Keith's Corner

Blog Has Moved To www.gospelrenewal.com

2011-03-16T14:50:00.002-05:00

Hey everyone - I've moved my blog!

Go to www.gospelrenewal.com to see the latest.

Thanks, Keith

Jesus Fulfills Prophecy

2011-03-13T17:08:00.001-05:00

I'm writing some new-believer training that I'm using with one of my neighbors who is new to the faith and hungry to know more about God and the Bible. As I was working on it this afternoon, I came across this great list of prophecies that Jesus fulfills from the Old Testament (with their NT connection). I remember the impact that this list had on me when I was investigating the claims of Christianity (thanks to Josh McDowell). Check this out:

Over 300 Messianic Prophecies

Gen. 3:15.....He will bruise Satan's head.....Heb. 2:14, 1 Jn. 3:18
Gen. 9:26,27...The God of Shem will be the Son of Shem...Lu. 3:36
Gen. 12:3...As Abraham's seed,will bless all nations...Acts. 3:25,26
Gen. 12:7...The Promise made to Abraham's Seed...Gal. 3:16
Gen. 14:18...A priest after Melchizedek...Heb. 6:20
Gen. 14:18........A King also........Heb. 7:2
Gen. 14:18...The Last Supper foreshadowed...Mt. 26:26-29
Gen. 17:19.......The Seed of Isaac.......Rom. 9:7
Gen. 22:8...The Lamb of God promised...Jn. 1:29
Gen. 22:18...As Isaac's seed, will bless all nations...Gal. 3:16
Gen.26:2-5..The Seed of Isaac promised as the Redeemer..Heb.11:18
Gen. 49:10...The time of His coming...Lu. 2:1-7; Gal. 4:4
Gen. 49:10.......The Seed of Judah.......Lu. 3:33
Gen. 49:10......Called Shiloh or One Sent......Jn. 17:3
Gen. 49:10...To come before Judah lost identity...Jn. 11:47-52
Gen. 49:10...To Him shall the obedience of the people be...Jn. 10:16
Ex. 3:13,14........The Great "I Am".......Jn. 4:26
Ex. 12:5...A Lamb without blemish...1 Pet. 1:19
Ex. 12:13...The blood of the Lamb saves from wrath...Rom. 5:8
Ex. 12:21-27...Christ is our Passover...1 Cor. 5;7
Ex. 12:46...Not a bone of the Lamb to be broken...Jn. 19:31-36
Ex. 15:2...His exaltation predicted as Yeshua...Acts 7:55,56
Ex. 15:11...His Character-Holiness...Luke 1:35; Acts 4:27
Ex. 17:6...The Spiritual Rock of Israel...1 Cor. 10;4
Ex. 33:19...His Character-Merciful...Lu. 1:72
Lev.14:11..The leper cleansed-Sign to priesthood..Lu.5:12-14; Acts 6:7
Lev.16:15-17...Prefigures Christ's once-for-all death...Heb. 9:7-14
Lev.16:27...Suffering outside the Camp...Mt. 27:33; Heb. 13:11, 12
Lev.17:11...The Blood-the life of the flesh...Mt. 26;28; Mk. 10:45
Lev.17:11...It is the blood that makes atonement...1 Jn. 3:14-18
Lev.23:36-37...The Drink-offering: "If any man thirst." ..Jn. 19:31-36
Num. 9:12...Not a bone of Him broken...John 19:31-36
Num. 21:9...The serpent on a pole-Christ lifted up...Jn. 3:14-18
Num. 24:17...Time: "I shall see him, but not now."...Gal. 4:4
Deut. 18:15..."This is of a truth that prophet."...Jn. 6:14
Deut. 18:15-16..."Had ye believed Moses, ye would believe me."...Jn. 5:45-47
Deut. 18:18...Sent by the Father to speak His word...Jn. 8:28, 29
Deut. 18:19...Whoever will not hear must bear his sin...Jn. 12:15,
Deut. 21:23...Cursed is he that hangs on a tree...Gal. 3:10-13
Ruth 4:4-9...Christ, our kinsman, has redeemed us...Eph. 1:3-7
1 Sam. 2:10...Shall be an anointed King to the Lord...Mt. 28:18; Jn. 12:15
2 Sam. 7:12...David's Seed...Mt. 1:1
2 Sam. 7:14a...The Son of God... Lu. 1:32
2 Sam. 7:16...David's house established forever...Lu. 3:31; Rev. 22:16
2 Ki. 2:11...The bodily ascension to heaven illustrated...Lu. 24:51
1 Chr. 17:11...David's Seed...Mt. 1:1; 9:27
1 Chr. 17:12, 13a...To reign on David's throne forever...Lu. 1:32, 33
1 Chr. 17:13a..."I will be His Father, He...my Son."...Heb. 1:5
Job 19:23-27...The Resurrection predicted...Jn. 5:24-29
Psa. 2:1-3...The enmity of kings foreordained...Acts 4:25-28
Psa. 2:2...To own the title, Anointed (Christ)...Acts 2:36
Ps. 2:6...His Character-Holiness...Jn. 8:46; Rev. 3:7
Ps. 2:6...To own the title King...Mt. 2:2
Ps. 2:7...Declared the Beloved Son...Mt. 3;17
Psa. 2:7, 8...The Crucifixion and Resurrection intimated...Acts 13:29-33
Psa. 2:12...Life comes through faith in Him...Jn. 20:31
Psa. 8:2...The mouths of babes perfect His praise...Mt. 21:16
Psa. 8:5, 6...His humiliation and exaltation...Lu. 24:50-53; 1 Cor. 15:27
Psa. 16:10...Was not to see corruption...Acts 2:31
Psa. 16:9-11...Was to arise from the dead...Jn. 20:9
Psa. 17;15...The resurrection predicted...Lu. 24:6
Psa. 22:1...Forsaken because of sins of others...2 Cor. 5:21
Psa. 22:1...Words spoken from Calvary, "My God..." Mk. 15:34
Psa. 22:2...Darkness upon Calvary...Mt. 27:45
Psa. 22:7...They shoot out the lip and shake the head...Mt. 27:39
Psa. 22:8..He trusted in God, let Him deliver Him...Mt. 27:43
Psa. 22:9......Born the Saviour......Lu. 2:7
Psa. 22:14...Died of a broken (ruptured)heart...Jn. 19:34
Psa. 22:14,15...Suffered agony on Calvary...Mk. 15:34-37
Psa. 22:15........He thirsted........Jn. 19:28
Psa. 22:16...They pierced His hands and His feet....Jn. 19:34,37;20:27
Psa. 22:17,18...Stripped Him before the stares of men...Lu. 23:34,35
Psa. 22:18.....They parted His garments.....Jn. 19:23,24
Psa. 22:20,21...He committed Himself to God...Lu.23:46
Psa. 22:20,21..Satanic power bruising the Redeemer's heel..Heb. 2:14
Psa. 22:22.....His Resurrection declared.....Jn. 20:17
Psa. 22:27...He shall be the governor of the nations...Col 1:16
Psa. 22:31......It is finished......Jn. 19:30
Psa. 23:1....I am the Good Shephard....Jn. 10:11
Psa. 24:3......His exaltation predicted......Acts 1:11; Phil. 2:9
Psa. 30:3......His resurrection predicted......Acts 2:32
Psa. 31:5...Into thy hands I commit my spirit...Lu. 23:46
Psa. 31:11...His acquaintances fled from Him...Mk. 14:50
Psa. 31:13...They took counsel to put Him to death...Jn. 11:53
Psa. 31:14,15...He trusted in God, let Him deliver him...Mt. 27:43
Psa. 34:20.....Not a bone of Him broken.....Jn 19:31-36
Psa. 35:11....False witnesses rose up against Him....Mt. 26:59
Psa. 35:19...He was hated without a cause...Jn. 15:25
Psa. 38:11.....His friends stood afar off.....Lu. 23:49
Psa. 40:2-5...The joy of His resurrection predicted...Jn. 20:20
Psa. 40:6-8....His delight-the will of the Father....Jn. 4:34
Psa. 40:9....He was to preach the Righteousness in Israel....Mt. 4:17
Psa. 40:14...Confronted by adversaries in the Garden...Jn. 18:4-6
Psa. 41:9.....Betrayed by a familiar friend.....Jn. 13:18
Psa. 45:2...Words of Grace come from His lips...Lu. 4:22
Psa. 45:6...To own the title, God or Elohim...Heb. 1:8
Psa. 45:7...A special anointing by the Holy Spirit...Mt.3:16; Heb.1:9
Psa. 45:7,8...Called the Christ (Messiah or Anointed)...Lu. 2:11
Psa. 55:12-14...Betrayed by a friend, not an enemy...Jn. 13:18
Psa. 55:15...Unrepentant death of the Betrayer...Mt. 27:3-5; Acts 1:16-19
Psa. 68:18...To give gifts to men...Eph. 4:7-16
Psa. 68:18...Ascended into Heaven...Lu. 24:51
Psa. 69:4...Hated without a cause...Jn. 15:25
Psa. 69:8...A stranger to own brethren...Lu. 8;20,21
Psa. 69:9...Zealous for the Lord's House...Jn. 2:17
Psa. 69:14-20...Messiah's anguish of soul before crucifixion...Mt. 26:36-45
Psa. 69:20...My soul is exceeding sorrowful...Mt. 26:38
Psa. 69:21...Given vinegar in thirst...Mt. 27:34
Psa. 69:26...The Saviour given and smitten by God...Jn. 17:4; 18:11
Psa. 72:10,11...Great persons were to visit Him...Mt. 2:1-11
Psa. 72:16...The corn of wheat to fall into the Ground...Jn. 12:24
Psa. 72:17...His name, Yinon, will produce offspring...Jn. 1:12,13
Psa. 72:17...All nations shall be blessed by Him...Acts 2:11,12,41
Psa. 78:1.2...He would teach in parables...Mt. 13:34-35
Psa. 78:2b...To speak the Wisdom of God with authority...Mt. 7:29
Psa. 88:8...They stood afar off and watched...Lu. 23:49
Psa. 89:27...Emmanuel to be higher than earthly kings...Lu. 1:32,33
Psa. 89:35-37...David's Seed, throne, kingdom endure forever...Lu. 1:32,33
Psa. 89:36-37...His character-Faithfulness...Rev. 1:5
Psa. 90:2...He is from everlasting (Micah 5:2)...Jn. 1:1
Psa. 91:11,12...Identified as Messianic; used to tempt Christ...Lu. 4;10,11
Psa. 97:9...His exaltation predicted...Acts 1:11;Eph. 1:20
Psa. 100:5...His character-Goodness...Mt. 19:16,17
Psa. 102:1-11...The Suffering and Reproach of Calvary...Jn. 21:16-30
Psa. 102:25-27...Messiah is the Preexistent Son...Heb. 1:10-12
Psa. 109:25...Ridiculed...Mt. 27:39
Psa. 110:1...Son of David...Mt. 22:43
Psa. 110:1...To ascend to the right-hand of the Father...Mk.16:19
Psa. 110:1...David's son called Lord...Mt. 22:44,45
Psa. 110:4...A priest after Melchizedek's order...Heb. 6:20
Psa. 112:4...His character-Compassionate, Gracious, et al... Mt. 9;36
Psa. 118:17,18...Messiah's Resurrection assured...Lu. 24:5-7;1 Cor. 15:20
Psa. 118:22,23...The rejected stone is Head of the corner...Mt. 21:42,43
Psa. 118:26a...The Blessed One presented to Israel...Mt. 21:9
Psa. 118:26b...To come while Temple standing...Mt. 21;12-15
Psa. 132:11...The Seed of David(the fruit of His Body)...Lu. 1:32
Psa. 138:1-6...The supremacy of David's Seed amazes kings... Mt. 2:2-6
Psa. 147:3,6...The earthly ministry of Christ described...Lu. 4:18
Psa. 1:23...He will send the Spirit of God... Jn. 16;7
Song. 5;16...The altogether lovely One...Jn. 1:17
Isa. 6:1...When Isaiah saw His glory... Jn. 12:40-41
Isa. 6:9-10...Parables fall on deaf ears...Mt. 13:13-15
Isa. 6:9-12...Blinded to Christ and deaf to His words...Acts. 28:23-29
Isa. 7:14...To be born of a virgin...Lu. 1:35
Isa. 7:14...To be Emmanuel-God with us... Mt. 1:18-23
Isa. 8:8...Called Emmanuel...Mt. 28:20
Isa. 8:14...A stone of stumbling, a Rock of offense... 1 Pet. 2:8
Isa. 9:1,2...His ministry to begin in Galilee...Mt. 4:12-17
Isa. 9:6...A child born-Humanity...Lu. 1:31
Isa. 9:6...A Son given-Deity...Lu. 1:32; Jn. 1;14; 1 Tim. 3:16
Isa. 9:6...Declared to be the Son of God with power... Rom. 1:3,4
Isa. 9:6...The Wonderful One, Peleh...Lu. 4:22
Isa. 9:6...The Counsellor, Yaatz...Mt. 13:54
Isa. 9:6...The Mighty God, El Gibor...Mt. 11:20
Isa. 9:6...The Everlasting Father, Avi Adth...Jn. 8:58
Isa. 9:6...The Prince of Peace, Sar Shalom...Jn . 16:33
Isa. 9:7...To establish an everlasting kingdom...Lu. 1:32-33
Isa. 9:7...His Character-Just...Jn. 5:30
Isa. 9:7...No end to his Government, Throne, and Peace...Lu. 1:32-33
Isa. 11:1...Called a Nazarene-the Branch, Netzer...Mt. 2:23
Isa. 11:1...A rod out of Jesse-Son of Jesse...Lu. 3:23,32
Isa. 11:2...The anointed One by the Spirit...Mt. 3;16,17
Isa. 11:2...His Character-Wisdom, Understanding, et al....Jn. 4:4-26
Isa. 11:4...His Character-Truth...Jn. 14:6
Isa. 11:10...The Gentiles seek Him...Jn. 12:18-21
Isa. 12:2...Called Jesus-Yeshua...Mt. 1:21
Isa. 25:8...The Resurrection predicted...I Cor. 15:54
Isa. 26:19...His power of Resurrection predicted...Jn. 11:43,44
Isa. 28:16...The Messiah is the precious corner stone...Acts 4:11,12
Isa. 29:13...He indicated hypocritical obedience to His Word...Mt. 15:7-9
Isa. 29:14...The wise are confounded by the Word...I Cor. 1:18-31
Isa. 32:2...A Refuge-A man shall be a hiding place...Mt. 23:37
Isa. 35:4...He will come and save you...Mt. 1:21
Isa. 35:5...To have a ministry of miracles...Mt. 11:4-6
Isa. 40:3,4...Preceded by forerunner...Jn. 1:23
Isa. 40:9..."Behold your God."...Jn. 1:36;19:14
Isa. 40:11...A shepherd-compassionatelife-giver...Jn. 10:10-18
Isa. 42:1-4...The Servant-as a faithful, patient redeemer... Mt.12:18-21
Isa. 42:2...Meek and lowly... Mt. 11:28-30
Isa. 42:3...He brings hope for the hopeless... Jn. 4
Isa. 42:4...The nations shall wait on His teachings... Jn. 12:20-26
Isa. 42:6...The Light (salvation) of the Gentiles...Lu. 2:32
Isa. 42:1,6...His is a Worldwide compassion... Mt. 28:19,20
Isa. 42:7...Blind eyes opened... Jn. 9:25-38
Isa. 43:11...He is the only Saviour... Acts. 4:12
Isa. 44:3...He will send the Spirit of God... Jn. 16:7,13
Isa. 45:23...He will be the Judge... Jn. 5:22;Rom. 14:11
Isa. 48:12...The First and the Last...Jn. 1:30;Rev. 1:8,17
Isa. 48:17...He came as a Teacher...Jn. 3:2
Isa. 49:1...Called from the womb-His humanity...Mt. 1:18
Isa. 49:5...A Servant from the womb...Lu. 1:31;Phil. 2:7
Isa. 49:6...He is Salvation for Israel...Lu. 2:29-32
Isa. 49:6...He is the Light of the Gentiles...Acts 13:47
Isa. 49:6...He is Salvation unto the ends of the earth... Acts 15:7-18
Isa. 49:7...He is despised of the Nation... Jn. 8:48-49
Isa. 50:3...Heaven is clothed in black at His humiliation... Lu. 23:44,45
Isa. 50:4...He is a learned counsellor for the weary... Mt. 11:28,29
Isa. 50:5...The Servant bound willingly to obedience... Mt. 26:39
Isa. 50:6a..."I gave my back to the smiters."... Mt. 27:26
Isa. 50:6b...He was smitten on the cheeks... Mt. 26:67
Isa. 50:6c...He was spat upon... Mt. 27:30
Isa. 52:7...To publish good tidings of peace... Lu. 4:14,15
Isa. 52:13...The Servant exalted...Acts 1:8-11; Eph. 1:19-22
Isa. 52:13...Behold, My Servant... Mt. 17:5; Phil. 2:5-8
Isa. 52:14...The Servant shockingly abused... Lu. 18:31-34; Mt. 26:67,68
Isa. 52:15...Nations startled by message of the Servant... Rom. 15:18-21
Isa. 52:15...His blood shed to make atonement for all... Rev. 1:5
Isa. 53:1...His people would not believe Him... Jn. 12:37-38
Isa. 53:2a...He would grow up in a poor family.... Lu. 2:7
Isa. 53:2b...Appearance of an ordinary man... Phil. 2:7-8
Isa. 53:3a...Despised.... Lu. 4:28-29
Isa. 53:3b...Rejected... Mt. 27:21-23
Isa. 53:3c...Great sorrow and grief... Lu. 19:41-42
Isa. 53:3d...Men hide from being associated with Him... Mk. 14:50-52
Isa. 53:4a...He would have a healing ministry... Lu. 6:17-19
Isa. 53:4b...He would bear the sins of the world... 1 Pet. 2:24
Isa. 53:4c...Thought to be cursed by God... Mt. 27:41-43
Isa. 53:5a...Bears penalty for mankind's transgressions... Lu. 23:33
Isa. 53:5b...His sacrifice would provide peace between man and God... Col. 1:20
Isa. 53:5c...His back would be whipped... Mt. 27:26
Isa. 53:6a...He would be the sin-bearer for all mankind...Gal. 1:4
Isa. 53:6b...God's will that He bear sin for all mankind... 1 Jn. 4:10
Isa. 53:7a...Oppressed and afflicted... Mt. 27:27-31
Isa. 53:7b...Silent before his accusers... Mt. 27:12-14
Isa. 53:7c...Sacrificial lamb... Jn. 1:29
Isa. 53:8a...Confined and persecuted... Mt. 26:47-27:31
Isa. 53:8b...He would be judged... Jn. 18:13-22
Isa. 53:8c...Killed.... Mt. 27:35
Isa. 53:8d...Dies for the sins of the world... 1 Jn. 2:2
Isa. 53:9a...Buried in a rich man's grave... Mt. 27:57
Isa. 53:9b...Innocent and had done no violence... Mk. 15:3
Isa. 53:9c...No deceit in his mouth... Jn. 18:38
Isa. 53:10a...God's will that He die for mankind... Jn. 18:11
Isa. 53:10b...An offering for sin... Mt. 20:28
Isa. 53:10c...Resurrected and live forever.... Mk. 16:16
Isa. 53:10d...He would prosper... Jn. 17:1-5
Isa. 53:11a...God fully satisfied with His suffering... Jn. 12:27
Isa. 53:11b...God's servant... Rom. 5:18-19
Isa. 53:11c...He would justify man before God... Rom. 5:8-9
Isa. 53:11d...The sin-bearer for all mankind... Heb. 9:28
Isa. 53:12a...Exalted by God because of his sacrifice... Mt. 28:18
Isa. 53:12b...He would give up his life to save mankind... Lu. 23:46
Isa. 53:12c...Grouped with criminals... Lu. 23:32
Isa. 53:12d...Sin-bearer for all mankind... 2 Cor. 5:21
Isa. 53:12e...Intercede to God in behalf of mankind... Lu. 23:34
Isa. 55:3...Resurrected by God... Acts 13:34
Isa. 55:4...A witness... Jn. 18:37
Isa. 59:15-16a...He would come to provide salvation... Jn. 6:40
Isa. 59:15-16b...Intercessor between man and God... Mt. 10:32
Isa. 59:20...He would come to Zion as their Redeemer... Lu. 2:38
Isa. 61:1-2a...The Spirit of God upon him... Mt. 3:16-17
Isa. 61:1-2b...The Messiah would preach the good news... Lu. 4:17-21
Isa. 61:1-2c...Provide freedom from the bondage of sin and death... Jn. 8:31-32
Isa. 61:1-2...Proclaim a period of grace... Jn. 5:24
Jer.23:5-6a...Descendant of David...Lu. 3:23-31
Jer. 23:5-6b...The Messiah would be God... Jn. 13:13
Jer. 23:5-6c...The Messiah would be both God and Man... 1 Tim. 3:16
Jer. 31:22...Born of a virgin... Mt. 1:18-20
Jer. 31:31...The Messiah would be the new covenant... Mt. 26:28
Jer. 33:14-15...Descendant of David... Lu. 3:23-31
Eze.17:22-24...Descendant of David... Lk. 3:23-31
Eze.34:23-24...Descendant of David... Mt. 1:1
Dan. 7:13-14a...He would ascend into heaven... Acts 1:9-11
Dan. 7:13-14b...Highly exalted... Eph. 1:20-22
Dan. 7:13-14c...His dominion would be everlasting... Lu. 1:31-33
Dan. 9:24a...To make an end to sins... Gal. 1:3-5
Dan. 9:24b...He would be holy... Lu. 1:35
Dan. 9:25...Announced to his people 483 years, to the exact day, after the decree to rebuild the city of Jerusalem... Jn. 12:12-13
Dan. 9:26a...Killed... Mt. 27:35
Dan. 9:26b...Die for the sins of the world... Heb. 2:9
Dan. 9:26c...Killed before the destruction of the temple... Mt. 27:50-51
Dan. 10:5-6...Messiah in a glorified state... Rev. 1:13-16
Hos. 13:14...He would defeat death... 1 Cor. 15:55-57
Joel 2:32...Offer salvation to all mankind... Rom. 10:12-13
Mic. 5:2a...Born in Bethlehem... Mt. 2:1-2
Mic. 5:2b...God's servant... Jn. 15:10
Mic. 5:2c...From everlasting... Jn. 8:58
Hag. 2:6-9...He would visit the second Temple... Lu. 2:27-32
Hag. 2:23...Descendant of Zerubbabel... Lu. 3:23-27
Zech. 3:8...God's servant... Jn. 17:4
Zech. 6:12-13...Priest and King... Heb. 8:1
Zech. 9:9a...Greeted with rejoicing in Jerusalem... Mt. 21:8-10
Zech. 9:9b...Beheld as King... Jn. 12:12-13
Zech. 9:9c...The Messiah would be just... Jn. 5:30
Zech. 9:9d...The Messiah would bring salvation... Luke 19:10
Zech. 9:9e...The Messiah would be humble... Mt. 11:29
Zech. 9:9f...Presented to Jerusalem riding on a donkey... Mt. 21:6-9
Zech. 10:4...The cornerstone... Eph. 2:20
Zech. 11:4-6a...At His coming, Israel to have unfit leaders... Mt. 23:1-4
Zech. 11:4-6b...Rejection causes God to remove His protection.. Lu. 19:41-44
Zech. 11:4-6c...Rejected in favor of another king... Jn. 19:13-15
Zech. 11:7...Ministry to "poor," the believing remnant... Mt. 9:35-36
Zech. 11:8a...Unbelief forces Messiah to reject them... Mt. 23:33
Zech. 11:8b...Despised... Mt. 27:20
Zech. 11:9...Stops ministering to the those who rejected Him... Mt. 13:10-11
Zech. 11:10-11a...Rejection causes God to remove protection... Lu. 19:41-44
Zech. 11:10-11b...The Messiah would be God... Jn. 14:7
Zech. 11:12-13a...Betrayed for thirty pieces of silver... Mt. 26:14-15
Zech. 11:12-13b...Rejected... Mt. 26:14-15
Zech. 11:12-13c...Thirty pieces of silver thrown into the house of the Lord... Mt. 27:3-5
Zech. 11:12-13d...The Messiah would be God... Jn. 12:45
Zech. 12:10a...The Messiah's body would be pierced... Jn. 19:34-37
Zech. 12:10b...The Messiah would be both God and man... Jn. 10:30
Zech. 12:10c...The Messiah would be rejected... Jn. 1:11
Zech. 13:7a...God's will He die for mankind... Jn. 18:11
Zech. 13:7b...A violent death... Mt. 27:35
Zech. 13:7c...Both God and man.. Jn. 14:9
Zech. 13:7d...Israel scattered as a result of rejecting Him... Mt. 26:31-56
Mal. 3:1a...Messenger to prepare the way for Messiah... Mt. 11:10
Mal. 3:1b...Sudden appearance at the temple... Mk. 11:15-16
Mal. 3:1c...Messenger of the new covenant... Lu. 4:43
Mal. 4:5...Forerunner in the spirit of Elijah... Mt. 3:1-2
Mal. 4:6...Forerunner would turn many to righteousness... Lu. 1:16-17

2 Ah-Ha Moments in Learning to Preach

2011-03-07T22:23:00.000-06:00

I met with a new church-planter last week and attempted to articulate the journey I've been on for the last three years in learning to faithfully preach the message of the Bible. I had some of the best seminary training in the world at DTS from 2001-2005, but nothing compares to actually being in the pulpit every week in teaching you to preach. Before we started HCBC-RR in 2007, I had spoken regularly to students and been given multiple opportunities to preach. However, it wasn't until we planted Hill Country in 2007 that I really began to grow in my understanding of Scripture and the art of preaching. Over the last three years, I've had two significant "ah-ha" moments in learning to preach - moments where the theory of preaching became real in the my heart and in the life of our church. If you are someone who regularly teaches or preaches God's Word to others, I hope these thoughts encourage and challenge you.

