Month: October 2013

Categories
Relationships

With Whom Are You Praying?

“God is great, God is good. Let us thank Him for our food. By His hands, we are fed. Thank You Lord for daily bread. Amen.”

A lot of Christian parents seem to do a pretty good job of helping their children learn to pray at meals and even to say their bedtime prayers. Hurray! This is excellent.

But based on my conversations with these same parents, I have a sneaking suspicion that these moms and dads aren’t praying together. So my question to you today is – Are You Praying With Your Spouse?

What I sense is that wives desire for their husbands to step into that spiritual leader role in the family and to lead in prayer with and for them, but that we men often shy away from doing so. Husband, are you leading you wife in prayer?

Prayer together with your spouse is a MUST. “Your prayer life together is important. Sure, you might be able to have a good marriage without it, but that misses the point entirely. The real question here is this: Can my marriage meet God’s call without shared prayer?” The answer is, or course, a resounding No! “If there are never times when you desire prayer with your wife… then your prayer life is on life support and your life is out of balance” (from Every Man’s Challenge)

I have been surprised that when I have had people pray together with their spouses at church, I have had multiple couples come to me and say – “Thank You for making us do that. I had never before heard my spouse pray for me.” Would your spouse say something similar?

Men, step up and be that spiritual leader. Do it before tomorrow. Before you turn off the light and drift off to sleep tonight, simply say, “Honey, I think we should pray before we go to bed.” Start tonight. And then don’t stop – repeat it each night. Pray for your children together, pray for your parents, pray for you two AS parents, pray for each other. And then watch the difference it makes in your life and in your marriage!

Categories
Worship

Thinking Deeply About God

We all think about God.
But when we give thinking about God a name, such as “theology,” we think to ourselves –
b-o-o-o-o-o-o-ring!

Systematic Theology. It even sounds boring.
And then when we hear preachers talking about words like glorification, imputation, sanctification, and plenty of other long words, we say – obviously, my initial thoughts were right on target! This is no fun.

So we occasionally hear people say things like, “I don’t have any use for theology.”

“I love flowers, but I hate botany; I love Jesus, but I hate theology.”

Certainly, when we think of theology as an unnecessarily tedious study of something beautiful, we can “feel” that there is not much value in it. But that just isn’t true.

I think about my own experience with learning History in school. I hated it because my teachers were boring, the textbooks were dry, and I was forced to memorize dates and facts that I never could connect back to my life. But later on, when I read the “right” historians who knew how to share history with creativity and excitement, I realized the truth – that history is not only interesting, but that there is value in knowing history. Certainly at least in the fact of “Those who don’t remember the past are doomed to repeat it.”

Theology is similar. It can be miserable if presented poorly. But it is so very important, useful, and exciting as we learn more about our amazing God.

We all have our own beliefs about God. The study of God is to help us better understand Him so that we aren’t just relying on our own beliefs, which have the potential to get extremely clouded. By refusing to think deeply about God, we can find that we easily slip into bad theology.

“Theology can be dull, or much worse, it can be ruthless. In Christianity, however, the answer to bad theology can never be no theology. It must be good theology. God gave us minds, and he surely expects us to use them in thinking about his truth” (Bruce Shelley).

You’ve said to someone before, “We were just talking about you,” and you’ve probably heard this reply – “Well then you had a good subject!” And when we are thinking about God, we are thinking about the greatest subject.

Let’s learn to enjoy thinking deeply about our great God as He is the best subject we could possibly think about.

He tells us – whatever is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, of good repute, excellence and if anything worthy of praise, think on these things. He is the pinnacle of all of these things; theology is the study of who He is. Let’s study Him – we’ll find He is ANYTHING BUT dull!

As an example in closing, here is a great quote that is a statement of theology, and the more I think about it, the more I am amazed by it…

“Christianity is the only major religion to have as its central event the humiliation of God” (Bruce Shelley).

Categories
Serving Others

Your Mission, If You Choose To Accept It…

“It is the duty of all men to repent and believe the gospel, therefore it is also the duty of those entrusted with the gospel to carry it to the whole world.” (William Carey)

Have you completed the first duty? How about the second?

(Begin humming the Mission Impossible Theme Song)

Over 200 years ago, William Carey wrote about five main objections that people had regarding missions to the “heathen” lands (today we might call them “foreign” lands). The five main objections people had were:

1. The long distance that must be traveled,
2. The barbaric nature of the native peoples,
3. The danger that would be incurred by those going,
4. The difficulties of raising and maintaining support, and
5. The unintelligible languages the native people would speak.

