World View and Purpose

At LifePointe we are currently walking verse by verse through the letter to the church at Philippi. Though I have read it countless times in my journey with God, I have never really studied it. It is a book depth written by a deeply passionate man. God is using it to move me to a deeper place.
This week, I have seen in a real clear way what shaped Paul's world view and why he never strayed from the purpose he was entrusted with. 2 things primarily shaped his world view and show us why he saw the world in the way that he did. He saw everything through the lens of these 2 things. Here they are:

1. His life was not his own. He belonged to Christ, not Paul. So when something happened or did not go his way - he just accepted it. There was no pouting and feeling sorry for himself, but he embraced whatever it was that came his way.
   
2. His purpose was advancing the gospel. As long as that was taking place then he was good about whatever he was forced to go through.

Everything was literally seen through the lens of these two important things. They kept him focused and on task with his life. Here are 2 passages that bring confirmation concerning the "shapers" for him.

Philippians 1: 12 I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel, 13 so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ. 14 And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear.
The gospel was advancing and it was clear that his imprisonment was for Christ. So in spite of being in a Roman prison, Paul embraced his circumstances as okay because his life was not his own and his primary purpose was the advancement of the gospel. That is why he rejoiced in a Roman prison. He trusted in the sovereignty of God leadership.

2 Corinthians 5: 14 For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; 15 and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.
He concluded that because Jesus died and Paul had believed that was the only way to live, then he would not orchestrate his life for his comfort and pleasure but his life would live for him who died. Whatever that might mean or bring.

These 2 are the only ways to get through the things we face. Our lives are to be for Him and as long as we are living as if our lives are not our own and that the gospel is advancing, then we are right in the middle of God's will and able to see clear in the midst of the chaos of this world.

Is this how you see the world? It is why Paul made an impact in his culture and handled his persecutions and struggles with rejoicing. I want this for me.

The Stirring of God

In my heart I am a writer, not necessarily a good one, but when I write I do feel alive. It seems that I write when God is stirring and when God is going to bring about change in my life. Change is needed, just not sure what that change will be, where it will lead, and what form it will take.

The stirring began a couple of weeks ago and I am being drawn deeper in my pursuit of God that I have not known in quite some time. I am tasting that He is good and drinking in the goodness of fellowship with Him.

Here are the ways God is moving:

• Hunger to read the word has greatly increased.
• Engaging in more spiritual conversations with people.
• Deeper insight as I read, study, and prepare for Sundays.
• Deeper hatred of sin and love of righteousness.

Change come on. God stir my love and passion for you to new places.

Here I am, send me! I will go.

Faith and Noah

You know, there are some stories in the Scripture where we have in a sense relegated to the category of Children's Stories. The story of Noah is such a one but it is anything but that. His life of faith is one that is amazing and very unique. I would like to put forward two specific things about his faith.

1. He had faith in God before he knew of the coming doom of the flood

In our day and time many people get what we call "fire insurance" that will help keep them from going to hell. While I believe a fear of hell can lead people to real faith in Christ, only the days and months after that decision will show whether they meant it or not if they start walking and seeking God. Faith in Christ means change. Noah had real faith before there was a fear of believing in God because he needed some "flood insurance". He treasured God before he knew God was angry and was going to destroy the world by water. He alone was found worthy in his generation as the only one who genuinely walked with God. Faith in God is the one thing that can transcend every situation or circumstance. In faith we find that which is most secure - God and His truth.

2. He had faith in God when no one else did in his generation.
Genesis 6:5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7 So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
Can you imagine the reality that never in your lifetime would there be another person or family who would go to church with you? You would have no other members of your bible study but your family. In a culture where everyone at all times in their heart only thought about evil, Noah's faith thrived. He just kept having faith regardless of the reality that no one else was interested in walking and knowing God. We struggle keeping our faith when there is a good church on every corner and we can fill up our calendars with a group of believers every night of the week. We struggle spiritually with so much at our availability and Noah just kept on having a faith that thrived with nothing encouraging his walk except God.

I pray for that kind of mature faith.

Thoughts on Malachi

As a church we are walking through the book of Malachi this summer. I have read it before, we never examined to fully integrate and adjust my life to its truth. What a great little book. Here are some highlights and things I learned in chapter 1.

• The Priests
  

The religious leaders had allowed things in regard to worship to really fall apart. While they were still going through the motions of worship and the sacrifices, they were not doing them as God had instructed. They were offering garbage as a sacrifice and calling it okay. A question for us all: Where are you and I offering garbage to God in our worship and calling it okay? Will we do something about it?

• The Love of God and Loving God
  

We so often ask God, "Do you love me"? We usually ask this when things are not going our way, because if God really loves us then He would see that things go our way. You know, we are the most important thing to him? Do you ever wonder why we so seldom, if ever, ask God the question, "Do we love you, God"? "Is it clear to you God that we love you authentically"? Furthermore, we get mad at Him when we haven't loved Him nor obeyed Him and He is not blessing us. Do you find it as interesting as I do that the Father loved us so much to send us Jesus and to see His one and only Son brutally murdered and we have the gall to ask, "God, do you love me"? He has made it clear. We are so messed up!

• Mediocrity at the Top of Spiritual Leadership

The priests allowed the sacrifices that were garbage and since they did not take serious God's Word, the people eventually did not take God's Word serious either. Mediocrity at the top will drift down, but a passion for holiness will lift the people up to the standard. The problem in the church as a whole today is that we don't value the character of the ministers more than we care enough that they can perform and get it done or that they have a winsome personality. Further proof how we do not get what he is about and what he values. Also, I think that some spiritual leaders do not keep the bar of the truth set high because people complain, talk behind your back, and are simply not wanting to follow God. We as spiritual leaders cannot lower the bar even if it means that it makes you unpopular.

