Matthew Barnett is the pastor of The Dream Center, author of and the son of a well-known mega-church pastor.
Matthew shares his story of letting go of his dreams and finding the cause God had given him. As a 20-year-old he ambitiously to be an inner-city preacher when God. It didn’t work. His church was gone and God stepped in to redirect him.
“When you lose yourself in the cause of Christ, when you lose yourself and say, ‘God, this is what I have in my hand, I want to use it to serve,’ sometimes you’ll wake up and you’ll have dreams you never even knew you had.”
His life and ministry didn’t turn out like he wanted, and that’s good.
“I’m glad God didn’t give my my dreams because they were smaller than God’s cause.”
Matthew wouldn’t have identified himself as a good fit for a pastor ministering to drug addicts and murderers. But, God’s plans were better.
When people ask him how to find their cause he says the answer is simple. He just instructs us to spend our lives using whatever God has put in our hands for God’s glory. When we’re doing that, our cause, the people who need our help, will find us. The enemy can lie to us and tell us we don’t have anything to offer. Satan can taunt us with the memories and mistakes of a bad past. Those doubts aren’t true.
When we submit our skills and talents to God, anything can break loose according to Matthew.
The refining process is a valley. God can bring us to rock bottom. Scary as it sounds, rock bottom may be the exact place we need to be.
God recreates people at rock bottom.
Key Scripture: Proverbs 3:5-6
