Chapter 6

Let Nothing Stand in Your Way

One of the more colorful characters around the Dream Center is a guy named Barry. We met him during our Under the Bridge visits. After losing a good job as a civil engineer, he lived for seventeen years on the streets, the last ten of those sleeping under bridge overpasses. He’d stomp up to our campus three times a day for meals, then return to his place under the bridge. Finally, through frequent conversations with some of our people, he was saved and then enrolled in our discipleship program for recovering drug addicts. Now, five years later, he is not only sober, but he just finished Bible college! At the age of sixty, after wasting much of his life and health on drugs—he admits to being a heroin addict for eighteen years before moving to methamphetamines for another twenty—he is serving as the director of our chapel.

If you had talked to Barry six or seven years ago, he would have told you he would never again accomplish anything productive. But once he got sober and began taking care of himself, God gave him a dream. The dream included getting a theological education—even at his advanced age—and then using it to help other downtrodden people pick themselves up and move forward. This is how Barry explains how his life has changed:

For years I ran from what my calling was, kind of like Jonah. I’m a good runner. I did all kinds of things these past few years, but I wasn’t listening to the call. Finally, I was placed in charge of the chapel. And that’s what all my education and preparation has been for. So now I’m consumed by it. We do eighteen chapel services each week, and it’s wonderful. I understand these people because I was one of them for so long. After I got discharged from the military, I used the benefits to go to school. I have a lot of education, but I didn’t have much smarts, if you know what I mean. Now I know that I will have a ministry to people on the streets, and I am so excited about that. There are so many good people on the streets, people in bad situations just trying to survive. God rescued me so I can help rescue them.

As surely as I know that Barry is guided by a God-given cause, I know that God has a cause that’s just right for you. He has loaded it within your heart the same way that operating software is loaded on a computer’s hard drive when you buy it. But in the same way that you might not know how to operate that software without further exploration and experimentation, you might not figure out your cause until you push through some obstacles that pop up. God isn’t hiding the cause from you, but the cumulative effect of choices can blind you from seeing it or prevent you from being ready to accept it.

Among the obstacles you’ll face are the countless distractions in your life. You’re busy with all kinds of activities, commitments, responsibilities, and opportunities. Most of those endeavors revolve around taking care of yourself; responding to the needs of others may not even register on your radar. Another obstacle could be your priorities. We invest our resources in the things we deem most important and necessary, which range from addressing basic needs to experiencing consistent comfort and pleasure. Considerations regarding our cause get squeezed out of the picture.

Never confuse activity for significance and impact. Can we agree that meaning doesn’t come from what we have to do to survive but from what we do that adds value to the lives of others? In other words, there are things you have to do to survive—earn a living, pay your bills, stay healthy, maintain relationships—but the acts that push you beyond survival and provide you with a greater sense of joy are those that make the world a better place. That means you have to make your cause every bit as important and central in your life as performing well in your vocation, eating healthy foods, and making sure your children are appropriately educated.

My experience has been that people always hit snags along the way to living out their cause. Meeting other priorities is just one of them. Here are some others I’ve seen emerge that you should be aware of—and ready to overcome.

Some people refuse to do anything until they understand their options in full. Finding and fulfilling your cause doesn’t work that way. God seems to provide what is known as progressive revelation: He shows you as much as you need to know (or can handle) and then unveils additional insight when it becomes appropriate. That makes sense: if He showed you the scope of what He wants to do with you in the pursuit of your cause, it would blow your mind and scare you out of the process. Instead, He does what every great coach does: gives you just enough opportunity and responsibility to build yourself up so that you’re ready to take the next step in your development.

Jesus modeled this approach when He began calling the apostles. He did not tell Peter, James, John, and the rest of the Twelve that He was taking them from their fishing routes and other simple jobs to build the Christian church that would change the course of human history. He did not explain that He was preparing them to scatter to different locations on the continent in order to challenge powerful and hostile rulers and to motivate people to live completely different lives. Had He done so, how many of the Twelve would have signed up for the ride? Probably none of them. Instead, He partnered with them to get them ready to fulfill their cause, giving them increasingly challenging tasks en route to becoming the first human leaders of the Christian church.

