Ray Li’s Blog

I’m on the Campus Church Networks e-mail list and I received yesterday the first e-mail from it that I have seriously read in a long while.

Jaeson Ma, the director of CCN, shared a very personal journal entry.  Now there are many things that I don’t agree with Jaeson on theologically but I can tell that this man loves Jesus.  And this entry was so encouraging and helpful for me.  I have an excerpt of it below.

 Sometimes, we don’t know how to change, so God has to get our attention by sending us into times of isolation. I believe the Holy Spirit is leading me soon into a time of sovereign isolation. It’s taken me 10 years to recognize what I really want. You see, God will give you what you want to show you what you really need. I thought for most of my life that what I wanted was to be successful, to make my life count, to do something great in this world for Him. God gave that to me, because I asked for it. In the last 10 years I’ve traveled the world and fulfilled what I believe God told me to do. I was obedient to the heavenly vision, “The Blueprint” if you may have it, and I preached the Gospel from campus to campus, city to city, nation to nation. Souls were won, disciples were made, hundreds of churches were planted and yes, lives were changed. Yet, in the midst of all the supernatural encounters, all the signs, wonders and miracles, my heart at times, felt empty. Why? It’s not because God didn’t want me to do all the things that I did for Him. The calling was always real. But what He wanted from me was not what I could do for Him, in order to please Him, but what He wanted was my heart. God will never have you sacrifice relationship with Him to do ministry for Him. Most Christian leaders I know have more of a relationship with their revelation, than they do with God. They are driven by the vision, by the ministry machine and not by relationship. This was me, and God had to wake me up to show me that successful ministry, will only leave you empty and dissatisfied if you don’t have intimacy with Jesus and community with others.

The prophet Elijah had to learn that success for God is different from success in God. In 1 Kings 18, Elijah has a showdown with the prophets of Baal. He encounters God in a powerful way, fire falls down from heaven and consumes the sacrifice on the altar, all the opposing false prophets are destroyed and Elijah wins, or does he? In the very next chapter we find Elijah running for his life. Why? The evil queen Jezebel had put a price on his head. He then tells God he wished he was never born, that he feels abandoned and wants to quit. God responds by sending Elijah into the dessert, then to Mt. Horeb into a period of complete isolation. This story of Elijah always boggled my mind. How could this mighty prophet on one hand have such great power and success in ministry one day and the very next day be completely depressed, suicidal and wanting to give up on everything? It finally made sense recently when I was studying this book called “Isolation” for my Fuller Seminary class. The author explained the 4-fold process of isolation in transforming the life of a leader in this way…

1. Stripping
2. Wrestling with God
3. Increased Intimacy
4. Release to Look Toward the Future

As I did this inductive study on 1 Kings 18-19 I finally understood why Elijah responded the way he did. For Elijah, his success was found in what he did for God. His identity did not come from His relationship in God, but his identity came from his ministry, that is, what he did for God. When ministry was going great, he was doing great. When ministry was going bad, he was doing horrible, because his ministry had become his identity. He found his worth, his value and success in what He did. He related to God out of function, but not out of relationship. When we relate to God only for what He can do for us, we really have no relationship at all. All we end up doing is a lot of “stuff” for God, empty stuff, because really it’s about ourselves and not about Him. We find our value in our performance and ministry becomes our identity. When we don’t have relationship we don’t have anything at all. Elijah had great success in ministry, but successful ministry will never leave you satisfied and fulfilled. The moment that success in ministry ends and you are left all alone, you become even more emptied inside, because all your satisfaction came from outward activity, not inward joy. God had to teach Elijah that his success was not found in the winds, the earthquake and the mighty fire, but rather, his significance was found in a “still small voice” that beckoned Elijah into an intimate relationship with His Creator.

In the process, God had to…

1) Strip Elijah from any success found in ministry, so God isolated Elijah by sending him persecution from Jezebel that forced him to run for his life into the dessert. In the dessert he had nothing. He had no one to tell him how great he was. He had no friends, no sustenance, no applause, no position and no ministry to find his identity or worth in. God had to strip all his external identities, so that Elijah could receive the identity God would place upon him.

