I found this video clip on a friend's Facebook page. Not only is it fun to watch, it's a great visual illustration for unity in a marriage. Scripture says that in marriage "they are no longer two, but are one flesh." (Matt. 19:6) The couple in this video are perfectly in sync in every movement and in every moment. Imagine if married couples who claim to follow Jesus would demonstrate this kind of unity in every movement and moment of our lives! Enjoy the video!
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Jacob's Trouble iMix on iTUnes
I created this little beginner's guide to Jacob's Trouble. Call it a primer for the uninitiated, if you will. A sort of JT 101. Enjoy!
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
a Radical thought....
Read this last night in David Platt's book, Radical:
"I am frightened by the reality that the church I lead can carry on most of our activities smoothly, efficiently, even successfully, never realizing that the Holy Spirit of God is virtually absent from the picture."
Have we programmed God right out of our churches? Have we effectively silenced His voice by our efficiency? He goes on to say:
"The church I lead could have the least gifted people, the least talented people, the fewest leaders, and the least money, and this church under the power of the Holy Spirit could still shake the nations for His Glory."
I haven't heard that in many of the church growth conferences I've attended! It's all about strategies and methods and buy my book. I fear we are so busy imitating each other that we have forgotten to imitate Christ.
Just a thought...
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
The Legend of Jimmy the Cat
A few weeks ago I bought a riding lawn mower from a guy off of Craigslist. We had recently moved into a house on 1.5 acres and a push mower just wasn't going to cut it... literally. My oldest son, Erik, and I went to meet the guy and look at the mower. It turned out that he and his wife were fellow Jesus followers and knew Johnny Hunt, our former pastor and mentor from First Baptist Woodstock. We hit it off immediately.
He was former military and had just taken a job in Huntsville, AL. They would be moving at the end of the next week and they were getting ready for a big yard sale. His wife was a sweet, little Romanian lady with a heavy accent. She was scurrying all over the house getting ready to move. She was trying to sell us everything in the house!
At one point she asks Erik if we would want a free cat. He tells her that he has always wanted a cat but that both he and his little brother are both allergic to cats so we have never been able to have one. She explains that these are outdoor cats; they have never been inside the house and that all we would have to do is put some food out and they would be fine. They are good mousers, she says, and that catches Erik's ear. We had been having a little trouble with mice getting in from the field behind our house.
So Erik asks me what I thought. I tell him maybe but I would have to talk it over with mom. I have brought animals home without consulting my wife once before. Only once. And it will never happen again.
So I buy the lawn mower and the man is nice enough to put it on his trailer and bring it back to our house. We shake hands and say goodbye. I ask Cheryl about the cat and she says let her think about it. We already have a dog, a bird, and a guinea pig. But the idea of an outdoor cat who will catch mice is appealing. The kids are all excited. We might get a cat! Especially my animal loving daughter, Whitney. They ask us everyday, Are we going to get the cat from those people?
A few days later the phone rings. It's the little Romanian lady. "Won't you please take one of our cats? You know the Bible says in Proverbs that a righteous man cares even for the animals." Oh no she didn't! Did she just play the Bible card? Anyway, she's crying and telling us that the cats belonged to her neighbor who was a good friend and that she died and so she adopted them and it would break her heart if she couldn't find a good home for them.
Needless to say, we took the cat. We arranged to come pick him up on my lunch break one day. So Cheryl and I drive out to her house with the little kennel that we use to crate our dog. That's what we planned to use to transport the cat to hi new location. When we arrive, she introduces us to Jimmy, a pretty orange and white striped cat. He is obviously agitated. He knows something is up. He's pacing around the kitchen, wide-eyed.
Meg, the little Romanian lady, explains that Jimmy has never been in the house so he's a little freaked out. Oh, great, I thought, just wait until we try to cram him in the crate! Suddenly Jimmy walks over to the sliding glass door, leaps about eight feet in the air and claws the door all the way down! Yikes. Meg is talking sweetly to Jimmy, trying to calm him down. She walks over and picks him up and brings him to the crate. I open the door. It takes a few tries to get Jimmy and all his splaying limbs inside the crate. Once we do, Jimmy is not happy.
In fact, Jimmy goes insane! He's howling and yowling and clawing and scratching and rolling over and over. It's all I can do to hold on to the thing. Meg is crying, "It's okay, Jimmy. Mommy loves you. It's all right..." Jimmy ain't havin' it. Jimmy is in full freak mode.
