Dying in God’s Blessing

Posted by admin2 | Filed under Grace Community Church, Ministry, Personal

God continues to move Grace into “the good land.” In other words, He’s blessing. On a more personal scale, God has moved my family to the good land.  No doubt God called my family here to NY for me to preach, and pastor the wonderful Grace crowd.  Grace is relationally and spiritually healthy and steadily (and quickly!) growing.

We are in a good land.

But here’s a word God gave me a while back: “But let not your heart turn away from the Lord to worship other gods.” … “Then you will quickly die in that good land the Lord is now giving you.  So commit yourselves completely to these words of mine.” Deut. 11:16 - 18

A church quickly growing can begin quickly dying.  How? Worshiping “the good land,” the blessing, instead of Jesus.   Idolatry lurks, and it can range from idolizing buildings, personalities, vision, strategies, ministries, to styles of music.  For me, Idolatry can be revealed in worshiping the ministry of God, the Church of God, instead of the God of the ministry and of the Church.  A Church, a family, a person can “die” in the midst of blessing. How? The heart turns away from the Lord of blessing to the blessing of the Lord. Self-dependence, arrogance, ego, begin to rear their rears. When you take what is good–blessing–and make it ultimate, that’s idolatry.

And that’s the sure fire way of dying in blessing.

Beware…

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Read more | Comments (1) | March 10th, 2010

Clarity

Posted by admin2 | Filed under Grace Community Church, Ministry, Thoughts

Every Wednesday is staff meeting with the Grace staff.  We always begin with Scripture and prayer. Then we get into the meat of things with our staff agenda–celebration moments, strategic ministry, old and new business etc. At the end of staff meeting we always allot about 20 - 30 minutes of leadership “training.” I walk us through material or articles about leadership based mostly on successful leaders who may or may not be Christian. We learn a lot from resources, as well as each other, in ways that we apply leadership principles in our personal lives, families, and ministries. I believe that God can use successful leaders (christian or not) to teach us how to better lead what and whom has been entrusted to us.

We wrapped up our most recent leadership training with a focus on “clarity.”  We spent weeks on this topic. A magazine leadership article we were studying had a list of questions to ask ourselves often to see if we were living, leading, and ministering with clarity.  I had my assistant make cards with the questions and give them to staff to have in front of us throughout the day.

I thought I’d post the article’s comments and questions for you with view toward helping you have clarity in your life too.  Enjoy.

The below (except for question 1) was taken from the article “The Power of Clarity” by Tony Jeary, SUCCESS Magazine, April 2009.

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[In regards to gaining clarity], [t]he willingness to change plays a huge role in your ability to succeed. Voluntary change, which does not require anyone to push you or mandate that you do new things, is the kind of change you should seek.  To enable smooth, low-stress change, you need to become aware of what you can and should change.

Here’s a change audit to follow:

1. What is it exactly that you’re trying to accomplish?

2.  What opportunities and choices present themselves to you daily?

3.  What causes you to feel stressed or rushed?

4.  What are the five most important actions you can take to bring value to your business, [ministry], or personal life?

5.  What are five actions you can either delegate or spend less time on?

6.  If you spent less time on the actions in No. 4 and focused more on the actions in No. 3, what would that mean to your effectiveness?

Remember, you will need to know what you want to do, why you want to do it, and how you will do it.  You need to know the benefit of doing it and the negative payoff for not doing it.  Acquiring clarity and increasing effectiveness will accelerate success.

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Read more | Comments (1) | March 3rd, 2010

How the Holy Spirit Uses Our Wives

Posted by admin2 | Filed under Feature blogs, Ministry

The below article was written by Marriage Today’s Jimmy Evans. It’s a weekly e-mail “Marriage Builder.”  I couldn’t locate the article on the Marriage Today site. So, I copied and pasted it into my blog from the email.  I highly recommend visiting the site and subscribing to the weekly emails of Marriage Today.

Enjoy!

Jesus describes the Holy Spirit as our “helper” in John 14:16. In this passage, the Greek word translated “helper” is procolasit. It means “called alongside.”

As our helper or companion, the Holy Spirit will walk alongside us as the most faithful friend we could have. And I believe that a great wife will exhibit many of the characteristics of the Holy Spirit in a marriage relationship.

Once of these shared roles is as convictor. In John 16, Jesus says that when the Holy Spirit comes, he will convict the world “of sin and of righteousness and of judgment.”

Convicting is not condemnation. Conviction is kindly telling a person, “Hey, you are wrong.” And let’s face it: women are pretty good at that. You might laugh, but I’m serious. A wife can say things to her husband—necessary things, things that he needs to change—that no one else can say.

They are good at it, and as husbands we need to listen when they convict us about something.

A second role of the Holy Spirit that a wife may also demonstrate is that of connector. He connects people relationally. The Holy Spirit is always connecting us with God. He reminds us of Jesus.

Women are natural connectors because they connect men to their children. This is one of the natural things women do. They remind us to spend more time with the kids, or make sure we know when we’ve hurt our kids’ feelings or when we need to have a talk with one of our children.

Our wives are intuitive about those things, while husbands often are not. We need their input to keep us tuned in.

Women will also connect us to our own feelings. It’s their way of partnering with the Holy Spirit to heal us. They know how messed up a lot of us are emotionally—don’t try to deny it, guys—and God uses them to get inside us and fix us.

Early in our marriage, Karen would always ask me how I felt about certain things. I would always respond the same way. “I do not feel,” I would tell her, “and I don’t want you to talk to me about my feelings.” Talking about feelings made me really nervous.

