack of planning... not the Spirit moving.

I've told our associate pastor to always double-check whether it's really inspiration or just indigestion... I think we often get the two confused...