Finally we get him in the car and Meg says a tearful goodbye along with some last minute instructions. She gives us some of Jimmy's favorite food, his dish. Some things to help make the transition go smoother. "I'll call in a couple of days to see how he is doing,"she says. We assure her Jimmy will be well taken care of. We'll take pictures and email them to you, we tell her.
On the ride home, Jimmy calms down. He goes still and quiet. He even lets us scratch behind his ears. He's very friendly, just scared. We talk about how we are going to bring Jimmy onto our back screened in porch to assimilate him. The plan is to feed him and pet him and talk to him to give him the idea that this is home. We talk about how much Jimmy will love it at our house. It will cat heaven! Our kids will love him, he will have the run of the place. We laugh about how our dog will probably be afraid of him. Meanwhile, Jimmy is in the crate in the back, completely calm. Was that a purr?
When we arrive with Jimmy, it's like a scene from a Disney movie. The kids all pour out of the house and run to greet Jimmy. They are so excited. We finally get to have a cat! But when we go to get Jimmy out of the car, he starts in with the freak-out again. He's howling and yowling and kicking with his back legs as hard as he can. I struggle to hold on as we slowly walk Jimmy around the back of the house to the porch, where he will be fed and loved and assured...
I am almost to the steps of the porch when suddenly Jimmy, in a last ditch, super-feline feat of strength, kicks the entire cage door completely off it's hinges. In the half a second it took me to realize what was happening, an orange and white blur shot out of the cage door, paused at the corner of the house to give us a look of contempt -- as if to say, "So long, suckers!"-- and disappeared. Forever. And we've never seen him since.
My head was spinning. What just happened? The kids were upset; our youngest was in tears. Disappointment hung like a fog over our backyard in that moment. Shock and disbelief gave way to anger. First at Jimmy -- How dare you! Do you know what I had planned for you? Do you realize how good you were going to have it? And you dare reject it? Reject ME?! But then I found myself angry with God. We had even prayed before our final decision to adopt the cat and felt like we had been given a green light. God, why would you do let that happen? We were just trying to do something nice for someone! Did we hear wrong? What was that all about?
I wish I could say that I handled it well in front of our kids. I was standing there still holding that stupid cage, the door laying in the grass at my feet. "Well, that's just great!" I spat. I dropped the cage, disgusted. "He's dead! You know that, don't you? He's dead! He'll be hit by a car, eaten by wild animals. He'll starve!" My wife is looking at me in horror trying to cover our youngest sons ears from hearing all this. It was not my finest moment. And my lunch break was over. I had just spent it all on that ungrateful cat. My family piled in the van to try to find Jimmy, while I went back to the office -- angry, dejected, humiliated -- and tried to be a pastor.
All day I felt horrible. I began to feel sad and defeated. I felt responsible for Jimmy. I kept hearing that sweet little Romanian lady's voice in my head, "I'll call in a few days to see how Jimmy is doing." For two weeks we wouldn't answer the phone for fear it was her! The phone would ring and the kids would yell, "Don't answer it! It's the cat lady!" I didn't know why it effected me so badly. I came home from work that evening. No Jimmy. Over the next few days, whenever we went outside, we would call out, "Jimmy! JIIIIIIIIIMMMMMMYYYYYYYYY!" Nothing. Jimmy was not coming back.
That evening I was out in the back yard with my oldest son, Erik. We were just kind of standing there, on the spot where it all happened. I was no longer angry, just kinda sad. While we were talking it over, it seemed like God answered my question, Why did You let this happen? It just came spilling out over my lips as we talked. "It's like when God has something great planned for us, somewhere He wants to take us that is better than anything we ever imagined," I said, "but because the transition from the place we are now to the place He wants us to be can be scary, we panic and bolt, like Jimmy. And we miss out on all the good things He has." The lights were coming on for me, even as I was speaking. "What is worse, we take ourselves out from under His provision and protection and refuse to come under it. Then we are on our own in a dangerous and hostile world."
Romans 8:28-29 sprang to the forefront of my mind:
The incident with Jimmy, the quote from Matt Chandler, and the passage from Romans 8 all came into line perfectly.
To this day, we don't know what happened to Jimmy. He's a legend, like Bigfoot. Maybe he's out there somewhere. Our oldest swears he saw him the other day at the fringe of the property. But he blinked and he was gone. But whether or not he ever comes back I am deeply grateful for what he taught me, and for how God used him to encourage our people to hang on to God even when things seem scary.
