Primary Focus

After I had been serving as an Area Team President for a while, I felt I needed to go back and analyze our meeting agendas to see where our focus was, and what we were spending our time on.

I was dismayed when my analysis showed over 90% of our Area Team meetings were spent planning other meetings: retreats, leadership developments, outreaches…all meetings! We were relentless in accomplishing every agenda item, too.

These meetings looked fantastic on paper - great attendance, plenty of money in the treasury, goals accomplished, but my heart hurt at the realization that this amazing, God-loving group of women I served with, along with myself, spent the majority of our times together ignoring the God we served. Our communications with Him in these meetings had more to do with, “God, please supply what we need to carry out this meeting,” or “Father, please give us enough money so we can do Your work in this outreach.” These meetings served a good purpose and the gospel was always shared, but we were so busy in being about the work of the Lord that we were missing the Lord of the work.

That changed, though, with our very next meeting. We spent time in His Presence, lingered in worship, and did not once look to our agendas to see what needed to be accomplished next. And that changed our whole focus! The retreats, leadership developments, and outreaches still happened, but they became secondary to our time together in His Presence. Now we became relentless about His Preeminence in everything.

As leaders, we sometimes get so caught up in doing His business, achieving what is set forth in our agendas, that we forget Him. Your leadership team’s focus is not to be a meeting planning group. Your first focus is to seek the Lord, to spend time lavishly in His Presence. That is where your strength and unity as a team will take root and grow. It is in His Presence that we learn to become like Him.

Graham Cooke says, “Our mindset has to be rooted in our relationship with God from our heart. I know you, Lord. You are training me to be a son. You use everything in my life to put the stamp of Your image on me and in me. I know that Your primary purpose is to make me like You. So, how do we do that in this situation? What is it that I am about to learn in terms of my sonship with You that will make this situation become entirely different to me?

We do not just go to God functionally (Lord, I have a problem, solve it), because we need to give Him the preeminence. Lord, this is about You and it is about me. It is not about this problem. This problem is about You and about me. Who You are going to be for me and what I am going to portray in You.

A mindset is relational; it is set in alignment with God’s primary purpose. His purpose is to bring many sons into glory. Sonship is one of the highest agendas of the Lord Jesus. So, relationally, we set our agenda to His. I know this situation is about sonship. It is about You and me. I know You want to be something for me. And, I know You want to change something in me so that I can reflect more of You.

Psalm 27:8- When You said, “Seek My face,” my heart said to You, “Your Face, O Lord, I shall seek.”