God wants you to succeed, so He’s willing to take things one step at a time. But He also knows that the progressive development of your cause allows you to demonstrate and strengthen your commitment. After all, one of His guiding principles is that you have to prove yourself to be faithful with what you have been given before you are offered more opportunities.10

There is a lot I don’t understand about life. But one thing I do know is that if God had told this twenty-year-old kid from the suburbs of Phoenix that within a few years he’d be in charge of a huge campus, more than two hundred outreach programs, a staff of several hundred people, an annual multimillion-dollar budget, and a building campaign of several million more, that young man would have totally freaked out. It would have been too much, too soon. In fact, if I didn’t freak out over the scope of the vision, it would have been due to having an overgrown ego—and that arrogance and overconfidence would have made a total mess of the tremendous opportunities that were in store for the Dream Center.

Instead, God worked with me and moved me forward at just the right pace. It wasn’t the pace everyone else thought was right: some said we were moving too slow; some said it was too fast. But God knows me better than I know myself, and He orchestrated the process perfectly. As long as I was willing to listen to Him and be obedient, everything would work out great. And it has. I have certainly made mistakes along the way—sometimes moving before God, sometimes not trusting Him enough and suffering because I waited too long. But overall it has been a wonderful experience of allowing God to build the church while I focus on helping to restore the lives of broken people.

God’s dreams for you are always bigger—and better—than your dreams for you. He understands the appropriate and most beneficial time to open your eyes to those dreams as well.

So if you do not understand all the details or if you believe that the vision must be bigger than you currently understand it to be, don’t let that stop you from beginning to act on what you know. Take whatever aspects of the cause God is willing to reveal to you now and run with them. He’ll fill in the blanks when He is ready to do so—which usually means when you are capable of handling them.

While some people refuse to act if they don’t have all the details, many other people stall in their drive to pursue their cause because even the limited vision God reveals overwhelms them. This happens because we underestimate the power of God working through us to accomplish His will. What’s at issue is what I think of as the miracle space: the gap between what we can accomplish on our own and what can be accomplished when we allow God to work through us. In a culture that acts based on the tangible, we are reluctant to step out in faith and believe that God will fill in that gap. Perhaps if we prayed more often and more fervently for God to give us His power to take on the vision, we’d be more aggressive.

Jesus had some experience with this too. Think about the crippled man who had been sitting by the side of the pool in Bethesda (as described in John 5). Every day for almost four decades that man had been dependent on others to help him—some 13,870 days of powerless, agonized living. When Jesus walked through that courtyard, the man lay there passively. Then Jesus gave him a completely different response than anyone else had: pick up your bed and walk home. Jesus was asking the crippled man to do more than the man believed he was able to do. But when God is working with you, that miracle space makes all the difference—the gap is bridged between “I can’t” and “I can!”

The existence of the Dream Center is a living testimony to the importance of trusting God to master that miracle space. When I was growing up, one day I asked my father, “Dad, is it possible for a church to be open twenty-four hours a day?” My father was always great about not wanting to squash my dreams. He was aware that the crazy questions I often asked might be a thought or dream that God had planted in me that needed to be cultivated. So he very wisely said, “I don’t know, Matthew. Why don’t you go ahead and build one someday?”

And, of course, it turns out that a 24-7 church was one of those God-implanted ideas. Thanks to the encouragement of my father and many others—and, of course, the blessing of God—that’s exactly what the Dream Center has become. It has not happened because of my world-class leadership or my visionary planning. It happened because it was God’s cause, and I was willing to let Him implement it through me. Building a 24-7 church is more than I can handle. It exists today only because God filled in that miracle space between the church I could initiate and manage through my natural talents and energy and the church that God had in mind.

We might never have gotten the church off the ground, though, if I had simply listened to the advice of people who make decisions without God. When we were establishing the church, many Christians pleaded with me not to establish the church in this area. One person was willing to fund the church if we went to Orange County; he was ready to write out a million-dollar check to get us started if we would locate the ministry there. My dad and I explained that we were called to Los Angeles, and we tried to encourage him to help us with that work, but the man insisted that he wouldn’t give us a dime if we stayed in downtown LA because he would not fund a failure. Other Christians kept warning me that staying in the Echo Park area was a disaster in the making. They rightly pointed out that at best we’d be helping people who didn’t have the resources to help us. “You can’t build a great church there,” they said. And they were right. I can’t. But God can. He chose to. And He chose to use me to do it. It is the insane cause He sowed in my heart, the vision that keeps me excited and motivated, the miracle that He performs every day in downtown LA.