1- The first "ah-ha" moment was coming to terms with the fact that the whole Bible is really about Jesus. This might sound incredibly foundational, but I can't tell you how much this has changed my preaching and teaching. At Dallas, I was trained to be a good exegete of the original languages and to dig deep into the original historical contexts in order to discover the human author's originally-intended meaning. While this has been and will continue to be valuable in my preaching, it is incomplete. It is not enough to teach historical context and authorial intent if we don't get beyond the human author and interact with the divine author. If God is the author of the whole Bible, then we can be certain that the entire revelation of Scripture is ultimately pointing us to the Living Word, Jesus Christ. The Old Testament is leading us to Christ and the New Testament is pointing us back to Christ. But it goes beyond the direction of the testaments to the actual meaning of the individual verses, chapters, and books. If I preach a sermon on the 23rd Psalm but don't show Christ in it, I have not faithfully taught the meaning of the 23rd Psalm. I prepared a sermon in seminary on Proverbs 12:15 (the way of the fool seems right to him, but the wise man listens to advice) and went back to look at it the other night. Nowhere in the manuscript did I even mention the name of Jesus. The sermon could have been given in a synagogue or even in a rotary club. The principle of the text was quickly explained and applied - listen to the advice of others - without any reference to Jesus. Now, this might work in trying to explain the original meaning of a text, but it fails in the pulpit. Why? Because the people who sit under my preaching don't just need moral instruction - they need the gospel. As a practitioner, one is quickly confronted with the limitations of preaching moral principles from the text when it comes to people actually experiencing life-transformation. Not only that, but the study of the Bible as one complete, consistent document also leads us to the same conclusion. To preach the mirco-context (the meaning of this text within the context of this paragraph, chapter, and book) without preaching the macro-context (the meaning of this text within the context of the entire Bible) is to miss the full meaning of any given text. When I came to understand the Christo-centric nature of every passage in the Bible, my preaching began to change. Now, if you attend HCBC-RR on any given Sunday, regardless of what section of the Bible we are preaching, you will undoubtedly hear about the wonderful person and work of Jesus Christ.

2- The second "ah-ha" moment was realizing that the gospel is not just the means of our justification but also the foundation and motivation for our sanctification. I came to faith in a tradition that preached this way: 40 minutes of moral exhortation from a Bible story (here's how you can live a righteous life) with a 5 minute gospel invitation at the end for anyone who was lost. The unspoken message was this: if you are lost, you need Jesus to save you, but if you are saved, you need to straighten up and get your life in line. Whether intended or not, the sermons taught people that they needed the gospel for justification (for right standing with God, forgiveness of sins, and eternal life) but not for sanctification (the process of actually becoming holy in our daily thoughts, motives, words, and actions). This creates a weird dynamic where we preach against self-righteousness in non-Christians but actually appeal to self-righteousness in Christians. In other words, a preacher who proclaims the gospel only as the means for justification will end up appealing to the Christian's self-will as the motive and power by which he lives a holy life. This produces devastating effects that I only began to understand and see clearly as I led a local congregation. Jonathan Edwards talked about the difference between common virtue and true virtue, making a distinguish between a good deed that was motivated by pride and self-righteousness and a good deed that was motivated by humility and appreciation for grace. I have found this distinction incredibly helpful as I think about preaching God's Word. If I don't come back to the gospel as the foundation for holy living (responding to the finished work of Christ and living by faith in the promises guaranteed by the finished work of Christ), then I will end up appealing to people's flesh (their pride) in order to get them to do what is right in God's sight. Here's the crazy conclusion and why this pattern is so deadly: I could actually be encouraging sin in the hearts of God's people on the way to external obedience. This is why gospel-Christianity is so different and so liberating - it speaks not just to my legal standing before God but also transforms the motivation for holy living. Because I am accepted and forgiven and found in Christ, I am freed to love God in response to His great love for me. I am not adding anything to the work of Jesus by living in obedience - I am simply living in light of what Jesus has already accomplished by His death and resurrection. There is much more to say on how the gospel actually progresses each of us in full sanctification (by destroying the idols and unbelief in our hearts that feed our sinful thoughts, actions, and words), but it is enough here to show how people need a greater understanding of the gospel to live like Jesus, not just a greater explanation of the moral principles of the Bible.

I have learned a lot about preaching in the last three years - I'm thankful that God continues to refine me for His purposes. If you regularly teach and preach God's Word, what "ah-ha" moments has God used to change the way you handle the Scriptures?

3 Tips For Date Conversations

2011-03-05T10:33:00.000-06:00

Barie and I have always made our date-night a priority for as long as we have been married. We have learned from wise mentors the importance of having a regular time for the two of us to enjoy each other and continue to improve our relationship. Over the years, we have used all types of babysitting to have at least two dates a month. We've partnered with another couple to switch off kids every week, we've utilized the YMCA's once-a-month four-hour childcare, and we've hired babysitters. At this point in our marriage, we're blessed to have Barie's mom living close to us and she enjoys watching the kids every Friday night so that we can go out. All that to say this: we've always made dating each other a priority and always encouraged other couples to do the same. We're constantly surprised by how many married couples go months without a date-night. I always tell them the same thing: the best way to love your kids well is to love your spouse well - kids thrive when they sense the stability and health of their parents' relationship.

As we've been going out over the years and encouraging other couples to do the same, Barie and I have witnessed the struggles that other couples have in dating each other. Sometimes, it has to do with scheduling. Sometimes, it has to do with childcare. Sometimes, it has to do with fatigue. But honestly, sometimes I wonder if it doesn't MOST have to do with a lack of excitement about the date itself. There are multiple reasons for this, and I hope to post a series of articles talking about how to address the root issues. But today, I want to address a common struggle that I've noticed: what do we talk about?

I can't tell you how many times Barie and I have been out for dinner and looked across at the table next to us only to find another couple sitting there staring at each other. The couple is going through the motions, sitting down to dinner together, but they have nothing to talk about. They just sit and stare and hope that the other one has something to bring up. In some of the worst-case scenarios, the couple retreats into their smartphones for some distractions. How do we fight this temptation? How do we keep the conversation engaging and fun and exciting every time we are together? Some of us have an easier time at this than others, but we all can be more intentional in improving our date conversations. Here's three of my best tips...

1) Ask good questions. In all other relationships in life, we know that the beginning of a good conversation is forming good questions. But in our marriage, after years of doing life together and talking about life, we can begin to think that we already know everything about this person. This is exceedingly dangerous! People are not static - they are dynamic - they change and develop and learn. In order to continue to be a good student of your spouse, ask good questions. Not the mundane questions like, "how was your day?" but the penetrating, learning questions like, "what was your biggest success in the last week?" or "what are you struggling with the most right now?" or "what is really energizing you right now?" Some of the most amazing conversations that Barie and I have had on dates over the years have started with good questions. Get creative. Ask the unexpected. Show your spouse that you are really interested in getting to know them better. They will respond - trust me. And if you really want to spur some deep conversation, ask them "what has God been teaching you lately that is challenging you?" Again, don't assume that because you live together and do life together that you already know the answers to your questions. Ask and then listen well. When their answer surprises you, ask a good follow-up question. Dig deeper. Ask why questions - "why do you feel that way?" or "why do you think you responded that way?" If you only talk in your marriage and don't ask, your conversations will eventually die - because no one wants to keep talking to someone who only talks about themselves. Ask good questions.

2) Tell funny stories. When Barie and I go out together, we laugh. A lot. We fight the temptation to complain and gripe and moan about the challenges and difficulties of life. Now, we do talk about hard issues that each of us is working through, but we never stop laughing. One of the reasons we enjoy spending so much time together is because we make each other smile and laugh. Do you and your spouse have that effect on each other? If your conversations are only dour and depressing, how long do you think you can keep the date momentum going? Not very long. One of the easiest ways that we have found to laugh together is to tell funny stories from the past week. We tell funny stories on ourselves, our kids, and our friends. We tell funny stories about stuff at church and at work. We tell funny stories about things that have happened to us or to others we know. I think every time you go out on a date, you should have a funny story from the past week to share with your spouse. Make them laugh with you. And make them share what has made them laugh as well. Laughter brings healing to the soul and breathes life into date conversations.

3) Dream together. I know that one of the challenges of dating when you have children is that your conversations tend to revolve around the children. Some of that is inevitable and good. However, I would warn you to not fall in the trap of only talking about your children - if you do, you will begin to view your marriage only as a business partnership built on accomplishing the goal of raising the next generation rather than a loving, passionate relationship between two best-friends. One of the best conversations that Barie and I regularly share is our dreams for the future. Where do we see ourselves in 1 year? in 5 years? in 10 years? If we had unlimited money and time and resources, what would we do? Those conversations get us out of the week to week operations of life (upcoming dates and events) and lift our eyes to the future. They also allow you to get to know the desires and dreams of your spouse better. As you hear them, you can begin to think and pray about how you might be able to make those dreams come true.

If your date conversations have become dry and dull, try one or all of the three tips and see what happens. If you and your spouse really excel in this area, share some of your tips in the comment section below. I look forward to learning from all of you.

Church Unity in Round Rock

2011-03-02T15:53:00.004-06:00

Today, 35 Round Rock pastors met for lunch at the United Heritage Center at the Dell Diamond in Round Rock. On the agenda: how to work collaboratively in the city of Round Rock to share the gospel with the 140,000 people who call our city home. Mark Westerfield, the pastor of Central Baptist Church, put together the event and invited all the pastors. Over the last few weeks Mark and I have been praying that God would use today's lunch as a catalyst for future collaboration across denominational and racial lines in our city. Today, we witnessed a huge answer to that prayer.

The relationships between the pastors in Round Rock have never been stronger. I am thankful to serve in a city where pastors are serving each other and supporting each other - so much so that we celebrate when other churches do well. We have learned that being Kingdom-minded pastors means that we live and work in light of the fact that there is only One Church in the city of Round Rock with various local expressions. This foundational belief allows us to honor our differences while at the same time collaborating around our core faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Throughout the last year, pastors in Round Rock have been meeting monthly to pray and seek the Lord together. We have prayed for each other (our families, our churches, our personal spiritual health, and our city). As we have prayed, we have sensed that the Lord was preparing our hearts for the next step - working together to declare and demonstrate the gospel of Jesus Christ to every person in our city. Today, we took the first step in outlining what that collaboration could look like.

At today's luncheon, I shared with the other pastors what collaboration could look like in three specific areas. First, we talked about collaborating together relationally for the sake of making sure that we help each other stay strong spiritually. Pastor Mark did a great job articulating his heart for every pastor in Round Rock: that no pastor in our city is isolated and feels alone in their work, that no pastor in our city fails morally, and that no pastor's family comes apart. I appreciated Mark's call to all the pastors to be in a PIC-group, to be accountable to other pastors, and to join with other pastors in prayer.

Second, we talked about collaborating together to serve our city in intentional ways - not in the names of our individual churches but in the name of Jesus Christ. Gary Foran from Gateway Church shared about their experiences in serving the students, parents, and faculty members of RRISD, and then challenged the pastors to imagine a city where every school (especially the underprivileged ones) was adopted by a church family. Michelle Jackson, the RRISD community-partnership coordinator, also attended our meeting and shared how the pastors could lead their churches to engage the school district in practical ways. Finally, Josh Cagle from Summit Community Church shared vision to all the pastors about what a unified service weekend would look like. He suggested that we adopt a weekend where all the churches would get out in the community and meet physical needs.

Third, we talked about collaborating together to support new churches in our city. We honored some of the new church-planters who have come to Round Rock in the last year and then envisioned what it would look like if the more established churches in our city strategically supported those new works. Our research has shown that years 2-4 of a plant are the most critical when it comes to determining viability. What would it look like for stronger churches to support struggling churches in their moment of need? I made the case that the city of Round Rock needs every church to do well AND new churches to start in order for gospel saturation to become a reality. In the midst of our discussion on supporting new works, I asked Jeff Whiston to share about how we can best reach the Hispanic community in Round Rock. He shared some great insights into the growing Hispanic population and what kinds of churches will be needed to impact that demographic.

As we look forward to the next ten years in Round Rock, it is interesting to look back over the last ten. The 2000 census showed the following make-up of the city of Round Rock:

City Population (including ETJ): 82,000
7.7% African American
2.9% Asian
22% Hispanic
67.4% Caucasian

The 2010 census numbers for Round Rock have just been made public in the last month. Here is the updated 2010 demographics for Round Rock:

City Population (including ETJ): 141,000
10% African American
5% Asian
29% Hispanic
56% Caucasian

Our city is changing - becoming larger and more diverse every day. I pray that the unified Church in Round Rock can reach every person, regardless of age, race, or socioeconomic status, with the life-changing reality of Jesus Christ. Thank you to everyone who prayed for our lunch today. Your prayers were answered. Now, please pray for the Spirit to empower the collaborative work that needs to be done and for the lostness of Round Rock to be reduced as the gospel of Jesus Christ is faithfully declared to the glory of God the Father.

No Other Gods - The First Two Commandments

2011-03-01T08:36:00.000-06:00

We are preaching through the Ten Commandments at church right now, learning what they mean, what they teach us about God, how Jesus relates to each one, and how they currently apply to our lives. It has been a fascinating study. As we work through them, I thought I would post a few of my observations here on my blog for you to read and interact with as we go. I'd love to hear your feedback and thoughts.

The first two commandments are commonly called the fountainhead from which the other eight commandments flow. Luther famously commented that if we don't break the first two commandments that we won't break the other eight because the root of all behavioral sin is idolatry - a wrong belief in and commitment to a false god. Therefore, the first two commandments deserve special attention in our study and intentional reflection to see how they are worked out in our own lives.

When God gave the Ten Commandments to his people through Moses in Exodus 20, He started by reminding them in verses 1 and 2 who He is and what He had done already on their behalf. This shows us again that the Lord is consistent in how He works in our lives. He graciously sees and hears our cries for help, delivers us from slavery and bondage, calls us to Himself, and then tells us how we are to live in light of His deliverance. This pattern is a great foreshadowing of the gospel of Jesus Christ - God sends His Son to set us free from bondage and then shows us how a redeemed people are to live in light of His work and salvation. If we don't get this order right, then the Commandments become a burden instead of a blessing. God gives us His moral law to teach us who He is eternally and how a freed people can live in light of who He is. This insight alone changes radically how we read Exodus 20.

Knowing this, when we get to the first and second commands, we understand why God would say that the people of Israel were not to worship any gods before Him and why they were not to create any physical idols or graven images. God was saying to His people that the key to staying free of bondage and sin is to stay single-minded in our faith in, love for, and commitment to the One True and Living God. God is the only true God. Let that truth sink in to your heart. There is never any other thing or person or pursuit that you and I will give ourselves to that is worth our love and devotion - because no-one else and nothing else are truly god. Every other god we worship is a false god - dead and unable to do anything for us or in us. Other gods are created - the product of our hearts and our minds - and not real. False god cannot challenge us or correct us or support us or provide for us or deliver us because they are not real. The level of devotion to our false gods is irrelevant - they cannot do anything for us regardless of how much time, money, passion, and energy we commit to them.

In fact, God is showing us His heart to protect us in the first two commandments because He knows that idolatry will ultimately destroy us. When we worship anything other than the True and Living God, we will ultimately be worshiping ourselves - because we create idols in order to control our own lives and destinies. And when we worship ourselves, we give in to every sinful desire we have (justified by the idols that we serve) which will lead us only to death - death in our relationships, death in our families, death in our souls, and death forever under the wrath of the True God.

God starts with two commandments about worshiping Him alone because He alone deserves our worship, because He cares for us and knows that our idolatry leads to death, but also because He knows that our idolatry is the root issue in all of our other sins. It is what Tim Keller calls "the sin beneath the sin." When we attempt to change behavior patterns without changing the beliefs that undergird those behaviors, those new patterns only last for a season. We will eventually go back to our old behaviors because we always live in line with what we truly believe. God starts with what we worship because what we worship matters the most when it comes to how we actually live. People who are not "religious" tend to think that discussions of God and worship are irrelevant to who they are and how they live, but the truth is that everyone worships something and everyone has a worldview. We believe a set of truths about ourselves and about God and about others that shapes what we value and the decisions that we make every day. Without touching those root beliefs, changes in behavior are temporary at best and wrongly-motivated at worst.

Now we see more clearly why God starts with the first two commandments. As AW Tozer famously said, "The most important aspect of a person at any point in time is what they believe about God." My only addition from Exodus 20 would be that it is equally important which God we serve. If you are struggling with behaviors you want to change or patterns that drive you crazy, look deeper to the idols of your heart that justify your choices. Thank God that He sent Jesus Christ to save us from our idols. He is the One True Image of the Invisible God - the only One who can set our hearts free from the bondage of idolatry and set our feet upon the solid rock of single-minded devotion to our Creator.

Sex, Marriage, and The Gospel

2011-02-24T06:51:00.001-06:00

I’ve been reading Hosea 1-4 this morning and thinking more about why we all struggle with adultery, at least adultery of the mind and the heart. As we study through the commandments at church, part of the challenge in the message on the 7^th commandment is to convince everyone that they have broken the 7^th commandment even if they have never laid a hand on someone who is not their spouse. Jesus reveals to us in Matthew 5 that our desires and thoughts betray us as we desire to have something and someone else other than our spouse in marriage.

As I meditate on that issue and read through Hosea 4, I am again confronted with the why. Why does Gomer, who has been pursued by Hosea, go back to her adulterous ways? Why does Judah, who has been relentlessly pursued by Yahweh, go back consistently to her adulterous ways?

It seems to me that the issue is the desire we have to seek pleasure outside of real relationship because real relationships take work and challenge us to be forgiving. I think of all the men and women I’ve talked to over the years who have been unfaithful and how often the underlying issue has been the broken relationship with their spouse that leads them to believe that sexual fulfillment outside of their marriage relationship is better. The challenge (it seems to me) with faithfulness to one person over a long period of time is that once you get to really know somebody, you realize that they are just as broken and sinful as you are. In order to pursue them relationally, you have to serve them, sacrifice for them, and ultimately learn to regularly forgive them. This is a LOT of work. Why not just find that sexual pleasure from a picture on a screen or a person you don’t really know so that you don’t have to get into the mess of relationship? We always foolishly think that the “grass is greener on the other side.”

This seems to be the warning of Proverbs 5 & 7 – that the ways of the harlot make her seem to offer something that is better and easier to have than the hard work of the marriage relationship. But in the end, she leads to death, leading us to the slaughter. God is not foolish – He knows what He is talking about when He commands our faithfulness in marriage. He is protecting us from the lie we tell ourselves about the easier pleasure we will receive from the harlot. It is easier but not better, life-taking not life-giving! We can get the pleasure quickly, but it leads to death – our death and the destruction of the people and relationships we really care about.

To me, this is where the gospel comes in. The gospel empowers us and frees us to do the hard work of faithfulness inside a long-term relationship. Because Jesus has been the faithful spouse that we need (He forgives us and loves us and pursues us relentlessly), He changes our hearts toward our spouses. He empowers us to KNOW our spouses and all their faults and flaws and sin issues and to still LOVE them faithfully – to do the hard work of forgiving them regularly. I think marriage is the closest human relationship we have for understanding what it is like for God to relate to us (Paul makes this point explicitly in Ephesians 5). He knows us intimately, loves us faithfully, and forgives us regularly. If we believe that, then we will offer forgiveness to our spouses and seek pleasure in their arms, not in the arms of another.

This is one issue when it comes to our struggle with sexual sin (there are many more). But these are just thoughts in my mind this morning about the sin beneath the sin of sexual unfaithfulness – our unwillingness to forgive our spouses and patiently, relentlessly pursue them as God has done for us in Christ.

The Age of the Earth

2011-02-22T17:11:00.000-06:00

I just finished a fascinating book by Drs. Young and Stearley (two believing professors of geology at Calvin College in Michigan) about the Bible and the age of the earth. I have always been fascinated by the hermeneutics of Genesis 1 and the intersection of faith and science. My background is mechanical engineering (my undergrad from Baylor), and from time to time my desire to learn from the best scientific research available takes me to books that most people don't read. This book is one such read.

Coming in at 460 well-researched and dense pages, The Bible, Rocks, and Time covers an immense terrain (forgive the pun). The first 160 pages are the history of the science of geology. The authors give us a snapshot of major figures in the study of geology and their important discoveries. Their major point in this section of the book is to say that Christian geologists concluded that the earth was very old from an abundance of evidence before Darwin proposed his evolutionary theory and before radiometric dating was discovered. Their summary is detailed and helpful.

The second section of the book (the next 50 pages) gives a history of the interpretation of Genesis 1. In this section, the two geologists are obviously outside their primary area of expertise, but they do a great job of quoting major figures in church history and current biblical scholars that demonstrate the diversity of opinions on Genesis 1. Their main point is the same conclusion that Dr. Letham comes to in his survey of early Christian teaching in the Westminster Theological Journal - http://www.meetthepuritans.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Letham-Creation.pdf - that the church has never had a monolithic position on the interpretation of Genesis 1. Most held positions, but held them lightly as secondary positions.

The third section of the book (the next 200 pages) goes into great detail on the geological evidence itself for the antiquity of the earth (an earth that is 4.5 billion years old, not 6,000 years old). This section is the most meaty, as this is the area of expertise of these two authors. They cover the study of fossils, the geological column (what the layers of rocks teach us in various places around the globe), how sedimentation works, how mountains and plate tectonics works, the combination of catastrophic events and normal processes (like erosion) that have shaped the rock formations that we see today, and the history and accuracy of radiometric dating. Their scope is expansive and their arguments are convincing. All along the way, they interact with young-earth scientific arguments to show how the physical evidence leads to different conclusions.

The final section of the book (the last 50 pages) is all about WHY this even matters. As a pastor, this section was the most compelling. The authors believe that the young-earth position (that the earth is only 6000 years old) is not only terrible science, but that it is actually detrimental to the cause of the gospel. Their argument opposes the position of YEC-proponents who believe that their defense of a 6, 24-hour day creation is necessary to proclaiming the gospel. Drs. Young and Stearley strongly believe the opposite - that continuing to teach that the Bible only teaches a 6000-year old earth is turning a generation of young people away from Christ and ignoring a whole people group (professional scientists) away from Christ who know the truth about the age of the earth. Here is one of their most compelling paragraphs in their final chapter:

Frequently, students are taught that the traditional six twenty-four-hour days interpretation of Genesis 1 is the only interpretation of the text that is consistent with belief in an inerrant Bible. Often they are also misleadingly taught that the tenets of young-Earth creationism stand on equal scientific footing with mainstream geologic views of an ancient Earth. Many young Christians have been reared to believe that this concept of creation is a virtual article of faith that represents the biblical teaching. Those young Christians then go off to college, to a museum or to another source of knowledge where they may be exposed to legitimate geology and are stunned by the force of geologic evidence for the Earth's antiquity. They have been personally confronted with an intellectual and spiritual fixed great gulf that is far wider than the Grand Canyon, between their newfound scientific understanding and the religious views of their youth. To them, the Bible now becomes a flawed book. Sensing that they have been misled about creation by the religious authorities of their youth, they lose confidence in the rest of their religious upbringing. Such students may suffer severe shock to their faith. They were not properly taught the truth about creation, nor were they equipped to deal with challenges to their faith. Christians who are professional scientists have all heard far too many accounts of individuals whose spiritual journeys sound much like the scenario just described. Let's have no shipwrecks of faith of young, vulnerable, unprepared Christian youth that can be laid at the door of the pseudo-science promoted by Christians.

Everyone of us who is raising kids to love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength needs to listen carefully to these words. May God give us the grace to teach His gospel faithfully to our children without putting any unnecessary roadblocks in the way of true and lasting faith.

Teaching Children to Respect Authority

2011-02-16T08:19:00.000-06:00

As I'm working through the Ten Commandments this year from the pulpit, I have been struck again by the high place of the directive from God to "honor your father and mother." The commandments are broken down into two sets - usually referred to as the two tablets (the first four that have to do with our vertical relationship with God and the second six have to do with our horizontal relationships with others). The pivot command - commandment number five - that transitions between these two topics is the one for us to honor our parents. At the same time that I've been studying the commandments, I've been reading the proverbs. The proverbs are obviously concerned with each of us living with wisdom - making the best moral decision in every situation. And the number one piece of advice that the Proverbs give to us in living wisely? You got it - listen to your parents. Solomon goes on and on to his sons about the importance of heeding his advice and listening to the instruction of their mother. So, all that being said, why does God care so much about how we respond to our parents? And how do we help our children understand the importance of following our instruction when they are young and still under our daily care?

