Posted on Feb 2, 2016 in Blog, Church, Featured, Truth
Waiting can be hard. I don’t know if you’ve had to wait for something, but I have. It can be challenging, stressful, annoying. The waiting is often the worst part. We get impatient. We want things now. We can’t wait for our birthday. We can’t wait for Christmas. We can’t wait for summer. We can’t wait for our wedding. We just have a hard time waiting.
Today I would like to look at another word: abide.
What is the meaning of this word that Jesus used in a very important teaching? If you want to know the context of this word, go read John 15.
What is the literal definition?
In the english dictionary the word is defined as:
1. to remain; continue; stay: Abide with me.
2. to have one’s abode; dwell; reside: to abide in a small Scottish village.
3. to continue in a particular condition, attitude, relationship, etc.; last.
- to remain, abide
- in reference to place
- to sojourn, tarry
- not to depart 1a
- to continue to be present 1a
- to be held, kept, continually
- in reference to time
- to continue to be, not to perish, to last, endure 1b
- of persons, to survive, live
- in reference to state or condition
- to remain as one, not to become another or different
- to wait for, await one
There is a key verse outside of John 15 that I want to draw your attention to: 1 John 2:28
“And now, little children, abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming.”
Let’s Define it:
Abide means to remain, to continue in, to be present in continually. What is the big deal with “abiding in Christ?”
That’s the key question we need to answer. Why do we need to abide? There are a few reasons:
To avoid drifting
The key temptation we face in waiting for someone is that our focus can drift off to something else. It’s like having kids. You may have noticed it can be a challenge sometimes to keep your kids attention for long periods of time. You may be talking to them, but a bird flies by the window and they’re distracted. Maybe the TV is on in the background while you’re talking and a funny commercial comes on and they get distracted. Or one of the siblings comes into the room and they get distracted. Before long, you realize it’s taken you 15 minutes to say something that should have only taken about 15 seconds.
The same is true for us. We need to abide in Christ, remain in him and be present in our relationship with him so that we don’t find ourselves drifting off course when life comes along to distract us. And it always will. There will always be a distraction. There will always be an opportunity to drift. We must abide.
To produce fruit
From the very beginning of the bible to the very end, God has been in the business of gardening to produce fruit. In this key passage in John 15 we discover the key to producing the fruit of the kingdom. Can you guess what it is? The key to producing fruit is remaining in, being present – abiding in Christ. The fruit of the kingdom is contrary to the fruit of the world. (Yes the world produces fruit – and it’s desirable too, just ask Eve.) If we want to produce the fruit of the kingdom of God which is making disciples, spreading the gospel and seeing love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control in our own lives, we can only do so by remaining in Christ.
To be ready for His return
In this verse in 1 John 2, we also see that abiding in Christ is what makes us ready for His return.
They key to not making mom and dad mad when they get home from a date is to make sure the house is ready for their return before they get home. And I’m not talking about rushing to clean the house in the last few minutes before they arrive. It’s easier to be ready for their return if we have kept the house clean all along. Other wise, we may find ourselves trying to clean up when they get home a few minutes early.
If we want to be ready for Christ’s return, we must abide in him continually. We must be present with him continually. We must remain in him. This means we are actively working on our relationship with him. This means we are presently pursuing him. This means we don’t wait for Sunday to come to hear from his word, but that we are in his word daily. We are devoted to this relationship and we are going to choose to make our relationship with him a priority. We’re not going to make a mess of our lives all week long and then hope it can be fixed up and cleaned up on Sunday. We’re going to continually reorder our lives around the call of the Kingdom. We will use Sundays as earmarks to make sure we are in a state of constant pursuit.
That’s why abiding is such a big deal. We must abide.
Will you abide in Christ today?
Posted on Jan 26, 2016 in Blog, Deliberate Living, Featured, Intentional Living
It’s a fun word when it comes to writing. It’s fun to take an inanimate object and personify it. Me and my spot on the couch are best buddies. He knows me and I know him. When things are rough, my friend knows just how to comfort me.
What does personify mean?
v. to attribute human nature or character to an inanimate object or an abstraction.
That’s how we generally think of the word. But there’s another way the word is often used.
v. to embody a quality, idea, etc. in a real person or a concrete thing.
even better:
to be an embodiment or incarnation of; typify.
To embody a quality. To be an incarnation of something. In other words, we might say that Joe personifies hard work. Or that Jane is the personification of a caring person. When we look at Joe’s life, we see in him the embodiment of hard work. When we look at Jane, we see in her the incarnation of care.
As believers, we are supposed to be the personification…the embodiment…the incarnation of God’s love.
