Assemblies of God Empowered Magazine LEADING WITH A SHEPHERDS HEART | Page 6

EXECUTIVE

Pastor Steve Batten
Assistant Superintendent
Senior Pastor,
citywestchurch,
New Plymouth, NZ

Being the Church
“So he shepherded them according to the integrity of his heart, and
guided them by the skillfulness of his hands.” (Psalm 78:72).
I sense a turning tide within church
leadership. It is a movement away from
doing and the way this is achieved, to
being; it is a careful recrafting of past
responses to our failures, to what God can
teach us from these experiences. I also
sense a reexamination and rediscovery
by leadership of Biblical pictures that
create healing pathways, which can lead
us back from failure to wholeness and
health within the church community. Only
when these pathways are effectively in
place to create a culture of acceptance
and forgiveness will we reach and retain
believers who have drifted away from
church some time in the past.

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a pathway and culture worthy of our
consideration if we are to reach and
restore those returning to faith.
First, how is your hope? Faith is
founded on the nature and character
of God, but hope is anchored in the
promises discovered within his word.
Hope is never wishful thinking that leads
to disappointment (Rom 5: 5), but is
evidenced by God’s unconditional love
we continue to hold in our hearts.

“Now hope does not
disappoint, because the love
of God has been poured out
in our hearts by the Holy Spirit
who was given to us.”

one’s loss and returning, make up part of
the processes that shape our lives. How
every compassionate heart wishes this
was not so! Sometimes leaving involves
a separation by distance; with others it’s a
relational disconnection. Yet the father’s
heart sees beyond this to a completed
picture, a restored relationship. He makes
it his business to control the mind game
of fear that shouts “What if?” and instead
responds from within with words of hope.
How are you managing this battle that
goes on inside you?

The parable of the two sons in Luke 15
is one of the best known of these pictures.
You know it well. The younger son leaves
home and loses everything; the older son
stays with his father but never embraces
the possibilities of the “everything” gifted
to him. Both experience personal failure;
one a long way from the house, the other
while continuing to live in it. Geography
is never the issue where God’s purposes
are concerned.

Hope is always tested by time and
demands patience. It must be focused
and passionate to last the distance.
While the older brother saw his younger
sibling’s departure as a permanent event,
this father refused to renounce hope.
Why else would he watch and wait all
those years? Who are you hoping for?

This father appreciates that parenting
is risky and testing. While the two sons in
their unique ways “un-son” themselves,
he refuses to “un-father” himself in spite
of their attitudes. Neither son was ever
disowned. A change of heart that lasts
cannot be engineered by pressure from
without, but only by a revelation within.
Truly the “goodness of God leads to
repentance” (Romans 2:4), even as we
are challenged by the grace he shows to
the seemingly undeserving! This father
believes that people can be changed by
God’s grace. He expects it! Do you?

It’s the father’s responses to his sons
that shout the loudest and demonstrate

This father understood, as any parent
does, that sometimes leaving, realising

This is why this father is prepared.
If he is to take hold of a restored future

Empowered

- Issue #2 August 2015

- Romans 5:5