1. Learning to respect our parents is important to God because it is the first authority relationship we have in our lives and reveals to us how we feel about God's authority in our lives. The context of the Ten Commandments seems to be saying to us that the first horizontal relationship that demonstrates our allegiance to God is the way we relate to our parents. In other words, kids need to learn to respect their parents so that they can learn to respect God. As I have said many times from the pulpit, everyone lives their lives under authority. Submission tends to be a nasty word in our culture because it implies a lack of independence and individuality, but in reality, we all have to submit every day. We have employers and police officers and government officials and church leadership and others who make decisions every day that impact our lives. We are called by Scripture to respectfully submit to their authority. Why? Because God teaches us how to follow His authority and direction by teaching us to follow human authority. Kids need to learn to respect and honor their parents so that they will learn to respect and honor God. God instituted the family and the leadership of parents in the home to teach children what it is like to live under His authority. As we help our kids respect and listen to us, we are helping them respect and listen to God.

2. Learning to respect our parents is important to God because all other human relationships flow from this first relationship. The second half of the Ten Commandments cover many different kinds of human relationships (those with strangers, spouses, friends, and neighbors). The way the commandments read to me in order show that our relationship with mom and dad at home will impact how all of these other relationships work out. In other words, if a child struggles at honor Mom and Dad, he will struggle to honor his spouse, love his neighbor, and respect his co-workers. All of these relationships are intermingled. Parents, we have a high calling to teach our kids to respect our authority not just because it helps them understand God, but also because it helps them learn how to relate in a healthy way to others. If a child is disrespectful at home to his parents, he will be disrespectful to his teachers, his coaches, his peers, his boss, etc. They are all connected.

3. As parents, we need to be especially aware of influences that teach our children that disrespect to their parents is acceptable and normal. While all parents work hard to keep grossly immoral influences away from their kids, we can struggle to filter those influences that encourage a disrespectful attitude toward parental authority. A disrespectful tone or attitude usually doesn't show up as blatantly inappropriate because the parents in TV shows have done something that seems to deserve the disdain of the children. In fact, our cultural dialogue over the last thirty years has been more about absent parents than disrespectful children. When parents are divorcing or overworking or emotionally distant from their kids, our highest priority as a culture can seem to be to get parents in line. And while I agree that parents (myself included!) need lots of help and grace and instruction, the Bible makes the case over and over again for how children should respect and honor their parents. As parents, I believe that you and I have a heavy responsibility to make sure that our kids learn respect for authority from an early age.

Ultimately, the command to honor our parents is the fifth command, not the first. It follows the command to not have any other gods before the true God. I repeat this at the end of this post, because I have seen the danger of parents who develop children who live in dependence on their parents and never learn to stand on their own two feet. We are called to honor our parents, but not worship them. As parents, we are called to teach our kids to love God first and in response to God's instruction, to respect our authority. In the end, I don't believe these are two separate goals. They work together every day. As parents, we help our kids love God first and most as we model that for them and help them to relate to us in honor and respect.

Book Notes: Outlive Your Life (3/5)

2011-02-10T21:34:00.000-06:00

As a preacher myself, I have always appreciated Max Lucado's ability to tell a great story and use inspiring illustrations. In fact, I have used in the past and probably will use again in the future some of his illustrations as they can be immensely helpful in up-front communication. Outlive Your Life reads like a book full of Lucado's best sermon illustrations from his messages in the book of Acts. While interesting by themselves, the stories and illustrations don't give the book the unity it so desperately needs. What is this book really about? Is it an exposition of the book of Acts? Is Max showing us how to live like the apostles? Is he calling us to live for the cause of compassion and justice? Is he encouraging us to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with all peoples? Is the book a devotional guide on how to get outside our personal shells? Is it a call to prayer? A call to courage?

In reality, the book is all of that and more. I think Lucado desires the main narrative to be one of helping those in need, with the book of Acts as his structural support. However, with his amazing repertoire of illustrations and stories and personal adventures, the book goes too many directions at once. The chapters are really short moral exhortations built on a biblical theme taken from one verse in Acts. While each chapters stands on it's own and is individually inspiring, the connections between chapters are not clear. And here is why that is problematic: the book of Acts is historical narrative. The author Luke is putting stories together and ordering his writing for a reason. Context matters and the arc of the book of Acts is important to understanding the individual stories.

I make that observation to ask a question that I wish Lucado had spent more time with in his book because I think it is the foundational question of the book of Acts. What about the apostles' encounter with Jesus's life, death, and resurrection and their subsequent filling by the Holy Spirit had moved them from "regular Joe's" to courageous evangelists and compassionate missionaries? And second, what about their message (the gospel of the Risen Christ) made them especially considerate of the hurting and needy? While Christians today need a reminder of the moral example of the early church, we even more need a reminder of what they believed that led them to live that way. We can be told inspiring stories and given encouraging reminders to live for others, but if our worldview does not support that lifestyle, the changes will only last as long as the emotions we feel from reading the stories.

Book Notes: Recent Reads

2011-01-22T10:05:00.000-06:00

I've read a few books over the last few weeks, but have failed to write about them. Here's a few sentences on each book...

1. Generous Justice by Tim Keller. Keller continues to shape my thinking on how the gospel of Jesus Christ shapes our philosophy of ministry and our personal lives. Keller is not only an clear, influential thinker; he is a practitioner. For that reason, I believe that Keller is helping to shape a generation of Jesus-loving, gospel-believing, city-dwelling Christians. Generous Justice is his attempt to explain how a deep commitment to the core truths of the Christian gospel and a heart-level experience of the grace of the gospel should shape the community of believers to do justice in our world. Keller does more biblical exegesis in this book than he has done in others (which is incredibly helpful and insightful), and then turns to how living justly should actually look in today's world. His threefold levels of doing justice (relief, development, and reform) gives us some helpful categories to think about doing justice corporately as the church. As community-involvement and mercy ministries grow in this generation, Keller's book will be a helpful reminder that we cannot separate works of justice from the grace of God found in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

2. The Confession by John Grisham. I've read a lot of John Grisham over the years, ever since I read his first novel, A Time to Kill, in high school (which I still think is his best). Grisham's latest book intrigued me at the beginning because the first chapter starts with a criminal on parole walking into the office of a pastor named Keith to confess the crime he has committed. Grisham's question in this novel is simple: how many innocent people need to be executed before we finally decide that the death-penalty should not be used by the state? His story is set in Texas (of course) and revolves around the execution of an innocent man. Grisham is obviously anti-death-penalty (which he has been for a long time), and this book in another good argument against the death-penalty. However, it's just not that great of a book. Without his normal plot-twists to keep the story interesting, I found the book feeding so many stereotypes that it became frustrating - the defense attorney is the hero, the prosecutors, judges, and politicians are scum-bags. I wanted to like this book because I liked the question it asked. I just didn't enjoy it very much. More gripping to me was this New Yorker write-up about the real-life execution of Cameron Todd Willingham (read it at http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann).

3. Unbroken by Lauren Hillenbrand. This book is one of my favorites in the last year for multiple reasons. I love good writing (Hillenbrand's prose is awesome). I love World War II history. I love seeing the power of the gospel in people's lives. This book includes all three! Hillenbrand diligently researched the story of Louie Zamperini (the last 20% of the book are her meticulous notes), an Olympic runner who fought in WWII, crashed at sea, floated on a life-raft with two other men for 47 days, and was a Japanese POW for the last two years of the war. Simply put, his story is gut-wrenching. The reader at times has stop reading in disbelief at all that Louie experienced during his ordeal. When Zamperini comes back with terrible flashbacks and emotional pain from his torture at the hands of his Japanese captives, he almost ends up drinking himself to death and ruining his marriage. However, a divine encounter with Jesus Christ at Billy Graham's first crusade in LA completely changes his life. If your stomach can make it through Hillenbrand's descriptions of Louie's POW experience, this book will greatly encourage your faith in the power of the gospel to radically change lives.

4. Decision Points by George W. Bush. I received Bush's biography from my mother-in-law for Christmas, and I have surprisingly enjoyed reading his account of his eight years in office. Rather than make political points about his decisions and his views, I would like to just share one overwhelming sensation I had while reading Bush's book. The president's job is very hard. That's it. I was reminded that every day the president is faced with hundreds of decisions that will impact the lives of millions of people in our country and around the world. I sensed the strong conviction that we (as followers of Christ) need to pray for our leaders, especially our president. Whatever we think about President Obama's politics and job performance, we need to pray for him. We are commanded by Scripture to do this, and we are wise to lift up those who lead us. Every day, our president goes to work with the weight of the military, the economy, and the security of the American people on his shoulders. May God strengthen our president, give him good advisers, and grant him the wisdom to make right decisions.

The Question of The Hunger Games

2010-12-24T14:10:00.000-06:00

I finished The Hunger Games trilogy today - a disturbing fiction series set in a future North-America divided into 13 districts, tightly controlled by an authoritarian central government and leader. The main character of the trilogy is a young woman (ages 16 to 18 over the course of the three books) whose life is destroyed and perspective is distorted by war and unending violence. Suzanne Collins, the author of the series, is a student of how war and violence impact the lives of young people around the world. Her three books are a creative way to really ask one question: how does the cycle of violence in our world today impact our youth and how does it stop? Other questions pop up throughout the series - ones about life and death, love and loss, authority and submission to authority - but they are all (in my mind) subsets of the bigger question about the impact and cycle of violence.

In fact, my favorite paragraph in the whole series comes in the second paragraph of page 186 of the final book, Mockingjay, where Katniss (the main character) is having a conversation with fellow rebels about the weapons they are creating to use against the "evil" central government. Here's the whole paragraph:

"That seems to be crossing some kind of life," I say. "So anything goes?" They both stare at me - Beetee with doubt, Gale with hostility. "I guess there isn't a rule book for what might be unacceptable to do to another human being."

In these few sentences, the author shows her hand. She is asking a great question about the cycle of violence. When people are hurt by others, they begin to think about hurting back (the natural emotions of vengeance), and usually they process their pain in such a way that the level of violence increases - "I will hurt them worse that they hurt me." This is not unique to war (it happens in all of our lives), but it is magnified by war. The violence and death of so many creates a rationalization to use "whatever means necessary" to get back at those who have caused the pain to us.

These questions are theological questions - why should we not treat each other like animals, hurting those who hurt those we love? Why should we not respond in anger and hatred and violence? And while Collins' book does a great job of raising the question, I feel like she does a very poor job of answering the question. In fact, the resolution of her third book has created lots of debate online precisely because it seems her answer is, "just do what you have to survive, to not be controlled by others, and keep on living." And while I really don't have a literary argument with the conclusion of the book, I have issues with her non-answer answer to her main question. In other words, is Collins saying by not answering her own question that there is NO answer to the question of stopping the cycle of war and violence and genocide? This might be the dominant view of our post-modern generation, but it surely leaves the reader wanting a better life philosophy than nihilism (extreme skepticism that denies meaning and truth). For those who have read the series, am I reading this right? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

The biblical answer to acts of violence is deeper and harder than the answer of the Hunger Games - forgiveness. I'm surprised with the level of violence in this series that the characters don't discuss God or forgiveness one time. I don't expect the book to present a Christian worldview at all, but I would think an honest discussion about this level of violence and vengeance and war would include a discussion on forgiveness and how a person's worldview shapes their response to violence. The series almost seemed to be going this direction several times (when the characters would talk about the need to NOT be a pawn in the games, controlled by the desires of evil leaders) but then would simply resort to the best way to fight back was to survive at whatever the cost. While an engaging read, I found the lack of resolution disappointing.

Book Notes: Safely Home by Randy Alcorn (5/5 - one of the best)

2010-12-18T11:26:00.001-06:00

On the way home from East Asia in November, I read Randy Alcorn's novel Safely Home. After my exposure to the underground church in Asia, this book hit me especially hard. Though written in 2003, the narrative still accurately describes some of the challenges facing the persecuted church around the world. Alcorn's book captures the tension that I have written about before - a nation whose economy is rapidly growing while the government continues to tightly control all freedoms of expression. Many in the West have believed that as Asian economies were opened to the world, its people would experience greater freedom. While the people have experienced growing exposure to Western companies and products, they have not experienced a corresponding growth in freedom - see the recent restriction of house-church leaders from attending the 2010 Lausanne World Evangelism Conference or the recent crackdown on political dissidents in light of the Nobel Peace Prize award to a pro-democracy advocate or the recent announcement that the government had designated all house churches as "cults" as evidence of the government's heavy hand.

Where Alcorn's book succeeds is giving us a person and a face and a story that grips our hearts related to the persecuted church. It is hard to feel compassion for a number. When you and I hear that millions of Christians face opposition because of their faith in Jesus Christ, we feel concern, but not deep, heart-rending compassion. We need a name, a person to move the information from our heads to our hearts. This was my experience in East Asia - I got to know people who are leading the church and got to spend time hearing their story. Randy Alcorn has done all Christians a favor by giving us a story that, though fiction, could be the story of any number of Christians in persecuted countries. A story of joy and victory, loss and pain, and most importantly - an eternal perspective.

Alcorn's ministry is called Eternal Perspective Ministries, and if you have never heard his personal testimony, I would encourage you to visit his ministry website and learn his story. Through some fascinating life-experiences, Alcorn is required to give away all of the royalties of his books, which he has written keeps him daily focused on his eternal rewards and not his earthly rewards. This understanding is important as you read Safely Home - you sense Alcorn's desire throughout the book to lift our eyes to the eternal scenes - to see persecution and evangelism and suffering through the eyes of Jesus Christ. The heavenly scenes in Safely Home are the most powerful - the ones that led me to tears as I read them.

I won't say any more because I don't want to give away the story of the book. However, I do pray that each of you will read this amazing work. I pray that I will not soon forget the images that Alcorn has left with me. And I pray for each of us to live every day in light of what is eternally significant, not temporarily seen as important.

I watched a TV special last night on the president's photographer - an interesting report on the people whose job it is to capture in pictures every moment of a president's term. As I watched it, a thought hit me that was embedded during my reading of Safely Home - though a photographer tries to capture every moment of a presidency, he can't see everything. And though a photographer wants to record significant moments for future historians to look back at, most images will be quickly forgotten and never looked at again. But there is One who sees all and remembers everything. And one day we will all meet Him face to face.

Are you living your life in light of this reality?

Another Look At Persecution

2010-12-07T08:09:00.000-06:00

I wrote last week about some of the insights that God gave us while we were overseas in November. In response to that post, I heard privately from one of our dear friends who serves in one of the hardest mission fields in the world. By "hardest," I mean an area where believers in Jesus Christ are most persecuted for their faith. After sharing my short-term insights on how facing persecution can be good for the purity and simplicity of the church, I wanted to share his insights on how persecution also suffocates the church. Here where his wonderful insights (which should lead us to pray for our persecuted brothers today)...

Concerning persecution, I wish that believers in our area had room to breathe. It is really tough. The pressure is from government (and this pressure is real--real prosecution, real legal implications). The social and family pressure is also very intense. There seems to have been a little momentum building over the past few years. But after some things happened last year, believers are afraid to even be seen with each other. And they are very afraid to be seen with foreigners in too close of a way. It has been a hard thing to see the very weak and struggling body of Christ, take such a hard set back. I once heard of a group of 13 adults and 7 children meeting together to read scripture. That is a mega church here.

And our work is also very sensitive. The locals who help in our work really feel like if people knew what we were doing, that we wouldn't live much longer. If there is enough of a group then persecution is strengthening, but it seems that without a critical mass of some sort; the effects really are strangling. Satan wants to stop the proclamation of the truth of the good news. There are many tools used to do this. Here fear is a huge weapon used very effectively. I praise God for the people that find the courage that only comes from the Lord. We realize in vivid ways that the only way that we can go forward is under the protection and care of God every day. But isn't that always true! What a blessing to be reminded of it so often. Pray that we would know how to be harmless and wise, bold and meek, faithful and fruitful.

What is the Gospel?

2010-11-30T11:56:00.000-06:00

I wrote this summary today for our church's website and wanted to share it here. I hope it stirs your heart reading it as much as it stirred my heart writing it.

The Gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ.

The Gospel is "good news" because it answers the deepest needs of every man, woman, and child - the need of sinners to be reconciled to a Holy God. The Bible teaches that each one of us is a sinner by nature and by choice when compared the holiness of God - the true standard of what is right. God is perfect and we are not. Our sin is infinitely offensive to God because God is infinitely glorious. The Word of God teaches that though God created us and loves us, we have become His enemies. No one is righteous in God's sight - not even one.

However, God was not satisfied to leave His creation in rebellion. He sent His One and Only Son, Jesus Christ, to live the life that we could not live and die the death that we deserved so that each one of us could become sons and daughters of God.

Christianity is not a "religion" as man sees religion - a set of rules by which we live better lives, but instead a message of redemption offered freely because Jesus kept the rules that we could not keep. The heart of the gospel is substitution. Jesus took our place - both in life and in death. If we receive the gift of God's grace by faith in Jesus Christ, we can be forgiven our sin and reconciled to our Heavenly Father. Jesus removes the wall of sin that separates us from God and restores our relationship with Him.

Though the gospel is utter foolishness to the world, it is God’s very wisdom. The Bible declares that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation for all who believe. God is working today in the world through the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

As Paul wrote to us in 1 Corinthians 15, the gospel is christological, centering on the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The gospel is biblical (his death and resurrection are according to the Scriptures), theological and salvific (Christ died for our sins, to reconcile us to God), historical (if the saving events did not happen, our faith is worthless, we are still in our sins, and we are to be pitied more than all others), apostolic (the message was entrusted to and transmitted by the apostles, who were witnesses of these saving events), and intensely personal (where it is received, believed, and held firmly, individual persons are saved).

At Hill Country Bible Church Round Rock, we proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ as the primary message of the whole Bible, as the only hope for a fallen world, and as the source of salvation and life-transformation for all who believe. We invite all who have ears to hear to believe today on the Lord Jesus Christ for life - both abundant life now and eternal life forever.

Lessons Learned in East Asia

2010-11-25T05:06:00.000-06:00

Luke 12:48: "To whom much is given, much will be required." -Jesus

This verse was on my heart frequently during our trip to East Asia. We have received much from the hand of God, and one day we will be required to give an account of what we did with it. I was reminded while I worked with pastors overseas that many of them would give their left arm to have the seminary education I have received, to have to the mentoring I've enjoyed from seasoned pastors and leaders, to have the resources and staff that I get to work with every day. In short, I have been a giant stewardship responsibility (as have all of you) before God to do something with all that He has poured into my life. I hope that I can stand before Jesus one day and honestly say that I was a good steward of what I had been given - that I served His global church who did not have access to the many resources I have enjoyed.

Beyond this overarching theme, Barie and I sensed the Lord teaching us several important lessons during our time in East Asia that we pray we will not forget soon...

1- If we are going to reach the nations with the gospel of Jesus Christ, we have to learn how to reach cities. The urbanization of the globe has been occurring for decades, and it is a phenomenon that I have read about repeatedly. However, it is hard to appreciate how many people live in cities around the world until you go to some of the biggest cities in the world and see the dense population with your own eyes. The cities in East Asia are huge, and while the gospel has spread rapidly in rural areas (like it has in other countries), it tends to slow down in urban areas where people are more occupied with career pursuits, wealth accumulation, and their educational goals. Sound familiar? If the church of Jesus Christ is going to see the gospel truly go to the ends of the earth, we have to pray that God will raise up missionaries both in our own country and abroad who will live in and take the gospel to people who live in cities. I think we are going to look back after the next fifty years and say that the cultural transformation that took place in our lifetimes was the complete urbanization of the globe. How will we respond?

2- Government support and public legitimacy are not important goals for the church as they negatively impact its purity over time. One of the most interesting conversations with church-leaders in persecuted countries is about their relationship with the state. While some look at the freedom we enjoy as westerners with envy, others see the purity and simplicity of having a faith that is oppressed by the government. This insight surprised me, but as a student of history, made total sense. Throughout history, as the church has received government backing and sought public legitimacy, the church has been taken off-tract from its primary mission of making disciples of all nations. Why? Because government support and public legitimacy tends to bring people into the church who do not have a genuine love for Jesus Christ, but rather who want the power, money, and influence that the church enjoys. This was a helpful reminder to me about my goals as a pastor in America. As I engage city-leaders in my city, my goal is to be a representative of Christ, not to change my message in order to get their favor.

3- Finally, no work we have as disciples of Jesus will make more impact on the world than raising up children who love Jesus and love the world. It was bizarre to go half-way around the world with my wife without our kids and find that God spoke to us about our family, but He did! Barie and I were both reminded by our time with missionary families and national families that our most significant work is how we raise up the next generation to love Christ and to love the people of the world. Our tendency as American Christians is to protect and separate our kids from the world, but the gospel of Jesus Christ calls us to raise up children who love the world that Jesus died for. Barie and I came back with a renewed passion to invest Scripture and the gospel in our kids, but not just for their sake. Instead, we feel called by God to impart a passion for Christ in our children for the sake of God's glory among the nations. May God give us wisdom as parents to raise up kids with a global perspective on God and His work.

There is much more we could share about the trip, from the funny cultural experiences we had to the remarkable people we met. I hope at some point in the future that we can get some time to show you pictures and share more stories. But overall, we are just thankful to God for what He allowed us to do in the lives of others and what He showed us and what He did in our hearts while we were away. We serve an awesome God who is at work around the world and in each one of our lives.

Pray for us that we will have wisdom in knowing how God wants us to be involved in the world in the coming years. We will pray for you that you will take time out of your schedule in the coming years to get overseas and see what God is doing all over the globe through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Book Notes: Lee: A Life of Virtue (5/5)

2010-11-06T16:54:00.000-05:00

Robert E. Lee is one of the most famous American historical figures, especially in the South. Schools and roads throughout the South today still carry his name, and mythical stories abound about his greatness in war and the strength of his personal character. John Perry's new biography of Lee in the Thomas Nelson series on The Generals is a short summary of the life of General Lee - one that moves quickly through his remarkable life and his remarkable military service. General Lee's servant leadership and strong personal Christian faith fill every page of Perry's book. In addition, this biography brought two features of Lee's life to my attention that have stayed with me long after reading the book.

First, General Lee was a genuinely humble person. Though he was one of the most famous men in America at the end of his life, he was remembered by all those close to him for his remarkable humility. As I was struck by this same character quality in the last Billy Graham biography that I read, I was struck by Lee's genuine respect, deference, and graciousness toward others. Jim Collins rights about Level 5 leaders in his book Good to Great, specifically mentioning how the greatest corporate leaders of the 20th century have not been those who are charismatic, flashy personalities, but those who are great servant leaders, well-known for their genuine humility and lack of self-absorption. This goes against our normal understanding of dynamic leadership, but once again, Robert E. Lee's life story affirms that the greatest leaders of men are actually the most humble (sounds like Jesus' words, doesn't it?).

Second, General Lee experienced his most distinguished service late in his life. As I have read Civil War histories in the past, I guess I didn't realize that General Lee had served so long as a engineering officer in the US Army before he found his success as a battle commander. Lee served well, but without distinction, for 40 years in the military before he was called upon to lead the Virginia Army under the Confederate Flag. Perry does a great job of showing that Lee's faithful service and perseverance through grueling assignments away from his family set the stage for his amazing leadership in the Civil War. As someone who has grown up in the generation that thinks you have to do everything by the time you are 35 if you are going to do something significant with your life, Lee's story was a great reminder that faithful service over a whole life is makes you ready for opportunities to lead. God sets the boundaries of a man's life, regardless what modern leaders declare.

Overall, this was a great book about a great man, and one that I thoroughly enjoyed.

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Josh Hamilton Testimony

2010-10-24T16:48:00.000-05:00

Misreading Mercy?

2010-10-07T15:02:00.002-05:00

As we get into Amos 2 this week, we will look at God’s words to his own people, the covenant people of Judah and Israel. Whereas last week’s message (in Amos 1) focused on God’s sovereignty over all the nations, this week’s message focuses on what God has to say to His own people.

The major theme that keeps reoccuring as I study Amos 2 is how the people of Israel misread the mercy of God. God had done many wonderful things on their behalf over the years, but they had not learned from that what God wanted them to see. I will go into more detail about this Sunday, but it seems like we also struggle with how to understand the mercy of God. Here’s two common ways that I see in myself and others…

1. We can misread mercy as indifference. I mentioned this briefly on Sunday. We can sometimes read God’s patience with us and His blessings on us as though He doesn’t care about the sin that we commit. Many people I interact with seem to have this view of life – God’s favor toward me simply shows that He doesn’t care how I live. If He did care about my sin, He wouldn’t have blessed me so richly.

2. We can also misread mercy as worthiness. In this view, all of God’s blessings on my life are signs of how awesome I am. God is simply agreeing with me by demonstrating how great I am to the world. His favor in my life is not undeserved – it is deserved. I am a good person and take care of others and give money to those in need and that is why God is so good to me. God’s blessings are an affirmation of God being pleased with my performance.

We’ll take a look at these in more depth on Sunday, but right now I’m curious if you see these beliefs in your own life. How else do you think we misread the mercy of God in our lives?

What is the Bible Basically About?

2010-08-29T21:58:00.001-05:00

I enjoyed this video that was put together from one of Tim Keller's talks on the metanarrative of the Bible. His teaching on a Christo-centric view of the Bible has made the Bible come alive to me all over again. I pray that this blesses you...

Book Notes: What I've Read Lately

2010-08-16T22:21:00.000-05:00

Book #1: Humility, True Greatness by CJ Mahaney. I picked up this little read after deciding in my spiritual assessment this year that I needed to work on pride. Pride is one of those root issues that is hard to nail down, but is apparent in everything we do. I love Mahaney's definition of pride - when sinful human beings aspire to the status and position of God and refuse to acknowledge their dependence upon Him. His shortened definition is one that will stay with me for years - contending with God for supremacy. I see that in my own life and how God constantly is at work to break me of my pride. Mahaney has some great, practical tips on growing humility in our hearts - all rooted in the gospel. I personally appreciated his section on using encouraging, edifying words toward others as a way to cultivate humility. Also helpful were his encouragements to focus on the doctrines of grace as essential to a heart full of humility. If everything I have is truly a gift of God's grace, what room do I have to boast? A great, easy read.

