February 9, 2012

The Great Competitor

Earlier today in my community youth leader meeting I shared part of a devotional from “My Utmost For His Highest”  In one of the days titled “It Is The Lord!” Oswald Chambers warns us, “Beware of anything that competes with your loyalty to Jesus Christ.  The greatest competitor of true devotion to Jesus is the service we do for Him.  It is easier to serve than to pour out our lives completely for Him.”

Week in and week out many of us serve in various areas.  We teach, preach, lead a Bible study, do service projects, lead worship, plan community events, and the list could go on and on.  In the midst if we are not careful we can begin to be more loyal to our occupations or ministries than we are to the Lord.  We can begin worshiping church success, big events, and numbers more than surrendering to Jesus Christ.

So in the midst of your serving don’t begin worshiping it.  As Oswald Chambers said, “Beware of anything that competes with your loyalty to Jesus Christ.”  Do not let anything else take His place in your life.  May Jesus have your complete devotion this week as you serve those around you.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as ,

February 8, 2012

It’s Not A Vacation

It’s a mission trip not a vacation.  This is a value I have been trying to get teens and adults in our church to grasp in regards to teen mission trips the last several years.  When I have conversations with youth ministers in various church sizes, denominations, and locations it seems to be a struggle many are having when it comes to conveying the purpose of taking teens on a mission trip.  When it comes to youth mission trips it can begin to be viewed as just one more thing the youth do each year a.k.a “The teens each year always have a retreat, go skiing, do a car wash fundraiser, and go on a mission trip.”

In my humble opinion here is the problem, I believe we can begin to forget the purpose in why we go on a mission trip in the first place.  I know people will probably have various reasons in taking youth to various locations whether they be domestic or international but here is my rational…

1.  To go into the world and make disciples

In the great commission we were given the mission to go out into the world to make disciples.  For this to happen we have to personally be growing in the faith ourselves, we need to be a part of the church body, we need to be seeking Christ both in our individual lives and as the body of Christ together.  I know some will definitely disagree with me on this point and say that a youth mission trip is a great place to bring a teen who does not know Christ in hopes of them coming to know him throughout the week of service.  Does this happen at times?  Sure, but my question is should that be the focus?  Should the focus be on bringing teens who don’t know Christ or have strayed and are making really poor choices right now in hopes of them turning things around?  Or should it be on taking teens who are seeking Christ in their everyday lives and want to share the love of Christ with those around them?  Obviously no one is perfect except Jesus and all teens and adults will have room in their lives for growth in their faith but what will be the focus?

2. To reach out to hurting world

We continually see through the scriptures Jesus reaching out and helping not only spiritual needs but physical needs as well.  We can read through the scriptures and see where when Jesus met the physical need of someone it opened the door for the spiritual needs as well.  Mission trips are a great opportunity to reach out to those who are hurting around us.

I live in Ohio and this year I decided to take our teens to Cincinnati, Ohio for our youth mission trip.  Every other year I have taken teens out-of-state but I wanted the teens to see that people in our own state are hurting and need physical needs met as well as spiritual healing through Jesus Christ.  I want them to see that we are not going on a mission trip so they can get away from home for a week, we are not going so they can goof off with friends for a week, we are not going for a vacation but we are going to so we can spread the name of Jesus Christ.

Why do you bring youth on a mission trip?

Leave a Comment

Filed under Church, Missions

Tagged as

February 7, 2012

I am not ashamed!

One of the verses that has stuck with me ever since I was a youth is Romans 1:16 where it says, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is God’s power for salvation to everyone who believes first to the Jew, and also to the greek.”

When it comes to the ministries we serve in and our relationships we need to proclaim the truth of the gospel boldly.  It is easy to be persuaded to present a watered down gospel that will seem more “gracious” and “loving” when in reality it is robbing people of the truth that God desires them to hear.

Today we can feel the intense pressure from our culture to be “tolerant” which we have translated to mean “accept as a valid truth”.  When we as Christians proclaim to know “The Truth” we are ridiculed as being hypocritical, hate mongers, who are not loving or merciful.  May we not fall into the temptation to compromise God’s truth to appease man.

