Last year we bought a Nintento Wii and then later, a Wii Fit thingie designed to utterly humiliate me! It sighs when I step on the scale, mocks me for not showing up in xx# of days, and loves to point out how many Yoga moves I can’t do because… I’m inflexible!
But in leadership, I’m quite the opposite. I love and respond to flexibility. What I mean by that is, I love the freedom of trying things and failing, and knowing that failure is ultimately okay. I remember Rick Warren once saying that for everything Saddleback Church had succeeded in doing, there were twenty experiments at which they had failed.
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We’re walking with the apostle Paul on Wednesday evenings and we’ve just received our call to Macedonia (modern-day Greece). We parted ways with Barnabas, taking Silas instead, and we picked up Timothy and Luke on the trip. In Philippi, God took the city for Himself! How did it happen?
On Saturday, one business woman named Lydia, a “seller of purple” came to faith in Christ along with her house. Then Paul caused a riot over God’s power to rescue a girl being used by adult men for monetary purposes. A jailer got saved and a bunch of prisoners’ lives were changed forever. In Thessalonica, another riot.
As I watch Paul through the eyes of Luke (the writer of Acts), I get the feeling that the gospel was influential and divisive wherever it was taken. People reacted with warm embrace or heated rejection, but nobody was neutral, and everyone took notice. Riots usually ensued.
Out of this wild and crazy second missionary journey of the apostle Paul comes these three realizations of what it looks like when God takes a city for Himself, such as Philippi…
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I have a relationship with Jesus Christ. I’m saved and secure. I’m on my way to heaven someday. But I still live here and I know that my purpose is to glorify Jesus Christ in all of the life that I have left. But how?
A common plight Christians suffer is this wrestling between getting ready to do something, and doing it now. When I surrendered to God’s calling on my life to ministry, I wrestled – do I spend some years in school, doing little and learning much, or do I get involved, doing much but perhaps learning little. I’ve heard it preached both ways. You have too, and it’s confusing, isn’t it?
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Message Based on The Life of Paul, Acts 9
Change is a tough word. It’s all around us in technology, nature, and culture. Yet I think we fail to understand the most powerful change of all which happens in a human soul that meets and trusts Jesus.
Paul had things going for him quite well. He had ascended to power and prestige. He had the authority of the Roman government to go and arrest Christians for treason and heresy, but Jesus confronted him.
The four things God did in Paul’s life, He does in ours as well…
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Last week I began a new post series that will feature “five great gooks” every week on a variety of subjects. I said I’d talk about five great books for women, but I spoke rashly. I’m going to postpone that until a bit later. Instead, today, I’m going to plug five great books about the life of the apostle Paul. I’m beginning a teaching series on this subject with tonight’s service and it’s a great way to get acquainted with almost half of the New Testament in survey fashion.
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My friend David sent me a link to a Fox News article about an ad campaign launching on Washington D.C. buses that asks “Why Believe in a God? Just Be Good for Goodness’ Sake.” The ads have certainly sparked controversy, but I’m not as bothered as you might think. For me, it would be tragic if someone saw the ads and decided that rationalism excluded the possibility of God, but I actually think the opposite may be true, and it causes me to wonder if the humanist group that sponsored the ads really thought their branding through.
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We’re down to the final study in our Wendesday night journey through the one another’s of the New Testament. This one is pretty awesome – we’re to comfort one another. It’s based on 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17, a familiar passage to many. It concerns itself with Jesus’ second coming, which forms the basis of our comfort of one another. Continue Reading »
I was deeply moved by today’s reading from J. Sidlow Baxter’s devotional, Awake My Heart. He speaks of the mysteries of life, what W. A. Criswell used to call “the imponderables of God.” Baxter mentioned birth, life, personality, human experience, Satan, eternity, etc. All of these are unexplainable. We can begin, but we can never conclude any definition of them.
Baxter goes on, however, to quote an unnamed old Puritan as saying, “Never let what you don’t know disturb your faith in what you do know.” Further, Baxter proclaims that “breaking into all this mystery comes a glorious, transfiguring fact which not all of these problems can discount: it is THE FACT OF CHRIST. He is a certified historical fact; a supremely significant fact; an experientially realized fact….”
We live in a highly skeptical age. To deny this is to prove that one has his proverbial head in the sand. We live in the age of the offensive atheist, exemplified by authors such as Richard Dawkins, who espouses a near hatred of conservative Christianity and writes it off as idiotic nonsense that should be put to an end. In the mix, Christians find themselves wavering and doubting.
So, what do we do with our big questions? I don’t know about you, but I believe God can handle our biggest questions. He has answers. Whether He will provide them or not is within the divine prerogative of God. But in the midst of all of the mysterious, imponderable concepts of spiritual, eternal things lie the rock solid, unbreakable truths of Christianity. In the words of Paul, “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.” (1 Timothy 3:16)
In this decade, conservative Christianity has lost some great giants of the faith. I was reflecting on the passing of Jack Hyles, long time Pastor of First Baptist Church in Hammond, Indiana. He was an interesting character with a unique leadership style. Far too many young Pastors went to their ministerial deaths trying to imitate his every move. Nonetheless, his impact on the independent Baptist movement and on the kingdom of God in general are immeasurable.
Then I think of W. A. Criswell. He pastored one of the most influential churches in the world, First Baptist Church in Dallas. He once spent almost eighteen years preaching through the entire Bible. His defense of the faith, his exposition of the Scriptures, and his charismatic style made a lasting mark on Baptist life and thought.