But she knew. She knew that I’d been hurt about certain things that I wouldn’t talk about. I’d always deny it when she brought it up, but every time the Holy Spirit would eventually confirm it. Karen was right. She was always right, and God used her to heal a lot of the emotional scars I was carrying around—scars that had taken their toll on me and our marriage.

Women have incredible intuition and relational wisdom. Just as I’ve learned to listen to the Holy Spirit’s promptings in my relationship with God, I have learned to listen to Karen’s voice in our marriage.

As convictor and connector, she continues to impact our relationship and make me a better person.

Every great wife can play that role in your marriage, too, if you’ll listen.

Blessings!

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Read more | Comments (0) | January 18th, 2010

Relief & the Gospel for Haiti

Posted by admin2 | Filed under Ministry, Personal

Please donate now to WORLD VISION HAITI RELIEF

From World Vision site:

Haiti was struck by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in January 2010, severely impacting the lives of millions of people. In what was already the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, life is a constant struggle for the children of Haiti. But you can help. Thanks to government grants, your gift will triple in impact to provide life-saving food, agricultural support, health care, and other necessities for hungry children and families in Haiti.

Haiti has long suffered the ravages of hunger. And now natural disasters coupled with rising global prices for food and fuel have made it even harder for families to feed their children.

World Vision has been on the ground in Haiti for more than 30 years and is the largest food-providing organization in the country. But we need your help to meet the growing need. A gift from you can help provide essential rations like beans, flour, and cooking oil for Haiti’s most vulnerable. And you can help fund long-term projects providing seeds and tools for farmers, and nutrition classes in which mothers receive practical advice on how to properly care for their young. Thank you for your generous gifts and heartfelt prayers for those who need your help in Haiti.

Also, see article “Does God Hate Haiti?”

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Read more | Comments (0) | January 15th, 2010

Why it’s good that I’m a loner

Posted by admin2 | Filed under Grace Community Church, Ministry, Personal, Thoughts

I’m a loner. Maybe that’s why I liked the picture of the lonely blue chair you see flashing at the top of my site. It kind of explains me. So, by virtue of this reality, this blog will be strongly narcissistic.

My wife knows this loner thing about me well. It was quite an adjustment for us when we first got married. I blame it on my selfish genes and my single days. I was single until I was 31 years old. I ate almost every meal by myself in those days… willingly. It’s a miracle that I’m married. I wasn’t a monk (although close). I still hung out with friends here and there but kept to myself most of the time. Now that I have a family, I enjoy eating out with them more, of course. I love having that time with Christie to casually chat, and laugh, goof around with the boys, and eat their leftovers. Still I enjoy being alone– going to the mall, bookstores, coffee shops, restaurants, even the movies alone.

I spent three-and-a-half years in seminary living in an 11×14 room. I rarely ate in the cafeteria. I couldn’t afford it. Even if I could have afforded it, I would have opted to eat alone in my room anyway.  I’m not saying spending so much time alone was completely profitable but to some extent it was for me. I survived on Honey Nut Cheerios, kidney beans, sardines, an occasional Chinese buffet, and coffee. Yes, I had constant heartburn. But being social gave me heartburn too.  Still does to a degree.

I’ve done the last 10 years of ministry alone (humanly speaking)–airplanes, rental cars, hotel rooms, camp dorms, restaurants, and so forth. But I rarely felt lonely.  Some people refuel being around people, hanging out, talking about sports, drinking coffee, eating lunch, debating theology, praying together, and such. Not me. My tank is filled by being alone. Not alone for alone’s sake, but sacred-time-with-Jesus-alone in which I don’t feel rushed, busy, or anxious about what has to be done. It also relieves me from having to be on my social A-game, or B-game, or D-game. A rarity for a minister….

Right now, I’m in Des Moines, Iowa. The conference host flew me in a day early to avoid my potential tardiness or absence due to weather related flight delays or cancellations. I confess that it has been incredibly refreshing. The conference will be blessed greatly I just know it. They unknowingly granted me alone time to be focused and filled by the Holy Spirit.

On that note, being alone in a hotel room grants me personal space to allow the Spirit of God to examine and expose anything in my soul I’ve denied or avoided. It forces me to deal with sin in my life. It makes me wrestle with what kind of husband, father, leader, and pastor I’ve been. I keep the TV turned off the majority of the time so that I can’t run from “stuff.”  I read a lot. I journal a lot. I repent a lot.

Right now, I miss my family, and my family misses me. The tremendous payoff though is that I nearly always come back a bit refreshed in spirit. In other words, I come back a slightly better husband and dad.  I believe this is the upside of my travels to Christie.

In addition, I am burdened I won’t be with the Grace family to preach Sunday morn. I love them deeply, and they love me and my family deeply. But the upside is that I will come back spiritually, emotionally, and mentally, and ministerially recalibrated.  As a matter of fact, I spent 12 hours on a sermon that I was going to preach next Sunday at Grace.  Yesterday, I tossed the sermon in the digital and hotel room trash bin. The Lord has revealed a whole other direction for me to go Scripturally, not only next Sunday, but for the next 8 weeks. Without this brief time alone would I have known?

Amazing what 3 days alone can do. Yes, I’ll be speaking 4 different times this weekend, but it’s a conference with over a thousand people so no pressure for me to be social. And that means after speaking for 40 minutes, a few hellos, and a couple of conversations, my hotel room, restaurant booth, Bible, journal, and a good book await me like a cozy blanket to the soul. Being a loner has tremendous benefits.  And not only do I reap the benefits, but those closest to me do too.

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Read more | Comments (7) | January 1st, 2010

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