• God does not Accept Mediocrity

As much as it may make us feel good to ignore what God says about the issues of our life in His Word, we need to remember that He does not ignore us when we ignore Him. If our worship is just an afterthought, then we are not offering God our best.


I love that the word of God is still absolutely relevant to our time today after thousands of years. It is further proof that God's Word is eternal.

New Impressions on the Heart

From time to time, God moves in our hearts and gives us a focus either in the area of our prayer, scripture, a discipline, etc. This is happening in my heart right now. Here are 3 things God is moving in me right now in regard to life and ministry.

• Pray for the Holy Spirit to come in power, then things will change.
  

Without a move of the Holy Spirit then everything will stay the same. Nothing changes without the Spirit's presence. Jesus said it in this way about the Holy Spirit in John 16: 8 And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: 9 concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; 10 concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; 11 concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.
We need the Holy Spirit to come and convict, judge, and bring about righteousness in our lives, communities, and in the church.

• Our lives would be marked by a desperation for the Spirit of God.

The western church is desperate for so many things other than pure Jesus and the Word, it is time for a core of believers to be really desperate for the presence of God. Those with this kind of desperation are few in our world, but they do exist. My prayer is that they be fruitful and have many more opportunities to share and run into those who are outside of the faith. My prayer is also that our worship services and small group gatherings would be permeated by those who are desperate for the move of the Holy Spirit.

• Our World is impacted best when we focus on making disciples.

This is the task Jesus left us with in Matthew 28: 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Believers who know God deeply are ones who lives spill out God and seek to see His kingdom established on earth. This task of making disciples needs a much needed new focus.

These are my 3 new impressions that I am asking God to bring about. Join me in the prayer.

Serving Means Following

Jim Elliot, the famous missionary to Quichas Indians (Huaorani) wrote these words after many in his American congregation told him it would be to hard and that he should not leave his comfortable church setting:

"So what if the well-fed church in the homeland needs stirring? They have the Scriptures, Moses, and the Prophets, and a whole lot more. Their condemnation is written on their bank books and in the dust on their Bible covers. American believers have sold their lives to the service of Mammon, and God has His rightful way of dealing with those who succumb to the spirit of Laodicea."

Jim and his colleagues would eventually die at the hands of those Indians. So, who was right? Those in his congregation or Elliot? Of course Elliot was as he was in God's will and therefore right in his choice to serve and follow Christ to his death. After his death, it was his wife, Elizabeth, who was a part of seeing the people of this tribe come to know Christ.

Remember these words of our King:
"Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eterrnal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him."
John 12:25-26

Real life is not going to come at the hand of the American Dream, but in following Jesus to wherever He is leading!

Make it your pursuit today!

The Preacher

I am walking back through one of the most significant little books for those who are called by the name preacher. Sadly, the term preacher is not such a relevant designation in today's world of Lead Pastors, Teaching Pastors, and other names that may be used. EM Bounds wrote a little book entitled "The Preacher and Prayer" and it is being a firm reminder of the calling on my life.

Often, I am humbled and overwhelmed by the calling and wonder if I am any good at it. What I have found in these days, is that the role seems much more important and much more difficult. After talking with some friends, we have come to see that there is so much expectation, little encouragement (unless it is going really well), such joy and at times disappointment, times of fruit and times of feeling lost in what we are doing. We love and treasure the calling.

No man call fulfill all the expectations of the calling in his own power and that is why so many have resorted to being personality driven, technology dependent or taking the step to water the message down and make man central to the message instead of the gospel being center to everything. If the course of our ministry takes us away from making the gospel central, then it is short of the true calling we have been entrusted with. We will all go one way or the other and you will choose a church that has made a choice about how the gospel fits and is embraced.

Here are some thoughts from EM Bounds:

• Preaching is not the performance of an hour. It is the outflow of a life.
• The gospel of Christ does not move by popular waves. It has no self-propagating power. It moves as the men who have charge of it move.
• The real sermon is made in the closet. The man - God's man - is made in the closet.
• Every preacher who does not make prayer a mighty factor in his own life and ministry is weak as a factor in God's work and is powerless to project God's cause in this world.

The reason this view of the preacher is not the norm, is only natural in a culture that treasures "self "so much. This man-centered view of life has influenced the church as well. The man of God who does not make man more central in the church can at times, depending on the church, find himself in direct opposition to those he is leading. The gospel does not always lend itself to making people feel good and that can be where the preacher and people experience the conflict with one another.

Bounds also said, "The energy of self-denial must be his being, his heart and blood and bones".

This was also John the Baptizers view of life when he said, "He must be more and I must become less."

I want to crucify myself and experience the words of Jesus when he said that whoever loses his life for my sake will find life. Why live any other way if we claim to be a minister of the gospel.

It is a unique time, for far to long the gospel has not been central in many ways as we have made music, media, personalities, good feelings, buildings, and far to many other things as almost equal to the gospel. We need a real return to simplicity of the gospel message. Our future depends on it.

I want to be a preacher of the gospel. I am okay to be called that. How I might be seen by church members or others I cannot control and I also will not stand before them to give an account when my days here are over. So I will choose to pray, love people, share Christ, and be a preacher of the gospel.

I want to live the words of Paul to Timothy because they are biblical. It is enough to live in these 5 verses regardless of what anyone may think.

II Timothy4:1 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. 3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. 5 As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.