Book #2: George Whitefield: God's Anointed Servant in the Great Revival of the Eighteenth Century. Arnold Dallimore was a Baptist preacher who wrote biographies of great figures in the recent history of the church. George Whitefield was definitely one of those figures. Originally from England, Whitefield split his ministry time between England and the American colonies. He was a powerful preacher of the gospel, known for his ability to captivate thousands of people in the days before public broadcast systems. God apparently gave him a voice that could carry and the physical stamina to preach and teach all the time. I was stunned as I read through this biography how many times a week Whitefield would preach - sometimes three or four times a day. I also didn't understand the relationship between Whitefield and the Wesleys before reading Dallimore's biography. They had a close friendship and ministry partnership even though Whitefield was more Calvinistic in his theology than Wesley. One of the stranger parts of the book is Dallimore's description of Whitefield's marriage, which almost seemed like a business arrangement. Whitefield and his wife were apart from each other for very long periods of time as he was traveling for his ministry. Amazing story - very interesting life - fast read.

Book #3: Patton: The Pursuit of Destiny. General George Patton was one of the most successful and colorful generals that the US Army ever produced. From a long line of military heroes, Patton almost seemed destined to make his career in the armed forces. He was one of the first American generals to see the possibility of mechanized warfare and many of the strategies and training programs that he devised are still used by the military today. His personal life was a mess, and his military career almost imploded several times because of his lack of self-control. His career was made into the famous movie with George C Scott in 1970, and the authors spend considerable time talking about how the Hollywood version of Patton compared to the real life Patton. This book, which is a very recent biography of Patton, is one of many Patton biographies out there. While I haven't read the others, I would think this one would fit in the introductory category. Under 200 pages, this book is a quick overview of the life and career of General Patton. I enjoyed it as an introduction to a very interesting and consequential life.

Book #4: Spurgeon: A New Biography. Another biography by Arnold Dallimore, this work studies the life of the most famous pastor/preacher of the 19th century. Charles Spurgeon pastored the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London for forty years in the second half of the 19th century. His ministry was expansive, covering everything from books to training pastors and teachers to caring for the poor to helping orphans to providing for the elderly. God definitely gifted Spurgeon as a preacher of the gospel and a trainer of other pastors and leaders. I pray that God will allow me to persevere in serving Him as Spurgeon did, even in the midst of bad health and the poor health of his wife. Dallimore's biography keeps the pace moving and covers the amazing breadth of Spurgeon's ministry with ease. Spurgeon, like Whitefield before him, did an amazing amount of work for the Lord. I don't think these men would appreciate our modern emphasis on balance and rest, but then again their poor health severely limited their ministry in later years. A great read - very encouraging and faith building overall for me.

Reply All #3 Preview: Discerning God's Will

2010-07-07T13:37:00.000-05:00

This Sunday, we will tackle one of the most common questions that Christians ask as they face the future: what is God's will for my life? What does He want me to do? Sometimes we ask this question because we really want to please God. But sometimes we ask this question because we are afraid and we don't know what to do. We seem to think that if God will give us the correct path to take then everything will work out great for us - no pain, only success. But the truth of Scripture is that God uses seasons of pain and struggle in our life to grow us in our faith. So why would God take us out of all trials? He has never promised to do that - only to be with us in the midst of our struggles. So, does God have a specific will for us to follow? Or do we just make the best decisions we can make each day? We will tackle this tough and very practical issues this Sunday at church. I can't wait to share what God is teaching me as I prepare.

Reply All Q&A #2: The OT and the NT

2010-07-07T13:12:00.000-05:00

The second question in our Reply All series was, How does God in the Old Testament relate to Jesus in the New Testament? Jacob, our student pastor, preached last Sunday, July 4th, and tackled this rather large topic. The main point of his message was the the God does not change between testaments. God is revealed the Old Testament to be holy, just, and gracious toward His covenant people. God is revealed in the New Testament to be exactly the same way - full of justice, truth, and grace. Jacob walked through the major covenants of the Old Testament on Sunday to show us that we cannot fully understand Jesus without understanding His place in progressive revelation. This truth also works the other direction - we cannot fully understand the God of the Old Testament without studying the person of Jesus. Hebrews 1:3 says that God has spoken in the last days in the person of His Son, revealing exactly what He is like to us in the person of Jesus. This means that we can get a full picture of God from looking at Christ, who is God in the flesh. Here are some of the many questions that came in on Sunday morning...

1. If Israel had obeyed and/or had learned their lessons, would Jesus still have had to come down? did God have to go to that level because of their stubbornness? The Bible teaches us that God had established the plan of sending His Son to redeem creation before the foundation of the world (see Ephesians 1), so we can be confident that Israel's action/inaction did not impact God's original plan. God's original plan was to choose a people to reveal Himself to and then to send His Son through that people to reconcile the world to Himself. That is exactly what God did. Everything that God did with Israel in the OT was to teach us about Himself and His character and to show all of the us why we needed Christ to come. Galatians 3 says that the law was given as a tutor to teach us our need for redemption. We needed redemption before the Law was given, but we didn't understand that we needed redemption. Therefore, Israel's struggle to obey is the same as my struggle to obey - we cannot keep the law because we are sinners in need of mercy. Thank God for showing us our need so that we would turn to Christ.

2. Do the old covenants apply today or does the new covenant replace them? This is the real debate between "covenant" theologians (who believe that the new covenant replaces the old covenants) and "dispensational" theologians (who believe that God is not done with the old covenants and will fulfill them along with the new covenant in the future). As a church, we tend to lean toward "progressive dispensationalism" which teaches that the answer is both/and. The new covenant replaces some facets of the old covenants in the sense that Christ fulfilled the demands of the old covenants and earned our place as recipients of the promises of God. However, there are parts of the old covenants that have not been fully realized yet and will not be fully realized until Christ comes back again. In other words, in his first advent, Jesus fulfilled parts of the old covenant promises - defeating sin and death - but we are waiting on his second advent before he fulfills the rest - when he will reign on the earth as the physical King of all nations.

3. When/where was the Holy Spirit introduced in the Bible? The Holy Spirit, as on of the three co-equal persons of the eternal Trinity, has always existed. His presence is seen throughout the OT, from Genesis 1 to key passages of the prophets. The full revelation of his unique personhood and work were not given until the New Testament, but His presence and ministry are seen repeatedly in the Old Testament. Jesus did the most teaching on the person of the Holy Spirit in the gospel of John (see chapters 14-17), and then the Holy Spirit started His unique ministry in the life of the church in Acts 2.

4. Should the entire OT be interpreted through the lens of Jesus? That is, does the OT only always have meaning through the NT? The short answer is no - the Old Testament has meaning on its own. The Jewish community has interpretations of the OT based solely on the OT text. However, the Christian community believes that the revelation of Jesus Christ has shown us the fullness of the meaning of the OT passages. In other words, as we study the Old Testament, we need to look first at the micro-context - what does this passage mean in its original context? Who was it written to originally? What would it have meant in that time and place? But, as Christians, we should not stop there. We should also look at the text in its macro-context - what does this passage mean in the context of all of Scripture? How does the whole revelation of God give more meaning to this passage? For example, Genesis 3 talks about the seed of the woman stepping on the head of the serpent. From reading that in its original context, we can get that a descendant of Eve is going to crush Satan. But without the NT, we don't know who it is or how they are going to do it. With the NT, we can see that Jesus is the seed of Eve who crushed Satan through His death and resurrection. Thus the OT has meaning on its own, but we don't see its fullest meaning apart from Christ.

5. How can God and Jesus be the same when Jesus even refers to God as His father? Jesus never refers to Himself as God. Even in Revelations when the heavens are opened, God and Jesus are described differently. This is why it is important to understand the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. The Bible does NOT teach that Jesus and God the Father are the same person, but that they are of the same essence. This is why (as the question above mentions) Jesus can talk to the Father as a separate person, and this is why the three persons of the Trinity can all be present at the same moment (at Jesus' baptism) - they are unique persons. However, Jesus is fully God. Jesus does claim to divinity for Himself - He says that He can forgive sin (which he says only God can do) - He says that before Abraham was, "I Am," using the Divine name of Exodus for Himself. Jesus does and says many things in the gospels that demonstrate his divinity, and the NT epistles repeatedly affirm his divinity. So the question is wrong when it says that Jesus and the Father are the "same" - they are not the same person, but they are equally divine in their essence. Well, then, you might say, are we saying that there are three gods? No - the Christian doctrine of the Trinity affirms what the Bible affirms - that though the Father, Son, and Spirit exist eternally as three divine persons, their is only One God. This is mystery, but that does not mean it is untrue. It is what Scripture teaches and what we affirm.

Reply All Q&A #1: Christianity Among Other Religions

2010-07-07T11:03:00.001-05:00

On Sunday, June 27th, we started a new series called Reply-All, where we are attempting to answer five questions that we received in response to the Letters series that we did in May and June. The first sermon I preached was in response to the question, How does evangelical Christianity compare to other denominations and other religions? In order to answer that question on the 27th, I went over the essential elements of the Christian gospel - the holiness of God, the sinfulness of man, the death and resurrection of Jesus, and salvation by faith alone in Christ. I then went on to describe how different denominations and religions tweak different elements of the Christian gospel. I discussed how liberal Protestantism tweaks the Bible's teaching on the nature of man (saying we're basically good, not basically sinful), how Catholicism tweaks the Bible's teaching on the means of salvation (saying we are saved by accumulating grace through the sacraments of the church), how the cults tweak the Bible's teaching on the person and work of Jesus (saying that He was just a created being and not fully God), and how the other religions in the world tweak the Bible's teaching on the nature of God (the Trinity, etc.). Here are answers to some of the text message we received in response to that sermon:

1. Which denominations/religions, other than our own, follow our message and teachings? Most evangelical churches that believe in the authority of the Bible will be aligned with us on the essentials of the gospel. We may disagree on forms of worship, ecclesiastical structure, how the gifts of the Spirit work inside the church, etc, but these are all secondary issues (what we call "open-handed" doctrines) compared to the core gospel message.

2. Is the Catholic tweaking of the gospel a question of salvation or is it a secondary issue? Can someone be a devout Catholic and still be saved? This is a very important issue to discuss openly and honestly. The question is one of trust - where is their confidence? I think people can be Catholic and be saved if their trust is in Jesus for salvation and not the church. One of the challenges that flows from Catholic ecclesiology (that has a very high view of the authority of the church) can be that people are not encouraged to have a personal faith in Jesus as their Savior, but simply to trust in the institution of the church. We believe that the Bible is clear that salvation does not come from membership in an institution, but through faith in the finished work of Jesus. Most Catholics believe rightly about the person of Jesus, but also believe that their salvation is dependent on the sacraments of the church. I think this is adding to the gospel of freedom in Christ alone and confuses people about the source of their salvation.

3. For those who have never heard the gospel message, is it for lack of faith in Jesus that they are cast out of God's presence forever? Is there any hope for them? People are not cast into hell because they have never heard of Jesus. People go to hell because they are sinners who have rebelled against a holy God and turned to their own idols to save them (see Romans 1). That being said, I understand the heart of this question. We all can hope that God will save those who never hear of Jesus, that God in His wisdom and mercy has some other way to redeem those who never hear, but we can't have certainty on this position. If you want to believe this, you have to defend this view from a position of Biblical silence. The Bible doesn't explicitly say anywhere that God will save those who never hear the gospel. Because of that, I cannot hold that position confidently. I must believe and live as though the name of Jesus is the only one by which men, women, and children can be saved.

4. Which category does the Unity church fall in as far as beliefs that are not consistent with the Bible? The Unity church tweaks the Bible's teachings on the nature of God, denying the Trinity - that God is One in essence and three in person. Orthodox Christianity over the last 2000 years has understood the Bible to teach that God is eternally One, but that in His One Essence, He exists eternally as three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To deny the Trinity, Unitarian churches tend to have low views of the Bible and thus fall into other unorthodox teachings on the nature of man and salvation. But the original change the Unitarian church made was on the nature of God Himself.

5. Why is it impossible not to sin? The Bible teaches that we are under the curse of sin as human beings because our original parents, Adam and Eve, rebelled against God in the garden of Eden. The Bible tells us that we have inherited a sin nature from Adam and Eve, that our very beings are marked by the impact of original sin. Christianity teaches that all men and women are fallen creatures, having dignity because we are made in God's image, but also being depraved because we are part of a fallen creation. Therefore, we are born into sin, both because we are decedents of Adam and because we choose to sin on our own.

6. Are practicing Jews still covered under the Old Covenant? The Old Covenant did not say that the Jewish people were saved by keeping the law or doing the sacrifices. They were saved by faith in God. The apostle makes the strongest case for this in Romans 4 when he says that the Bible is very clear that Abraham was saved by faith and not by his works. Therefore, salvation has always been by faith, even if the Jews of the Old Testament did not know about Jesus or his work on the cross on their behalf. That being said, today's Jews do know of Jesus and his work on their behalf. Today, Jewish people are saved just like Gentile people - through faith in the finished work of Christ. The Old Covenant does not provide another way to salvation - it simply pointed people to their need for Jesus Christ. Therefore, all people around the world today need to repent and place their faith in Christ for salvation - Jew and Gentile alike.

These are tough questions - theologically and emotionally - but I want to be clear and I want to faithful to Scripture. Please let me know if I need to clarify my answers on any of the points above....

Book Notes: Matterhorn (5/5)

2010-07-07T09:27:00.000-05:00

Matterhorn is one of the most powerful novels I have ever read. I've read many nonfiction books about war over the years, but this is one of the few fiction accounts I've read based on actual events. Karl Marlantes spent thirty years writing this novel after his own experiences in the Vietnam war. His writing is thoughtful, emotive, and clear. The list of characters is long and the military language is unfamiliar to me, but after about 200 pages, I was enveloped into the story. Marlantes does a brilliant job of covering the minutiae of jungle life in the war of Vietnam while also getting us inside the heads and the internal conflicts of the men who served.

As a novel, the book is fascinating because Marlantes places pages of beautiful prose right next to pages of dialogue that is full of profanity. It took me about 100 pages to get over the fact that almost every third word in the dialogue between the soldiers is the f-word. But later I realized that this was not only Marlantes' attempt to show us the way the Marines actually talked to each other, but is a picture of the war itself - vulgarity right next to beauty, valor, and honor. More than any war account I've ever read, Matterhorn made me feel the conflict from the soldier's perspective - the brutality, the hate and love right next to each other, the boredom and the intensity, and mess of emotions related to the chain of command and the war itself.

In one particularly gripping section, the most "religious" character in the story shares with his friend his own internal struggles with faith in the midst of so much pointless death. This paragraph moved my heart like few others I've ever read:

Cortell was silent for a moment. Then he said, "Ever'one here think it easy for me. I be this good little church boy from Mississippi with my good little church-goin' Mammy, and since I be this stupid country nigger with the big faith, I don't have no troubles. Well, it just don't work that way." He paused. Jermain said nothing. "I see my friend Williams get ate by a tiger," Cortell continued. "I see my Broyer get his face ripped off by a mine. What you think I do all night, sit around thankin' Sweet Jesus? Raise my palms to sweet heaven and cry hallelujah? You know what I do? You know what I do? I lose my heart." Cortell's throat suddenly tightened, strangling his words. "I lose my heart." He took a deep breath, trying to regain his composure. He exhaled and went on quietly, back in control. "I sit there and I don't see hope. Hope gone." Cortell was seeing his dead friends. "The, the sky turn gray again in the east, and you know what I do? I choose all over to keep believin'. All along I know Jesus could maybe be just some fairy tale, and I could be just this one big fool. I choose anyway." He turned away from his inward images and returned to the blackness of the world around him. "It ain't no easy thing."

This 4th of July, I'm especially thankful for the men and women who have descended into the depths of hell on earth to ensure the freedom we enjoy, knowing that their service wasn't "no easy thing."

My Bride At 31

2010-06-22T23:37:00.000-05:00

I married the girl of my dreams 10 years ago, and this past Sunday (June 20th), my bride turned 31 years old. We were laughing the other night remembering what we were like when we met in 7th grade, full of junior-high awkwardness and adolescent energy. I have known Barie Sue since she was 12 years old, and she has turned from an fun-loving friend into a fun-loving wife and mom. Who could have imagined that the girl sitting next to me at the lunchroom table in middle school would end up being my lover and partner for life? I'm sure if I went back and talked to 12 year old Keith, he would think I was crazy. But the 31 year old Keith who has had the privilege of knowing Barie for two-thirds of her life knows that God was being incredibly gracious to him when He put Barie Sue in his path.

I am kind of a serious guy (some people call it gruffness - I like to call it intensity), and Lord knew that I needed a wife and best friend who could make me smile. And if it is one thing that Barie does extremely well (among many), it is smile. I mean, check out the picture that I posted with this entry. Barie's bright, big, beautiful smile, and her penetrating eyes can soften the heart of the hardest person. I can't tell you how many times I've heard Barie say over the years, "I know you can't look at me without smiling." And it is true. When I think of her, I smile. Her laugh is infectious and her most commonly noted quality is her joy. The fact that she has come from the places she has been and still exudes seemingly endless genuine joy from her heart is a daily evidence of the gracious love of Jesus in her life.

Which reminds me of another facet of Barie's life that nobody could have guessed when she was 12 - her hunger and passion for God. She was passionate about boys when I first met her (which was good for me), but today she is most passionate about honoring her Lord with every aspect of her life (which is really good for me). She has struggled to figure out how spending daily time with God fits into a life with four small kids and a husband who moves slow in the morning, but amazingly, she has still managed to grow in her knowledge of and love for Jesus Christ. This year at church we have made it our focus to work at growing in Christ-likeness, and to that end, we filled out spiritual assessments on each other so that we could see what other people see in our lives. When I filled out Barie's, I was reminded what a godly woman she has become. When you know somebody a long time, it can be hard to see how they have changed because the process is so slow. But when I stopped to think about the woman that Barie has become, I was thankful for not only her love, but her example. I want to be the kind of Christian that she is.

Beyond her spirituality, she has worked hard to be more physically fit at 31 than she was at 21. In 2009, she completed her first triathlon and her first half-marathon. I mean, who are we kidding? We're talking about the year after she had her fourth baby! I can't speak from experience, but I've heard that having kids can be tough on your body. I got to watch first-hand how her short body struggled to hold those big babies. But she did it with joy and ease (and quite a few TUMS - but that is a story for another post), and now she looks like she hasn't even had any babies. She is in the best shape of her life. I remember trying to first get her into running and working out after I found out about my diabetes five years ago - it took some arm-twisting. But now, I can't even keep up with her. My bride at 31 can out-run, out-bike, and out-swim me. I personally don't think that is fair.

Most of all, though, I wish all people could know the giant heart of compassion that grows in my wonderful wife. Every person she meets is the most interesting person at that moment. She never meets a stranger, though she has met some strange people, and her tears flow freely when she sees someone in need. If God ever makes her rich, I know that she will give all that money away. She simply feels so deeply for others. I am thankful that God has grown my own heart of compassion over the years, so that now I can see people and feel for them with deep love. But Barie feels that deep love for everyone, not the handful that I care about. Almost every day when I come home, Barie starts off her first paragraph of conversation with these words, "you won't believe who I met today..." And then we're off to the races. And while it is funny to me - it's not funny to her - she is genuinely concerned and every new person she gets to know. Over the years I've known her, that deep love for others has only grown.

When Jesus was asked in Mark 12 what the most important commandments were in all of the Torah, He answered with two - love God with all that you are and love others as yourself. As I read those words, I can't think of any better description for my amazing bride at 31.

Book Notes: Ford County (2/5)

2010-06-17T07:18:00.001-05:00

I've read a lot of John Grisham books over the years, enjoying the earlier legal thrillers better than his later books, and so I picked up a used copy of his newest work, a collection of short stories, before we left for vacation. The book is a quick read and the characters that Grisham introduces us to are interesting. In spite of this, I didn't really enjoy the stories. I tired of the combination of similar features in every story - lots of drinking, unethical small-town lawyers, frequent divorce, and time in prison. I just couldn't get involved in any of the stories in any kind of meaningful way. Maybe it was the fact that I just read Gilead a month ago, but either way, I found Grisham's writing in these stories to be repetitive and uninspiring. Sin may be the universal point of contact between human beings, but stories without any redemptive value wear down the soul.

Book Notes: Billy Graham (5/5)

2010-06-14T07:53:00.000-05:00

I read Billy Graham's autobiography, Just As I Am, about 10 years ago when I was first considering a life of ministry. His autobiography is long and detailed, but extremely moving. Graham has preached the gospel of Jesus Christ to more people in person than anyone in history and has influenced a whole generation of Christian leaders around the world. When I received David Aikman's biography of Graham, I was excited to read about his life from an outsider's perspective. Aikman, as a senior writer for Time magazine earlier in his life, is well versed in world religion and world politics. Because of this, Aikman brings a unique perspective to covering Graham's ministry and life.

First, let's talk about the structure and style of the book. While Graham's autobiography is primarily written chronologically, Aikman's biography is written categorically, covering Graham's crusade ministry, his relationship with other Christian leaders, his teaching and example on racial issues, his friendships to American presidents, and his legacy one at a time. I really appreciated this approach as it allowed the reader to think about Graham's ministry in larger terms than simply one-time events. Aikman's book is much shorter than Graham's autobiography (about 300 pages compared to 800 pages) and moves quickly. Graham's life, experiences, and relationships gives the biographer plenty of material to work with, and Aikman doesn't get bogged down in too much detail. Rather, Aikman tries to interpret the impact and influence of Graham's life and ministry. Also, as an insider to the Christian community, I can testify that Aikman understands the inner-working complexities of the community very well and writes about them lucidly.

Second, let's talk about the content. Aikman is obviously a big fan of Billy Graham, and it is hard not to be. Very few people are this faithful to their calling over the course of 70 years in the public eye. So many ministers in the public eye have fallen prey to the temptations of power, money, or sexuality. Yet, Graham has stayed true to his original call to preach the gospel for seven decades. Aikman carefully examines Graham's missteps along the way, most of them the result of Graham's desire to be liked by those around him. The part of the book that grieves my heart the most (as a pastor with four kids) is Aikman's discussion of how Graham's traveling ministry impacted his five children. Three of the five have been divorced, and they have all talked publicly about their struggles with their dad being gone so much of the time for his crusades around the world. At the end of the day, however, we all have much to learn from the example of Billy Graham - most clearly from his faithfulness and his humility. The last paragraph of Aikman's book is so poignent that they are worth quoting in full:

Some of the results of Graham's ministry may become clear in time; others may not be known until - if we believe in its existence - we are in eternity. But we do know that Billy Graham, evangelist, one of the most successful men in America of the second half of the twentieth century in any conceivable endeavor, was also one of the most humble. When speaking of how people would recognize his followers, Jesus taught, "you will know them by their fruits." What fruits? The fruits of moral virtue in their lives, sometimes referred to as "the fruits of the spirit." by that criterion alone, Billy Graham, world-famous evangelist, sometimes called the Protestant Pope, a seven-decade long servant of the call to preach the gospel, has been singularly and to the end a faithful follower of Jesus Christ.

Questions About Perseverance

2010-06-07T15:29:00.000-05:00

I preached yesterday on our call as believers in Jesus Christ to persevere (look at Galatians 6:9, Hebrews 12:1, and Matthew 5:33-37). I had never preached on that topic, and I found it especially challenging and helpful to my own maturity. I've talked to many people since yesterday who said they had never heard a sermon on that topic and were thankful to hear what the Scripture teaches. We only answered questions after first hour since we baptized after second-hour yesterday. As I've done other weeks, here are some answers to questions that came in...

1) How do you discern when to pray and wait, or pray and take action? This is really a question about discerning God's will. My general rule of thumb on discerning God's will is that we pray (try to discern His voice), we read Scripture (to make sure that we are not missing something that is obvious), we listen to godly counsel (a lot of Scripture encourages us to seek wise advice), and then we act. Sometimes we can use "I'm praying about it" as cover for procrastination and laziness. We need to make sure and guard against that temptation. If my Bible teaches it and godly men and women around me encourage it, I should seriously consider it. All that being said, we do need to make sure that we don't over-commit ourselves to the urgent at the expense of the important (a major point in my sermon yesterday). If we say 'yes' to everything, we will eventually say 'no' to something. We have to be discerning about what is most important for us to give ourselves to, commit to those things, and then follow-through. This raises other questions...

2) What do I do if I have already over-committed? How do I respond to this message to persevere if I am already over-committed and I simply can't keep up this pace without killing myself? The first answer to this question is to remember NOT to get in this situation again. Remember that you can't please everybody all the time and that each of us have to make priority decisions every day. If you get trapped into being a people-pleaser all the time, you will constantly find yourself over-committed. That being said, the question is what to do when I'm already there. First, I would say that you have to realize that your lack of perseverance will impact somebody else. If you are going to back out on something you originally said you were going to do, you need to make sure and help find someone else to do what you had previously committed to. Don't just drop the ball - hand it to someone else. Second, consider if you can keep your commitment if it is short-term with the knowledge that you will not re-up your commitment after you are done. It is easier to be out of balance for 8 or 12 weeks if you know that at the end of your commitment, you will have learned your lesson and can stay balanced for a longer period of time. Finally, if you absolutely have to break a commitment to someone, don't act like it doesn't matter. Own your own faults and commit to learn from your experience.