One of the most moving examples of someone grasping her cause and trusting God to handle more than she could possibly manage without Him is Alena Strickland. Shortly after her birth, Alena’s daughter Jamie contracted an infection in her brain that required multiple surgeries. While she and her daughter stayed in the hospital, Alena found out about another infant who had been left at the hospital by her parents. This baby weighed less than a pound at birth and was given only a small chance of survival. She did not have healthy intestines, so she needed to be on a constant IV in order to get sufficient nutrition to fight for her life. Alena’s daughter and this other child were about the same age, so they shared a hospital room for about eighteen months, at which point the doctor said the other child was not going to make it. Alena recalls that time with crystal clarity:

At that point, I heard God telling me, “Take her home and let her die at your house.” That little girl was black. At the time, I lived in a very white area, and during those years there was a lot of racial stuff going on. On top of that, I had a very sick daughter of my own plus two other small children at home and a husband who was not very supportive of this. Then I thought about the fact that I didn’t know how to do black kids’ hair, her teeth were really messed up from being on a pacifier all the time, I had no idea how to provide the medical care she’d need, we didn’t have the machines she required, and things like that. And yet God kept saying, “Take her home, take her home.”

For weeks I wrestled with God, and I gave Him all my excuses and fears. It got to the point where I couldn’t sleep. God just kept putting it in my head and my heart, every second of every day: “Take her home. Take her home. Take her home.” Finally I did something I had never done before. I said, “Okay, God, this is it. I feel like You’re telling me to do this. I’m telling You, You’ve got the wrong person. You’re going to have to either audibly tell me, or You’re going to have to show me something so there’s no more doubt in my head.” At that point I actually had two of my kids in the hospital, one of them in a crib and the other in a bed. I felt I was already in over my head.

I threw the Bible down on the bed and told Him to show me. When I picked up my Bible, it fell open to James 1, and I started reading the chapter. I was thinking, What a relief, this has nothing to do with anything. I’m clear on this one. But then, of course, I got to the end of the chapter, down to verse 27, where it says, “pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress.” At that point, I just said, “Okay, God, this is it. I understand now.”

So that day I went to the hospital people and asked them to start training me on how to care for her. Soon after that, we had her home with us for about a month before she died. I had learned all the medical care and all the machines. The hospital, of course, had my phone number, and after that they just started calling me to take care of more terminally ill kids.

And it became clear that I was called to that cause. God met me at every step of the journey. Every issue I had argued about with Him was no longer an issue. It just worked out. So I started taking the kids until my own children got a little bit older and it was getting to be too much for them to handle. At that point I told God it was over, but He said, “Nope, now I’ve got some kids that aren’t going to die. They just have medical issues, and you know how to handle it.”

That began in 1985. Today, after twenty-five years of caring for the people God has called her to love, Alena and her family have taken in and served 170 suffering children. That number includes fifteen who have become permanent parts of her family through adoption or guardianship. At every point along the way, God has given her the knowledge, patience, resources, and whatever else she has needed to make it work. She often speaks to other people about her journey and encourages them to believe that the cause God gives them is one He will help them master:

I know some people are amazed at what I do, but it has become no big deal at all. It’s not even a hard thing to do anymore; it’s just what I do.

I encourage others to step up and do whatever God calls them to. You can do it. After all, I’ve been able to do something that is certainly beyond what I know how to do, and I have had no special training or preparation—nothing at all, really. My husband left me while my daughter was in a series of comas and the doctors were telling us that she wasn’t going to live much longer. He just couldn’t take it, along with the other children we were caring for. He met me at home one day and said, “This is it. You either stop going to the hospital and staying with her or I’m leaving.” I said, “Well, I can’t leave her. I’ve got to be with our daughter in the hospital.” I came home from the hospital later that day, and he was gone.

So I’ve done most of this while I was single. God met me at every point and has helped me handle each new disability and every new challenge. Whatever God calls you to do—it doesn’t matter what it is—He will meet you there and give you what you need to do it.

