Articles by Paul Scanlon

Life Is Not About What's Happening TO You,
But What's Happening IN You

The apostle Paul is saying that what really happened in Asia wasn’t what happened to him but what happened in him. It wasn’t so much what Asia did to Paul but what Asia did for Paul. He understood that life was not about what happened to him but what happened in and through him. What happens to you is temporal but what happens in you is eternal. If you asked Paul, ‘What happened in Asia?’ He would reply, ‘I happened, I grew, I became stronger, I became a bigger person, I learned to trust God more; Asia did something in me not to me.’

Believers in the midst of adversity often ask, ‘What’s happening?’ And the answer is always, ‘You are happening, Christ in you is happening, character is happening, strength is happening, wisdom is happening.’ In difficult times churches also ask, ‘What’s happening to our church?’ And again the answer is, ‘You are!’ ‘What’s happening in your city?’ Your church is happening in the city! ‘What’s happening in the world?’ God’s people are happening in the world.

As Christians, we are ‘the salt of the earth’ [2] and nothing happens to salt. Salt happens to everything else! We are the most happening thing on the planet. God’s not looking at what’s happening to the world, God’s looking at what’s happening in his church. It is what’s happening in and through the church that will ultimately shape what happens to the world.

‘Type 1’ and ‘Type 2’ People

There are two essential ways of looking at life: You will either be a ‘type 1’ person, that is a ‘What’s happening to me person’ or a ‘type 2’ person, which is a ‘What’s happening in me person.’ Sadly, most believers are ‘type 1’ people.

When we live according to what’s happening to us, we surrender our world to external circumstances, events and happenings. And what God wants to happen in and through us is postponed, delayed or even cancelled by what’s happening to us. We let go of our dreams, down grade our plans and live a smaller life because we believe the lie that we are defined by what is happening to us. Our lives become thermometers reflecting what’s happening to us rather than thermostats reflecting what’s happening in us.

Let me just say for clarity, that I’m not talking about self-inflicted things that happen to us; problems we create by our own foolishness. All we can do about those is to wise up and start making some better choices. In the context of this article I am referring to things that happen to us which are beyond our immediate control, the things that life, and sometimes the devil, just brings our way.

External Guidance versus Inner Obedience

People who live by what’s happening to them also develop a complicated circumstantial system of interpreting God’s will for their life. Knowing the will of God becomes a system of circumstantial red, amber or green lights. When things are going well, God is for them and blessing their life, but when things start going badly they quickly change their minds and start looking for new guidance, wondering what God is really trying to tell them. This breeds all manner of flakiness, as people go off in pursuit of signs, conspiracy theories and prophecies, and often the use of Gideon-style ‘fleeces’ to find the true will of God [3]. My Associate Pastor, Stephen Matthew, told our church recently about an occasion when he was a new Christian. He was sat in a home group, wondering whether or not what he wanted to say was actually a prophecy. He made a deal with God that if a red double-decker bus went past the window, he would know it was the will of God for him to prophesy. Three red buses later he was totally confused and finished up saying nothing! You may think that this is ridiculous but the equivalent happens every single day in the lives of ‘type 1’ people. They are totally preoccupied with, ‘What is happening to me?’

Divine Compulsion

I discovered this reality during our ‘crossing over’ period; that is the period which began about five years ago, and during which we became a new church. I soon realised that when God wants something doing, he couldn’t care less what you’re already doing; he has a way of so impressing his will on your heart, until what’s happening in you is far stronger than anything that’s happening to you. I now call this living under ‘divine compulsion.’
I learned this from the apostle Paul’s life and some of you reading this article need to understand that you too are under a ‘divine compulsion’ to get something done in your generation, and God couldn’t care less what’s happening to you, he’s after what’s happening in you and what’s going to happen through you. Some of you are wondering what part of ‘No’ and ‘I can’t do that’ God doesn’t seem to understand! Well, you can keep trying to say ‘No’ but if it didn’t work for Jonah, Jeremiah, Moses or Gideon, I don’t think it will work for you either.
During our ‘crossing over’ as a church, my dilemma wasn’t that bad things were being said to me or about me, or that people were leaving me, or withdrawing their financial support. My dilemma was that I was so compelled by what was happening in me that I was unmoved by what was happening to me. Like Paul in Asia, I felt like I was dying and that I should probably start choosing the hymns! But despite that, I couldn’t get free from my inner compulsion to keep going in a direction that I knew only too well would be dangerous, difficult and painful. I realised that God didn’t seem to care about our nice ‘middle class’ church, he was more concerned about his perfect will for our city.

Prophets of Doom

I remember clearly the day when a couple who had been in our church for many years, and who just couldn’t get past what was happening to our church, came to see me with a so called ‘word’ from God. They told me, ‘God is saying that if you continue on this path, many people will leave, families will be divided, your reputation will be damaged, money will dry up and people will be hurt. You and Glenda will be lied about, blamed and slandered. You will experience great pain.’ And it was delivered in such a way as if to emphasise that, ‘What you’re doing can’t be God’s will because all these bad things are happening.’ My response came straight from my guts. I remember so clearly saying to the couple: ‘I believe you are right; that is the word of God to me, thank you.’ They thought that I had seen the light, until I shared a passage of scripture with them that God had educated me from months earlier. It is the passage where Paul is saying a final farewell to the Ephesian elders: ‘And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me--the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace. [4]

Some time later, while still on his way to Jerusalem at the house of Philip the evangelist, Agabus prophesied over Paul that bad things were going to happen to him in Jerusalem. Paul’s companions pleaded with him not to go to Jerusalem because of this but Paul made it very clear that he was more concerned about what God wanted to achieve in and through him than what anybody could ever do to him; he was prepared to go to Jerusalem even if it killed him. [5]
Paul, unlike the ‘type 1’ people around him, didn’t assume that bad things happening to him meant that God had changed his mind about what he was doing in and through him. And likewise, people leaving our church, financial hardship and my own personal suffering never really caused me, deep down on the inside, to question my direction. God was not saying ‘Don’t do it,’ he was saying, ‘If you do, there’s a cost and this is what it is.’