Look at the life of Jesus when he proclaimed the truth of the gospel, multitudes of people left him.  Jesus didn’t say, “I better tone this message down some because some of these people might not want to be my disciples anymore if I am to forward.”  Instead Jesus said, “If anyone wants to come with Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.  For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of Me will find it.”

So let me say loudly…

I believe that Jesus is the son of God

I believe that Jesus was born of virgin

I believe Jesus lived a sinless life

I believe in the Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

I believe that Jesus died on the cross and rose three days later

I believe that it is only through Jesus Christ that we may be saved

I am not of ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, I will proclaim this loudly and boldly in the face of all adversity and I want to challenge you to as well!

2 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as ,

February 2, 2012

What does God use?

“God doesn’t use what we bring to the table, He uses what we surrender.”  Crawford Loritts

This is a truth that if we are not careful we can too easily forget.  We can begin focusing on our talents, our abilities, our training, our education, and think if we try our best on our own this is what gives God praise.  I have even heard multiple times people quote the Bible verse Philippians 4:13 “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” and we loudly proclaim “See I can do anything if I put my heart and mind to it!” but we are missing the point.  We need to remember the end of that verse most of all “through Christ who strengthens me.”

With all of todays focus on how to become a great leader we can forget the story of Paul and the thorn in his flesh.  We don’t know specifically what this was but Paul asked the Lord to remove it and in 2 Corinthians 12:9 the Lord replied, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.”  Paul went on to proclaim “Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me.”

It will not be when we position for power, seek to build our platform, promote ourselves, lift high our gifts, that Christ works through us the strongest but, it will be when we surrender each area of our lives and acknowledge that it is through Christ that we are strengthened.  When we lift high our gifts, and abilities, and ideas people may “ooooh” and “ahhhh” over them but it will not be until we wave that white flag of surrender that we will see the real power of God in our lives.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as ,

February 1, 2012

Urgent!

“What is inherent in the gospel is urgency”  Crawford Loritts

One of my favorite quotes from the Elephant Room Round 2 was this quote from Crawford Loritts. One of the popular methods of sharing the faith today is “Friendship Evangelism” but at times I believe we can take this to the extreme.  Of course in our day and age people are very leery of trusting people they don’t know…don’t believe me then stand outside a grocery store and try to hand out something free I guarantee about half of the people will give you this odd glance like you just tried to secretly get them to drink something off of the t.v. show Fear Factor and then walk away.  So please understand I believe relationships can be crucial for others being open to the gospel.   As I said earlier though I believe we can take this to the extreme.  There are times where we have been friends with someone for 5 years and the closest we have gotten to sharing the gospel with them is responding to the question “What did you do on Sunday” with “I went to church.”  Many times we can go through the day talking about sports, clothes, cars, vacations, schools, kids, work, and never share the thing that is supposed to be the most important to us.  Why is this?  I think this happens for multiple reasons and here are just a few…

1.  We are afraid to look like a fanatic.  We are so concerned with fitting in, not looking odd, or standing out that we hide the thing that we should be letting shine throughout our lives in everything we do.  But we need to ask ourselves is this what Jesus called us to?  Did he call us to fit in with everybody else or did he call us to be the salt of the earth?

2.  We use the old quote “Preach the gospel, and if necessary, use words.” as an excuse to just be an overall nice person and hope this shows people Jesus.  My question is what if Jesus did this?  If He did not proclaim to be the son of God, if He did not claim to be the way, the truth, and the life but instead just acted like a nice guy and helped the poor and outcasts would that have accomplished his purpose in coming to the earth?  What if the disciples after Jesus died decided that they didn’t want to be too pushy so instead they only clothed the orphan, took care of the widow, but didn’t proclaim Jesus Christ as the savior of the world what would have happened?  I think people would have recognized the disciples as a great group of guys but the message of Jesus would have fallen by the wayside.

So what am I saying?  First off please understand I am not saying we go around wearing billboards with signs that say “YOU’RE GOING TO HELL!” in big bold letters and yelling things through a bullhorn at people.  Nor am I saying that we only use words to share the love of Jesus Christ because in the book of James in the Bible in chapter 2 verse 17 it says “Faith without action is dead.”  If we are only proclaim the truth but we don’t live it out our faith is useless.

