Why Are You Thinking These Things?

5 02 2010

“Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, ‘Why are you thinking these things?’”
-Mark 2:8

Jesus knows what you are thinking in your heart—and that inspires me to have better motivation for doing things.  It is far too easy to allow ourselves to be deceived by our own actions into thinking that we are living the Way of Jesus while our motives are infecting all those actions with impurity.  Motive can be redemption for poor results, and condemnation for good results.  So I’m praying that the people of God would live by hearts that have been sanctified, and not simply disguised.  My dream of that kind of people looks something like this:

  • People laboring for God because they want to make Him happy, and not because they want to make other Christians happy.
  • People praying because they want to know God, and not because they want to use Him.
  • People trusting God with their money because they want more of Him in their life, and not because they want more money in their life.
  • People seeking miracles so that God will be glorified, and not so that they will be satisfied.
  • People who serve “the least of these” because they see opportunity, and not because they feel guilty.
  • People who give things up because God is enough, and not because they want better replacements.
  • People who love because He first loved us, and not because they’re trying to earn the love of others.
  • People who are at peace because they know God’s in control, and not because they’ve created control for themselves and are camped in comfort.
  • People who share the gospel because they want the world to know Jesus, and not because they want the world to know them.
  • People who forgive because they want to free others with grace and mercy, and not because they want to imprison others with guilt and debt.

Would Jesus ask you, “why are you thinking these things?” even though you were there with Him, hearing all He was saying and seeing all He was doing? You have to let God mold your motive before you’ll be able to act with integrity and produce fruit that’s healthy and nourishing instead of rotten on the inside!


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Categories : vision

Being and Doing

2 02 2010

“‘Arise! For this matter is your responsibility, but we will be with you; be courageous and act.’”
-Ezra 10:4

The Israelites vowed to be with Ezra…and for Ezra, it was time to get up and DO.

Sometimes life is risky, uncomfortable, surprising, wearisome, unclear, heavy, confusing, stressful, or emotional.  And it’s easy to overlook what other people are going through when you’re going through things yourself.  It seems to be too much work to involve yourself too deeply in the  lives of others.  You don’t have enough time to get what YOU need to get done, let alone helping someone else.  There is an emotional demand in partnering with the life of someone else.

But it’s time to stop overlooking.  It’s time to be with someone.

Be with them in their struggles.  Be with them in their victories.  Be with them in their questions and their answers.  We are called to love one another in humility…and humility is thinking less of yourself and making much of others.  You can’t solve the problem for them, but you can encourage them to arise, and to have courage, and to act.  You don’t have to put your life on hold and ignore everything that’s happening on your end of things.  But if you lead by example in being with someone and encouraging them to do what only they can do, not only will you bless their lives with the kindness and faithfulness of Christ, you’ll have at least one person who knows exactly what to do when you need someone with you!

Sometimes life is difficult, overwhelming, dangerous, scary, fast, exhausting, relentless, uncertain, or unexpected.  And it’s easy to come up with excuses for not doing what you know needs to be done.  There are some things that have been on your to-do list for weeks.  There are some things you’ve been doubting for no real, good reason.  There are some things that God has been burdening you with that you’ve been trying to ignore.

But it’s time to stop making excuses.  It’s time to get up and DO.

Do what you know you should have done awhile ago.  Do what has been keeping you up at night.  Do what you are called to do, even if no one else is doing it.  No one can live your life for you.  What is on your heart is your responsibility.  You don’t have to do it alone—the Lord is faithful to those who are zealous for His will—but you do have to do it.  Our God is a God of victory, and of hope, and of provision, and of redemption.  We have NO REASON to not go ALL OUT for HIS GLORY.


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No, Can Do

29 01 2010

Jesus is our Savior. Not just when we are raised to new life, but continually.  He saves us and protects us as we walk through life.  But He does not save and protect us from many of the things that seem to worry us most…when we get too focused on what lies before our eyes, we overlook what lies before our hearts—and it is what lies before our hearts that we really need saving and protection from.  You do not need rescue from a financial situation as much as you need rescue from insecurity.  You do not need saving from joblessness as much as you need saving from meaninglessness.  You do not need protection from pain as much as you need protection from misery.

