How to Grow in Holiness

Holiness.

If you attend church, you have heard this word. You have heard that you are supposed to be holy as God is holy. (1 Peter 1:16)

But why? Does anyone want that?

Two reasons. One, we are called to it as followers of Jesus. All over the Bible we are told to be like God.

The second reason is because it is the path to life and freedom.

Everyone is attracted to Jesus, and in Jesus we see the person who lived the freest and fullest life and did so without sin.

How do we grow in holiness, though?

Once we determine we want holiness and see that as the path to freedom and life, Peter gives some crucial steps in 1 Peter 1.

1. Live out of your identity as a child of God. The New Testament letters contain a lot of commands about how a follower of Jesus is supposed to live. All of those come after the promises and assurances of God’s grace towards us. It happens in the Old Testament, too. Take the 10 commandments. Before giving them, God reminds them that He rescued the nation of Israel and set them free. Then He tells them how to live in that freedom.

Peter does this in chapter 1. He spends the first 12 verses laying out the truth of God’s grace towards us and our redemption found only in Jesus. Then in verse 13 he says, “Therefore.” Because of this, in light of this, be holy.

Live out the truth of your new identity.

Sinclair Ferguson said, “Holiness is a way of describing love. To say ‘God is love’ and that ‘God is holy’ ultimately is to point to the same reality. Holiness is the intensity of the love that flows within the very being of God.”

2. Prepare for it. Holiness does not just happen. In fact, very little “just happens” in our lives. Holiness takes intentionality. So does sinning. You plan for sinning simply by not choosing not to sin. You put yourself in situations that make sinning a possibility or easier to fall into.

To be holy you must prepare for it, choose it and pursue it. This term is a military, athletic term. Training for a sport, a marathon or a long hike does not just happen. You have to plan your training, when it will happen and how it will happen. You schedule your nutrition and your sleep. All those preparations go into it. The same is true for holiness.

And this is where most of us fall off track. It is easier to prepare for sin than holiness. Sin is easier to fall into than holiness.

3. Focus on Jesus and His return. Throughout the New Testament, when endurance or obedience is commanded, we are told to fix our eyes on Jesus, to look toward eternity and the promises of God we have in Jesus. Jesus is our only hope in life and death, and we must through the power of the Holy Spirit and the promises found in Scripture, keep our eyes focused on Him. Peter uses the word “fully” or “completely.”

This means identifying the things that will take our focus away from Jesus. What idols, desires or loves will put our eyes and heart from Jesus? We must know what those things are and continually battle those to keep our eyes on Jesus.

4. Be conformed by obedience, not by your past life. Following Jesus is a constant battle of moving forward. It is easy to fall backwards, to look back. Our past is what we know. It is comfortable, like an old shirt. We know those places and those people and can easily slip back.

Don’t.

Holiness says freedom and life aren’t found there.

Conformed in 1 Peter 1:14 is a shaping word. We are shaped by our passions, by our loves. They determine who we are, who we become and ultimately where our lives end up. Sinclair Ferguson said, “Knowing whose you are, who you are, and what you are for, settles basic issues about how you live.” That is what Peter is talking about here.

If our former passions shape us, they determine where our lives end up. If the holiness of God, the way we are called to live, shapes us, that determines what we love and where we end up.

What if God Really Loved You? (Luke 15)

Do you believe that God loves you? Do you know and live like God loves you?

The words rang out through the room as I was sitting there.

In all honesty, I believed it. I knew it. I didn’t live like it, though.

Who does?

In talking with people and reading books, very few people live as if they believe and know God loves them. We read it in the Bible but do not live like those words are true.

In his book Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?, Philip Yancey shares this story: David Ford, a professor at Cambridge, asked a Catholic priest the most common problem he encountered in twenty years of hearing confession. With no hesitation the priest replied, “God.” Very few parishioners he meets in confession behave as if God is a God of love, forgiveness, gentleness, and compassion. They see God as someone to cower before, not as someone like Jesus, worthy of our trust. Ford comments, “This is perhaps the hardest truth of any to grasp. Do we wake up every morning amazed that we are loved by God?…Do we allow our day to be shaped by God’s desire to relate to us?”

The problem for many of us is that we read verses about God’s love for the world and us (John 3:16), that Jesus loves us (John 15:9), that God predestined us in love (Ephesians 1:4 – 5), that God sings over us (Zephaniah 3:17), that God loved us first (1 John 4:19), that God draws us to himself (John 6:44). We read Paul saying over 160 times that as a follower of Jesus, we are “in Christ”, and yet we live each and every day as if God is disappointed in us, indifferent towards us, mildly happy with us or just “likes” us.

We’ll say things like, “I know God has forgiven me, but I can’t forgive myself.” Or, “Yes, God loves me, but I can’t love myself.”

When we say those things, we have made love and forgiveness something it is not. We have based that on our own definitions and life.

Read those verses that are listed above. Put them on your phone, your computer wall paper, tape them to your mirror. When you pray, you are praying to a God that knows everything about you and still listens and still loves you.

This is a daily battle we fight to remind ourselves that God loves us.

What is amazing to me in those verses is that God’s love towards us all happened and was promised before we were born, before we were on the radar of our parents’ minds.

Still struggling to believe it?

Jesus tells an amazing story in Luke 15. We meet a family, a father and his two sons.

The younger son comes and asks his father for his inheritance. In this culture, the younger sons were often seen as the rebellious, carefree ones. The older sons were the responsible ones. The oldest son received 2/3 of what the father had when the father died. Notice, the father isn’t dead. The remaining children received what was left after that. This son says, “I want mine now, before you are dead.” He is telling his father, “I wish you were dead.”