Another giant among men who has passed away this decade was Adrian Rogers, Pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, often called the flagship church of the Southern Baptist Convention. Like Criswell, Rogers’ impact upon the nation’s largest non-Catholic denomination was immense, serving as president of the Southern Baptist Convention three terms. His preaching was practical and poignant, but his wisdom in leadership was what elevated him above the average preacher.
On Sunday, May 6, two other leaders were taken on to heaven. Dr. Lee Roberson, Pastor of the Highland Park Baptist Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee and founder of Tennessee Temple University, went home to be with the Lord. Within an hour of his passing, Dr. Viola Walden also slipped into her eternal home. She had been personal secretary to Dr. John R. Rice since he began The Sword of the Lord. At age 91, she was at her desk at work on the Friday before she died.
God’s timing, sovereignty, and wisdom are all unquestionable attributes. I know that His intention was to take them home, to give them a final rest with the saints. But from our perspective, they seem like missing links in modern Christianity. My great question would be, who will replace them? Who will be the anchors of the church in the next half century? Have we reached the end of an era of Christianity that will never be revived again?
Some would say that the face of Christianity must change. I’ve listened to far too many upstarts criticize the elder leaders among us as “behind the times.” I have a different perspective. Though we’re moving swiftly through the information age with little clue what lies next, we can still rely on twenty centuries of a very faithful pattern. Namely, God has always raised up men who have challenged their generation to think biblically.
Consider Paul, Peter, and Polycarp who faced Rome without trepidation. Think of Athanasius, who stood virtually alone to combat Arianism. Dwell upon the reformers who, with all of their shortcomings theologically, stood against the established church leadership of their times to call Christianity back to sincere and emboldened faithfulness to God’s Word. And think of the evangelistic-missionary age with the Spurgeon’s, Torrey’s, and Moody’s.
Until Jesus comes again, He’ll be building His church out of the stock of saved humanity. He’ll be calling forth leaders to stand in the gap for the land. And they will respond, for Jesus promised it would be so. With all the “missing links” the real question that remains for us is, are we willing to continue the tradition? Will we be surrendered to a life of holiness and passionate, Spirit-filled zeal? To say that the survival of God’s kingdom depends in any way on our abilities would be negligent of the self-sufficiency of God. But to recognize that the future of God’s Kingdom depends upon our availability simply serves to remind us that God has chosen to use people in the redemption of this lost and sinful planet. Will you stand in the gap?
This past Sunday was perhaps the most awesome day of ministry I’ve ever experienced. Like the old gospel song says, “Heaven came down and glory filled my soul.” It wasn’t great planning, great music, or great preaching that made the day great, it was our great God visiting us in a powerful way in response to a whole lot of concerted, passionate praying.
Last Wednesday, our prayer service, which normally consists of calling out some requests, a short pastoral prayer, and a long Bible study, turned into an extended session of a concert of praise. Multiple people were praying out loud for their lost friends and family and giving praise to God for His working in their lives. At the conclusion of our payer, I almost felt that teaching would be an interruption in what God was really doing, and perhaps it was.
Sunday began with an intense prayer circle, seven men gathered together a half hour before Sunday School. We prayed over our time and it was well worth it. Together we asked great things of God. Sunday School itself was right on target as we learned about “serving God with holiness.”
Then the worship hour came and we sang songs to honor the King with a particular emphasis on the Holy Spirit’s role in our lives. The message was all about the power of the Holy Spirit. I left out two illustrations that I later realized would have been detrimental to the point of the message. I felt an anointing more powerful than ever in my ministry. I had boldness to say things without regard to the approval of people.
The invitation came and God did an awesome work. The altar filled with people praying and weeping for the fullness of the Spirit, praying for lost loved ones and other needs. A young man and a young lady received Christ as Savior. The invitation went through three movements as things kept happening. Joy Ewalt, for whom we have been praying for healing from cancer came and testified that God had completely healed her from brain cancer. Tests show that her head is now clear and she gave all the glory to God and the credit to prayer.
We left later than ever before and people continued to attest to God’s working in their lives in a very powerful way. I left church feeling so small, so undeserving, and so grateful that God would allow me to experience such an event.
Sunday afternoon our Deacons gathered for a time of training and we exchanged testimonies of the godly men who have inspired us in the past. I recalled my grandfather’s strong convictions as a Deacon for over a half century of time and the other stalwart men who influenced me throughout my childhood. In the evening service I preached about “The Sanctity of the Womb” where God has performed some great miracles in the lives of John the Baptist, Jeremiah, Paul, and others.
We had prayer for young girls facing this difficult decision to choose life, for women who have had abortions to find the freeing forgiveness of God, and for America to turn a corner on the abortion issue and repent before God. We also had prayer for some couples currently struggling with infertility and for Loving Choices, a local pregnancy support center. We’re also currently praying for healing in the life of one of our Deacons, Nick Gann.
One thing I am continually remembering is that we cannot dwell on these now past events in the “remember that day…” sense. Instead we must look forward to the awesome things God can do every time we meet. There is no reason why each worship experience cannot grow in intensity so long as our hunger for God, our commitment to holiness, and the passion of our prayer grows as well.
May God continue to visit us in special ways in our individual lives and every time we meet together, and may He continue to raise up Spirit-filled, Bible-drilled, prayer-skilled warriors for Christ’s Kingdom!
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