As Christians we need to understand that we hold the message of hope, of truth, of joy, of life and we are all called to reach out into our world to make disciples of Jesus Christ.

Crawford Loritts said, “Don’t be casual about eternal matters.”  I want to encourage you to take this to heart and realize you have been given a great commission and it is urgent!

Leave a Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as ,

January 31, 2012

Whose Kingdom?

“We have to decide if we are going to be kingdom builders or empire builders.” Wayne Cordeiro

Wayne Cordeiro said this quote during the first conversation at the Elephant Room Round 2 last week and I feel it is an important question that should stir our soul.  There has been much discussion on how the churches that are really reaching people are new church plants because after a couple of decades the older churches just don’t reach out as much to their community.  So a question we should ask ourselves is what happens?  Why is this the case?  Do we begin to transition from being Kingdom focused (On God’s will and purpose) to Empire focused (building what we want).  Do we move from keeping the great commission at the fore front of our minds  to focusing on keeping those who are already in the building happy?

It was said during the first conversation at the Elephant Room if we are not careful to keep the vision before the congregation we move from a movement, to a monument, to a museum in the life of the church.

As the church may we remember that we are the body of Christ, we are called to be a living organism that spreads the gospel of Jesus Christ not become an institution that is focused on preserving what is ours.

So as we look at the life of the church today and the ministries that we serve in ask the question “Whose kingdom are we building our’s or God’s?”

Leave a Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as ,

January 30, 2012

After the Elephant Room…

For the handful of you who read my blog and know I usually post Monday-Thursday might have noticed that I didn’t post last Wednesday or Thursday.  On Wednesday I had the privilege of attending a simulcast of the Elephant Room in Canton, Michigan outside of Detroit.  At the conference they had pastors Mark Driscoll, James MacDonald, Crawford Loritts, Wayne Cordeiro, Steven Furtick, TD Jakes, and Jack Graham.  The discussed numerous topics that impact our churches and communities.  In the next week I will be sharing several things that I feel God spoke to me about during that event but today I wanted to share with you something that happened afterwards.

About 5 p.m. the event ended, I got in my car, and reached the first traffic light on my way back home to Toledo.  When I was coming to a stop my car made a sound similar to gravel being put into a garbage disposal and then my car learched forward.  I put my car in park, got out, and looked underneath and saw nothing.  So I got back in drove the car over to a gas station, called my wife to let her know what was going on.  I then drove over to an empty parking lot across the street to see how the car would drive and if I would be able to make it home….it didn’t take long to see that was not going to happen.  I also quickly realized that if I called the tow truck I had no idea how to describe where I was so I got back in the car and very carefully drove the minute or so back to the church where I knew the address.

After I arrived back at the church I noticed that the drivers side front wheel was beginning to tilt in and then it happened, I heard a clunk and the whole front left side sank down on the wheel.  When the tow truck driver arrived they quickly diagnosed that my ball bearing was broken on the car.  I rode with them in the front of the truck and got towed to a local shop where they began working on my car.  Thankfully my lovely wife was not working and was able to drive an hour to pick me up.

Before my car had broken down I was only a minute or two from getting on I-75 where in Michigan the speed limit is 70 mph.  If that part had completely broken when I was driving 70 mph instead of sitting in the church parking lot I probably would have spun out uncontrollably until I hit something which could have seriously hurt or killed myself or others.  Why do I bring this up?

I think at times it can be easy to pray for those things we see happening around us such as a test coming up, a rough relationship, a sick family member, financial problems, or a personal struggle that we see but what about those things we don’t see?  Those events in our lives that never happen that God protects us from?

When I got back to that church and as I waited the 45 minutes for the tow truck to arrive I prayed for a couple things 1. That the cost of the repairs would not be so much that I would have a heart attack and then have to go to the hospital.  2. I thanked God that He looked out for me and let my car break down when it did.

That might seem kind of strange thanking God for my car breaking down but honestly I think it is those things that God protects from that we never have to experience that we should be just as thankful for.  We can see the blessings that God has given us in our lives and the hurts that are around us but have you taken time to thank God for the ways he has looked out for you when you didn’t even know?

2 Comments

Filed under God, living for today

Tagged as ,