Anxiety over what may happen TO you is a sign of what hasn’t happened IN you. Jesus does save us…but not from adversity—He saves us from abandonment.  He saves us from loneliness.  He saves us from insecurity.  He saves us from a state of spiritual emptiness.  He sustains us with everlasting love, rescues us with infinite grace, empowers us with unending joy, and restores us with prevailing peace.  He calms the storms within our hearts so that we can face the storms before our eyes, and point to His supremacy while we’re doing it!

But a lot of these truths are difficult to grasp when we don’t let Him prove them to us.  Though you may be raised to new life in Christ, sometimes we still live by the limitations of our old life, fighting against His guidance when we’re led toward something that we think we can’t handle.  But you cannot allow your past defeat to limit your future battles.  Everything that is over your head is still under His feet.  And until you really own the victory of Jesus for yourself, until you claim it and go forward in His promises, none of those truths will ever become a reality for you.

God cannot teach you to trust Him if you never let Him take you to the doorstep of your greatest fears.  You won’t believe He is with you always if you refuse to go where you would otherwise feel alone.  And until you step out of the boat, you won’t really believe that you can walk on water.  Your “No can do…” will turn into God’s “No, CAN do!” when you live by His love rather than your lack.

He may still take you through hard times…but He will always be with you in them.  Don’t despise the hardships God has ordained to minister to you!  Let go of what you can do and trust in what He can do.  He knows where you are, and what you’re feeling, and how impossible it is to make it out…

But Jesus is the incarnation of the impossible, and that doesn’t phase Him one bit.

He’s got it under control.


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Categories : discipleship

Everything Everywhere All the Time

21 01 2010

“This is the answer they gave us: ‘We are the servants of the God of heaven and earth, and we are rebuilding the temple that was built many years ago, one that a great king of Israel built and finished.’“
-Ezra 5:11 (NIV, emphasis my own)-

No one knows the fullness of God.  He’s too big for us to get all of.  And that’s wonderful, because it means that we will never run out of things to love about Him, and we will never get bored with Him because we’ve found out everything about Him, and He will always know better than us and make the best decisions for us.  But just because we can’t know every characteristic of God doesn’t mean we shouldn’t know as much as we can, and a lot of people tend to tailor God to be only what they perceive Him to be.  But you do not define who God is…He defines who you are.  These Israelites in the book of Ezra knew that—they acknowledged that God is God of heaven AND earth.  It’s easy to get stuck on God only reigning over one or the other, but He is King over all of it.  And we’ve got to check ourselves and make sure that we’re serving Him as Lord of both, and not one or the other.

Are you serving the God of heaven, but not of earth? When you see God as Lord of heaven, and not also of earth, He becomes unreachable.  You forget that He wants an intimate relationship with you.  Because you’ve forgotten this, you attempt to live all of life on your own, and never feel strong, confident, or rested, because the world’s relentless attacks are deterred only by the power of the Holy Spirit.  God becomes a distant idea that should be adhered to because it is somehow for the greater good (though you’re not really sure how).  When God is not the God of earth, you’re left on your own.  You can’t know anything for sure.  But God IS the God of earth, and we CAN know Him.  You don’t have to sustain your own joy, or fight for peace in your heart, or find impossible strength within yourself.  The Holy Spirit does those things for you, when you acknowledge that God is King over all the earth and become His servantin the things that you do and the way that you love others.  He is near to you, and you can know Him, and He is actively moving in your life, and He has not abandoned the world to wait for its destruction but is in the world changing it through His people, who even today are “rebuilding the temple” all across the world.

Are you serving the God of earth, but not of heaven? When you see God as Lord of earth, and not also of heaven, He becomes “man-centered,” existing for your benefit rather than His own glory.  You forget that He is all about Himself—and how could He not be?  If God is perfectly good, would it not be unloving to the universe for Him to not make much of Himself?  Because you’ve forgotten this, you find no satisfaction in simply who God is and rather seek an ever-elusive experience in which your own desires are quenched indefinitely.  But earthly events are not eternal, and until you are satisfied in the being of God, you will never be able to sustain an awe and appreciation of the doing of God.  Your faith in God is dependent on your feelings towards God, and you feel rejected or abandoned by Him when things don’t go the way you wanted them to.  He becomes seen as a slot machine that you keep pouring your treasures into, not because you want Him to have them, but because you want the slots to line up and get a big reward back.  When God is not the God of heaven, there is nothing greater to live for than what you can see and understand, and the sense of His glory and majesty is lost.  But there IS something greater to live for, and His glory and majesty IS worth our sacrifice.  There IS more to life than what you and I can see, and God is in control of all of it.  And it is Him alone who is able to satisfy our souls for all eternity.  He is enough for you, and His glory is worth losing your life over.