Pause: what does it mean to be a believer?
It’s worth figuring that one out. Because the essence of being a believer is not just someone who believes in the existence of something. People will say all the time that they believe in God. But that does not make that person a believer.
In the book of Acts we see the disciples say “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household.” (By the way, that word for household is the same word we get our idea of 6 to 8 from – there are 6 to 8 people God has put in your life to reach for His Kingdom.) So, if salvation comes from believing in Jesus christ, then it becomes very important that we understand what it means to believe.
So, what does it mean? Believe means to think to be true, to be persuaded of, to credit, to place confidence in the thing to be believed. Here is the distinction. You can say you believe in God and still not be saved. Belief in the existence of someone or something is not the same as placing your belief in it.
Faith is important, but it’s not just faith. It’s a belief that leads us to change our lives completely. A belief that leads us to place our confidence in Christ.
Think about how you act when you really believe in something. When you really believe in a product what do you do? You completely incorporate it into your life and you tell everyone else about it.
Play: Back to personification
The point of being a believer in Jesus is that our lives look more and more like His life and less and less like the life of others who are still completely entangled in this world. We are supposed to look different, sound different, act different.
When it comes to our families, we love them differently. When it comes to our neighbors we love them differently. When it comes to our jobs, we work differently. When it comes to how we spend our time, we invest it wisely. When it comes to how we spend our money, we don’t hold on to as much as we can for ourselves, but we see it as something God has entrusted us with to build His Kingdom on earth.
We aren’t completely wrapped up in this world any more. We are being untangled. And as we are being untangled, we start to stand out. The more we are untangled, the more we will stand out.
The question is: Based on the actions of your life the past few weeks, would people be able to say that you are the personification of God’s love? Are you noticeably different? Do you make decisions that differ from the decisions your non-believer friends and family make? Of equal importance, do you live your life in close enough proximity to them that they are able to see the personification of this change?
I know I have work to do. I’m not there yet. But I’m getting there. It’s not okay to stay the same. I have to make progress. I have to grow in my walk with God. If I’m not growing I’m dying.
Where are you?
Posted on Jan 1, 2016 in Blog, Featured, Vision
There are probably hundreds of articles written and shared today about the one thing you need to do as the new year begins. Lose weight, get organized, spend more time with your family and less time with your phone, and so on. And those are some good things.
But, I would like to propose to you the predecessor to starting anything. Whether you’re starting a new year, starting a new job, a new phase in life or any other new thing, this will help you.
But before tell you about letting go, let me share with you from my own experience. I’ve been in ministry for 15 years. I’ve been around a lot of people during that time. But, there is something I’ve observed. In nearly every church I’ve worked in, there has been something that people were holding on to that ended up costing them.
For some it was holding on to a traditional style of worship. For others it was control over a ministry or program that they had been running for decades. For others, they got overly attached to a leader or pastor.
Then, when it came time for things to change, all hell broke loose. Quite literally.
When the worship style started to change, people started clinging more tightly to it. The style of worship became the most important thing. More important than anything else.
When the leadership of a program was changed, people would try to subvert the new leadership. They would intentionally set up the new leaders for failure by withholding critical information. Or they would gossip behind the scenes to try to create dissention.
When it was time for the pastor to move on, people never gave the new pastor a chance. They would constantly compare him to the old pastor. They would talk about all the ways the new pastor didn’t measure up, or how different he was or about his weaknesses – never giving any credit for his strengths and differences in areas that the former pastor was weak in.
What many of these otherwise wonderful people didn’t realize is that their clinging was only strangling what they were holding so dear.
If you’re going to have any success moving forward in this new year, you’re going to have to let go of last year. You’re going to have to let go of some specific things that will hold you back.
The predecessor to starting anything is letting go of anything that’s holding you back.
What are these things?
The Past, Control and People
1. The Past
The past isn’t the past if it’s still affecting your present. The past is over. It’s gone. It’s never coming back. Yesterday is gone. There is nothing you can do to change it. There is nothing you can do to fix it. Whatever yesterday was is what it will always be.
So, stop trying to compensate for the mistakes of yesterday by making up for it today.
Another perspective. Things will never be like they used to be. The world is constantly changing. People change. Churches change. Families change. Everything changes. Don’t forget the past, but don’t cling to it any longer. Celebrate what it was.
When we try to cling to the past (which is impossible), we dilute the possibility of today. Today can’t make up for yesterday, but today has tons of potential in and of itself. You are only defined by your past when you stop doing anything of significance today. Make today great, and be determined to make tomorrow great too.