I watch someone like Alena, who often partners with the Dream Center in ministering to families, and marvel at how God works through His chosen people—normal, ordinary people like her or you or me—to do these incredible things. Alena also tells people about all the other ways He has taken care of her needs. She remarried about ten years ago, and her husband helps her with all of the children. Their home—1,900 square feet, which is not big by Southern California standards, and certainly not large for a household that includes ten or more people, most of whom have special needs—has proven to be sufficient for what they do. She admits that her life is difficult socially and spiritually. She can’t go out to lunch with her friends in the middle of the day: who could babysit for so many kids who have such special needs and who sometimes become physically violent? She and her husband don’t get many social invitations either. Vacations are next to impossible. She also acknowledges that they don’t get a lot of sleep.

The kicker was that after having attended a church for forty-five years, she was asked not to return because the presence of the children was too stressful for the congregation. And none of that bothers her:

You know, that’s just a small price to pay. I’m not complaining about any of that. Things happen, and people have different reactions, but I love what God has called me to do, and He has given me an eternal perspective on the short time I have on earth.

Once you’ve had God call you to something that you’re totally incapable of and yet you do it, you really learn to trust God a lot faster. I’m still learning how to fully trust Him. I have more to learn, but every day I have to give everything to God and be careful not to allow my own nature to take over. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt He called me to this, and I know He wouldn’t leave me unable to do it. He has proven Himself over and over; it works.

I think a lot of people listen for their cause and then they just say, “No, I can’t do it.” Just like I did. Literally, I told God, “You’ve got the wrong person. Physically, I can’t do this.” But I’ve learned that you need to be still and know that He’s God and simply listen. If He says to do something really crazy, check it out. I wasted months going back and forth with Him before realizing He was right. Based on my experience, at least, I believe God will tell you what the calling is if you listen, and then He’ll make a way for you if you’re willing. I fought against it for a long time. It wasn’t something I minded doing. I didn’t think, Oh, that’s gross, drawing blood and doing those other things. It wasn’t that. I felt I simply could not do what was required physically and I did not have the technical skills and capability.

On top of that, I wasn’t sure about losing all my family members and friends. You’ve got to be willing to lose all that. But really, is it that big of a deal if you don’t get to have your nails done, or your hair done, or go on that big vacation? Really, is it that big of a deal when you’re giving eternity to people? You’ve got to be willing to basically lose everything, and then God gives it back to you when you answer His call and when you walk in His will. He gives it all back to you.

It would have been easy for Alena to fall back on her lack of expertise or experience as a good reason not to step out in faith and pursue her cause. Alena proves, however, that when God is in it with you, you can do more—a lot more—than you think you can do. There are all kinds of excuses you can come up with to avoid pursuing your cause, but in the end that will just leave you empty.

When David took on Goliath, he was accepting a challenge that everyone knew he could not accomplish. He embraced it because he felt called to the challenge and believed that God would support him.11 I look at people like Alena and Barry and realize that they do not have the human capabilities to pull off what God has asked them to do. But they do it because of their obedience to the call and their trust in God’s love for them. They do more than they can do. You can too.

Another obstacle to pursuing the cause may be the lack of resources we assume are needed to get the job done. In our desire to avoid failure, we do our best to imagine what it will take to complete the task we believe God has given us. We want to be good stewards of our finances and opportunities, so we halt everything until we have the resources in hand or at least lined up.

But you have to remember that fulfilling your cause is a matter of obedience and faith. You have to be wise, but you also have to be spiritually sensitive. Prayer is critical—not the kind through which you tell God what to do but the kind through which He tells you what He is up to. When God tells you to go, your current lack of resources is not a viable excuse not to go. He may simply be preparing an opportunity to fill in the miracle space.

If I had waited until we had the funds to do our different forms of outreach to hurting people, I doubt I’d be writing this book today. When we had the opportunity to save a girl from sexual trafficking, we had no program and no budget for that kind of service. It costs us more than $250,000 each year to help girls escape from trafficking and then help them get their life and their dream back. Yet we do it, believing God called us to it. He has faithfully provided the money.

When we saw how the current recession is destroying so many families, we had no room or money to take in desperate families who wound up on the streets. We had no program to help them get back on their feet and focus on their dream. But we launched out in faith, and God has been providing the $150,000 that effort costs us each year. Money, space, and other tangible needs cannot be used as the barrier that prevents you from doing what God calls you to do. You may have to get creative, and everything may not be as proper and pristine as you’d prefer, but the most important thing is trusting God and responding to His call.