Click here to here the sermon I preached from this experience.
He was former military and had just taken a job in Huntsville, AL. They would be moving at the end of the next week and they were getting ready for a big yard sale. His wife was a sweet, little Romanian lady with a heavy accent. She was scurrying all over the house getting ready to move. She was trying to sell us everything in the house!
At one point she asks Erik if we would want a free cat. He tells her that he has always wanted a cat but that both he and his little brother are both allergic to cats so we have never been able to have one. She explains that these are outdoor cats; they have never been inside the house and that all we would have to do is put some food out and they would be fine. They are good mousers, she says, and that catches Erik's ear. We had been having a little trouble with mice getting in from the field behind our house.
So Erik asks me what I thought. I tell him maybe but I would have to talk it over with mom. I have brought animals home without consulting my wife once before. Only once. And it will never happen again.
So I buy the lawn mower and the man is nice enough to put it on his trailer and bring it back to our house. We shake hands and say goodbye. I ask Cheryl about the cat and she says let her think about it. We already have a dog, a bird, and a guinea pig. But the idea of an outdoor cat who will catch mice is appealing. The kids are all excited. We might get a cat! Especially my animal loving daughter, Whitney. They ask us everyday, Are we going to get the cat from those people?
A few days later the phone rings. It's the little Romanian lady. "Won't you please take one of our cats? You know the Bible says in Proverbs that a righteous man cares even for the animals." Oh no she didn't! Did she just play the Bible card? Anyway, she's crying and telling us that the cats belonged to her neighbor who was a good friend and that she died and so she adopted them and it would break her heart if she couldn't find a good home for them.
Needless to say, we took the cat. We arranged to come pick him up on my lunch break one day. So Cheryl and I drive out to her house with the little kennel that we use to crate our dog. That's what we planned to use to transport the cat to hi new location. When we arrive, she introduces us to Jimmy, a pretty orange and white striped cat. He is obviously agitated. He knows something is up. He's pacing around the kitchen, wide-eyed.
Meg, the little Romanian lady, explains that Jimmy has never been in the house so he's a little freaked out. Oh, great, I thought, just wait until we try to cram him in the crate! Suddenly Jimmy walks over to the sliding glass door, leaps about eight feet in the air and claws the door all the way down! Yikes. Meg is talking sweetly to Jimmy, trying to calm him down. She walks over and picks him up and brings him to the crate. I open the door. It takes a few tries to get Jimmy and all his splaying limbs inside the crate. Once we do, Jimmy is not happy.
In fact, Jimmy goes insane! He's howling and yowling and clawing and scratching and rolling over and over. It's all I can do to hold on to the thing. Meg is crying, "It's okay, Jimmy. Mommy loves you. It's all right..." Jimmy ain't havin' it. Jimmy is in full freak mode.
Finally we get him in the car and Meg says a tearful goodbye along with some last minute instructions. She gives us some of Jimmy's favorite food, his dish. Some things to help make the transition go smoother. "I'll call in a couple of days to see how he is doing,"she says. We assure her Jimmy will be well taken care of. We'll take pictures and email them to you, we tell her.
On the ride home, Jimmy calms down. He goes still and quiet. He even lets us scratch behind his ears. He's very friendly, just scared. We talk about how we are going to bring Jimmy onto our back screened in porch to assimilate him. The plan is to feed him and pet him and talk to him to give him the idea that this is home. We talk about how much Jimmy will love it at our house. It will cat heaven! Our kids will love him, he will have the run of the place. We laugh about how our dog will probably be afraid of him. Meanwhile, Jimmy is in the crate in the back, completely calm. Was that a purr?
When we arrive with Jimmy, it's like a scene from a Disney movie. The kids all pour out of the house and run to greet Jimmy. They are so excited. We finally get to have a cat! But when we go to get Jimmy out of the car, he starts in with the freak-out again. He's howling and yowling and kicking with his back legs as hard as he can. I struggle to hold on as we slowly walk Jimmy around the back of the house to the porch, where he will be fed and loved and assured...
I am almost to the steps of the porch when suddenly Jimmy, in a last ditch, super-feline feat of strength, kicks the entire cage door completely off it's hinges. In the half a second it took me to realize what was happening, an orange and white blur shot out of the cage door, paused at the corner of the house to give us a look of contempt -- as if to say, "So long, suckers!"-- and disappeared. Forever. And we've never seen him since.