2. Control
You may be a control freak. I’m not. But I’ve worked for a lot of control freaks. I’ve known a lot of people who have a hard time not being in control. If you’re not a control freak and you have one in your life, you know what it’s like.
When life is only what we can control, we’re never open to the possibilities of what exists outside our own abilities.
You can’t control everything. It’s impossible. All you can control is yourself. You can have influence in the lives of others, but you will lose that influence if you try to control. There will be things that happen that you can’t plan on. There will be things that change that you will just have to accept. You cannot control every situation. You cannot control every person.
If you look around you, and you find that you can control everyone and everything, look in the mirror. You’re a control freak. You need to release people to be who they can be, and focus on yourself. Let go.
3. People
We all have people who used to be in our life that we miss. For some of us it’s family. For others, it’s an influential leader. For others of us, it’s a friend. Losing people is hard. Whether someone dies, moves away or simply moves on, it’s hard to lose someone.
But, if we never move past that relationship, we are yielding control to something that never will be. I miss my grandfathers. But, if I never move on and try to make the most of those who are around me today, I severely limit what today can be. I never open up to new relationships – ones that could potentially create more impact and greater memories that before. Aside from family, most of the significant relationships we have lost were at some point new relationships. Don’t miss out on a potentially meaningful relationship because you’re clinging to the memory of a relationship that used to be.
Celebrate the memories of those relationship. Laugh at the stories. Think fondly of the time you had with them. They shaped your life. They helped you become who you are today. But, don’t get stuck there. Don’t stay there. Start some new friendships. Meet some new people. Stretch yourself.
The gist of what I’m saying is, I want you to have an awesome 2016. It will be tremendously difficult to reach new heights if you have one hand clasping to something that was, but will never be again. Stop choking out the possibilities of today by grasping so tightly to yesterday. Let go of it and reach toward something new and exciting this new year.
Posted on Nov 19, 2015 in Blog, Culture, Featured
I wrote a post a couple of days ago about how annoying Social Media has been lately. If you haven’t read it, you ought to. As a follow up to that post, I have a question to ask you: Have you noticed how easily offended we have become?
Why do you think that is? Why is it that, no matter what you say, there is a good chance you’re going to offend someone? I have offended people by talking about the old school tupperware sippy cups. Seriously. Why have we become offended about everything?!
Let’s try it out. I’m not going to say anything offensive in this paragraph, but tell me if you get offended. It’s offensive to be a Christian, and people are offended by Christians. It’s offensive to be American and americans are offended by people being american. It’s offensive to eat meat. It’s offensive to drink cow’s milk. Those are some of the easy ones to talk about. I don’t even want to mention the others because I don’t want people to be distracted by them.
Why? Why are we so easily offended? I don’t think it used to be this way. People have always been offended by things, but not like this. In the past, people would get offended if you said something that they took personally. We would get offended if someone called us fat or ugly, rich or poor, stupid or smart.
Why are we offended by silly things like milk and meat now? I think it boils down to this one thing: truth.
Truth, morality and reality used to be something that was defined outside of ourselves. Definitions to reality existed outside of who we are. Honesty was defined. Integrity too. Our humanity was defined by biology, and for Christians by who God says we are.
That has all changed. Now we define truth, morality and reality within ourselves. We decide who we are and who we want to be. When we make a stand on something, we are doing so because we are that thing. Whatever the issue is, it’s not just a battle of ideas, it’s personal.
That’s why we are so easily offended. Because when you disagree with someone who has defined their own truth, morality and reality, you aren’t just disagreeing with an idea. You’re actually disagreeing with the very foundation of what makes that person who they are.
It’s the same as calling someone fat, ugly or stupid. (All names I’ve been called, by the way.) You may think you’re discussing an idea, but you’re not. You’re discussing a person.
This is one reason why absolute truth is so important. Without it, we are at the mercy of the most popular idea of the time. Without it, we are at war with each other. Without it, everyone is left to decide what truth is for themselves.
With absolute truth, we are at the mercy of truth and the God who created it. And He is a God who loved us enough to send his Son to walk in Grace and Truth. He is a God who sent His son to die to pay the ransom for my sins and to restore me into the likeness of His son.
Without absolute truth, there is no right or wrong. There is no way to come to a decision about what’s right. And there’s no legitimate way to decide who even gets to decide. Just look at the world around us. We’re trying to decide truth by consensus, and how’s that working out? How does that work out when there are two differing opinions and the split is pretty much even between them? There is no way to determine if I am right and you are wrong. With absolute truth, there is a right and wrong. And, even though you may not think so, that’s a good thing.
