Gen. 30:6 Dan, “God has vindicated me.”
Envious of her sister’s children, Rachel enters the contest by giving her maid Bilhah to Jacob to conceive a seed. God answers her prayers, and as a sign of her vindication, she names the son, Dan, meaning judge.
At some point in your ministry, you will come under the scrutiny and be judged based on the standards of others. The difficulty of this position comes because we are very aware of the mixed motives of our own hearts. We vacillate between believing everything we do is out of pure and undefiled hearts to condemning ourselves for our failure and misgivings. The tendency of the world to look for some clear standard of measure by which to judge the effectiveness of our work runs against God’s ways of judging our hearts.
In 1 Samuel 16, the prophet is sent to the house of David to pick the next leader. God bypasses all the sons of Jesse who are tall and handsome in appearance and chooses David, saying, “For the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7) God chooses David, a ruddy, sensuous, worshiper of God who also has he own faults and then pronounces two New Testament epilogues about him: “a man after my own heart,” (Acts 13:22) who “served His own generation.” (Acts 13:36)
How can we reconcile the good that David and other leaders of the church have done with their human failures? Fortunately, the job of judging ministries is not ours, but rather God’s. When we are caught in a difficult situation whereby all our actions are brought into question, our only hope is to fall on the Lord’s mercy rather than vindicate ourselves. God is the Just Judge of the universe who judge rightly.
I have seen in many instances fallen human take up this mantle of judgment against a man, women, or ministry. Their initial motives always appear pure when they say they want to be good stewards of the ministry and help insure we are serving God as effectively as possible. The challenge, however, is that their opinions and judgement are always limited by their biased perspectives. No one person can see the 360-degree view that God has of an individual or a ministry. No person can judge the heart of a man or woman as God can.
When you are faced with a challenge of justifying your ministry by providing measures, rubrics, strategic plans and targeted performance goals; it may help to realize that these human indicators cannot alter your position and the opinion God has of you in heaven. Man looks at the outside; the Lord looks at the heart. Let Him be your vindication.
The Joseph Factor 