My head was spinning. What just happened? The kids were upset; our youngest was in tears. Disappointment hung like a fog over our backyard in that moment. Shock and disbelief gave way to anger. First at Jimmy -- How dare you! Do you know what I had planned for you? Do you realize how good you were going to have it? And you dare reject it? Reject ME?! But then I found myself angry with God. We had even prayed before our final decision to adopt the cat and felt like we had been given a green light. God, why would you do let that happen? We were just trying to do something nice for someone! Did we hear wrong? What was that all about?
I wish I could say that I handled it well in front of our kids. I was standing there still holding that stupid cage, the door laying in the grass at my feet. "Well, that's just great!" I spat. I dropped the cage, disgusted. "He's dead! You know that, don't you? He's dead! He'll be hit by a car, eaten by wild animals. He'll starve!" My wife is looking at me in horror trying to cover our youngest sons ears from hearing all this. It was not my finest moment. And my lunch break was over. I had just spent it all on that ungrateful cat. My family piled in the van to try to find Jimmy, while I went back to the office -- angry, dejected, humiliated -- and tried to be a pastor.
All day I felt horrible. I began to feel sad and defeated. I felt responsible for Jimmy. I kept hearing that sweet little Romanian lady's voice in my head, "I'll call in a few days to see how Jimmy is doing." For two weeks we wouldn't answer the phone for fear it was her! The phone would ring and the kids would yell, "Don't answer it! It's the cat lady!" I didn't know why it effected me so badly. I came home from work that evening. No Jimmy. Over the next few days, whenever we went outside, we would call out, "Jimmy! JIIIIIIIIIMMMMMMYYYYYYYYY!" Nothing. Jimmy was not coming back.
That evening I was out in the back yard with my oldest son, Erik. We were just kind of standing there, on the spot where it all happened. I was no longer angry, just kinda sad. While we were talking it over, it seemed like God answered my question, Why did You let this happen? It just came spilling out over my lips as we talked. "It's like when God has something great planned for us, somewhere He wants to take us that is better than anything we ever imagined," I said, "but because the transition from the place we are now to the place He wants us to be can be scary, we panic and bolt, like Jimmy. And we miss out on all the good things He has." The lights were coming on for me, even as I was speaking. "What is worse, we take ourselves out from under His provision and protection and refuse to come under it. Then we are on our own in a dangerous and hostile world."
Romans 8:28-29 sprang to the forefront of my mind:
And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son...My mind immediately went back to something Matt Chandler, pastor of the Village Church in Dallas, TX, had said at a pastors' conference I recently attended. He was speaking to a room full of church planters and pastors, and he made this statement:
"Suffering is coming for your people. It just is. You can't protect them from it but you can prepare them for it."That statement had really burned into my heart. I thought of all the families in our church and the things they were going through -- broken marriages, strained relationships with kids, lost jobs, addictions, diseases, financial struggles. The dots were beginning to connect. I remembered a prayer I had prayed a week or so earlier. I was due to preach in a month or so for our lead pastor who was going to be in Africa with a missions team. I had asked God, "What do You want to say to our people?"
The incident with Jimmy, the quote from Matt Chandler, and the passage from Romans 8 all came into line perfectly.
- God wants to take us somewhere we could never get on our own. He wants to produce in us the very image of Christ. It's what we were created for, to bear His image and so bring Him glory.
- The primary way He produces that in us is through suffering. James says that "the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." (Jas. 1:3-4, NASB)
- How we respond to suffering says everything about who we believe God is. That's why James said it was the testing of your faith. It proves whether or not you believe that God is who He says He is and that He will do what He says He will do. (see Hebrews 11:6)
- Trusting God requires a change in our perspective about what is truly "good."
To this day, we don't know what happened to Jimmy. He's a legend, like Bigfoot. Maybe he's out there somewhere. Our oldest swears he saw him the other day at the fringe of the property. But he blinked and he was gone. But whether or not he ever comes back I am deeply grateful for what he taught me, and for how God used him to encourage our people to hang on to God even when things seem scary.
Click here to here the sermon I preached from this experience.
Monday, May 24, 2010
When Faith Takes Center Stage: Making the Most of Major Moments in our Culture
(This is a reprint of an article I wrote a few years ago for our church magazine at Hope Baptist in Las Vegas. I think it serves as an excellent refresher in leveraging the opportunity to speak truth into the culture that the final episode of the TV series Lost has afforded us. Enjoy!)