God is lord of everything, everywhere, all the time.  Don’t let your sight determine His might.  The limitations you put on Him in your mind don’t keep Him from being all that He is, but they do keep you from seeing all that He is.


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Six Questions for the Ministerial-Minded

14 01 2010

I recently asked the small group leaders at 24-7 to ask six questions during their planning, and I thought I would share them with the internet world and expand on them a little bit… (almost all of them can be applied in some way to any area of ministry, so this may be applicable to everyone who is not a small group leader too!)

  1. Does it bring God glory and make much of Him? If what we are doing isn’t first and foremost bringing glory to God, then it is inevitably bringing glory to something else, and is no longer leading people TO His throne, but leading them AWAY from it.  It is really easy to include God without making it about God.  Instead of looking first at our lives and then searching for how God relates to them, we ought to look at God first, and then see how our lives relate to Him.  This keeps us focused on the fact that man was made in God’s image, and not the other way around!  Too often people live lives that include God but do not require Him…the first step in changing that is to model it in our own lives, and then to make it a foundational part of our ministry!
  2. Does it help people know God in a deeper and more relevant way? If we are not helping to lead people into a deeper relationship with God, we’re probably not leading them anywhere helpful at all.  A leader’s purpose is not to do things for others, but to help others get to a place in which they can do things for themselves.  If you aren’t continually encouraging and challenging people, you are actually building up glory for yourself by keeping them reliant on you to give them what they need.  Instead, we’ve got to lead in such a way that eventually makes us unnecessary because those we’ve been leading have become self-sustaining.
  3. Does it challenge people to live in greater integrity? We’ve got to make it a point to have people seek God’s approval, rather than man’s.  Many churches have made it far too easy to look Godly without being Godly, and that may be because they’ve forgotten that people aren’t held accountable to the church—they’re held accountable to God, who sees their hearts and knows their motives.  The world can’t be changed by liars…which is what we’re letting people be when we let them come to church and get involved in ministry without challenging them to be filled with the Spirit and live as they are called.
  4. Does it inspire people to make a heavenly impact on the world? The church isn’t a social club, it’s an army!  God gave us victory over every power and principality of the world, and yet many Christians keep that victory inside the walls of a building instead of storming the gates of hell and bringing the good news to the world in both word AND power.  Christianity can’t be allowed to settle as self-help…that’s an insult to the power of God that raised Christ from the dead (which is in you, by the way!).  Tekmito Adegemo said, “We cannot preach good news and be bad news,” and it’s bad news if the people who claim to love and serve a God of life, peace, hope, joy, and justice don’t do anything to bring those things into the world in a HUGE WAY!  Jesus said that we would make a greater impact on the world than even He did…so we’ve got to lead people into that promise and do everything we can to raise up people who are relentlessly in love with Christ and obsessed with a hope for the world.
  5. Does it create opportunity for vulnerability? It was the broken, the hungry, the sick, and the rejected that Jesus went to.  And I think there’s a whole lot more people who are broken, hungry, sick, and rejected than we perceive.  But it’s sometimes hard to admit that.  There are walls that are often built really high, and really thick, in people’s hearts…and those walls keep them from moving forward.  Leaders need to create an atmosphere of forgiveness if they want others to really start growing and dealing with their issues.  Grace has got to be our greatest asset.  And we need to not only notify people of grace, but give them opportunities to experience it for themselves by encouraging honesty and openness.
  6. Is it encouraging to people? JESUS IS GOOD NEWS! There is no reason anyone should be able to be around Christians and not be encouraged.  It makes sense that if we want people to grow, we ought to always be building them up!  A leader’s encouragement can act as fuel for a person’s progress.  There is always something in a person that is worth our encouragement…if there wasn’t Jesus wouldn’t have died for them!  We have to draw the purpose out of people and help them to discover and step into their gifts and talents.  And we’ve got to do everything we can to lighten their spirits, energize their minds, and inspire their hearts every time we get a chance!