3) How do you cope with other people’s failure to keep their promises, when you are the one who was let down? What if you are on the receiving end of someone not persevering in their commitment? What if you end up carrying the weight of the family, your job, your ministry because someone else did not follow through? This is a very real situation that we all face from time to time. In my response, I think we need to hold two principles in tension: grace and truth. First, we need to be gracious - we should realize that we have let others down before, and that if Jesus had waited until we persevered in all of our commitments before He rescued us, we would still be waiting. In other words, as with all sin, we are called to reflect the forgiveness that we have received from Christ. In addition, however, we need to be people of truth. We need to challenge other believers to keep their word. We need to let others know how their lack of commitment will impact our life. When we don't persevere, other people are hurt - that is the simple truth. And as a Christian community, we need to do a better job of having honest conversations with each other about follow-through. We can be gracious and still call others to a higher standard of integrity and perseverance. Ultimately, I think we should learn from our painful experiences with broken promises to not break promises ourselves. May God help us all to be men and women who keep our word.

Minor Prophets

2010-06-07T14:32:00.000-05:00

While I was away on study-break last week, I read through the Minor Prophets (the 12 smaller prophetic books at the end of the Old Testament). This was a great exercise for me and reminded me of God's greatness, holiness, and compassion. As I read, I summarized the message of each book. Here were some of my thoughts...

Hosea – 14 chapters – Hosea is asked by God to marry a prostitute (Gomer) so that he will know what God’s experience with Israel is like. God addresses Israel’s repeated adultery (idolatry with other gods) and their presumption of God’s continuous blessing. The book ends on a positive note with God promising to renew and restore a repentant Israel.

Joel – 3 chapters – Joel announces the locust plagues against the people of Judah (a terrible judgment from God), then in 2:12 begins to call God’s people to repentance and healing. God promises to restore His people, pour out His Spirit on them, and to defeat their enemies. He does all of this so that His people and the nations will know that He is the true and reigning God.

Amos – 9 chapters – Amos speaks of God’s judgment on kings/nations that oppress other peoples with violence and cruelty (see 2:6-6-16 on Israel). The Lord has brought warnings from prophets and plagues on His people, but they failed to return to Him. Amos if the reluctant shepherd prophet who confronts the leaders of Israel with the visions that God has given. Amos’ vision of God is intense and awesome in His judgment and wrath against sin. Only the last 5 verses speak of God’s future restoration of Israel.

Obadiah – 1 chapter – God promises to bring judgment on the people of Edom because they stood by and watched as the nation of Israel was invaded and conquered by foreign fighters. They turned on Israel when the going got tough, and now God has promised to destroy Edom and restore Israel.

Jonah – 4 chapters – God calls Jonah to announce judgment on Nineveh. Jonah refuses and runs away from God’s calling. God stops Jonah and gets his attention through a storm and a fish. Jonah repents and delivers the message to Nineveh. The people of Nineveh repented and God relented. Jonah became angry at God’s mercy toward Nineveh and God confronted Jonah about his anger.

Micah – 7 chapters – Micah prophesies the Lord’s judgment against those who abuse their wealth and power (especially the leaders of Israel) to take advantage of the weak and poor. He condemns the false prophets who are saying everything is okay when it is clearly not okay, and he looks forward to the coming reign of God on the earth (the coming Messiah – Jesus). In the day of the Coming King, peace will finally reign and all nations will worship the true God. More than sacrifice, God wants his people to do right, love mercy, and walk humbly with Him. God is faithful to His promises.

Nahum – 3 chapters – God announces coming judgment against the Assyrians in Nineveh, proclaiming His great and awesome power to wipe out a people with one word. This book is full of powerful imagery of what Nineveh will experience as God brings judgment – it is terrifying language. The Assyrians were the most powerful and wealthy nation of that day, and yet God brings them to their knees.

Habakkuk – 3 chapters – Habakkuk questions God’s plan to use the Babylonians to bring judgment on Judah. God pledges to destroy all those who worship idols, who put their trust in their wealth. This book is a call to faith – Habakkuk ends with a prayer declaring his trust and joy in God his Savior.

Zephaniah – 3 chapters – Zepheniah prophesies against Judah for their indifference toward God’s ways and the nations for their pride in scoffing at God’s people and God Himself. The prophet recognizes that God’s continued threats of judgment are not changing the people and looks forward to that day when their hearts will be changed because the Lord, the King of Israel, will live among them in person.

Haggai – 2 chapters – Haggai confronted the governor and high priest with the message that the Lord’s house was in ruins while the people were building their own houses. The people and the leaders repented and God spurred their hearts to rebuild the Temple. In response to their obedience and faith, God promised to bless them richly.

Zechariah – 14 chapters – Zechariah is full of apocalyptic imagery – flying horses, lampstands, baskets, chariots, scenes of heaven and earth – all pointing to the restoration of God’s people, God’s judgment against all of the nations (images pointing to the four corners of the earth), and the coming of the royal Branch (who will reign in Jerusalem as God’s representative). The main message is that God has not forgotten His people in exile and that He will restore them through their coming King (9:9-17). When the King comes, He will bring dancing and rejoicing for His people. This book is more hopeful than the others and more focused on the coming Messiah, his betrayal and death for the cleansing of the people.

Malachi – 4 chapters – The Lord is angry with His people because they show less respect to His name than the other nations who have no covenant. Malachi’s role is to call the people of Israel to respect and honor the name of the Lord, to not give Him empty, left-over sacrifices, but their best. The Lord is angry at His people for breaking their vows, stealing their tithes, and ignoring His warnings. The book ends with a group of God-fearers renewing their vow to God, and God promising to send the Son.

Book Notes: Three Books

2010-06-02T08:00:00.043-05:00

I have been behind in posting about the books I've been reading, and before I dive into several books this week, I wanted to put out some quick reviews of three books I've read recently. I read the first two while I was on my 10-year wedding anniversary trip to Cancun in May, and I am working my way through the third one right now with my family.

Book #1: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
Marilynne Robinson won the Pulitzer-Prize for this fiction book in 2004. I had heard some great reviews by other pastors who read it, so I picked up a used copy before I left for vacation. The book is a compilation of first-person letters written from an elderly dying pastor to his young son. The letters cover a wide range of topics - everything from family history to his professional life as a pastor to personal struggles. I really enjoyed this book - probably more than most since I could relate to many of the ups and downs that the pastor faced over the years of his ministry and because I loved the quick interludes of American history throughout. The writing is beautiful and moving throughout, and Gilead made me want to write a yearly letter to each of my children on their birthday so that I could leave them with something from me when they get older. I don't know if I'll do it, but I should.

Book #2: With the Old Breed by EB Sledge
EB Sledge's memoir of his fighting on the front lines in the Pacific during WWII has been out for almost three decades now. The book continues to sell well and has been introduced to a new generation of readers as the basis for HBO's WWII series called Pacific. I have read several books about the World War II era, so nothing in Sledge's book was new to me, but his close personal encounters with war, death, disease, friendship, and honor made for incredibly gripping reading. As we just celebrated Memorial Day 2010, book like this remind me of how blessed we are for the freedom that we enjoy. Men like EB Sledge and many others who did not come home have served our country so bravely and sacrificed so much. I am thankful to EB Sledge for writing his story down for generations to read.

Book #3: Training Hearts, Teaching Minds
I have always struggled to know the best tool to use to help my kids get an accurate understanding of God and His ways. We have used different kids' Bibles and devotional books over the years, but this one by Starr Meade is my favorite (by far!). Training Hearts, Teaching Minds is a daily family devotional guide that gives six devotions for each question in the shorter catechism. The catechism questions are updated into modern English (which is great), and the daily devotionals are short (which is also great). The devotionals guide your family into one or two passages each night that help the family understand the question that you are current studying as part of the catechism. If you are in the midst of raising up kids to know and love God, I would highly encourage you to pick up this awesome tool.

Letters Topic #3: Perseverance

2010-06-01T16:55:00.000-05:00

I like to preach about risk-taking, about being a radical disciple of Jesus Christ. Early in my pastoral ministry, I used to think that everyone's problem in their relationship with Jesus was their lack of willingness to make sacrifices and take risks for the sake of the gospel. Now, I am beginning to wonder if I only had part of the story. While risky faith is important, perseverance is equally important. It is not enough to set sail, we have to finish the journey. The Bible has much to say about God's faithfulness toward us and His desire for us to be faithful to our commitments. As I lead a group of Christ-followers in 2010, I notice that one of the major challenges that we face in our journey toward maturity is persevering in our commitments and being faithful to our word. This Sunday, June 6th, I will preach on how Jesus Christ can help us become a people who regularly persevere. In anticipation of that topic, I thought I would throw out a few reasons we fail to persevere...

1) Lack of Clear Priorities - when we are not sure what is most important in our lives, we can tend to say "yes" to every opportunity that comes along. And of course, if we say "yes" to everything, we are really saying "no" to what is most important. We all know this in general terms, but if we have not written down explicitly what our most important priorities are, then we don't know how to evaluate all the opportunities that come our way. In order to persevere in our commitments, we have to limit our commitments to what is MOST important.

2) Fear of man - as a follow-up to point one, we need to admit that we all struggle to say "no" when someone asks us to help. Most of the time, it is driven by compassion and a desire to help, but sometimes it can be driven by the fear in our hearts that the person asking us may reject us and not like us anymore. In this way, a fear of not getting man's approval can cripple our perseverance. We are usually less willing to say "no" on the front end that we are to say "yes" at the front end and then follow it up with a "no" when we realize that we have over-committed. I think this is because we believe other people will be more understanding if we tried to say "yes" but had to back out because of other commitments.

3) Boredom - we are an entertained people, aren't we? It drives me crazy when one of my children goes from one activity to another and then asks me, "what's next?" as though I were their personal entertainment machine. Yet we have all been impacted by immediate-gratification culture. We want to enjoy something, and we want to enjoy it now! If something bores us over time, we move on to something new. This seems harmless when it is a video-game, but what happens when it is a spouse? Our limited endurance for boredom has had terrible consequences in the area of personal perseverance.

4) No Vision - another reason that we give up so quickly is that we forget why we are doing what we are doing. If we lose vision and feel like we are just going through the motions, we will quickly grow weary with the follow-through. How many of us have signed up to do something or said 'yes' to something when we very excited only to see the passion and joy leave as we got into the long-haul? This is so common that we even have a name for it - "burn-out." Why does a fire burn out? Because it loses it fuel (the wood) or can't get any more oxygen. The fuel for perseverance is vision - remembering the big picture while we are faithful in the small details.

What are your thoughts on why perseverance is so hard?

Book Notes: Jesus Manifesto (4/5)

2010-06-01T16:21:00.000-05:00

Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola have teamed up to write a new book about Jesus Christ. Their work is an attempt to call the Christian community back to a exalted view of Jesus as all in all and to correct the Christian community for all the other pursuits that we have made primary over the years. In many ways, their words are encouraging and powerful as they stirred my heart to reconsider my devotion to and connection with Christ. In other ways, their book felt uneven (co-authorship can do that) and unnecessarily polemical (attempting to refute those who emphasize other things in their preaching and teaching). I would have enjoyed their exalted vision of Jesus more had they not repeatedly attempted to correct the teaching of others.

As a guy who attempts to preach Christ in all that he does, I was saying "amen" to many passages in the book. All of us can be reductionistic in our teaching (trying to say that all we need to teach is ______), and the Jesus Manifesto says that if we are going to be reductionistic in anything, it should be toward Christ. The Scriptures do say that He is all in all, so we have justification for putting our whole attention and devotion and affection on Him. However, Sweet and Viola don't go to the next step (which I understand is not the focus of their book) and show how an all-consuming devotion and love for Christ then impacts all the different areas of my life. In other words, if we are not going to preach legalism or moralism or social justice or mission, then we need to show people how a passionate walk with Jesus produces morality and justice and evangelism.

Overall, this book is an attempt at a modern-day updated Christology. How do we talk about Jesus in today's language so that we are faithful to the Bible and yet also help introduce people in our day to meet with the living Christ? Sweet and Viola make a strong case against dry doctrinalism (just talking about Jesus instead of talking to Him), and yet their book is a doctrinal book - making the case for the biblical view of Jesus in all of His glory. I think this is needed - I just wish they had not dogged the doctrine of Christ as less important than knowing Christ. They are equally important. Most cults in our culture today speak of Jesus and their relationship with Him, but they are not talking about the Jesus I know and meet with every day. They are making Jesus in their own image, according to their own doctrine. In order for our worship and devotion and love of Christ to not lead us into the ditch (to use the authors' language), we have to make sure that we are worshiping and loving the true Christ. I'm afraid that most people in my generation use the name Jesus without any idea who they are talking to.

All this being said, I do want to sincerely thank Sweet and Viola for calling us back to the center of all things - Jesus Christ. My heart is stirred to love Him more and to allow Him to live fully through me.

Questions About Sex

2010-05-31T09:16:00.000-05:00

We had a great Sunday yesterday at church. We usually have less people in attendance over Memorial Day weekend because so many families are traveling, but we were up yesterday - most likely because we were covering the tough topic of sex. It seems everyone could use some help in maturing in this area of our lives. Here are some of the many text messages that came in after I preached yesterday and my best attempt at a quick answer...

1) Will we be condemned before God if we have had sex before marriage? Sex outside of marriage is the same as every other sin in God's economy, meaning that it does bring condemnation and death, but not any more than stealing or lying or gossiping does. Sin is sin, and the grace of God poured out in the blood of Jesus Christ covers all sin. Sexual sin is unique (as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:18) in some of its consequences in our own lives, but it is not unique in its consequence for our relationship with God. When we trust Jesus as Savior, He saves us from all sin - sexual sin included. As I said Sunday, sometime the most difficult part of moving beyond our sexual past is forgiving ourselves - in other words, believing that God's forgiveness is real. Be encouraged - His forgiveness covers all our sin.

2) Does it cause men to struggle with purity when ladies in their life dress immodestly? The short answer is yes. The Bible speaks to how women dress in multiple places because women can use their physical beauty as a source of trust (an idol) that they can use to manipulate men and get what they want in life. Men are attracted to women by sight, and since women are not attracted to men by sight (as much), they can fail to understand and appreciate how their dress can impact men. All this being said, men cannot wait for all women to begin to dress modestly to have a mental life of purity. Even if most of the women in our lives dress modestly, there will still be women around us (at the store, the bank, at work) who don't, and we have to develop the discipline of not lusting over those women.

3) Is adultery the only free pass to unforgiveness and divorce? Jesus said that divorce was acceptable in situations where adultery had been committed, but He didn't say it was best or even desirable. Divorce never fixes the situation - it simply changes the difficulties that you are dealing with. I believe that couples can reconcile even after adultery occurs if repentance is sincere and life-change occurs. Also, everyone needs to recognize that adultery is not a free pass to unforgiveness. Unforgiveness is deadly to the person holding on the pain and hurt and bitterness, not the person who has hurt us. Regardless of what someone has done to us (even including adultery), we cannot live with unforgiveness in our hearts. We must forgive by the power of the Spirit in us.

4) What if you try to confess and talk about your past with your spouse but they don't want to hear it? This is a great question, and actually, a very common one. Because most of us bring sexual issues with us into our marriage relationship, we have to be wise about how we handle our past. In my personal opinion, we need to confess in broad terms what we have done and/or experienced that will impact our sexual relationship in marriage. However, I don't think we need to confess every detail of everything we've ever done sexually. That would be unnecessary and painful to our spouse. Our spouse does need to know if we've been sexually active or if we have struggled with pornography addiction, etc., but they don't need to know that on October 4, 1998, I went out with this person and we made out at the movies. It is pointless to go into that much detail unless there is something in a specific experience (where sexual abuse or date rape, etc.) that continues to cause you pain and hurt in your sexual relationship with your spouse.

5) What is God's view on homosexuality? Does God love his gay children as well or are they going to hell? I am really thankful to be able to attempt an answer to this question. I know that this is a difficult question for many people either because of their own sexual struggles or because of friends and family who have shared that they are gay. First, we need to recognize that all people are created in the image of God and given significance and worth and value by God. Rather than label people based on their sexual desires or orientation, we need to label all people as just people first. I am not a straight man first. I am just a man, created and loved by God. Second, we need to apologize for all the terrible things that people in our tribe have said toward homosexual people. We have many stupid, unloving people in our tribe who have held signs that have said terrible things like "God hates fags." I hope and pray for the day that homosexual men and women can forgive us for that and take a new look at Jesus Christ. Finally, we need to confess that the Bible does say that homosexual activity is outside the will and plan of God. The Bible doesn't condemn homosexual desire, just like it doesn't condemn heterosexual desire. The question is what we do with that desire. If we use our heterosexual desire inside of marriage, then we are honoring God with it. If we use our heterosexual desire outside of marriage, then we are not honoring God with it. If someone has homosexual desire, then they are challenged by Scripture to live a celibate life in order to honor God with their desires. I understand that this is difficult, but all men and women are challenged to submit their sexual desire under the lordship of Jesus, and as best as I can understand Scripture, this is what it means for men and women with homosexual desire.

6) Finally, what can we say about David and the OT kings who had all those wives? Is God okay with multiples wives? Another great question! From the very beginning of the Bible (Genesis 2), God set up marriage to be between one woman and one man for life. When Jesus and Paul speak to the issue of marriage, they go back to Genesis 2 to show that God's design and intention for marriage has never changed. Within this bigger biblical narrative, we can see that David and the other OT kings were outside of God's plan by taking on multiple wives. In fact, the Scriptures never glorify what they did or tell us to follow their example. Rather, the text tells us that it was their multiple wives that led their hearts astray from the heart of God. As they added wives from different lands who worshiped different gods, they brought idols into their homes, and their allegiance to their many wives eventually led them astray spiritually. Instead of exalting what they did, the Bible tells that what they did was foolish and did great damage to them personally and the nation of Israel.

Letters Topic #2: Sex

2010-05-27T09:21:00.000-05:00

As we continue in our Letters series this Sunday, we are going to speak to the issue of sexual purity. As we continue to address challenges to our spiritual maturity, we must confront the ongoing temptation that comes from sexual sin. There are many ways to talk about this issue, but as I have prepared for Sunday morning, let me surface three reasons that I believe everyone needs good teaching and helpful accountability to make progress in our personal purity.

First, our culture presents conflicting messages about sexuality because individuals are conflicted about their own sexuality. Without a biblical worldview to give us some kind of standards with regards to sex, we have to figure out our own boundaries with sex. Very few people believe that all kinds of sex are okay, but no one seems to agree about where the healthy boundaries exist or even should exist. Add this cultural confusion to the fact that all teens are confused about their sexuality (remember how you felt when your sexual desires first started to blossom?) and we have a recipe for disaster. On top of this, many parents feel like they are handicapped to speak clearly and with conviction to their children about sex because of the way they have handled their own sexuality. Simply put: we need to be able to think clearly about sexuality and have some kind of objective authority to establish healthy boundaries.

Second, sexual sin is unique in its impact. The apostle Paul says something to this effect in 1 Corinthians 6:18 when he separates sexual sin from other forms of sin. While all sin offends God and brings distance in our relationship with Him, sexual sin is unique in its impact on the human soul and the human body. Much has been written about the impact of promiscuous sexual activity on the body (disease, pregnancy, etc.), but little has been written about the impact of sexual sin on the soul. This is the main focus of the Bible - we cannot separate our bodies from our souls and think that what we do with our bodies has no impact on our souls - it absolutely does. In fact, the Bible gives us a very high view of sex - saying that it has the power to bring two people together and make them one new flesh. When the Bible talks about this, it is speaking beyond the physical union to the spiritual union that occurs. We must be careful that we don't abuse the gift of sex in our lives because it impacts our souls, not just our bodies.

Finally, sexual desire is powerful. Everyone knows this, and yet (like the money discussion last week) so few of us get honest with other people about our sexual desires and struggles with sexual temptation. Why is this so? I think very few of us (especially men) want to admit that our sexual desires are as strong as they are or that we struggle with knowing what to do with them. Every time men share about sexual temptation, there is immediate compassion and connection over the issue because all men can relate. Yet, it seems like those conversations are slow to occur. Additionally, I think it is important for women to talk openly about their struggles with sexuality and sexual sin. Just because men are more likely to be aroused by sight does not mean that women are free from the temptation to abuse the gift of their sexuality. If we are not careful, we will assume that we have our sexual desires mastered only to find ourselves giving in to sexual temptation once again. Sexual activity is pleasurable, and the human desire to be sexually active is strong. As we get honest, we can more adequately deal with the truth.

I'm excited to preach on this important topic this Sunday. Let me know if you have any questions or comments ahead of Sunday's sermon.

Questions About Giving

2010-05-26T20:47:00.000-05:00

For those of you who attended our services last Sunday, you know that we re-introduced the feature where people in the audience could text-message in their questions after the sermon for a short Q&A. We haven't tried the text-message questions in a while, but when we know that we will be preaching on a topic that stirs a lot of interest and passionate debate, we want to make this feature available. As I mentioned last week on my blog, I preached on money last Sunday and took questions after each service. We received 5 questions after first service and 11 after second service. Because I couldn't answer them all during the short Q&A session on Sunday, I wanted to answer a few of the questions here on my blog. Here were three questions that I thought were very thought provoking...

Question #1: We are considering purchasing a new home. It is not a necessity, but we do feel like we could use the extra space. Obviously, this purchase will require us to spend extra money that we could give away. How do you know when spending money on non-necessities is okay and when it is sinful/greedy? This is a great question because it is a question that we all face every day - how do we know if it is okay to spend money on stuff that we don't really need but that we just want to buy? I think two principles are in play in this discussion. First, we need to make sure that giving is first in our budget before we make these kind of decisions. If we can't give as we sense God is leading us to give because of our spending too much (like on a new house), then we should reconsider. However, if we pray about how much our family should give away, we give that money away first in our budget, and we still have the margin left in our budget to get the new house, then we can probably move forward. This leads to the second principle - don't make large purchases in isolation. Buying a new house is a much bigger decision than buying a new pair of jeans. When we are making large financial decisions, we need to make sure that we are getting good counsel from others around us who are wise financial stewards. We tend to do this with every other decision that we make, but for some reason, we don't seek good counsel on financial purchases. God's Word shows us that we need to find the counsel of the wise if we want to be wise - especially when it comes to how we handle money.

Question #2: I disagree with one of the points in your sermon about God not needing our money. Without our money, there could be no church, and without the church, how could you reach people? This is another great question, and one that I am glad to have the chance to respond to in detail. In my sermon, I made the point from Psalm 50:9-12 that God doesn't ask us to give because he needs our money, but rather because he wants our hearts. The Scripture says that God owns everything anyway, so we are, theologically speaking, simply giving God back His own stuff. That being said, the question does raise the tension of how would the church operate without our giving. Two answers to this important question - first, though God doesn't need the money we give (He can work without our resources), He does choose to use our giving in other people's lives. In my mind, this is another evidence of God's amazing grace - the fact that my giving not only changes my heart, but can be used by God to impact another life as well. Second of all, the question assumes that God needs the American form of church (large worship gatherings in public places with professional ministers) in order to reach people. In fact, in many places in the world, God is using small house churches without professional clergy to rapidly take the gospel to millions of people. In other words, God shows us globally that His Spirit can move even when great financial resources are not available. In fact, I would argue historically that God's Spirit moves in the most profound ways among the poor.

Question #3: In the Old Testament, the Bible teaches that we should bring the whole tithe to the church, but in the NT, aren't we free to give the tithe to other places besides the church if it is helping to fulfill our mission? If we are still giving to God, does it really matter where it goes? Another great and common question that I encounter. As I said on Sunday morning, I believe that we are under grace in the New Testament, and we have freedom to follow the Holy Spirit in our giving. I don't believe that we are limit our giving to 10%, and that our giving should only be given to the local church. I don't read the Bible to teach that the local church is the same as the "storehouse" referenced in Malachi 3, for example. The people of the Old Testament were told very specifically what to do with their tithe, but I believe that we have freedom to follow the Spirit in our giving as NT believers. This means that we can give to our local church, our local pregnancy center, our local college ministry, and missionaries around the world. However, I would caution in one area. The NT speaks of the fact that we should support those who teach us the Bible and feed us spiritually (see 1 Timothy 5:16-18), so I believe that we should be giving regularly and generously to the local congregation that is supporting us and equipping us in our walk with Christ. In fact, one the blessings of being part of a community of faith and giving regularly to that local congregation is that you can be confident that your giving is supporting that local church and other ministries in the city and around the world that your local church is supporting. In this way, giving to a local church is a very powerful way to impact the world for the cause of Christ.

Letters Topic #1: Money

2010-05-17T11:21:00.000-05:00

So, we're starting a new series this week at church called Letters. The idea is simple: the NT writers wrote letters (hence the name) to churches throughout the ancient world to encourage them in their faith and to speak to specific issues that they were facing. Over the next five weeks at church, we are going to speak to five issues that our church-leaders repeatedly confront as we are discipling others to become more like Jesus Christ. The first topic we will address? Money!