“If God had a face what would it look like? And would you want to see if seeing meant that you would have to believe in things like Heaven and Jesus…”
(from “One of Us” by Eric Bazilian)
I’ll never forget the first time I heard those words come wafting over my car stereo speakers. The woman’s voice that sang them sounded so sincere and the questions she was asking were so poignant that it stopped me in my tracks. In the weeks that followed, that song rocketed up the music charts and you could hardly turn on a radio or TV without hearing it. Whether or not you agreed with the sentiments expressed in the song, there was no denying that the subject of faith in God had suddenly been thrust into the spotlight. It was as if the songwriter had tapped into something deep within our cultural consciousness; the longing for God to be real and, more importantly, to be accessible.
Suddenly, everywhere I went, people were discussing spiritual things. Friends outside the faith were anxious to hear my take on it. “You’re a Christian, Jerry, what do you think about it?” People who had been totally closed to the gospel only a short time before were now asking me to explain it to them.!
That was a rare moment in our secularized culture, a divinely orchestrated open window of opportunity to engage our culture on its home turf. Dan Brown’s runaway bestseller The DaVinci Code was another such moment. Suddenly the question “Who is Jesus?” made headlines in every newspaper and magazine in the world.
Dick Staub, in his book Too Christian, Too Pagan says, “Jesus didn’t invite the world to come to church, He commanded the church to go into the world.” The question for us is, “Can we put down the picket signs long enough to honestly answer the deep questions of faith our culture is asking in popular music, books, TV and movies?”
So how can we be ready for that next big moment when it comes? How can we engage our culture without succumbing to its influence? Here are a few ideas to help us be “in the world but not of it”:
Pray! There is no substitute for spending time alone with God. Like Pastor Vance always says, “We don’t pray before we work, prayer is the work, then God works.” Changing your world starts by letting God change you into the image of His Son, then letting people see that image in your life.
Stay connected. Don’t retreat into a stained-glass bubble. Get out there and mingle! Watch a little TV, listen to the radio, go to a movie. Don’t retreat into the Christian subculture or you may miss what God is doing all around you.
Affirm Truth wherever you find it. There is an old saying; “Truth is Truth even in the mouth of Baal.” Sometimes pop culture can stumble onto truth, even if it doesn’t understand why it’s true. Look for themes in pop culture that line up with Biblical truth. Point them out at every opportunity. Use them to start discussions at work or school. Some helpful resources for doing this can be found at websites like movieguide.org, movieministry.com, and Focus on the Family’s pluggedinonline.com.
Be ready with a gentle answer. People will have a lot of tough questions about faith in a fallen world. Don’t get defensive or intimidated. It’s not about being right; it’s about speaking the truth with love (Eph. 4:15) and trusting God with the result.
What LOST taught us....
Ok, ok so I am probably just one of a million self-styled pundits blogging on the final episode of what was arguably the greatest show in the history of television, ABC's Lost. As expected, the final episode was polarizing and controversial among it's fans. The first few minutes after the final show finished, Facebook lit up with Christians who were fans of the show decrying the ecumenism and universalism of the show's theology. But really, what did we expect? Lost has toyed with spiritual and religious matters its entire run. In my opinion that is one of the things that made it so compelling. But ultimately you have writers and creators who do not know the truth or the Author of Truth so can we really expect it to line up perfectly with Biblical doctrine?
So... While it's fresh on my mind I wanted to share a few thoughts on where I believe Lost got it right.
The spiritual is as real and as significant as the material. Even more so.
Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, "... we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal."
What many of us miss in the busyness of our lives is that we are built for glory, made to last. We were created for the eternal, not the temporal. There are spiritual realities in us and all around us that are even more real than what we experience physically and will last far beyond this present world. We would do well to have an eternal perspective.
There is life after death, and the decisions we make here have an impact on where and how we experience it.
I want to be very careful that I am not misunderstood here. The Bible says clearly that Jesus Christ is the only provision for salvation. "And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”(Acts 4:12) But even for the believer, how we live in this life bears heavily on the life we will experience in eternity with Christ. Otherwise why would the Bible say that "each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire." (1 Cor. 3:13-15) We have hope beyond this life, and a blessed assurance that we will see our loved ones in Christ again. I found this aspect of the final episode very comforting and very moving, even if it was theologically flawed.
Faith is a vital part of our lives, so be careful where you place it.