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Catch and Release

5 01 2010

All at the same time, Christ gives to us complete security and demands of us complete faith.  It is His perfect love that casts out all of our fear, and even so, that perfect love requires us to walk by faith and not by sight.  Total security and total faith, simultaneously.  An unconditional comfort and a perpetual dependence.

Security in the world is found in control.  When we start becoming unable to change or regulate something, our security starts to dwindle.  We know that the world is not perfect, and that people make mistakes, and that nothing lasts forever, and so we fight to make things as perfect as possible, protect against as many mistakes as we can, and prolong and enhance the little time we are able to keep something (or someone).

Yet in the kingdom of God, it is precisely the opposite.  Because while we are imperfect, God is entirely perfect.  While we make mistakes, God precedes all things and all things are for His glory and He never falters.  And while we are temporal and can know nothing on earth that does not pass away, God is even more certainly everlasting and eternal.  And so we do not have to fight for our security when we are covered in the blood of Jesus.  He is perfect.  He is flawless.  He is timeless.  And all these things become ours when we profess Him as our Savior and leave our insecure, earthly lives to follow Him.  We do not have to fight for them any longer.

But just as we do not have to fight for a security of our own, we also cannot cling to a security of our own.  When we follow Jesus we are not allowed to take anything with us.  He is enough.  He is all that we need.  And to try and carry things with us from our former life is to disown that truth.  When we refuse to let God have control over a particular area of our lives, we are insulting the Cross because we are saying with our actions that His sacrifice was not enough for us. We cannot accept both the security of Christ and the security of ourselves, because complete faith in Jesus is too great a thing to grasp if anything else is in our hands.  And so we must give up our control and accept His.  We have to trust God with everything we have if we desire to take part in everything He has.  And He has SO MUCH to give…we simply have to drop what we’re holding on to and allow Him to place His perfect, faithful, everlasting gifts of love, hope, mercy, grace, forgiveness, and joy in our empty hands!

The great thing about the fear of God is that when you have it, you don’t fear anything else.  And that’s why discovering the fear of God is so important: because it is only when all our other fears are released that we can be joyful about not knowing what’s coming next.


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One or Undone

21 12 2009

Jesus is the Prince of Peace, the origin of unity, and the manifestation of love.  Through Him, we are baptized into one body and one Spirit, made brothers and sisters in Christ, sons and daughters of the Most High God, and together part of the kingdom of heaven, where life has new meaning and deeper realities and overcomes all adversity.

Yet there is a world that has no hope in the Christian faith because many who follow it show no sign of life.  There are Christians who will protest war and uphold peace with their mouths, and yet be at war with others in their congregation.  There are people who rely more on their denomination than their Savior.  Church politics drive worship leaders to begrudge pastors to look down on small group leaders to disrespect elders to gossip about worship leaders.  And to a great extent, we Christians have lost sight of the healing mercies of God that are found in our ONE and ONLY Savior Jesus Christ, who draws each of us into His care by the same means, for the same reason, and to the same grace.  It is our failure to exemplify the peace that surpasses all understanding in our interactions with each other that takes away the legitimacy of our words and the power of our faith.

Every moment of our lives, we are faced with a decision.  We can bring the world together in unity, or we can drive it apart to division.  There is no middle ground.  Refusing to choose is choosing the latter.  And we must in every moment decide to love without condition, hope without restraint, and let our faith sustain every circumstance, for when we are unified we will see God.

“For where two or three come together in My name, there I am with them.”
-Matthew 18:20
“All the believers were together and had everything in common…praising God and enjoying the favor of all people.  And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”
-Acts 2:44, 47


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Making a Statement

14 12 2009

Pray that these would be true in your life and in mine every day, and strive for them with everything you have.  It is worth the risk.


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Categories : leadership, personal, scripture, vision

Faith for Life

1 12 2009

I think you and I may have lost some perspective on suffering for the gospel of Jesus Christ.  And with as frequently as it is addressed in the New Testament as part of following Jesus (Rm 5:3, 8:17; 2Co 1:5; Php 1:29, 3:10; 2Ti 1:8; 1Pe 2:19, 4:12-13; to name a few) this strikes me as an important thing to deal with.