Interestingly enough, Jesus talks about money more than he does any other topic. One of the reasons I think he warns us repeatedly about greed and building our treasure here on earth is because greed is so hard for us to see it in ourselves. In other words, even though we are wealthier than 95% of the world, we can always find someone who makes more money than we do and spends more than we do and therefore convince ourselves that we are not greedy or consumed with materialism. But can we be honest for one minute? We all struggle with being generous people. With so many options to spend our money on, we can always think of a good reason to buy that new gadget, get the new car, buy the newer, bigger house. I'm not throwing stones - I'm right there with you!

You would think that because we are the most prosperous people in the world, we would be the most generous. But all the research shows that people give less money as they become more prosperous. This report from 2007 shows that the poor gave about twice as much as the rich in percentage terms. How can this be? I think the reality is that the more we make, the more we think we deserve to enjoy in life. And when we buy into that line of thinking, it is harder for us to part with our money. We begin to consider what other things we could do with the money if we didn't give any. Think about it this way: if I give 10% of $100, that's only $10. What can you really do with $10? But if I give away 10% of $100,000, that's $10,000. I could do a lot with $10,000 (for myself) - maybe a great vacation or a upgrade on my house or a great new car. But what we fail to realize is that the first person only has $90 to live on, while the second has $90,000.

My dad used to always say (and still does): it doesn't matter how much you make, you can always find a way to spend it. In other words, we are never at a loss of things we think we need to buy. I would add my corollary to his nugget of wisdom: if you don't give first, you won't give at all. Because we find ways to spend what we have, we have to give first. Generosity must become a first-place discipline in our lives. We can learn to live on whatever we have, so let's learn to give to God first and to live on the rest.

Any thoughts?

Celebrate Life!

2010-05-17T10:45:00.000-05:00

We had an awesome day yesterday at church as we looked at the question of what it means for a local community of Christ-followers to celebrate the value of every human life. The Christian tradition stands on the theological foundation of the imago dei (image of God) to declare that every person has worth and value because every person is made in God's image. We teach our preschool kids that "God made me," but many times as adults we have not given time to thinking through the implications of this powerful doctrine. Yesterday at church, we talked about three organizations that we partner with who are demonstrating the life-changing reality of Jesus Christ through their care of the most vulnerable around us. If you missed the message (which included all three interviews), you can catch it on our website this week. Here's who we talked to...

Caring for the unborn (by loving on expecting moms):
Agape Pregnancy Resource Center
Many of you took a baby-bottle from their table on Sunday (we are collecting change in them to help fund their amazing work in downtown Round Rock). They are due on Father's Day.

Caring for the orphan (through foster-care & adoption):
Arrow Family Ministries
Arrow does their orientation to the foster and adoption process on the first Tuesday of each month at their Round Rock offices. The next orientation is June 1st!
ABBA Fund
We announced Sunday that we were launching our own fund with a great ministry called ABBA Fund, which helps prospective adoptive families get loans to cover adoption costs. We are also participating in a marathon in October (called Chosen: Marathon For Adoption). We had 30 runners sign up on Sunday!

Caring for the poor (through international sponsorship):
Compassion International
Compassion is a wonderful international agency that works in over 25 countries. Barie and I have sponsored a Compassion child for 10 years, and we were excited to see many families pick up packets on Sunday.

I am blessed to lead a congregation of people who are so giving. Thanks for everyone who helped out on this special Sunday!

Envision Update April 2010

2010-04-29T15:09:00.005-05:00

Just released this video to the church family...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYL_sYhDZcE

Week of Prayer and Fasting

2010-03-27T15:39:00.003-05:00

Our elders are starting a week of prayer and fasting tomorrow in preparation for Easter and in preparation for some big decisions we are facing in the next month. I will be offline all week and not be updating my blog. Here are a few of my thoughts on fasting that I put together for our church leaders. I pray that they are helpful to you as you approach times of fasting in your own life:

A couple of thoughts on fasting:

1. Definition: Traditionally, the word has been used to talk about voluntarily abstaining from food and/or drink for a certain period of time. Throughout church history, people have fasted for certain days or they have fasted for a certain meal over a set of days. However, the concept of fasting can apply to anything that we want to voluntarily abstain from that will allow us more time and energy to focus on God. The idea is to set aside something that is morally neutral (like food) to remind us that we are dependent on God for everything in life.

2. Wrong Goals: The Bible speaks explicitly about the danger of thinking that fasting (and other forms of religious activity) will move God to do something we want Him to do on our behalf. I encourage you to read Isaiah 58:1-12 and Zechariah 7:1-14 for clear warnings about using fasting as a means to manipulate God. In both of those passages, God reminds His people that what He wants most in his people is a heart like His (godly character and compassion) rather than empty religious activity. This does not mean, however, that fasting is unimportant. Jesus assumes that his followers will fast (read Matthew 6:16-18), but again makes sure to warn us of the temptation of trying to show others how holy we are by fasting.

3. Right Goals: Jesus says that instead of fasting for others to be impressed by our display of devotion to God, we should use times of fasting to actually draw near to God. In my own life, I have found that fasting improves my ability to listen to what God is saying. As I set aside part of my regular routine in order to seek God, I find that God’s voice becomes clearer and easier to discern. With all that in mind, our motives in fasting should be to better connect with Jesus, better discern the voice and direction of the Holy Spirit, to remind ourselves that God alone is the One that we fear and follow, to check our own hearts for areas of un-confessed sin, and to spend more time in prayer.

Book Notes: Isaac Newton

2010-03-20T21:04:00.003-05:00

Mitch Stokes new book on the life of Isaac Newton is part of a series by Thomas Nelson called Christian Encounters. Each volume is a short paperback introduction to the life of a famous Christian from history. Stokes’ book is about 160 pages of tightly written historical narrative, a great starting place to learn about the life and career of Isaac Newton.

Newton lived in the second half of the 17^th century and the early parts of the 18^th century. One of the greatest thinkers of modern history, Newton studied and wrote on such varied topics as mathematics, physics, chemistry, philosophy, theology, optics, and inventions. Never married, Newton leveraged his amazing mental capacities to work on some of the most difficult problems in nature.

I had personally been introduced to Newton’s work during my education as an engineer. He was the inventor of calculus, which of course we still use today to describe natural phenomena like motion mathematically. He was also the inventor of modern physics, which we call today Newtonian physics (by which we distinguish his work from Einstein’s work in the early 20^th All high school physics students learn Newton’s equations for understanding forces, motion, gravity, and acceleration. These are a product of his great work Principia, written late in his life in three volumes. My final encounter with Newton’s work was in college when I studied dynamics in my engineering training. Whereas Einstein’s work is necessary to work on very small scales, very large scales (planetary motion), or very fast scales (close to the speed of light), Newton’s equations are still extremely accurate in everyday engineering work. This explains why most engineering training today continues to use Newton’s calculus and mechanics formulas.

Because of my exposure to Newton’s work throughout my education, Stokes’ explanation of these discoveries was not new to me. However, I was most intrigued to learn in Stokes’ book about two features of Newton’s life: his theology rigor and his philosophical views about science. Newton was a committed Christian and saw his life’s work through the lens of honoring God as creator of an ordered natural world. He also was an amazing student of Scripture, giving his life to understanding God as revealer of all mysteries. Newton wrote more about God and theology than he did about any other topic. The second surprise to me was Newton’s focus on making sure that he distinguished between natural explanations of how the world worked and mystical reasons of why the world worked as it did. He focused his efforts in science to the first – showing how mathematics could explain the way the world operated, but he made sure to write in detail about his convictions that there were deeper mystical reasons for why the world works as it does. This view of science and the theological underpinnings of science seem to have been lost among the latest generation of well known scientists.

Overall, I would highly recommend Stokes’ book for those who are interested in learning about the amazing life of this man. He explains difficult issues in simple English and shares enough of the drama that surrounded Newton’s life to keep the non-academic interested throughout. I also appreciated Stokes’ fair assessment of Newton’s theology and religious convictions.

Parenting Resources

2010-03-16T15:53:00.002-05:00

Last Sunday at church, we finished the 3-week parenting part of our family series from the book of Genesis at church. As I did with the marriage section, I thought it would be helpful to type out a list of resources that would guide parents who are seeking to grow and work through the challenges they are facing. I hope these various ideas and links will provide direction regardless of your circumstances.

1- Read a parenting book with a gospel-centered view of parenting. I would start with the two parenting books that have most influenced my view of the goal of parenting - Shepherding a Child's Heart and Instructing a Child's Heart by Tedd Tripp. The first book is more theological in nature and helps the parent build a philosophy of parenting built on the truths of the gospel. The second book if more practical in that Mr. Tripp works out what you need to teach your kids so that they view the Bible as part of their family history. The other book that has really shaped me as a parent is Grace-Based Parenting by Dr. Tim Kimmel. I highly encourage you to wrestle with his premise that we should learn how to parent by studying how God parents us (in grace), not necessarily by what produces the quickest results in behavior change.

2- Go to a Christian family-camp during the summer. I have never taken my family here, but everyone who has gone always raves about the amazing impact this camp has on families. The camp is Pine Cove Family Camp. The closest location to Austin is Pine Cove Crier Creek (in between Austin and Houston). The week-long camp has family-time, parent-time, kid-time, and free time. The camps are staffed by high-quality college students, and the camp brings in well-known Christian speakers in to speak on biblical and family issues. The camps are expensive, but everyone who goes says it is worth it.

3- Plan a weekend retreat with your kids. My kids always respond to time away from the routine of life when I am completely focused on them. This could look like a weekend away camping together, a day-trip to the lake, or doing something creative with the kids that would give you time to spend focused energy on them (not the movies).

4- Have a plan for daily devotionals with your family. Whether you simply read through the Bible with your kids every night or you read a good devotional book that gets you into the Bible together, the important issue is that you have a plan. Nothing happens on the devotional side by accident. You can use the devotional guides that our church provides for your family (check out the philosophy and resources at www.familytimes.org) or you can pick your own plan. The main goal is that you are getting in the Bible together as a family and that you are spending time worshiping God.

5- Meet with a mentor couple. As a church, we are blessed with many spiritually-mature couples who are willing to sit down with you and share from their years of parenting experience. Barie and I have been blessed with great mentor-couples as a young couple in ministry. I would highly recommend that you email Nick Shock (our ministries pastor) if you think meeting with a mentor couple would be helpful to you.

6- Go to family counseling together. I have referred families to many different Christian professional counselors over the years. If you need professional parenting help, please seek it. Don't buy into the lie that you should be ashamed of getting counseling. In Austin, I would recommend that you contact the Center for Relational Care which provides on-going professional counseling. As a second-choice, I would contact New Life Counseling Center in Round Rock.

7 - Check out additional resources and ministries online. There are so many great national ministries that focus their efforts on resourcing parents. One of my favorites is Family Life. You can check out a list of additional books, ministries, and resources on our church's website that our family ministry put together. These are all helpful in different ways.

My prayer for you is that you would not put your trust in these resources as a parent, but put your trust in God alone. We can always learn better parenting skills, but the key is to walk daily with God and stay on your knees interceding for your kids. Our kids belong to God, not to us, and our job is to daily point them back to Him as their Creator, Source, and Savior. May God richly bless you and sustain you in the journey of parenting!

Keith-
Jeremiah 9:23-24

Theology Matters, ctd.

2010-03-07T15:11:00.002-06:00

I was blown away this afternoon by reading this article in the Wall Street Journal weekend edition. The article builds on an interview done by one of the WSJ's editorial staff with Mosab Hassan Yousef, who is the son of one of the founders of Hamas. Yousef converted to Christianity in the 1990s and served as a major source for the Israelite intelligence agency during much of the last decade. He has a new book that just came out called Son of Hamas that recounts his amazing life story and his conversion to Christ. Money quote from the article:

Do you consider your father a fanatic? "He's not a fanatic," says Mr. Yousef. "He's a very moderate, logical person. What matters is not whether my father is a fanatic or not, he's doing the will of a fanatic God. It doesn't matter if he's a terrorist or a traditional Muslim. At the end of the day a traditional Muslim is doing the will of a fanatic, fundamentalist, terrorist God. I know this is harsh to say. Most governments avoid this subject. They don't want to admit this is an ideological war.
"The problem is not in Muslims," he continues. "The problem is with their God. They need to be liberated from their God. He is their biggest enemy. It has been 1,400 years they have been lied to."
These are all dangerous words. Of the threats issued to his life by Islamists, he says, "That's not the worst thing that can happen to you. I'm OK with it, I'm not afraid. . . . Palestinians have reason to kill me. Some Israelis may want to kill me. My goal is not to defeat my enemy. It is to win over my enemy."

Please read the whole article.

Don't Assume The Gospel

2010-03-04T10:53:00.002-06:00

With all the discussion about "missional engagement" inside the church today, I always fear that we begin to assume that we all mean the same thing when we talk about the gospel. From my experience in ministry and attending different churches, I think this is a bad assumption. When one generation assumes the gospel, the next generation forgets the gospel. I have been growing in the last few years in my own confidence level in the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ to really changes lives. Rather than focus most of my preaching on practical tips on how to live like Christ (though not bad) or on simply teaching information found in the Bible (not bad either), I have come to the passionate conviction that my role is to lift up Jesus, to exalt Him and the message of the gospel so that people are drawn to Him not as their example, but as their Savior. I believe that people act out of their core convictions and beliefs (rather than what they confess to believe) and that the only way to see lifelong transformation is to get our true beliefs in line with the gospel.

I always believed in the gospel, but now I'm beginning to see all of Scripture and all that Scripture teaches on morality through the lens of the gospel. When morality is taught from our pulpits apart from the grace of the gospel, we simply create Pharisees who are self-righteous and proud of their own moral achievement. If this conviction is true (that the gospel shapes everything we do and teach), then we need to spend time reflecting on the nature of the gospel and the implications of the gospel. Instead, it feels like many times we assume the truths of the gospel and hope that everyone who has been in church for any length of time will simply "get the gospel." I don't agree with this - we can't assume, but rather must be explicit in our teaching about the gospel. It sounds like Matt Chandler from the Village has been thinking some of the same things. I am so thankful for his ministry and his leadership. Check out his recent video:

Matt Chandler - 20/20 2010 Session 1 from Southeastern Seminary on Vimeo.

Evaluating Your Team Dynamics

2010-03-03T09:46:00.004-06:00

We returned yesterday from our spring staff retreat out at Camp Tejas. We had a great time remembering all that God has done and looking forward to all that God will do in the coming months. Though we got a lot of work done, we also spent a considerable amount of time just laughing together as a team (which is always helpful). One of the first sessions we did was called building a culture of trust and we talked through the five dysfunctions of a team that Patrick Lencioni writes about in his leadership book on team. Lencioni does a great job of articulating what a team looks like when they are dysfunctional. His five elements are...

1) The absence of trust, which stems from a team's unwillingness to share honestly and openly with each other. Does your team get vulnerable with each other? We decided that our team shares honestly with each other and owns our own mistakes and feels a strong sense of trust.

2) Fear of conflict, which results in a team that is unable to have unfiltered and passionate debate. Does your team have healthy conflict, where debate is passionate without getting personal? Our team is really strong in this area, though some of our newer staff members said they were still getting used to the free-flow of ideas that happens in our meetings.

3) Lack of commitment, which means that team members rarely buy in and commit to the decisions of the team. We decided this shows up when "I" and "ya'll" language trumps "we" language among a team. Team members who are not bought in say "I told you so" when things go poorly instead of owning group decisions. Does your team have equal commitment from all the members? We are getting better in this area.

4) Avoidance of accountability, which produces a team that is afraid to hold members of the team accountable to their commitments. Does your team have a healthy level of accountability or do people fail to keep their word without fear of confrontation? Our team can struggle sometimes with over-committing out of a desire to be helpful only to realize later that we can't deliver. We are getting better at being accountable to each other and to the team.

5) Inattention to results, which is different from #4 because it means the team is not paying attention to the team performance, only personal performance. This is really deadly in church settings where one ministry feels like they are doing well and ignores the struggles of the rest of the church. Does your team put the results of the whole ahead of their own personal results? This is one of the hardest parts of a healthy team, but we are getting better in this area by clarifying what results we should all care about and looking at them together as a whole team.

Unhealthy leadership teams produce unhealthy organizations, so take time to make sure that your team is not dysfunctional!

Life & Death

2010-03-01T09:40:00.003-06:00

Our church has been in operation for two and a half years and as of last month, I had yet to do a funeral for someone in our congregation. I had done other funerals for family and friends, but not for anyone in our church. And then in two months, two members of our church have gone to be with the Lord. One was Aaron Williams, a 29 year old who fought a 13 year battle with cancer. Aaron was a charter member of our church along with his wife Tara and was a faithful servant of God right up to the end. The other was a man named Jerry Burnaugh, a 73 year old who also fought a long battle with cancer. He passed away last Thursday and his funeral is tomorrow. Jerry had been disconnected from church before he started attending our services about 18 months ago. He was baptized in the swimming pool in Stone Oak in August of 2008 as a testimony to his faith in Jesus Christ. About a month ago, as he sensed that he was not feeling well, he approached me after church and told me that he wanted to let me know that his "faith was totally in Jesus."

Both of these experiences have just reminded me about the serious nature of the message we proclaim. As a young man myself, I can sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that I will live forever and that death is something that is always "far away." When I was diagnosed with type-1 diabetes a few years ago, that view of the world took its first hit. But as we have said goodbye to two godly men in the last month, I have been challenged again to consider what is most important. We know in our minds that we are not guaranteed tomorrow, but rarely do we live with the urgency that this kind of worldview should produce. Maybe our hearts just don't want to deal with the reality of life and death. We would rather just think about life.

But as we meditate on the gospel of Jesus Christ, we can approach death with new hope and joy. I have always known that Jesus' death and resurrection gave us a new view of life and death, but only recently am I fully grasping the nature of what Jesus accomplished. Without His sacrifice, we would be utterly hopeless. And many people, rather than face the hopelessness of their own worldview, simply distract themselves from the reality of death. But time will not allow us that privilege forever. Death comes for us all. And yet Jesus has overcome the grave. I hope that you are prepared for that day. I hope that you are daily trusting in the only person who has ever defeated death. Then, and only then, can you saw with the apostle Paul:

Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? (1 Corinthians 15:54-55)

Why Johnny Can't Preach

2010-02-25T09:20:00.003-06:00

I read Dr. Gordon's new book Why Johnny Can't Preach last night (it is a quick read - 108 pages) as I am in the preaching business and wanted to see what he had to say about why my profession is broken. I actually started to read the book about a month ago but put it down after 20 pages when I felt like I had been caught in the vortex of a complaining retired seminary professor. However, late yesterday as I was working on my sermon for 3.14 and putting some books away, I picked it up again and started skimming his later chapters. What I found was encouraging and challenging.

Dr. Gordon's basic premise is that today's preachers (who have grown up in a media-saturated generation) struggle to preach because we struggle to read and write - the necessary basics of preaching well. His chapter on reading basically makes the argument that most preachers do not know how to sit with texts for long periods of time and wrestle with metaphors and poetry (which the Bible is full of) and this negatively impacts our ability to preach the Scriptures. I was challenged by his conviction that most preachers start with a short list of Christian convictions that they have been taught through the years and then look for those principles in every passage they read (technically known as eisegesis - reading intended meaning into a text). This stands in contrast to how we should preach - built on exegesis (looking for the text's actual meaning). Dr. Gordon says that preachers should regularly be challenged (in their worldview) by the texts they are working on if they are doing actual exegesis - because after studying the actual texts the concepts are different than what the preacher thought they were going in. I totally agree with this!

His second concept is that modern preachers struggle to preach because they are ineffective writers. Instead of growing up writing long-hand (which forces thinking ahead, clarity, and brevity), my generation has grown up with limited writing experience and even then, only in the context of email and word-processing (which is very forgiving to errors - thank you "delete" key). Dr. Gordon's main point is that my generation has grown up in a media-saturated environment (where we spend a ton of time with video-imagery) where we spend more time with TV, movies, video-games, and the computer than we do with reading and writing. This obviously has a major impact on preaching, causing most preachers to struggle with not only understanding texts but with articulating their ideas in coherent and cohesive ways. Hard to argue with that!

While these two chapters were insightful, his final one was actually the most helpful in this short book. He writes about four alternative concepts of preaching from the Reformation view of preaching as gospel-centered and Christ-exalting. The first is moralistic preaching, where the sermon is a call to some kind of ethic living separated from the redemptive narrative of Christ's death and resurrection. This is not new to me - Tim Keller has shaped my views in this area over the last year - but Gordon connects moralistic preaching to the birth of Protestant liberalism in the early twentieth century. I have never made this connection (that ethical preaching separated from Christ and the gospel is another version of classical Protestant liberalism) but think it is accurate and common. The second alternative that Gordon describes is "how-to" preaching which is very similar to moralistic preaching (he calls is a subset), but is built even more on the assumption that people can obey God is they simply know the right strategy to take - the problem is lack of information, but the condition of the heart. The third alternative is introspective preaching or what Gordon calls "you think you are saved, but you're really not" preaching where the focus is constantly on the commitment level of the listener rather than the glory and perfection of Christ. He likens this to standing at the edge of a bridge crossing a canyon and discussing the person's level of confidence in the bridge rather than the trustworthiness of the bridge. What people need is not continuous self-reflection but rather to hear the beauty and glory of Christ's perfections. The final alternative that Gordon addresses is culture-war preaching where the communicators spends all of his effort addressing cultural and political issues in an attempt to increase the Christian flavor of the overall culture. Gordon calls this misdirected patriotism that seeks to coerce the masses rather than convert the individual with the gospel of Christ.

In all of this, Gordon is focused on the skill of preaching. And for this contribution to my thinking I am grateful. I would recommend this work to stir your thoughts more than anything else. However, Gordon leaves off one very-important piece of the puzzle - the character of the preacher. As important as the skill of crafting and delivering a fully biblical, gospel-centered sermon is the character (read godliness) of the man who delivers that message. We are all guilty of preaching better than we live, but we need to continue to pursue an incarnational model of preaching that demonstrates that we believe what we are saying.

Marriage Resources

2010-02-21T20:47:00.004-06:00

As we have just finished the 3-week marriage part of our family series from the book of Genesis at church, I thought it would be helpful to type out a list of resources that would guide couples who are seeking to grow and work through the challenges they are facing. I hope these various ideas and links will provide direction regardless of your circumstances.

If both husband and wife desire to improve the marriage, here are give specific suggestions that couples can do together that will make an impact:

1- Read a marriage book together. I would recommend Love & Respect by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs. Love & Respect is a good book to read together as it surfaces foundational issues in marriage and how husband and wife see each other and relate to each other. L&R is immensely practical and thoroughly biblical. There are lots of marriage books out there, but this is one of the best. Start here.

2- Watch a marriage movie together. I would recommend Fireproof. The movie is not professional-quality in all aspects because it was shot on a small budget, but the message is solid. For those who would rather watch a movie than read a book, this would be a good place to start. The movie raises lots of important issues related to marriage (work-life balance, pornography, emotional affairs, faith, etc.) and will spur healthy conversations.

3- Attend a marriage conference together. I would recommend the next Weekend to Remember conference hosted by Family Life. The next one in Austin is April 30th-May 2nd at the Renaissance Austin Hotel at the Arboretum, but they also host conferences all over the US. Barie and I have attended this conference twice and it is awesome. The time away together is refreshing, and the material really enhances oneness. Low-cost and high-impact.

4- Do a getting-away-to-get-it-together weekend together. We did our first getting-away-to-get-it-together weekend four years ago on the recommendation of a mentor during the church-planting residency at HCBC. We haven't missed a year since. The premise is simple and based on the notebook written by Bill Wellons: plan out a weekend trip with your spouse away from the kids to just focus on the health of your marriage. I would recommend reading Wellons' guidance before you go - his ideas on balancing structure and spontaneity are really helpful.

5- Meet with a mentor couple together. As a church, we are blessed with many spiritually-mature couples who are willing to sit down with you and share from their years of marriage experience. Barie and I have been blessed with great mentor-couples as a young couple in ministry. I would highly recommend that you email Nick Shock (our ministries pastor) if you think meeting with a mentor couple would be helpful to you.

6- Go to marriage counseling together. I have referred couples to many different Christian professional counselors over the years. If you need professional marriage help, please seek it. Don't buy into the lie that you should be ashamed of getting counseling. In Austin, I would recommend that you contact the Center for Relational Care which provides both marriage intensives and on-going professional counseling. As a second-choice, I would contact New Life Counseling Center in Round Rock.

If a husband or wife's desire to improve their marriage is one-sided and not reciprocated by their spouse, here are some specific steps he or she can take...

1- Pray for your spouse. If you truly believe that only God can change your spouse, then the appropriate response is committed prayer. Barie has found Stormie Omartian's book The Power of a Praying Wife helpful in knowing how to pray for me. Husbands, I have found praying through Proverbs 31 a good guide in praying for Barie.

2- Do the Love-Dare. The Love Dare is a 40-day challenge to sacrificially love your spouse based on the movie Fireproof. While completion of the Love Dare will not guarantee that your marriage will automatically be healed, it does give some creative techniques for showing love to your spouse and seeing how that love flows from the love of Christ.

3- Wait on God. The hardest advice, but also the truest. God's timing is not our own, and we must learn to trust Him and walk with Him even while we wait on Him.

Book Notes: The Well-Behaved Child (4/5)

2010-02-20T08:40:00.000-06:00

John Rosemond, a long-time parenting speaker and writer, has written a new book on discipline that is focused on helping parents with kids ages 3 to 13. His book is based on an approach that he calls "old-fashioned" parenting - looking to the wisdom of previous generations instead of the strategies of professional psychologists. Rosemond's discipline strategy is actually very simple and built on a simple philosophy of parenting.