Every person has faith in something. They can't help themselves. It is written into our DNA by our maker. We long to know that we matter, that our lives have purpose and direction and significance. So whether it is in God or in something else or even ourselves, we doggedly cling to that belief. Where we get "lost" (pun intended) is in the object of our faith. For Locke it was the island. For Ben it was Jacob. For Jack it was his ability to fix things. Every character had placed their faith in something. The truth is that everything other than God will fail us. Matt Chandler once said, "When you make gods of things that are not God, they cannot bear the weight of it and they will eventually collapse. And when they do, you will get hurt." Nevertheless, I loved the way that Lost fearlessly tackles the deeper issues of faith and doubt, redemption and salvation, purpose and destiny. The show handled deep issues of faith with more courage, honesty, and intelligence than all of Christian television programming combined.
Ultimately, life is about relationships.
It's not about blowing up hatches, pushing buttons and entering numbers. It's not even about smoke monsters and mysterious pools of light. This is the strongest theme of Lost. Our lives both here and in eternity are shaped by the relationships we have cultivated and invested in. How we treat people, how we love them, forgive them, comfort them, encourage them, these are the things that Bono calls "all that you can't leave behind." Your relationship with God through Christ is the fundamental, foundational relationship of your life, out of which will flow every other relationship. I appreciate that the writers of Lost never let the show stray too far from its heart: the relationships of the characters.
One final word of encouragement I would like to offer my fellow believers that may have been disappointed or upset at the universalistic approach of the final episode. Please do not get so bogged down in the details that you miss the big picture. Every now and then, God opens a rare and fleeting window for the Church to break out of its stained-glass ghetto and speak the Truth into the mainstream culture. Lost's final episode was such a moment. All over the world today -- in break rooms, cafeterias, around water coolers, in cubicles, in chat rooms and message boards -- people are talking about spiritual matters of life after death because of Lost. People are asking questions like what happens when you die, where do I go, how can I know for sure? The Church has some very good answers to these questions. Hopefully we can stop the flaming and the hating long enough to see this opportunity and leverage it for the Gospel's sake.
Thanks to J.J. Abrams, Carlton Cuse, Damon Lindelof, and everyone else who worked so hard to make Lost one of the most compelling, intelligent, creative, and even spiritual hours of television I have ever had the pleasure to experience. Now please pray for me as I enter my period of post-Lost depression. I almost wore a black arm band to work this morning! Oh, well, there's always Wipeout! :-)
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Exponental 2010
I am in Orlando, FL right now with out staff team at the Exponential Conference. It's an annual conference for church planters and pastors. I have to admit that my attitude going into it was not great.
We have just come off a whirlwind of back-to-back events at our church that began in February and ended with our big 4th anniversary celebration last weekend. In between has been a lot of stress, overtime, and being apart from my family, even when I was physically with them. At that same time we were buying and moving in to a new house, doing our taxes, teaching a class on marriage, and dealing with a series of stomach viruses that swept through the house, not once but twice! Now, don't get me wrong, there was also a lot of cool things happening: God was moving and growing me and my marriage, He was doing amazing things in our church body. There were plenty of good times along with the pressure, but the last thing on earth I wanted to do after all that is be away from my family for four days at a conference for pastors. I mean, seriously.
But in her Spirit-filled, graceful way, my wife reminded me to stop and ask God what He wanted to show me at the conference. She is so wise! I love that God put her with a doofus like me; I benefit from her wisdom and she gets to learn patience and long-suffering and mercy. It's a win-win! :-) So I asked God to show me what He has for me.
Okay, so it's only one day in and already it's been really great! Yesterday, I got to sit at the feet of one of the biggest influencers in my life, Matt Chandler, the lead pastor of the Village Church in Texas. Don't know if you know what all is going on in his life, but you can read about it just about anywhere. This dude is AMAZING. His wisdom, his knowledge of scripture, and how to practically apply it in personal discipleship is second to none. He is very funny but very serious at the same time. He will lay a truth on you that will just lay you out but you will be laughing at the same time. And he doesn't water anything down or pull any punches. I highly recommend his podcast as part of your regular intake of truth and wisdom from the Word.
Biggest takeaway from his workshops yesterday was this nugget: He was speaking on Matthew 13 about the parable of the sower and the seed. He was breaking down Jesus' explanation of it to the disciples in verses 18-23, as to what the different soils and scenarios meant. And he was framing it for church planters and pastors, who are sowers of the Gospel. We can become very frustrated and disappointed when people don't respond to the teaching or when our people fall away or don't seem to get it.