Good People Happen to Bad Things

Bad things do happen to good people. But more importantly, good people happen to bad things. I decided that instead of being a good person to whom bad things happened, I would happen to bad things! The writer of Hebrews doesn’t record the bad things that happened to Daniel or the three Hebrew boys thrown into the fiery furnace, he records what happened to the lions and the flames. ‘By faith they shut the mouths of Lions and quenched the fury of the flames.’ [6] Daniel happened to the lions, Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego happened to the flames. The only thing the three Hebrew boys lost in that furnace was their bondage - their ropes fell off! And the only thing that you are going to lose in the ‘furnace’ of what the devil tries to do to you, is the bondage he is trying to put on you in an attempt to destroy what God is doing in you.

Luke records a very interesting episode on the island of Malta. Following Paul’s shipwreck just off the coast we read: ‘Once safely on shore, we found out that the island was called Malta. The islanders showed us unusual kindness. They built a fire and welcomed us all because it was raining and cold. Paul gathered a pile of brushwood and, as he put it on the fire, a viper, driven out by the heat, fastened itself on his hand. When the islanders saw the snake hanging from his hand, they said to each other, "This man must be a murderer; for though he escaped from the sea, justice has not allowed him to live." But Paul shook the snake off into the fire and suffered no ill effects. The people expected him to swell up or suddenly fall dead, but after waiting a long time and seeing nothing unusual happen to him, they changed their minds and said he was a god.’ [7]

Here we have a classic illustration of the difference between ‘type 1’ - what’s happening to you people, and ‘type 2’ - what’s happening in you people. The islanders judged Paul to be a bad man and a murderer because of what happened to him. They expected him to swell up and fall dead. And in the same way, some people who saw the bad things that bit me are still waiting for me to swell up and die! Some people who are convinced you were wrong because of the bad things that happened to you, are probably still waiting for you, your church or ministry to fail too. When Paul didn’t die but instead just ignored what had happened to him and shook off the snake, they changed their minds and declared that he was a god! It’s amazing how, to some people, you can go from being a devil to an angel by simply ignoring what’s happening to you and staying focussed on what’s happening in you. People who live by and judge life by what happens to them and others are the most fickle, unstable and unreliable people in the church.

Sadly, many churches are run by these ‘type 1’ people who, almost daily, in the light of unforeseen circumstances happening to them, start looking for new direction and guidance. Many other leadership teams suffer because they are a mixture of ‘type 1’ and ‘type 2’ people. The truth is that no leadership team will survive which hasn’t first settled that their governing ethic is to be ‘type 2’ people; believing that what God is doing in and through them always matters more than what’s happening to them.

Just keep doing the last thing God told you

What the islanders didn’t realise was that between the last thing God told Paul to do, which was, ‘Go to Rome’ [8] and that snake biting him, he had lived a three year nightmare of bad things happening to him. Yet never once did he go back to God to check that his direction was accurate. From the moment God compelled Paul towards Jerusalem and ultimately Rome, he had survived an assassination plot, two years in jail under Governor Felix, numerous public trials, including the famous one before King Agrippa, weeks at sea in a ‘perfect storm,’ a ship wreck, another assassination plot by the soldiers on board the sinking ship and then finally the snakebite on the island of Malta. During that entire period, Paul paid no attention whatsoever to what was happening to him. In fact one night during the storm, two and a half years into his obedience to the last thing God told him, Paul tells his fellow passengers that an Angel appeared to him, not to rescue him or issue new instructions, but simply to say, ‘it’s still plan A; it’s still Rome’: ‘Last night an angel of the God whose I am and whom I serve stood beside me and said, “Do not be afraid, Paul. You must stand trial before Caesar; and God has graciously given you the lives of all who sail with you.”’ [9]

As far as we know, God had not spoken to Paul for three years regarding the primary direction for his life. But listening to some people, it would appear that God speaks to them more in a day than he ever did to all the apostles put together in their lifetime!

The last thing God told me to do was five years ago when he said, ‘Cross the church over, reach your city and tell my church what you learn.’ During the past five years I have had some trouble, lots of stuff has happened to me, but I can honestly say that I have never once allowed what was happening to me to question what God was doing in and through me. Some of you have and you must go back to the last thing that God told you to do. He is not trying to give you new guidance through what’s happening to you. He simply expects what’s happening to you to deepen what he is already doing in and through you. Once you become a prisoner to the will of God, nothing else must ever be allowed to become your jailor.

I pray for all reading this article, that you will begin to live afresh from what God is doing in you and through you. It’s time to shake off the snake, the trials and the shipwrecks and press on to your ‘Rome’. Yes, it’s still Rome, still plan A. I’ll see you there!

1 - 2 Corinthians 1:8-11
2 - Matthew 5:13
3 - Judges 6:36
4 - Acts 20:22-24
5 - Acts 21:10-14
6 - Hebrews 11:33-34
7 - Acts 28:1-8
8 - Acts 23:11
9 - Acts 27:23-24