These are very tough times economically. The United States has millions of hurting people, millions of families that are on (or over) the edge, millions of young people who are making bad choices in life, millions of older people who are living in hardship because their savings have been wiped out. Churches and nonprofit organizations have been hit hard by the reduction in people’s giving. There are plenty of good reasons not to take risks in the pursuit of your cause. But now is not the time for us to shrink back in fear and uncertainty. If we can’t do what people need when they need it the most, then why are we here? What value do we bring to the world? This is a season of great need; it requires people of great faith who will invest in people’s lives and dreams. It is the best time ever for you to influence the shape and well-being of the world.

If I had waited until I had everything in hand, there would be no Dream Center today. By the grace of God, I was encouraged to keep pushing the boundaries of the dream He gave me. So we started with a little church building and a couple of small homes down the street. As we pursued the cause, we filled up that space and the other houses that we rented. One day I was driving down the Route 101 freeway, about a mile and a half from Bethel Temple, and I looked to my left and saw this massive building, this 400,000-square-foot hospital, just sitting right there like a cargo ship docked against the freeway. It had a big For Sale banner on it. I’d never even noticed that massive building before. Immediately I thought, That’s it! That’s the place for us. A hospital for broken people—it’s the perfect fit.

So I did some calling around and found out the story regarding that building. It was the old Queen of Angels Hospital owned by the Catholic church, and they were trying to sell the property. The building had been sitting vacant for a while, and it needed a lot of renovations. It had been on the market a while too. One of the major movie studios had put in a bid for the building, which was about to be accepted. The plan was to expand their movie studio to that location and make films there.

Immediately we got in touch with the people representing the property and talked to them about what we do and the possibility of buying the building. They told us the movie studio’s bid was around $15 million. I told the hospital representatives outright, “We really don’t have that kind of money, but we’ve got a dream.” They were really stirred by the vision and told me to make them an offer. My dad and I had not expected the meeting to go that well, or for things to move so quickly, so we had not discussed strategy, pricing, and the rest. But it was our moment, and we knew we couldn’t just walk away; if we did, we felt the opportunity would be lost. So we kind of threw out a wild number, just to see what would happen. We offered $3.9 million.

To our shock they said, “We love your vision. This is wonderful. We’ll call the lawyers and agents to get the process started.” Well, we didn’t know what to say. It was too good to be true. Only God could orchestrate this sale when the owners already had an offer for nearly four times as much money from a more financially respectable organization. In a way, though, it didn’t surprise me, because from the moment I first noticed the building and that huge For Sale banner waving in the breeze, I knew this was supposed to be our new home.

Of course, the downside was that we didn’t have $3.9 million. In fact, we didn’t even have $1 million.

The scope of this provision and its timing were unexpected, to say the least. After my Echo Park encounter with God, I was thrilled to have that little Bethel Temple property, and I just figured I’d be there forever. We were happy to be plodding away in that neighborhood, based at a tiny church that you couldn’t find if you tried. During my first years there, various people who were scheduled to visit Bethel sometimes couldn’t find it, even when they’d been sent maps and directions ahead of time.

Bethel Temple’s difficult location wasn’t our only challenge: by the grace of God, we had outgrown the facilities. That didn’t seem like a big deal to me; I simply figured we’d be there forever and somehow make it work. You do what you can with what you have. I was at peace with that notion. God had delivered me to my cause, and this was clearly the place where I was meant to pursue that cause, so we’d figure out a way to buy or rent more homes in the immediate area in order to help more people. From a human perspective the Bethel property was inadequate to accomplish what needed to be done. But none of what was already happening made sense from a human perspective. Given that, we believed that God knew what He was doing. He’d placed us at Bethel, and we’d just keep doing what we were called to do and let Him worry about the rest.

So when the hospital option arose, it seemed like the opportunity of a lifetime. The money could have been an issue, but we didn’t let it be. If God did not want us there, they would not have accepted the offer. If we misread the situation, we trusted that the deal would fall apart during the closing proceedings. But we fully expected everything to move forward.