Why is it good? Because, let’s say someone breaks into your house, steals your stuff and harms your family. You go to the trial, only to hear the defendant say that he was only doing what he thought was his right. And it just so happens that the jury and judge agree with him. He was doing what he thought was his right. It doesn’t matter how it affected you, because it is what was right for him.
It may seem ridiculous, but it’s not that far off. “But we have laws that protect us against that!?” I know! That’s what I think. But, those laws are continuously being changed to match our new moral relativism. It is not too far fetched to imagine that most, if not all laws will be done away with over time.
And, how do we decide what should be laws if we don’t have any absolute truth to base them on. You may feel that all life is precious and valuable, but that doesn’t mean I do, or that the judge does. If we all disagree, how do we decide what is right and wrong? We are left to do what’s right for us. And if that affects you negatively, that’s just your too bad.
I think this is why we’re easily offended. Because we have become the be all end all for everything. We are the source of our own truth. And when something conflicts with that truth, the person doing the offending is in the wrong. I can’t possibly be wrong because I decided it was right in the first place.
And then, like Jesus, let’s be gracious with one another. Especially in areas where God’s truth directly confronts our lives. When there are those around us who have believed a lie for a long time, it’s going to take time for that lie to be rooted out. Let’s be gracious with one another and walk with one another towards the truth.
If you find yourself being offended about an issue, try to dig into it a little bit. Try to discover if this belief is based on absolute truth or something you have created. If it isn’t, try to discover what the truth is. If you don’t know how to figure it out, ask someone. Ask me, and let’s see if we can’t find the truth together.
As long as you’re interested in the truth. The whole truth. And nothing but the truth.
Posted on Nov 17, 2015 in Blog, Culture, Deliberate Living, Featured
I wasn’t one of the first people to jump on Facebook. It took me a while. But, it didn’t take me long to discover there was tremendous potential in this tool.
As a pastor, I do my best to keep up on what’s going on in people’s lives. Prior to Facebook, this was quite a challenge. It took a lot of time, a lot of phone calls and coffee, etc.
Once I learned how to use Facebook, I could be in the know with a lot more people. It wasn’t necessarily the deepest knowledge, but I at least knew what was going on. I could make a list of people and scroll through their updates in about an hour.
Then I got on Twitter. I’m still not huge into it. I try. I’m not a big conversationalist. I can do better, I’m sure.
But, Facebook has changed. Twitter too. We’ve gone from sharing about our own personal lives to sharing news and politics. Social Media has become a platform for whatever propaganda we agree with.
You can’t get on Facebook right now without being bombarded with people’s politics and other opinions. Which, if you think about it, is kind of funny. We won’t talk about these issues with people face to face, but we’ll destroy our relationship with someone behind the security of the blue and white.
I loved being able to know what was happening in your life. I loved that I can connect with friends and family who are thousands of miles away and see what they’re doing today. I didn’t even mind the posts about food and coffee.
It’s fun to be able to celebrate when a new life is brought into this world. It’s fun to be able to celebrate a new job or a new house. Those are the things Facebook was meant for.
I don’t even mind you sharing when things are going bad in your life, and you need encouragement. That’s you. That’s your life. I don’t think our social media lives should be only the good parts. It’s good to share the raw parts too. The point is, I want to hear from you. I want to hear about your life. I know there’s a bunch of junk going on in the world. We all do. I don’t troll Facebook & Twitter to see the garbage. I do so because I want to know what’s happening in the lives of the people I care about.
But, for far too many, social media has become the prime landing strip for all the things we don’t like about the world, politics, religion, culture, society, etc. etc. etc.
I understand why we do it. Those things matter to us. They matter to me too. We want to have a voice in the discussion. We want to be heard. If we post something on Facebook, we can gauge if people have heard it. We see the metrics right before our eyes. These important things, that we’re probably too scared to share face to face with someone, have become the status quo for what’s in Social Media.
Right now, my Facebook and Twitter feeds are full of people arguing about Syrian Refugees. Last week it was full of people arguing about a red cup.
Considering this is the week leading up to Thanksgiving, could we all try to overwhelm our Facebook feeds with the things we love & the things we are thankful for. I know some of you are going through tremendous struggles right now, and I don’t discount them. But, the majority of us, if not all, have a mountain of blessings in our lives.
So, before you hit share on some political propaganda that will spread wide the divide, stop and think about something positive, encouraging, uplifting and inspiring you can share. Not a meme. Not the equivalent of an email forward. Something encouraging in your life. Something you are thankful for. Something good that is happening for you.