First, a few words on his philosophy. Rosemond teaches that kids are evil by nature (in line with a biblical view of depravity) and all of his parental coaching flows from this worldview. He believes that parents are called to lead their children rather than follow them, correct them rather than coddle them, and discipline them rather than apologize for them. All of these conclusions flow from his view that kids are foolish in themselves and need correction and direction.

Second, a few words on his discipline strategy. Rosemond teaches that parents need to shift the burden of bad behavior from themselves to the children that misbehave. He calls this the agony principle and most of the book is full of ideas on how to shift the agony of poor decision making away from the parents to the children. His most common discipline technique for young children is to send them to bed early, strip them of all electronics and privileges, and keep them from extracurricular activities. The book gives various examples of how to use these techniques, but the core elements are the same. Rosemond also gives helpful techniques to parents on how to shepherd young kids during tough moments without losing their cool (a constant challenge I have found with multiple young kids).

Overall, I thought his book was helpful in his abundant specific examples - he has obviously been working with many, many parents over a long period of time. He is convinced that parents have lost their backbone in our generation after listening to too many professional psychologists give expert advice that he believes has come up short. Rosemond is a funny writer and keeps the material moving. While I was thankful for his very practical advice and will most likely use some of his techniques with my own children, I was a little concerned that he didn't take the next step and talk about the need for a child's heart to be changed by the gospel. In my view (based on Ted Tripp's book Shepherd a Child's Heart), the greatest need that our children have is not compliant behavior, but transformed hearts. And while Rosemond's techniques can help us have compliant children, they will not produce hearts that love God and want to do what is right over the long-term. Only kids who love Christ first will continue to honor God after they leave the next of parental supervision.

Reading Lately...

2010-02-15T11:13:00.001-06:00

Sometimes people ask what I've been reading lately. Here's a quick overview of some books I've finished in the last few weeks. I'll have a longer review tomorrow for a book on parenting that I'm reading right now. We are finishing a three-week marriage series from the book of Genesis in the morning at church, and then we are starting a three-week parenting series from the book of Genesis next Sunday. Both have been really energizing to work on and helpful to our families (from the feedback I've received so far). Because of that, I've been looking back over some books on marriage and parenting the last several weeks. I'll post a review of one of the new parenting books I've read next week. But, here are some others that I've read - both work-related and some just-for-fun stuff.

1- Forgotten God by Francis Chan. Chan's book on the Holy Spirit was a good reminder of living in daily dependence on the Spirit and teaching our people to walk with Him each day. A good primer on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and the practice of engaging the Spirit daily.

2- Why We Love the Church by DeYoung & Kluck. Similar in format to the book they wrote on the emergent movement (alternating chapters), this is a response to increasingly popular stream of thought that is anti-establishment and anti-institution. I found it extremely helpful and encouraging, giving me words to describe why I feel so positively about the local church.

3- How to Multiply Your Church by Ralph Moore. Moore is the founder of the Hope Chapel movement of churches and the pastor of Hope Chapel in Hawaii. The book is more motivational than strategic, but Moore's words and his example did help me process some of my fears related to church-multiplication.

4- Money, Greed, and God by Jay Richards. This is the most helpful book I have ever read on how economies really work. Richards writes as an economist and as a committed Christian, and his insights and explanations have radically changed my view of economics.

5- Stone Cold by David Baldacci. I haven't read a fiction book in a while and got this one on clearance at B&N and read it while I was in Colorado. Fun read, fast paced, entertaining, nothing life-changing. I already forgot what it was about.

Appropriate Smallness

2010-02-03T10:28:00.002-06:00

We (me, Barie, and the three boys - we left Brynlee with grandmothers) just returned from a great family getaway last weekend in Colorado. We had booked some cheap Southwest tickets when they were available last fall and spent three nights up in Estes Park - right next to the entrance to the Rocky Mountain National Park. Our intent was to spend some intentional time with our sons and let them have some firsts that they have been talking about for a long time - riding on a airplane, playing in the snow, seeing the mountains, etc.

What I didn't expect was how refreshing the time would be for me spiritually. I told the kids during our time in Colorado that if they listened (according to Psalm 19 and Romans 1), they could hear creation crying out, "God is awesome!" It was so cute to listen to them stop us on the trails in the national park and say, "I can hear it." In reality, I needed to hear the words of Psalm 121 that says, "I lift up my eyes to the hills - where does my hope come from? My help comes from the Lord." In looking at the enormous size of the mountains and their beauty and grandeur, I was reminded of the size and beauty and grandeur of our God. We serve the God who made everything that I was seeing from nothing. My Father is the God of all creation - easy to forget, isn't it?

I think in the daily grind of life and ministry that it is easy to forget the awesomeness and hugeness of God. I know that I am tempted to think too highly of myself and too lowly of God. But the mountains reminded me of my place. I am one person on a planet with over six billion people. My life is brief - the Bible compares it to a vapor that is here today and gone tomorrow (James 4:14) - and so small when compared the greatness and glory of God. Why am I so tempted to forget this and be so full of pride? The truth is that the mountains I saw were a small part of the creation we see on earth - mountains and oceans and clouds and fields. And the earth is one small part of a giant universe that include billions of stars and planets. And God is bigger than this - the Maker of all.

I am not depressed by this truth - in fact, it reminds me how remarkable the love of God is as seen in the gospel of Jesus Christ. But I am humbled by this truth. I see myself again with appropriate smallness. God is God and I am not.

HCBC in Haiti

2010-01-25T15:54:00.003-06:00

I thought you might want to be updated on what the association of Hill Country Churches is doing to help the victims in Haiti. A team from HCBC went with a group of doctors and nurses on two chartered planes full of donated medical supplies to help the victims of the earthquake. The team is updating their progress on the website http://haitihcbc.blogspot.com/.

These efforts have also been the focus on local media reports. You can read these reports by going to the Haiti relief site with HCBC and scrolling to the bottom: www.hcbc.com/haiti. The story has been covered by local news affiliates and the Austin paper. I am thankful to be a part of a team of people so committed to helping those in need.

Haiti

2010-01-13T15:14:00.002-06:00

If you've been following the story in Haiti, you might be wondering how to help. I personally like to give through Samaritan's Purse, who is heavily invested there. Their website is http://www.samaritanspurse.org/. I have also been following the blog of a missionary family that lives in the capital - their site is http://livesayhaiti.blogspot.com/. Gripping to read their accounts of what is going on. Does anyone personally know anyone on the ground there?

Holiday Entertainment

2010-01-05T11:31:00.003-06:00

I enjoyed the holiday break and hope you did as well. I want to quickly review one book that I read and one movie that I saw over the holidays. One, I enjoyed - the other, not so much.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The book first. McCarthy won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2007 for this post-apocalyptic tale of a father and son trying to find their way together in a world ravished by some kind of terrible worldwide devastation. I'm always nervous when I read Pulitzer-recognized fiction because sometimes I feel like it can be so wordy that the stories are hard to follow. But McCarthy is the opposite - the book is short, the writing is abrupt, yet powerfully beautiful. I really connected with his description of the father-son relationship. I also resonated with his insight into the human soul as he imagines what life might be like after some kind of disaster that wipes out most of what we value. What do humans do when all that their lives are built around disappear? Some of his scenes are gruesome, but they connected with me as plausible because of my view on the depths of human depravity. Wow - even now as I write, I am reminded of the powerful emotions that this book ignited in my heart - a great little read. They turned the book into a movie that was released in November - I haven't seen it or heard much about it.

Avatar by James Cameron
The movie Avatar is at once visually appealing and at the same time intellectually insulting. Insulting not in the sense that I wish the story had been better (which I did), but insulting that the $350 million movie is a cover for political propaganda and theological instruction. Cameron knows how to use to technology, no doubt, and I was actually glad that I saw the movie just to witness the 3D movies of the future. However, Cameron's main point, it seems, is to present us with his conclusions on America's involvement in Vietnam and Iraq. He's not trying to really hide these lessons - the references are repeated and clear. But the theological instruction is more subversive - a high-tech apologetic for pantheism. I'll refer you to Ross Douthat's article because I can't say it any better - Cameron's religion of choice is clear.

The Nativity Story

2009-12-23T09:05:00.002-06:00

As parents, we are always trying to think of ways to make the Christmas story more real to our kids than the presents they open on Christmas morning. We read them the Christmas story from their kids-Bibles, but the cartoon images make the story seem somewhat unreal. Barie and I share why we are thankful for the coming of Jesus, but that seems somewhat subjective. We also have acted out the Christmas story with all the kids this year - which they really enjoyed. But the acting-out of the story involves more laughter than anything else - we are a goofy group. So, I was really excited to show our kids The Nativity Story movie last night, if for no other reason just to make the story come to life with real people with real emotions with real families. I had never seen the movie, so I was pleasantly surprised by how it well it grabbed the attention of our kids. They asked all kinds of questions throughout the movie - "who is that?" - "why did she do that?" and more. I was really excited by how well the movie brought us into the lives of these characters and made the story so much more real for my whole family. I highly recommend that you take the time to see it!

Noonan on Culture

2009-12-21T11:03:00.003-06:00

I always enjoy reading Peggy Noonan's article on Saturday in the WSJ. She has some good insights into politics and the American culture. I sometimes disagree with what she writes, but always makes me think. I especially connected with her article this weekend about parents feeling exhausted by the energy it takes to guard their kids from the culture at large. I would take her argument one step further, believing that we don't need to just protect our kids from cultural influences before they are ready, but that we need to teach our kids how to think about the cultural influences they experience. It is more about training our kids to engage culture with a biblical worldview than escaping our culture, but it does make this parent of young children feel tired when I have to constantly be on guard for what might show up even in a commercial on TV. Here's Peggy's main thought about why most Americans feel shaky about our country (even more than economic reasons, she would say). She uses Adam Lambert's performance on ABC as a launching pad:

People were offended, and they complained. Mr. Lambert seemed surprised and puzzled. With an idiot's logic that was nonetheless logic, he suggested he was the focus of bigotry: They let women act perverse on TV all the time, so why can't a gay man do it? Fifteen hundred callers didn't see it as he did and complained to ABC, which was negligent but in the end responsive: They changed the West Coast feed and apparently kept Mr. Lambert off "Good Morning America."

Mr. Lambert's act left viewers feeling not just offended but assaulted. Again, "we don't care what you do in New York," but don't include us in it, don't bring it into our homes. Our children are here.

I don't mean to make too much of it. In the great scheme of things a creepy musical act doesn't matter much. But increasingly people feel at the mercy of the Adam Lamberts, who of course view themselves, when criticized, as victims of prudery and closed-mindedness. America is not prudish or closed-minded, it is exhausted. It cannot be exaggerated, how much Americans feel besieged by the culture of their own country, and to what lengths they have to go to protect their children from it.
It's things like this, every bit as much as taxes and spending, that leave people feeling jarred and dismayed, and worried about the future of their country.

Agree or disagree?

Proud Husband Alert

2009-12-15T09:56:00.002-06:00

What an awesome weekend!

In the last few days, our church family has participated in Jingle Jam out at Round Rock Family Christmas Night on Friday, prayed for 24 hours on Saturday, and hosted the Women's Christmas Social on Sunday. All three went extremely well.

The staff and the LIVE team did a great job representing our church and Christ to our city. Many families in our city were exposed to the message of the gospel through Jingle Jam. Hat's off to the team who set up the show and braved the tough weather to pull off a great evening.

I also have to say how proud I was of my wife for the message she gave at the Women's Christmas Social. She worked hard for two weeks to prepare a message that would share the heart of God with the 230 women who came this year. I might be biased, but I thought she did a phenomenal job in sharing the story of Christ in a winsome and authentic way. I know that many great spiritual conversations were started because of that event.

Thanks to everyone in our church who participated in these events this weekend, especially those of you who prayed. I believe God is moving in such powerful ways because we continue to seek His face on a regular basis. Ultimately, I am thankful to God for His grace and His presence in all that we do. Thank you, Father, for such an awesome weekend and such an awesome wife...

A Good Tired

2009-11-23T11:27:00.004-06:00

Everyone is moving slowly at the office this morning after last night's volunteer-appreciation dinner, but we are a good tired. We have such a great church-family, and last night was a fun time to celebrate all that God has done through our ministry-volunteers this year. I hope everyone knows how much we appreciate them and what a huge impact they are making. Here's the video we finished with last night as we start to spread the word for Christmas Together 2009 - our Christmas-Eve services at Hill Country Bible Round Rock. Have a great Monday...

Staff Carol of the Bells from Hill Country Bible on Vimeo.

Finished the Race!

2009-11-18T09:21:00.002-06:00

What an awesome weekend!

Barie and I did our fourth annual Getting Away to Get It Together weekend. We had a great time this year. We ran the San Antonio Rock 'n' Roll Half-Marathon on Sunday morning in 2 hours, 25 minutes, and 58 seconds. We then spent the rest of Sunday recovering from running a half-marathon. You can watch the video of us crossing the line on the Rock 'n' Roll website - just enter in Bib Number 16446.

After the race, Barie and I spent the next two days regrouping on the home front - evaluating our relationships with God, each other, and our kids. We spent time discussing our calendar, our budget, and our priorities as a family. It was a tremendously refreshing and helpful time.

Thanks for everyone's encouragement and prayers. Now go run!

Tom Basile Video

2009-11-18T07:00:00.002-06:00

I went to school with some great people at Dallas Theological Seminary.

One of the most interesting was Tom Basile, who was in my Spiritual Formation group during my first two years at school. Tom was serving in New York City in homeless ministry before he came to DTS, and since he graduated, he has returned to NYC to serve as the director of the Bowery Mission, a historic mission in the heart of the city.

Just this week, DTS highlighted Tom's work at the Bowery Mission in one of their promotional videos. Tom still has the infectious energy that he had when he was in school with me. Check out this wonderful video to learn about his work.

Go Tom!

Idols

2009-11-12T09:41:00.004-06:00

I was in Exodus 20 this morning for my devotional time (as I'm following along with our study guide this week) - reading through the Ten Commandments. What struck me today was the emphasis on idolatry in the first few commandments - God is serious about making sure that we understand that He is the only real God and that we don't bow down to any other idols in our lives. I wrote in my journal today that if I can root out the idols in my heart (by His grace), then I will be in better shape to follow the rest of His commands.

I've been reading Tim Keller's new book Counterfeit Gods recently, but trying to do it slowly so that I could personally reflect on the observations that he is making. In his chapter on money, I was struck by the following insight on the hidden idolatry of greed - see if it resonates with you:

Why can't anyone in the grip of greed see it? The counterfeit god of money uses powerful sociological and psychological dynamics. Everyone tends to live in a particular socioeconomic bracket. Once you are able to afford to live in a particular neighborhood, send your children to its schools, and participate in its social life, you will find yourself surrounded by quite a number of people who have more money that you. You don't compare yourself with the rest of the world, you compare yourself to those in your bracket. The human heart always wants to justify itself and this is one of the easiest ways. You say, "I don't live as well as him or her or them. My means are modest compared to theirs." You can reason and think like that no matter how lavishly you are living. As a result, most Americans think of themselves as middle class, and only 2 percent call themselves "upper class." But the rest of the world is not fooled. When people visit here from other parts of the globe, they are staggered to see the level of materialistic comfort that the majority of Americans have come to view as necessity. (pages 52-53)

Ouch. May God open our eyes to see what we truly worship.

Sunday Night Thoughts -

2009-11-08T22:46:00.004-06:00

I'm sitting here watching the end of the Cowboy game (good to see them win a big one) while my wife and kids are sleeping peacefully. It has been a great day today.

We've continued to preach through the gospel of Mark this morning at church - we finished chapter 12. I've enjoyed preaching through a long book - it has been one of the more challenging things I've done since we started the church two years ago. Nick is preaching next Sunday through chapter 13 (the prophetic teachings of Jesus) while Barie and I are in San Antonio for a much-needed weekend away. We're running the Rock'n'Roll half-marathon next Sunday morning, then spending two days working on our marriage and our parenting. We always love our times away together, and this year is no different.

Then, after we get back, we've only got a few weeks left until we're done with the gospel of Mark. I'm working now on summarizing what I have learned after preaching through the whole book - would love to hear from you about what you've learned. We're already working on the preaching calendar for 2010 and it looks very different - I can't wait to roll it out in December.

This afternoon I was able to rest for about an hour, which was great after working late last night and early this morning on my sermon - it took a while to figure out how to get The Office clip I needed :). Then, tonight, we gathered with two neighborhood families for dinner - what a blast. We really love these two families and enjoyed our time at dinner. After three years in our house, we love the community that we've been able to build with our neighbors. It is sad that some are already moving, but others are moving in. I thank God for our awesome neighbors.

Well - that's all I've got tonight. Get some sleep...

Book Notes Today

2009-11-05T06:48:00.003-06:00

I haven't posted in a while, so I thought I would say a few words about what I've read recently. First, I read a book on ancient classical history - the period from the formation of the earliest Greek cultures through the Roman period.

This is a fascinating period in history for me because it defines the context for so much of the NT. Jesus lived and taught and Paul traveled in this Hellenistic world, though of course they were shaped in huge ways by Hebrew culture. Robin Lane Fox' book called The Classical World is a quick overview of a huge period of history. Fox tells the story well, though I must admit that I skimmed through some of his longer discussions about wars between different people groups during this time. What I was really looking for was information about what it would have been like to live during this period - and Fox delivers on this front. Of course, he admits that large parts of his description of ancient life are speculations built upon our study of ancient artifacts and history written later about that time period. However, what he describes is not some mystical, wonderful, enlightened world that was lost during the Dark Ages by the influence of the church (the narrative we all learned in school), but a period that was full of war and famine and incredible immorality. The cultural elites of the ancient world were all men (women were not valued or accepted, but used for reproduction) and were involved in pedophilia (using young boys for sexual gratification). Not only that, but the period was full of war (like every period of history) between people groups and strife between cultures. Fox' vivid description of the development of Greek culture (including art, philosophy, and science) reminded this reader how depraved humans are in every period. It was into this world that Christianity's message of love, charity, care for the poor, sexual purity, and gospel grace came flooding through.

As I was reading this book on ancient culture, I was handed another book by a friend to read called Atheist Delusions by David Bentley Hart. Hart's work is an academic response to the popular attacks made by New Atheism against Christianity. Hart writes at a high level and engages academic and popular positions throughout the book. His main argument is that Western culture has failed to understand the dramatic impact that the Christian gospel has had upon every facet of society. He argues persuasively that the popular atheist writes of today are standing on a Christian foundation to make their attacks against the Christian religion. Hart is a wordsmith, and his writing is devastatingly articulate in tearing down the false premises of the new class of atheist apologists. Hart rightly points to the development of care for the needy, the rights of women and slaves, and the philosophical underpinnings of an ordered world as distinctive contributions of the Christian worldview. His most provocative sections are about what happens to our worldview and treatment of others when the Christian revolution is undermined. To answer this question, he looks at the world before the Christian revolution and says that we could easily be headed back in that direction - see my notes above for why that is so scary.

Fun reading - I love history anyway, and these books are helping to fill out my reading of the Bible and the radical nature of the message of the gospel.

For My Facebook Friends

2009-10-21T10:59:00.002-05:00

The Questions of Jesus

2009-10-20T10:10:00.002-05:00

I've really enjoyed preaching through the book of Mark this year at the church. We just finished chapter 10 on Sunday, so we have basically hit the 2/3 marker in our journey. The text this weeks starts the Passion Week narrative, where Mark slows down the timeline and spends six chapters in the last seven days of the life of Jesus. We will be preaching the end of Mark all the way until the end of the year, which means that the Advent season will take us through the crucifixion of Jesus and on Christmas Eve, our last service of the year, we will preach Mark 16:1-8, His resurrection. Should be interesting!

One thing that happens when you preach through a whole book is that you begin to notice interesting connections and themes that go from beginning to end. I shared Sunday night at Leadership Community about the theme of the compassion of Jesus in the book of Mark, which challenges us to see people with the eyes and heart of God, not our normal cynicism.

One other interesting thread on Mark's gospel is how many questions Jesus asks. I know you will think I'm weird for doing this, but I actually wrote out all the questions from Jesus and counted them. He asks 46 questions in 16 chapters. It seems that Jesus teaches with questions. In so many passages, he gets a question and turns it immediately back to the questioner with his own inquiry. Jesus is the master question-asker. A couple of thoughts hit me as I read this...

1) I should ask more questions rather than always assuming that I have the answers. Do I ask good questions or just space-filling questions?

2) I should not only come to Jesus with my questions, but should also listen to His questions. Maybe I'm consumed with the wrong stuff and Jesus is trying to shift my focus.

3) One of the best ways to teach is to ask great questions. We all struggle with self-awareness and a good question can lead a student to see himself honestly for the first time.

What did I notice about Jesus' questions? Well, that might need to be another post. Or even a sermon series - the questions of Jesus. That would be fun - like Jesus putting us on the hot-seat rather than us always throwing our questions at Jesus.

One final note - Jesus' last words in Mark are a question - My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? Wow - the questions of Jesus.

Spiritual Dryness

2009-10-15T06:25:00.002-05:00

We had a great discussion yesterday at staff meeting about spiritual dryness - what it is and how to diagnose it. We all agreed that we go through seasons in our walk with God where we hunger passionately for Him and really enjoy our time with him, and we also go through seasons where we are disciplining ourselves to spend time with God, our hearts are cold spiritually and our passion is gone. The big question for me is, "what do we do in seasons of spiritual dryness to get that passion and joy to return in our relationship with God?" Our team had a few ideas that I thought were helpful...

1) Be Honest With God. We need to start with self-awareness and honesty. For some reason, we tend to deny that we are in a spiritual rut until we get really desperate. We need to buck that trend and start with telling God the truth (since He knows anyway) - we are struggling spiritually and need His help.

2) Repent of Sin. Sometimes spiritual dryness results from unconfessed sin in our lives. God is convicting us by His Spirit and His Word, we are rejecting His leading, and the result is distance in our relationship with Him. We need to ask the question, is there sin in my life that is keeping me from being close to the Lord?

3) Reconcile Relationships. Strange as it sounds, we all agreed that broken horizontal relationships can negatively impact our vertical relationship with God. If we are having a hard time connecting with God, it may be the Spirit telling us that we need to get right with another person (spouse, friend, child, anyone) first.

4) Meditate on Truth. Rather than thinking that we need read something new in Scripture or listen to a new sermon for that spiritual spark, sometimes we just need to meditate on what we already know to be true. This is especially important for those of us who are readers and think that we just need one more insight. We may just need to reflect on the cross and the love of Jesus Christ.

5) Tell Someone. Spiritual leaders struggle greatly with telling someone else about their spiritual dryness. Maybe because we feel the pressure to always be "on" or maybe just because we are full of pride and hate to admit that we are not craving God as we should, we tend to hide our dryness behind religious language. We should reject this as vanity and tell someone close to us that we are dry spiritually so that they can pray for us.

6) Pray. In the final equation, only God by His Spirit can grant us the grace we need to pursue Him with all our hearts. Knowing this, we should ask God for anything that is lacking in our walk with Him. He is faithful and will answer.

Hope that helps when you are in that dry place. I've been there many times, but God has always been gracious to lead me out. May He do the same for you -

Awesome Time of the Year

2009-10-08T11:55:00.002-05:00

I have to confess that October is one of my favorite months of the year. It brings...

1) Cooler weather (and this year wetter weather!) - after a brutally hot and dry summer here in Austin, we are ready for some cool, wet weather. My attitude always seems to improve a little bit as the weather changes - not a lot, just a little.

2) Baseball playoffs - though the Rangers couldn't make it this year (they did give us a great season), the baseball playoffs are still great to watch. The crowds are huge and energetic - the players are at their peak - and every game matters.

3) Holidays are close - the holiday season is so much fun at home and at church - I just look forward to it with great expectation every year. And October seems to be the month that starts the discussions - what are we doing for the holidays, where are we going, what are we doing for the kids - all so fun. And everyone gets some much-needed time off.

4) More people outside - seems like every night, our neighbors are hanging out outside in the street with each other since the weather has turned, the kids are playing, the parents talking - just an awesome time to connect with more people.

5) Dreaming for the next year - we do our ministry planning for the next year in October of each year, and though planning and budgeting can be tedious at times, I love dreaming about the future and trying new things - all of that starts in October. We even do some planning for our family next year - and this one will be big since next next May is ten years of marriage.

What's your favorite time of the year?

Gifted Hands

2009-10-06T07:37:00.002-05:00

Barie and I watched a great movie last weekend called Gifted Hands, the Ben Carson story. Ben grew up from humble origins to be a director of pediatric neurosurgery at John Hopkins University. His story is quite incredible and well told in this movie. Cuba Gooding, Jr. plays the adult Dr. Carson, though much of the story is about his childhood and the influence of his mother in shaping his hunger to learn and his Christian faith. Check out this promo video...

Abstinence Education

2009-09-29T10:09:00.002-05:00

As a former youth pastor who has spent a lot of time teaching students about sexuality, I was very interested in this Austin Statesman article on Sunday about districts moving away from abstinence-only sex education. If you didn't know, there has been a long debate in public education about how to each kids about sex. The "consensus" professional view has shifted over the years, and now another shift seems to be taking place. The recent history goes something like this...