The purchase of the hospital campus—a nine-acre campus that included eight other buildings and several parking lots as well as the fifteen-story hospital building—was God’s continuing provision for a group of people who were sold out to His cause. All of a sudden, when God feels you’re ready, He does a miracle. At some point He may say, “Okay, we’re moving up to the big leagues now.” That might happen as a result of your past faithfulness, or it might happen to boost your faith; I’ve seen it take place both ways. In our case, I believe we’d slogged our way through so many tests and pushed through so many ordinary days that buying the hospital was a result of God’s seeing our commitment and willingness to continue in a hidden place with unwanted people, without adequate funding, media fanfare, or celebrity involvement. And what He has done through that building is to create an extraordinary cause on the foundation of a lot of little days and simple acts of love and kindness that largely went unnoticed except by those whose lives were altered by those efforts.

By the way, getting the money for the hospital purchase—and then millions more for renovations and upgrades—is another story we’ll get to later. Suffice it to say I had no clue how to get my hands on $3.9 million, but God did, and we own the building free and clear today because we were willing to let God fill in that miracle space.

I know somebody who reads this is going to be thinking about people, including some ministers, who have “stepped out in faith” because “God spoke to them” only to wind up embarrassing God and the Christian body by defaulting on a loan or some other agreement, creating black-eye experiences for the Kingdom of God. Those situations do occur. But in my mind, you have to recognize the difference between stepping out in faith because you believe you are skilled enough to make it happen versus stepping out in faith based on the clear and consistent call of God and the knowledge that there is no way you can make it happen on your own. As always, the proof is in the results.

As you get ready to make a difference through your cause, rest assured that you will be criticized. Some people will be jealous. Others will be angry. Some will misunderstand your motives. Others are highly competitive and don’t want anyone taking the spotlight from their own work. Some of your critics will be people who do work similar to yours; others will be people who are clueless about what you do. No matter where the negative words come from, just know they will come. And be ready to turn criticism to your advantage.

From a very early age I knew I would become a spiritual leader of some type. I expected my role to be that of a pastor. Given that, I worked on my preaching skills even as an adolescent and teenager. Finally, when I was sixteen, I was given my first preaching opportunity. My dad is a terrific preacher, known throughout the world for his ability to communicate effectively; many people expected me to have the same gift.

I practiced my message for weeks, knowing that this could be my breakthrough moment. By the time the day arrived for me to preach, I had my content ready, had worked hard on delivery techniques, and was eager to take the stage. But I was so nervous that I finished my entire forty-five-minute presentation in five minutes. Five minutes! My dad had been telling me for years that I needed to slow down, pace myself, enunciate, and allow people’s ears to catch up with my tongue. I wasn’t able to follow his advice that day. I also had a stuttering problem, which was magnified by the speed of my delivery. Well, it all hit the fan that day.

As I was walking out of the church building after that humiliating experience, I passed by a conference room in which a couple of the older pastors were sitting. The door was partially open, so I was able to hear their conversation. One veteran pastor said to his colleague, without knowing I was within earshot, “His granddaddy and his daddy are fine preachers, but it’s really sad to see a young man do what he’s not called to do. And that boy is certainly not called to preach.”

That crushed me. I took five steps toward the wall and just knocked my head against it, distraught at my failure. Who did I think I was fooling? Tears started falling to the carpet as I felt my hope of serving God slip away. I slinked out the nearest door in a total daze, crying the whole way to my grandmother’s house. I was convinced I was the biggest failure in the world, and now the word was out.

After blindly walking two miles to her house, I flopped on a bed and continued to weep. My grandmother entered the room and asked how I was doing. “Grandma,” I confided, “those preachers said I’m no good and I should never preach again.” My grandma, who had been in the church and witnessed my dismal performance, said something that was so powerful. “I can’t believe those men said that. You were amazing. You sounded like Billy Graham up there. You were incredible.” That lifted my spirits enough to realize that all I needed to do was refuse to let a bad experience and harsh criticism negate my call to serve God. I used that criticism as a motivation to get better. I didn’t like the nasty words spoken about me, but they fueled a determination to never again give those men reason to think that God had not called me to serve Him by preaching.

And I always say, thank God for lying grandmas!

That sure wasn’t the last time my best efforts have been ripped apart by others:

• In the early years several pastors from other churches visited to tell me they knew I wouldn’t stay at Bethel Temple once the church grew and I had a chance to leave for a more comfortable and prestigious suburban setting.

• Professionals have written and called to tell me that our recovery programs are worthless because they do not use the latest and greatest clinical techniques and rely too much on faith in Christ.

• Some people have accused me of being too evangelistic; others have accused me of not being evangelistic enough.