Will you join me in this joy revolution? I may not be able to start a revolution on my own. But I’m going to try. I could use your help. I’m not asking you to share this post, instead, all I’m asking is that you go share something about you on Social Media. Share something joyful and encouraging. Share something that has happened in your life. I have a feeling, that’s what we’re all wanting to hear.
Posted on Nov 3, 2015 in Apologetics, Blog, Culture, Featured
Have you ever found yourself disappointed with God? You can’t believe He let you down, He didn’t do what you wanted Him to do or what you thought He would do. Maybe you feel like God has broken one of His promises, or that God doesn’t seem to be consistent – sometimes He gives us what we ask for and other times He seems silent.
I know I have felt those things. There have been plenty of times in my life when I have expected God to act one way, only to experience Him in a completely different way. Why does that happen?
I think there are two basic reasons for this that we all relate to. And when we understand them, I think it’s quite simple, and we can recognize it.
1. We are trying to define God from our humanity.
God is infinite. God is immutable. God is both transcendent and immanent. That’s just four characteristics of who God is, and we, in our humanity do not have the ability to really understand any of them. God is immortal, immovable, all powerful, all knowing, all seeing. God is huge.
God is infinite. He is not constrained by time. He has always been, will always be and always is. We have a birthday. We celebrate it each year. We go to funerals. We have a beginning. We have a start date.
God is immutable. God never changes. We change all the time. We are growing. We grow in our understanding of God’s word and ways. We adapt our lives to Him. Our lives were never perfect. We are fickle. We change our minds all the time.
At these two foundational aspects of God’s nature we discover that we cannot possibly come to a complete understanding of who God is. We are constrained by our humanity.
Problems arise when we critique God because we can’t understand his nature. Let me give you an example. Because we are constantly changing, we can’t understand how God could stay the same for all of time. Because we are confined by time, we can’t understand a God who isn’t.
So, out of frustration we change God. Certainly God would change if He knew what I knew. Certainly, if God knew how long it was going to take to do this or to change this or to become this, he would circumvent the process.
We take our humanity and try to define God. And we fail. Miserably. When God’s nature isn’t measuring up to our standards, it is not God who is incorrect but our standards. We adapt to his nature, we can’t change his nature to adapt to ours.
2. We are trying to understand His ways in the context of our ways.
Because God is all of these things, He has a way of doing things. The way that God does things is in perfect keeping with His nature and character. God is not hindered by imperfections and flaws like we are. God is not tempted by sin like we are. God is not hindered by time, by a lack of knowledge, by a lack of wisdom or any kind of lack we can imagine. God lacks nothing. There is no part of God that is not perfect. God is perfectly complete and completely perfect.
So, when God doesn’t answer our prayer the way we think He should, He isn’t doing so to punish us or to keep us unhappy. God isn’t out to get us or to keep us miserable. God’s wisdom is perfect. So, when the timing isn’t right, He leads us in a different direction until the timing is right. If it ever will be.
We don’t critique God for not working as we think He should. He is God, we are not. If God doesn’t move like we think He should, it’s not because He doesn’t love us but because He does. If God doesn’t do what we want, it’s not because He doesn’t care, but because He does. He cares enough to lead us in the everlasting way. He cares enough to say no to something good because there is something great that He can see and knows is what we need. Not only does He see it, He has planned it.
Another example: Culture around us is constantly changing. Currently at a pace that is hard to keep up with. There is great pressure on believers to change their beliefs to adapt to culture. And it’s hard not to. It feels wrong to stay the same when everyone else is changing.
But, God never changes. His wisdom never changes. His understanding never changes. This system He created operates on the same foundation as it did when He created it. The promises God made to Abraham are still in keeping with what God’s nature is for us today. The value God placed on life at the beginning of creation is the same value He still places on life today. The way the whole system functions today is the same way God created it to function in the beginning.
When God’s ways do not measure up to our ways, it is not God who has failed but our understanding of His ways that has failed.
So, no matter where you find yourself this day, I hope you are encouraged. And if you are not encouraged, but discouraged because God isn’t measuring up, I hope you have found definition for your discouragement. Our frustration with God is because we can’t fully comprehend and understand, not because God has failed. God cannot fail, it isn’t in his nature. We fail all the time.
If the answer from God right now is no, it’s not because He doesn’t love you, it’s because He does and He exists outside of the confines of time we experience and He knows and sees better for you. If you are frustrated that God isn’t giving you something you want, He hasn’t given it to you because He knows what it will do to you right now to let you have it. That’s because He is God and can see things we can’t see. He is God and knows things we will never know.
God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. If your frustrated with the way your life is working out, could it be that you’ve been fighting God for your way and not following His?