So he gets to verses 20 - 21:
Chandler breaks it down this way: This is the guy who hears it, gets it, gets saved, gets baptized, plugs in, then a year later falls off the wagon and disappears. Why? Because he doesn't make the connection between the Gospel and his suffering, He doesn't connect the dots between the Gospel and persecution. Chandler says pastors have to make that connection for their people so they will be ready when suffering comes:
Isn't that huge? Isn't how we see and interpret and handle our suffering just ginormous in our relationship with God. Otherwise we think He is out to get us or doesn't care or maybe isn't really there. My thought is this: if we fail our people in this, we are handing them over to the Enemy. We are setting them up to fall away and disappear.
Also, I got to meet Matt and shake his hand and personally thank him for being faithful. I got to look him in the eye and tell him what a difference his faithfulness has made to me and my wife. Matt has terminal brain cancer and will die, when is anyone's guess. I just didn't want to miss an opportunity to tell him what he means to me while I had the chance. It was great. He is speaking this morning and I can't wait to hear what he has to say.
There is a ton more but I gotta run and grab breakfast real fast before we leave. Later!
We have just come off a whirlwind of back-to-back events at our church that began in February and ended with our big 4th anniversary celebration last weekend. In between has been a lot of stress, overtime, and being apart from my family, even when I was physically with them. At that same time we were buying and moving in to a new house, doing our taxes, teaching a class on marriage, and dealing with a series of stomach viruses that swept through the house, not once but twice! Now, don't get me wrong, there was also a lot of cool things happening: God was moving and growing me and my marriage, He was doing amazing things in our church body. There were plenty of good times along with the pressure, but the last thing on earth I wanted to do after all that is be away from my family for four days at a conference for pastors. I mean, seriously.
But in her Spirit-filled, graceful way, my wife reminded me to stop and ask God what He wanted to show me at the conference. She is so wise! I love that God put her with a doofus like me; I benefit from her wisdom and she gets to learn patience and long-suffering and mercy. It's a win-win! :-) So I asked God to show me what He has for me.
Okay, so it's only one day in and already it's been really great! Yesterday, I got to sit at the feet of one of the biggest influencers in my life, Matt Chandler, the lead pastor of the Village Church in Texas. Don't know if you know what all is going on in his life, but you can read about it just about anywhere. This dude is AMAZING. His wisdom, his knowledge of scripture, and how to practically apply it in personal discipleship is second to none. He is very funny but very serious at the same time. He will lay a truth on you that will just lay you out but you will be laughing at the same time. And he doesn't water anything down or pull any punches. I highly recommend his podcast as part of your regular intake of truth and wisdom from the Word.
Biggest takeaway from his workshops yesterday was this nugget: He was speaking on Matthew 13 about the parable of the sower and the seed. He was breaking down Jesus' explanation of it to the disciples in verses 18-23, as to what the different soils and scenarios meant. And he was framing it for church planters and pastors, who are sowers of the Gospel. We can become very frustrated and disappointed when people don't respond to the teaching or when our people fall away or don't seem to get it.
So he gets to verses 20 - 21:
As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away.
Chandler breaks it down this way: This is the guy who hears it, gets it, gets saved, gets baptized, plugs in, then a year later falls off the wagon and disappears. Why? Because he doesn't make the connection between the Gospel and his suffering, He doesn't connect the dots between the Gospel and persecution. Chandler says pastors have to make that connection for their people so they will be ready when suffering comes:
"Suffering is coming for your people. It just is. You can't protect them from it, but you can prepare them for it."
Isn't that huge? Isn't how we see and interpret and handle our suffering just ginormous in our relationship with God. Otherwise we think He is out to get us or doesn't care or maybe isn't really there. My thought is this: if we fail our people in this, we are handing them over to the Enemy. We are setting them up to fall away and disappear.
Also, I got to meet Matt and shake his hand and personally thank him for being faithful. I got to look him in the eye and tell him what a difference his faithfulness has made to me and my wife. Matt has terminal brain cancer and will die, when is anyone's guess. I just didn't want to miss an opportunity to tell him what he means to me while I had the chance. It was great. He is speaking this morning and I can't wait to hear what he has to say.
There is a ton more but I gotta run and grab breakfast real fast before we leave. Later!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)