Living in the United States, my idea of suffering is made up of things like illness, financial struggle, losing friends, and being stressed about having too much to do.  The most persecution a lot of “Ameri-Christians” go through is heated arguments that are frequently politically charged.  (If only there was some way to get the Christians who are so vocal about things like abortion—which goes against the ways of God—and spending money on war instead of the impoverished and the sick—which also goes against the ways of God—to be so vocal about JESUS and His hope of salvation!)  The trials we face often do not happen outside of courtrooms for anything more than speeding tickets.  Offering our lives as a living sacrifice has, in many cases, come to mean going to church and praying to a God we don’t care about or even believe in so that our lives will turn out better.

But perhaps the suffering that the Bible says we will experience is talking about something beyond what happens naturally, to everyone.  Because these types of “trials” and “hardships” are not specific to Christians.  They are experienced by anyone and everyone around us.  Perhaps the suffering that the Bible says we will experience is said under the assumption that we are so in love with Jesus and believe so much that He is the way, the truth, and the life that we are proclaiming His name and His message with reckless abandon.  Perhaps the suffering that we as Christians are called to comes from sharing the gospel so much that it gets us thrown into prison, like Paul, or it gets us attacked, like Stephen, or it whisks us away from everything we’re doing, like Peter.  If we were to live with the fervor that we are called to, the sufferings of Ameri-Christians would be commonplace, and we would not wait for suffering to happen upon us but in a sense bring it upon ourselves by how unapologetically and how frequently we preached the Way of Jesus to the world.  Our suffering for Christ ought not to come from natural unfortunate circumstances, but from our inability to shut up about Jesus.

We have lived far too long by buying apparel and keychains that say we are Christians, and that Jesus is our homeboy and we have faith 4 life.  I think the Christians of whom God will say “Well done, my good and faithful servant,” are the ones who actually require faith to continue living.  We should have faith for life, from beginning to end.  But if we are living the call of Christ we should need faith to live as well.


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Categories : discipleship, reflection

A Few Thoughts

4 11 2009

God has been going crazy at 24/7!  Talk about JOYFUL worship!  Two reasons why I think it’s happening:

  1. Our services have been more about Jesus than our church.  When you have a church that spends all its time talking about how YOU are going to do things, what YOU need to change, how YOU felt about the music last week, what direction YOU think the church needs to be going, what YOUR doctrine statement is, how YOU are managing the church’s money, what YOUR vision for the church is, the things YOU think are important to have in a meeting…the souls God has placed under your leadership to steward are never led to the One from which all meaning and significance flows.  The moment even one single aspect of your ministry stops being about God, the entire ministry becomes irrelevant and pointless, and its purpose is reduced to simply making you feel good about yourself for “doing what God called you to do.”  God never calls people to do anything that makes them the hero.  Churches must be all about how GOD wants to do things, what GOD is pleased with, where GOD leads you, and what brings GOD the most praise and glory.
  2. We’ve prayed for a spirit of celebration instead of a spirit of success.  The reason we go to church services is not primarily so that God will do something, but because of what God has done already.  The Sabbath was the day God rested from working the other six days.  We should not ever rely on the one hour per week we have at church for God to do miraculous things.  We should be listening for God’s voice and acting on what He reveals to us on the other six days, and use Sunday to rest and celebrate.  So many Christian’s lives revolve around what they will get out of a church service, when really, they should be bringing something to put into the church service as a harvest of the work God has done through their faithfulness.  We sing songs to God because He is faithful and praiseworthy…but unless we truly believe that, our voices are empty, and unless we are seeking God in the other 167 hours of the week, we will have a much harder time truly believing.  Soren Kiergegaard said, “It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey”…obedience nurtures belief.  None of this means that God doesn’t do miraculous things and speak to people and change lives at a church service, in fact it’s often quite the opposite—but we ought to come to church services with joy and thankfulness more often than despair and demands.  God often only gives us more when we are good stewards of what we have already.

When we put God and His glory above ourselves and our own efforts, and when we are satisfied in Him instead of demanding of Him, INCREDIBLE THINGS HAPPEN.


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