We might still want to raise some of these same objections as to why we are unwilling to fulfill this second duty or mission of ours. Carey’s general answer to all of the objections: the merchants of his day were willing to take these same risks in the hopes of making money. He said: “It only requires that we should have as much love for the souls of our fellow-man, and fellow sinners, as the merchants have for the profits arising from the sale of a few otter skins, and all these difficulties could be easily surmounted.”

Wow. Exactly.

Many people (including some of us) have been more serious about the mission to make money than we have been about the mission to take the gospel message to those different than us. Willing to face more risks. Willing to tackle difficult obstacles.

God, forgive us for being so willing to overcome many difficulties for our finances (and for our pleasures), while being so quick to give You insignificant excuses for why we won’t obediently take Your message to others.

Help us choose to accept our Mission.

Categories
Christian Living

The Death of Temptation

If there is one thing I’d like to see the grim reaper take – it’d have to be my temptation.

Ugh… But I still find that temptation is very much alive in my life.
As I have grown more spiritually mature, I do find that I am quicker to recognize the temptation and flee from it early, but I still have the desire within me to flirt with temptation for too long, allowing it to lead me to sin.

My attitudes, my thought processes, my grumbling and complaining, my desire to please me.
It doesn’t take much, and that temptation grabs hold, and I enjoy the feeling for just a bit too long, and then… blammo… sin. and guilt. and shame.

But could it possibly be different?

I recently read that through the power of God in transforming us, we can actually experience the death of temptation. That the power of temptation should be fading in our lives. I have been learning that this is true in my own life. It is not that temptation has disappeared, but as I stand strong against temptation in an area of my life today, it becomes easier to stand strong again tomorrow. And after I do it two days in a row, the third day is even easier. And so on and so on.

“True salvation should always…encourage a conscious rejection of ungodliness and lead to holier living. A profession of Christ must be accompanied by a choice of godly living.”

That is the normal pattern of the Christian life. Are you normal?

“God doesn’t measure normal in relation to the world…. When God speaks of normal, He speaks along these lines: Jesus is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. He is the most normal person ever to walk on planet Earth. You are a Christian, my child. Are you walking normally like My Son, Jesus?

“…Too often we call God’s ways confining and much too hard and tight. Why not just call them what they really are — normal? We must be fervent and anxious to become normal — as defined by Jesus, not by us.”

“Wherever the Spirit points, choose change. And above all, intercede for yourself.”

Great point. Jesus, in His moments of greatest temptation in the garden, also prayed for Himself. We should pray for God to make us more normal!

And what should we be praying for ourselves?
“Do you know what my deepest cry to God has become, the cry that burns, the one that draws sobs from my heart and tears from my eyes every time? Oh God, please don’t leave me like this. I want more of You. Please don’t leave me like this.”

(quotes from Arterburn, Stoeker, and Yorkey in Every Man’s Challenge)

Categories
Worship

You Are As Close To The Lord As You Want To Be

Lo Siento… (I am sorry).
I’ve been “off the grid” for two weeks. But that is often what happens when I go out of the country. It is not that I don’t have internet access as much as I don’t have time to post when on an international mission trip. But I had a great time in Mexico with friends I had not seen in a year, as well as being part of the very first worship service at a church plant in Uriangato, Mexico.

Anyway, back to today’s post…

“You Are As Close To The Lord As You Want To Be.”

Yowch!

Can that be true?
Definitely not.
It can’t be.
It can’t be my fault.
I mean, I want to be closer to God.
But then why aren’t I?
Is God moving away from me as I am trying to draw near to Him? No. That can’t be it.
Maybe it is true.
Maybe I am as close to the Lord as I want to be.

“Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.”

The scriptures seem to be clear that God doesn’t move away from us, rather we move closer or further from Him.

If I want to be closer to Him, then it is on me to spend more time talking to Him, reading His Words to me, worshiping Him. He is as close to me as He can get – in that He has put His Holy Spirit within me. So it is up to me as to how much I choose to interact with Him.

If I truly want to be closer to God, then I will be closer by making the necessary changes in my life to spend more time with Him.

Guess it’s time to make some changes.

How about you? Are you close enough?