I recently had the opportunity to connect with an amazing team of church planters. They were spending the day together praying, sharing stories and learning about how to multiply disciples as they planted new communities of faith. One of their leaders asked me to stop by and introduce myself. As we were talking about how important it is to cultivate a healthy, Jesus-centered culture from the very beginning of any new church plant, our conversation began to focus on how important it is to invest time into growing healthy leaders.
In order to submit to the process, you have to sacrifice the idol of your dreams—and it hurts. That’s the real problem with the carpenter shop. We can get so zealous about our prophetic destiny that when God speaks about something else or points us in a direction that we deem contrary to what we have seen in the spirit, we feel robbed. But God is no thief; we know that the real reason He brings us into the dark room is not to lock us away, but to better develop the full picture of who He has made us to be. So the real question we need to ask ourselves is: Why do I feel like God is robbing me?