The last decade has seen a large increase in federal funding for abstinence-only sex education in the public schools. This has spawned a large number of non-profit organizations that specialize in teaching students to wait for marriage before they become sexually active. These non-profits get large amounts of federal funding and then are contracted by school districts to come in and do their sex-education. All well and good except that now federal money is moving away from abstinence-only education because of recent research showing that it is not working - in other words, more kids are having unprotected sex resulting in higher pregnancy rates and higher STD transmission rates. The education establishment is now wondering if abstinence-plus sex education would reverse these trends. In other words, if educators still tell students that waiting is the best option, but also teach them how to use condoms and more details about STDs, would we see these trends go the other direction?

The Statesman article is very good, with lots of charts and graphs to help illustrate the data that public officials are wrestling with. I'm not sold on all their conclusions, but they do raise a great question that the Christian community should think about. For the sake of argument, let's agree with the following presuppositions (I'm not saying that I do) and see where we land. When abstinence-only education is compared to abstinence-plus education, we find that abstinence-only education helps the average student wait an additional year before beginning their sexual activity, but also increase pregnancy rates and STD rates by 10%, how should we move forward? In other words, if the average student begins sexual activity at 17 instead of 16 and yet more teen girls get pregnant or more students get STDs, what policy should school districts have when it comes to sex-education? I'd love to hear your thoughts...

A few of mine (that won't necessarily clear this up):

1) Kids should learn about sex at home. We shouldn't depend on the school district to teach our kids about sex. Parents need to be more open with their kids and kids more open with their parents so that sex is not off-limits at home. I think kids make stupid decisions with sex when they get bad information from peers and they are not prepared for the temptations that come as a teenager. Parents, let's make sure to help our kids through this with gospel-grace and brutal honesty. We can't pass this off on a school-administrator.

2) God desires our best - saving sex for marriage. As a society, we need to keep in mind that sexuality is not just about pregnancy and disease. These are obviously huge issues, but sex is ultimately about God. He created it and His intent is that we enjoy it within the boundaries that will give it the most meaning and beauty and keep us from the most pain. I've talked with plenty of students over the years who have been destroyed by sexual activity, but not because they were pregnant or had a STD. They had given themselves away to someone else and connected too intimately with them. As many have said before, "you can't put a condom on your heart."

3) God desires the best for kids. What complicates this discussion for me is that God desires the best for children - a consistent theme that shows up throughout the Bible. In fact, I'm preaching a passage this Sunday that reminds us that Jesus welcomes children to Himself even when no one else does. My point is that we have to think holistically about this issue. If abstinence-only education results in more abortions or more kids born into and raised in poverty, we need to think hard before we rubber-stamp it as they only way.

Any insight on this one?

Proud Uncle Alert

2009-09-28T11:15:00.003-05:00

I received some new pictures from my mom of my nephew Evan. He is 4 1/2 months old in these pictures - he's a cute guy, isn't he? Check him out...

David Robinson & Michael Jordan

2009-09-22T10:29:00.004-05:00

Loved this post from Voddie Baucham about why we should be like David, not like Mike (based on their speeches at the Basketball Hall of Fame induction last week). I grew up watching these guys play and idolized MJ on the basketball court. Funny how time, maturity, and wisdom changes your perspective. One of Voddie's thoughts...

David Honored God... Mike Honored Basketball

David Robinson ended his speech with a moving reference to the story of the ten lepers in Luke’s gospel. It was so refreshing not to hear the old standard, “First, I want to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who made it all possible by making me so good” cliche. Instead, Robinson actually referred to the Bible (book and chapter), used it in context, applied it to the situation, and was completely appropriate, God-honoring, and not at all cheesy. Praise God!
David Robinson presented himself as a man who had a great career, but didn’t let it define who he is. Michael Jordan, on the other hand, presented himself as a man who loves, needs, and craves basketball and the attention it brings. He even alluded to the idea of coming back and “playing at fifty.” I doubt he was serious, but the point was clear. Jordan is defined by what he did on the court. He needed this moment to snatch his throne back from the likes of Kobe Bryant if only for one night. He needed the bright lights, and the attention again if only for twenty-three minutes. And in the end, it was quite sad. A man who has “everything”; the most recognizable figure on the planet at one time, looked as empty as the United Center (where the Bulls play) two hours after a disappointing loss.

Read the whole thing - it is very good.

Rangers Jinx

2009-09-15T10:08:00.003-05:00

My dad and I finally made the decision this year to visit the Rangers during spring-training back in March. We'd been talking about it for a long time and decided to actually go. Because of getting to meet the players and see them play up-close, I've been a much bigger fan this year. And they've actually been good this year - lots of fun to watch.

As unlikely as it sounds, the Rangers have been in the playoff race most of the season and stayed with the Angels and the Red Sox, who are both looking to make the playoffs. We've even purchased tickets to go see the Rangers in person this Friday night (when the Angels come in town - could be a make or break series) - plan on taking the kids and everything!

All that being said, I gave in to the temptation to purchase post-season tickets when they went on sale last week. A man has to hope, doesn't he? Well, since then, the Rangers have lost 3 out of 4 games and look like all the rain in Arlington is getting to them. With only 19 games to go in the season, and being 3 1/2 out of the wild-card and 6 out in the AL West, the Rangers have got to step it up and do it quickly.

I guess I'm wondering, did we jinx the Rangers by buying playoff tickets too early?

Sick Day

2009-09-14T12:15:00.004-05:00

I've felt lousy today, trying to shake a cough and sore throat and lots of drainage (yummy). My voice barely made it through preaching yesterday (God's grace), but it is almost completely gone today. I tried to go and coach t-ball tonight for the boys, but I wasn't much good without a voice (thankfully I had a whistle). So, today I decided to read The Hobbit. One word - awesome.

I've owned the whole Lord of the Rings set since the movies came out and got me interested, but I've never actually read them from start to finish. With so much serious stuff filling my reading list lately, it was time for a break and something just purely enjoyable. Of course, Tolkien makes great points throughout his books about life and human nature and truth, but mainly they are just a great story. Creative, imaginative, fun, rhythmic, insightful, and interesting. Did I mention fun?

Now on to LotR book I - Fellowship of the Ring. And after I read them through, I will take out the movies and enjoy them again; it's been a while since I watched them.

Book Notes: Fearless (4/5)

2009-09-08T12:42:00.004-05:00

Max Lucado writes books like I write sermons, which is to say that they keep on coming. I just finished reading his latest book, Fearless, this week, and hope my thoughts are helpful as you decide if this book is for you. Before I can review the book, however, I need to truthfully share my preconceived ideas about Lucado and his books.

First, I had the opportunity to sit in a meeting with Lucado and some other large-church pastors during a conference in 2006. I was able to compare and contrast his personality and leadership with other large-church pastors during our short time together. What did I find? Max Lucado is one of the most gracious, genuine, down-to-earth, friendly guys you will ever meet. Some of the guys in the room that day couldn't fit their egos in the room, but Lucado was incredibly humble and gracious the whole time. From that one meeting, I walked away asking God to make me a more gracious and humble pastor - such ingratiating traits. All that to say that I really admire and respect Pastor Lucado.

Second, and not quite as positive: I've read my share of Lucado books over the years. They seem to all follow the same pattern, which makes me wonder if they are constructed out of sermon series that he preaches at his church. They are full of wonderful stories, short, insightful explanations of Bible passages, and extremely practical applications. This not a bad pattern - it is just Lucado's pattern. In some ways, if you've read one of his books, you fill at home in the others - though the content is different, the structure is very similar. This always leads me to assume before I even read one of Lucado's books that I am going to enjoy his stories, but not be challenged too deeply by his insights.

Now, to Fearless, Lucado's effort to expose our deepest fears and provide helpful solutions to live a fear-free life. The book gives one chapter to each fear. Here's the list of fears that Max addresses:

1) the fear of not mattering
2) the fear of disappointing God
3) the fear of running out
4) the fear of not protecting my kids
5) the fear of overwhelming challenges
6) the fear of worst-case scenarios
7) the fear of violence
8) the fear of the coming winter
9) the fear of life's final moments
10) the fear of what's next
11) the fear that God is not real
12) the fear of global calamity
13) the fear of God getting out of my box

Out of this list, I personally connected with only a few chapters. However, I read each chapter because I know people in my congregation struggle with these fears - they sit in our chairs every Sunday and in my office during the week. So what did I like?

1) I really enjoyed his explanation of each fear, especially the way in which he showed the reader how these fears show up in their lives. He does a great job of explaining what this fear looks like in our every day lives.

2) I always enjoy his illustrations and stories. Lucado does a wonderful job using historical examples, personal stories, and funny parables to make his points come alive. I'm sure some of his illustrations will show up in my upcoming sermons.

3) I really enjoy his writing style. His language never gets old or repetitive. His chapters are short and to the point. He uses great metaphors and keeps the reader engaged.

So what did I not enjoy?

1) I felt like his solutions to the different fears left me wanting something more. Part of this may have been driven by my lack of satisfaction at his analysis of the source of each fear. He exposes fear adeptly, but doesn't seem to get down to the root issues. I understand that I am afraid of not mattering, and I understand how that shows up in my life. But WHY do I have that fear? What root heart-issue explains my irrational fear of something happening to my kids?

2) I don't have answers to those questions (like I know something that Lucado doesn't know), but I felt like he didn't really wrestle with them. The closest he got was the last chapter, where he began to explore the connection between fearing God with other fears. Here, he quickly mentions that all other fears are rooted in a lack of fear toward God. I think this is kernel I was looking for, but got to the end of the Fearless and wanted more. How, then, do I develop my fear of God? Why don't I fear God? Why do all my other fears dwarf my fear of the Lord? These answers would have helped me more.

Thanks, Max, for another great book and for continuing to teach us so much about faithfully communicating the message of Jesus to this generation.

Book Notes: This is Your Brain on Joy (3/5)

2009-09-02T22:22:00.003-05:00

Dr. Earl Henslin is a licensed professional counselor in southern California who has written a new book on how to have a healthy brain. He has adopted many of the practices of Dr. Daniel Amen (famous for his books on the brain that have developed from his brain-imaging work) and put them to work in his daily treatment of patients in his counseling practice. His basic premise is that people are complex physical and spiritual beings who have complex physical and spiritual issues based on their life experiences and their individual physiology. Through the book, he explains his own personal development as a medical profession and his growth in diagnosing multiple complex causes of his patients' struggles.

I really appreciated Dr. Henslin's book and his view of helping people, though the book became very tedious about half-way through when he began going through each individual section of the brain, looking at various scans from different patients, and describing the variations in treatments that he uses to help each kind of brain issue. The most personally helpful sections of Dr. Henslin's book affirmed what I long have suspected to be true - that a healthy diet and daily cardiovascular exercise and good sleep all contribute to good brain health and increase personal joy. I have already implemented his recommendation that everyone take a daily does of fish-oil as it increases the health of the brain.

Dr. Henslin's variation of recommendations encouraged me that there is no one way to help people who have brain issues. He discusses medications at length, but in the end only recommends them in short doses because of the long-term consequences they can have on the brain themselves. Each of the chapters that discuss the different areas of the brains and the issues connected to those area end with various ways to help the brain. He discusses diet recommendations, supplements, exercise routines, books to read, movies to watch, music to listen to. He even adds long sections of Scripture at the end of each chapter than can be memorized and meditated on - very cool.

The last two chapters show us how Dr. Henslin's Christian worldview influence his professional practice - he spends time working through Paul's prescription for eternal joy in the book of Philippians. His conclusions are not new, but they are really cool to read in the book from a medical professional on brain health. Overall, a good read that bogs down in the details, at times making it feel more like a reference book that a cover-to-cover read.

Sunday Night Thoughts -

2009-08-30T20:15:00.001-05:00

What a fun weekend - thanks to everyone who helped to make it possible.

We chartered Summit Community Church on Saturday evening - they are now official! Pray for Summit as they prepare for their first public service on Sunday, September 13th. I am so proud of this whole team and Josh & Amber. I can't wait to see what God is going to do through this new work.

On Sunday morning, we moved into the new gymnasium at the YMCA for our first worship service. We bought an additional 100 chairs for the move (so we can now set out 350 for worship). The facilities team was up all night working on the sound and lights and the new stage set-up. It was really amazing to see the fruit of their labor. I again can't wait to see what God is going to do as we open up more space in our worship venue.

On Sunday night, we baptized at the Stone Oak Community Pool. We baptized 16 - 8 adults, 5 kids, and 3 teens. Baptism never gets old - hearing life-change stories as people explain how Jesus has changed their lives from the inside-out.

Don't we serve an awesome God?

Now, on to another week...

School Starting Tomorrow!

2009-08-24T11:30:00.002-05:00

Big day in the Ferguson home tomorrow as Kade starts kindergarten tomorrow at Teravista Elementary School. We went to the Kindergarten round-up on Friday and had the chance to meet his teacher. Kade is very excited, though he shared last night that he is a little nervous about meeting a whole new group of kids. But after a week, they will probably all be his best friends. Kade's teacher seems great, and we are excited about this new phase in his life. Pray for mom and dad, however, as we are a little overwhelmed emotionally that our son is old enough to start school! I know that millions of parents have been through it before us, but it is still hard for us, being our first time.

My prayer goes out this morning for all the kids, teachers, and administrators starting back to school tomorrow - for God's grace to cover the new classes and the new relationships. And I pray that those of us who claim the name of Christ can represent Him well this very public environment. To everyone starting back, I pray for a great year!

New Church Plants

2009-08-19T10:07:00.002-05:00

This is an exciting time for our association as we plant four new churches this fall. One of the plants, of course, is our daughter church, Summit Community Church. These new works start on September 13th. We commission Summit CC during our August 30th service (the first in the new gym at the YMCA - big day!). Here's the video that introduces the four planters that are starting this fall.

Book Notes: Beyond Belief (4/5)

2009-08-17T19:09:00.003-05:00

I finished reading Josh Hamilton's personal story called Beyond Belief: Finding the Strength to Come Back. I really enjoyed the book, but I am not your average reader of Hamilton's story. I am a lifelong Rangers' fan, a big-time baseball fan, and I actually got to see Josh up-close while he was signing autographs at Rangers' spring training back in March. My boys and I have been watching the Rangers all season, and we are rooting for the Rangers to earn a playoff birth this year.

Hamilton's story is gut wrenching - a four year journey through the depths of drug addiction, a trip from being one of the hottest prospects in baseball to someone who couldn't even keep his personal life together. The book is a quick read and brutally honest. It seems like Josh's goal was to be completely transparent about his experience with drugs in order to honor the grace of God at work in his life. As a pastor, I also appreciated how Josh recounted his journey to wholeness - it was a slow, day-by-day process which is still in progress.

I think some people believe that the moment they trust in Jesus as their Savior that all their struggles will immediately go away. They will no longer be tempted to sin and live a perfectly holy life all the rest of their days. I appreciated Josh's honesty in explaining that he was a believer in Jesus even before his days of drug use, but that it wasn't until a time of total surrender to God that he could begin the process of recovery. I think this is reality - personal transformation is a lifelong process that can have days where we are very far from living the life of Christ we seek to live.

Josh is always fun to watch on the field - in fact, I'm watching him bat as I write this blog. When dad and I saw him play in person during spring training, we noted his amazing balance of speed, arm strength, bat work, and amazing power. He is awesome on the field and when he is on his best, he plays the game like few others. I hope he can keep from repeating his stumble that occurred this January and keep his eyes on Christ. His life is a wonderful testimony to the glory and grace of our Savior.

Book Notes: Grand Expectations (4/5)

2009-08-12T23:47:00.003-05:00

I just finished the next book in the Oxford History of the US series that I have been enjoying so much recently. This one covers 1945 to 1974 and is written by James T. Patterson. The history picks up after the end of WWII and caries the reader through the amazing time of progress for American society during the postwar years. This 30 year period included amazing economic prosperity for our country and with it, a challenging of "traditional" cultural values on everything from racial roles to sexual identity to gender relationships.

Patterson's approach to covering these years is different from the other books in the series that I have read. While covering the important details, he seems to be concerned with explaining all the various historical views of those events rather than clearly articulating his own view. While this "fair-minded" approach helps the reader to see all sides of the history, it can become laborious over 800 pages. When I read history, I understand that I am seeing through the eyes of the historian, not completely objectively. Total objectivity is impossible. That being said, I have enjoyed other books in the series that seem to be more "lop-sided" because they passionately present their perspective on the historical events.

The early parts of Patterson's political narrative were not new to me because I have read two fascinating presidential biographies on Truman and Eisenhower. I would recommend them both - David McCullough's Truman is an awesome book (winner of the Pulitzer for history) and Stephen Ambrose's book on Eisenhower (Soldier and President) is one of my favorite biographies of all time (mostly because Eisenhower's life is so interesting). However, I did learn a ton from Patterson's description of everyday life in the late 40s and 50s. Suburban American was exploding, technological changes were advancing, and families were becoming wealthier. TV was expanding into homes for the first time and media was starting to reflect a more diverse culture to more people. I really enjoyed learning about this era when my parents were coming of age.

The politics of the 60s and 70s, though closer to me chronologically, was new to me. I haven't really read much on LBJ's historically significant presidency (though I have visited his presidential library here in Austin) or the troubled presidency of Richard Nixon. Both men had huge impacts long after they left office (not necessarily the kinds they wanted to, but important nonetheless). I also gained a new perspective on the escalation and pitfalls of the war in Vietnam, obviously one that had a huge impact on my parents' generation, but has been forgotten by many in my generation.

Life in the 60s and 70s was a time of greater turmoil as the civil-rights movement exploded in America and student-led opposition to the war in Vietnam increased. Political parties were upended, leaders were voted in, then out, and long-held cultural expectations were challenged. Patterson's best work is done in these chapters, where he recounts the life of the normal American during these years.

Overall, a fascinating work that helps me understand the period before my birth in new light.

Spurgeon on Prayer

2009-08-11T11:27:00.002-05:00

Quote for the Day:

We are taught to say, "Our Father," but still it is, "Our Father who are in heaven." Familiarity there may be, but holy familiarity; boldness, but the boldness which springs from grace and is the work of the Spirit; not the boldness of the rebel who carries a brazen front in the presence of his offended king, but the boldness of the child who fears because he loves, and loves because he fears. Never fall into the vainglorious style of impertinent address to God; he is not to be assailed as an antagonist, but entreated with as our Lord and God. Humble and lowly let us be in spirit, and so let us pray.

Helpful reminder today that we can go boldly before our God through Jesus our Savior, but that we should never lose perspective. We are still approaching the Sovereign of All Creation.

Handling Criticism 3

2009-08-08T07:29:00.003-05:00

The final type of criticism that those of us in the church are likely to experience is general criticism about the church or about a ministry area. This is different from 1 & 2 because it is not directed toward you as a individual and is really not about another person, but it general in nature. As spiritual leaders, this kind of criticism can be hard to figure out. Here's a few words of wisdom to shape your response:

As with all of these situations, understanding the person well is of primary importance (what are they really saying/critiquing?)
When people criticism something in general language (the church is so ______ or this ministry is too _______), we need to encourage them to get more specific in their criticism – what have you experienced that makes you feel that way?
When driving people from generic statements to specifics, we sometimes find that we have to go back to point two because they are really upset with one person, not the church in general (but don’t know how to process their emotions).
Sometimes, we also have to be discerning when people use others’ behavior as an excuse to not take responsibility for their behavior – we sometimes call this the victim mentality. In these situations, we need to lovingly direct people away from being others-focused to being self-aware.
On top of this, we additionally need to be willing to learn from general criticism – maybe the issue is not personal offense or a victim mentality – maybe we are being told something we need to really work on as a group. It is helpful to ask, “What do we need to learn from this comment?”
Finally, we need to see when a value mismatch is present. Some organizational conflict is personality based, but many times it is value-based. In these situations, we can be most helpful to others by helping them see the root values mismatch involved.
For example, if someone criticized our church because we are evangelistic even after the biblical foundation and vision were clearly explained, the core issue is primarily a values mismatch and will not go away. Either the person will have to adopt our values, live in the tension, or find another church with different values.

These principles will work for any organization - not just the church. But they require you and I to know the core values of our organization and not try to change who we are in every conversation we have in order to try and make everyone happy. Behind the scenes of this discussion is a big issue - are we ultimately trying to please God or please man? They are not always in tension but many times are.

Handling Criticism 2

2009-08-07T10:56:00.004-05:00

Yesterday I gave some tips on how to handle personal criticism. Today, I want to look at the equally complicated issue of how to process criticism directed at someone else. Let's say, as an example, that someone approaches you to tell about what bothers them about another person in the church, your small-group, your neighborhood, your family, etc. What steps do you take to know that you are processing that situation biblically? Here are a few suggestions that can really help:

Attempt to shut people down from just gossiping to you about someone else by asking them two fundamental questions: “Do you want something to change in this situation?” – check intent - “Would you say that in front of them face-to-face?” – check importance
If their answer is no to either of those questions, then politely tell them that you are not going to listen to them talk about someone when they don’t intend to handle the situation biblically, which is…
They need to go directly to the person they have an issue with (Matthew 18) rather than talking to others about that person
This is important because we are all part of one unified body in Christ (Ephesians 4) and Jesus prayed that we would have unity as His followers (John 17)
If they are willing to talk to the person they have an issue with directly, then we can provide coaching on how to talk with that person directly
This will primarily involve helping them process their fears about confronting someone directly (and helping them understand why they are afraid)
The final step is accountability – making sure that the person who has talked with you then follows through in meeting face-to-face with the other person.

This can be one of the most difficult because we want to sound empathetic to those who come us. At the same time, we don't want to triangulate and create circles of gossip. We need to encourage and equip people to deal with their issues directly rather than indirectly.

Handling Criticism Part 1

2009-08-06T10:10:00.003-05:00

We started a great discussion yesterday at staff meeting about how to handle criticism. Every one of us receives criticism from others, whether that is from a neighbor, friend, family member, boss, coworker, of fellow church member. Criticism can cause us to get angry and respond inappropriately if we are not careful. And because we don't think much about criticism except when we are getting criticized in the moment, we rarely take time to think objectively about handling criticism.

At our staff meeting, we broke down criticism into three types - personal criticism, criticism about another person, and criticism about the church/ministry in general. Each is different and requires different skills to respond graciously. Today, I want to give you our thoughts on the first type of criticism. How do I respond when I get personal criticism? In my world, this generally has to do with my preaching or leadership at the church. In your world, it is probably something different. Here's a few biblical tips we came up with:

Don’t assume bad motives too quickly, jumping to the worst possible conclusions about the person delivering the criticism
Attempt to separate the facts from the person as much as possible
Listen well before you respond (James 1) in order to make sure that you understand what is being said correctly before responding to it (active listening - so I am hearing you say....)
Take some time to process before you respond in anger (be slow to speak - some people respond too quickly and regret what they say)
Don’t take too much time to process lest the emotions turn to bitterness (some never respond, but avoid and bury their emotions which can lead to other problems)
Filter the criticism through a biblical grid – is this criticism a sin-issue in my life that I need to repent of, a personal preference that I can be flexible on, or simply a personality difference?
Process the criticism humbly, thinking of others instead of being completely self-absorbed and defensive (Phil 2:1-4)
If repeatedly criticized by the same person, be discerning about deeper issues in that person’s life (hurt people tend to hurt people)
Don’t sin in your anger, but use your words appropriately (Eph 4), seasoning your speech with grace (Col 4:6)
Evaluate your response through the grid of the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5) - am I self-controlled, gentle, peaceable, loving, maintaining my job, etc.?
Pray for discernment and wisdom (James 1) to understand what you need to learn

I hope that helps you the next time you receive some personal criticism - great food for thought.

Marriage and Sex

2009-08-04T16:10:00.002-05:00

As someone who has done a lot of teaching to students about sexuality over the years, I was really interested in this article from Christianity Today that just came out. The article, written by UT professor Mark Regnerus, makes the case for early marriage. I hope you will take time to read his thoughts. While his argument is not air-tight, it is an extremely helpful correction to our over-focus on sexuality and lack of teaching on marriage. I hope that we can help the next generation of young people make good choices sexually by making good choices with marriage.

What do we worship?

2009-08-03T10:52:00.000-05:00

One of the things I enjoy on Sundays after church is picking up a Sunday-edition of the newspaper to read. You can imagine that it caught my attention this week when I had just finished preaching about the idols that can choke out the Word of God in our lives and I opened the Austin paper to find this interesting full-page article about the new Cowboys' stadium. The title of the article says, "Cathedral of Football" and says that Cowboys' fans "can take a trip to Arlington to worship in Dallas' new stadium." Wow - never thought I would see it so clearly laid out, especially by our local paper. I guess when you spend $1.4 billion to build a new stadium, you run out of words to describe what is happening - you can only turn to God-words like cathedral and worship. So sad, but so true. I like the Cowboys, but are they really worthy of our worship?

500th Anniversary

2009-08-01T15:31:00.002-05:00

We are celebrating some big events in the history of the Reformation over the next several years. John Calvin's 500th birthday was this summer, and we are coming up soon on the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther's famous act that started the Reformation storm - pinning his 95 thesis on the church door at Wittenberg. There is obviously a ton in print about these reformers, but I wanted to pass on a few notes that I've enjoyed recently.

On Calvin's legacy, read Kevin DeYoung's thoughts (someone who is in the Reformed tradition) and Ben Witherington's thoughts (someone who is not in the Reformed tradition). Both have some great insights into Calvin's lasting impact.

On Luther, check out this neat story from today's Washington Post, which includes a great online slide-show where you can see the sites of modern-day Germany where Luther made history. Wouldn't it be fun to go there some time?