2) Elijah had to “wrestle with God” in the dessert for forty days asking himself the question, “What is my true identity – apart from outward ministry?” He had to come face to face with who he really was. Not the prophet, not the mighty minister, not the guy who calls down fire from heaven, but the man who was in need of finding his true self. He had to wrestle with the important questions of life. Who was he really and what did he ultimately want? He had to come face to face with God and himself.

3) Increased intimacy was the result of Elijah’s stripping and wrestling with God. He had to get honest before God, and through isolation he recognized he wasn’t as in control or as put together as he thought he was. He admitted his character flaws, his need for change and most of all his need for God. He had to ask himself what he really wanted in life. Through this time of humbling, he knew he could no longer find his identity in successful ministry, he understood success is only found by being satisfied in the presence and loving arms of Jesus. As intimacy increased with Elijah and God, the need for “cutting edge” ministry decreased. He understood his true identity did not come from the external, but from his internal relationship with the Father. He could be still and finally know the still small voice of God was enough. This is what God wanted all along, and now what Elijah wanted, intimacy with God.

4) Elijah was released to look toward the future. He came out of the time of isolation, not by his own choice, but by the leading of the Spirit. For many, we try to leave God’s sovereign work of isolation in our lives too early, but this can be dangerous because it proves His presence is still not enough. When Elijah left isolation, it was because God spoke to him, and told him his next assignment. He didn’t move till God said so. Yet, this time, it was not about Elijah but it was about empowering the next generation to fulfill God’s destiny. Elijah was called to anoint Jehu and Elisha to carry on the work. He did this with a quite peace, knowing it was no longer about himself, but about God and others.

When I studied God’s purpose for Elijah in isolation, I knew God was asking me to experience the same. Like Elijah, I had found my identity in my performance and ministry for God. I kept doing and doing, becoming more tired, more dissatisfied each time I was left alone and wanted to quit at times because the ministry was too demanding. That’s when God hit me with a tone of bricks.

I’ve been traveling non-stop doing itinerant ministry for nearly 7 years now. Around late December, all the traveling had finally caught up to my body. In mid November of 2007 I had taken on too much responsibility for the different projects I was working on. All the stress had mounted up and I was getting hardly any sleep at night. I would sleep for 2 hours, at most 3 hours and then I would wake up with my mind spinning. This lasted for more than 40 days straight. During the day, my body felt like it was walking through mud. My mind was exhausted and no matter how hard I tried to get work done, I couldn’t because my energy was zapped. It got really bad, so I got a medical check up. I was diagnosed with “adrenal exhaustion” it’s a symptom that happens to people when they become over stressed because they have completely exhausted their adrenal glands, which are the glands in the body that give us the drive and energy to get things done. I was told that if I didn’t stop my hectic ministry schedule, something very bad could happen, something that I would regret if I did not make the right decision to slow things down.

This was my wake up call from God. He showed me, that I could either bench myself or that He would bench me, like He did to Elijah. I knew that God was telling me that I had to learn to rest. If not, ministry would consume me and become my god. When I received this diagnosis and medical warning, I went into a time of deep prayer and reflection. It was in this time I decided I needed to choose the place of isolation in order to find my true self again.

Near the new year of 2008, I wrote a personal letter to all my ministry partners worldwide. I shared with them honestly how I was burning out, losing my passion for Jesus and my medical condition. I told them I needed a break from ministry and would need to cancel certain ministry commitments for health reasons. This was one of the most difficult letters I had ever written, because I didn’t want to let my friends down, but obedience is better than sacrifice. My friends from around the world responded with great grace and supported my decision. As of now, I’ve decided to finish certain ministry commitments in 2008, while cancelling others so that I can have adequate time to restore my body and get my life back into order. At the moment, I plan to take a one year sabbatical from all platform ministry (speaking publicly) beginning in Oct 2008. It’s been difficult to say “no” but I’m glad I did it. I feel God’s peace in this decision.

I’ve been asking myself recently what I really want in life. I’ve come to the conclusion that all I want is relationship with God and to build healthier relationships with those most important to me. I want to know Jesus more. I want to know what it means to truly live in Christ. I feel like I’m getting my heart back, a little bit at least and God is teaching me what it means to live again.