You never know how bad the destructive intentions of others will get. I went through a period of time when I was feeling overwhelmed with all the things happening in the church. Great things were taking place, but it was emotionally draining. We had some severe challenges, and I knew I was in over my head. Truthfully, I was discouraged and wondering if it was time for me to leave.

Then one day I was opening the mail and found an oversized manila envelope. I tore open the top and pulled out an elaborate certificate. At first glance my spirit jumped; I thought I’d won some type of award, and such recognition was just the type of positive pick-me-up I needed at that moment. With excitement building, I read the text on the certificate. Big letters in the middle said, “Congratulations to the World’s Worst Pastor.” Then there was a bunch of text beneath that to explain exactly why I was unfit for the ministry. Some poor guy actually toiled at home for hours making this terrific certificate to tell me what a loser I was. Trust me, if you’re doing anything of significance, you’ll attract your fair share of antagonists and critics.

One of the most important skills in the pursuit of your cause is knowing how to forgive those who attack you or bad-mouth you. As hard as it is to hear what some say about your good-hearted efforts, you cannot let those derogatory comments and smear tactics derail you. Ultimately you do not answer to your critics; you answer to the One who gave you the cause. All the nastiness shown to me over the years has simply deepened my appreciation for the forgiveness that Jesus Christ has shown toward me and everyone around me. His response is my model. The more I imitate that kind of understanding and love, the more effective I will be at serving Him and the people who so desperately need to be blessed.

One of my advisers helped me get a grip on unfair criticism and the practice of forgiveness. He reminded me that negative reactions often reflect critics’ personal disappointment over not being able to accomplish the dreams God has placed in their hearts—or perhaps the dreams they conjured up by themselves and God has chosen to withhold His blessing from. Viewing criticism from that perspective, I can actually feel sorrow for the state of mind that hinders those critics from being a positive, value-adding part of the movement of God’s people. It is clear that they, too, have fears and hurts and need to be loved and blessed as much as the people who live in the Echo Park area. Perhaps if God can love them through me—via my reactions to their criticism or even my continued steadfastness in doing good for those among us who are struggling—they can get past their insecurities and anger and participate in the healing of the world around them.

The bottom line is simple: you cannot allow your cause to be derailed by critics. It’s appropriate to listen to their complaints because sometimes they are right and other times, even if they aren’t, you might learn something about yourself, your cause, or how to better influence the lives of people who don’t get it. Consider what they say, and if it resonates, do something about it. If their words do not ring true, thank them for their thoughts and move on. Your cause is too important to be negated by the naysayers. Your passion and commitment cannot be squandered trying to make everybody happy. Focus on the incredible thing God has set aside for you.

A pastor told me a story about how the famous evangelist D. L. Moody once dealt with a lady’s criticism. After attending an evangelistic service over which Moody presided and at which a number of people gave their lives to Christ, the woman stormed through the crowd to speak with him afterward. She told him all the things he had done wrong and how ineffective he was as an evangelist. Worried that he was not serving God well, Moody was eager to learn from this woman who seemed so sure of herself.

“Please tell me,” Moody graciously and humbly asked the woman, “how do you share the gospel with people?”

“I don’t,” she sniffed pretentiously.

Moody thought for a moment while studying his accuser. “Then forgive me, madam, but I prefer the way I bungle evangelism to the way you avoid it.”

Criticism may be God’s way of realigning you on the road to influence, or it may be a distraction as you are moving ahead. Develop the discernment to know the difference and respond accordingly.

Once you understand your cause, you are on a grand mission to change the world. Granted, you won’t change every life. And you’ll probably make more than a few mistakes along the way. Certainly you’ll face hardships and challenges as you pursue your cause. Get used to it and get over it. Have enough faith in God’s love for you, and in the abilities and resources He has given you, to believe that something great is going to come from your commitment to the cause within you.

What I’ve Learned

• Don’t expect to grasp the fullness of your cause at first; God will reveal it over time.

• God’s timing is perfect. Rely on His timing rather than your own.

• Be prepared to do more than you can humanly do.

• Don’t let a lack of resources keep you from moving forward with faith and wisdom. Allow God to fill in the miracle space.

• Past failings do not disqualify you from future success.

• You will be criticized often. When the criticism rings true, use it to improve what you do. When it is off base, ignore it. Either way, keep moving toward your cause.