The father at this point would’ve had every right to beat and disown the son in this culture. Instead, the father gives it to him, which means he would’ve had to sell land. In this culture that is focused on the father, the people hearing this story would’ve been blown away by the audacity of the son.

The younger son leaves, takes his money, lives it up and spends it all. Then a famine comes to the land he is in. He is at the bottom, so hungry that he is wanting to eat the food pigs are eating.

The younger brother says, “I don’t believe in God and will define right and wrong for myself.” In the younger brother, Jesus gives us a depiction of sin that anyone would recognize. The young man humiliates his family and lives a self-indulgent, self-centered life. He is totally out of control. He is alienated from the father, who represents God in the story. Anyone who lives like that would be cut off from God, as all the listeners to the parable would have agreed.

There is another kind of mess that Jesus doesn’t want us to miss, and that is the mess the older son is in. The Pharisees, the ones who are religious in this culture, are like the older brother. The older son said to the father, “I have never disobeyed you.” But he doesn’t want the father either. The older son thinks what will save him is his obedience, his morality, and his good deeds. The older son believed his father should bless him because of all that he did. For the older son, Jesus is a helper but he doesn’t need a Savior; he can save himself. The older son obeys God to get things. God owes you answered prayers because of how you live. Older sons may do good to others, but not out of delight in the deeds themselves or for the love of people or the pleasure of God. They are not really feeding the hungry and clothing the poor; they are feeding and clothing themselves. They serve on a serving team because that’s what you do, not because God has gifted them to do it.

Why is the older son angry at the father? The father has reinstated the younger brother. When the father says to the older son, “Everything I have is yours”, he isn’t lying. The oldest son gets 2/3 of the inheritance, and the other part was already given to the younger son. So, the father is spending the oldest son’s inheritance now on a son who is wasteful.

Both sons missed the father, and we often do the same.

This is often called the Parable of the Prodigal Son. The word prodigal means “reckless, extravagant, having spent everything.”

Jesus is trying to tell us this is what God our Father is like.

When the son returns and starts his speech, before he gets it out of his mouth, his father runs to him and throws his arms around him. In this culture, a father did not run. Certainly not to a son who rejected him like his did.

Not only does he welcome his son, but he throws a party. He gets a robe, the father’s robe. He reinstates the son.

Do you believe God loves you like that? That he would run to you and throw his arms around you?

Tim Keller said, “To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.”

That is the love God has for us.

The question we wrestle with is, will I wake up tomorrow and live like my Father in heaven has extravagant and reckless love and affection for me?

How to Pray to a God who is Close (Psalm 23)

When it comes to what we think of God and how close or far He is, I think we too often think of Him as “out there” somewhere. We aren’t sure where, but He often feels further away than close by. This has an enormous effect on our prayer life.

Over and over throughout Scripture, we are told that God is close. That God never leaves us. That God watches over us. That God cares for us.

That God is close.

Psalm 23 is a great example of this.

Often seen as a psalm for funerals or dying, it is a psalm about living. Life is hard. Life hurts. Life is often more down than up, and David tells us from his experience how to experience God in the depths of darkness as well as the heights of celebration.

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of righteousness
for his name’s sake.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD
forever.

David describes an incredibly close God.

A shepherd is with his sheep. He is not off somewhere else but is with them. He knows them. He knows if they are sick, eating well, eating too little, if they are young or old.

A shepherd knows what the sheep need so that they do not live in want.

A shepherd leads and the sheep follow. The sheep do not arrive anywhere the shepherd does not want them to.

When the shepherd leads, the sheep find food, water and rest. In the shepherd is found life and rest. Many of us find ourselves tired, rundown, barely hanging on instead of living, and yet God invites us to follow Him to rest and life.

How?

David tells us in verse 3 that God restores us. God picks us up. God cleans us off. For the person who feels unloved, who feels dirty, abandoned, not worth anything, this verse is a beautiful picture of God’s grace towards us.

Why does God do this?

To get our lives on the right paths, His paths.

As if that weren’t enough, God does not leave us. God walks with us.

We walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

We don’t stay there. We don’t walk into it, we walk through it. With God. Through the power of God.

There is an ebb and flow to prayer and the Christian life. David starts with comfort and God’s provision, things that help us see the character of God as we walk in new ways of His grace. That grace is just as real, and that grace is the same when we walk through the dark valleys. For many of us, we need the grace of the first few verses to believe the grace that God has for us when the storms roll in.

The rod and staff of a shepherd were used for protection of the sheep, warding off predators, but they were also used to keep the sheep together, in line and to discipline the sheep if necessary. In all this, God’s protection and discipline are a comfort.

How can David say this?

Because they keep me on the path that God has for me. They get me to where God wants me.

David ends with a powerful statement: Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.

If we don’t understand David’s life, we miss the power of this statement. For David, life was not good. Many times King Saul tried to kill him. The whole Philistine army (the most powerful army of the day) chased him to kill him. They killed his best friend, Jonathan. He lost a baby with Bathsheba. His favorite son Absalom stole his throne, and David was overthrown and had to flee for his life. Then Absalom was killed. For David, life was hard, painful, difficult and full of loss.

Yet because God was close, because God walked with him, he was able to face life and pray to his God.

Here’s my challenge for you this week. Use Psalm 23 as a prayer guide:

  • Simply read through the Psalm several times in one sitting.
  • Whatever word or phrase that jumps out to you, ask God why that stood out. Is there something happening in your life that God wants you to think about or draw your attention to? Is there something about yourself or God that the Holy Spirit wants to make you aware of?
  • Throughout your day (when you’re standing in line, waiting for a meeting, etc.), ask God to remind you of His closeness to you.

How to be Thankful as a Leader

thankful

Most of the time on blogs like mine or other leadership and ministry blogs you read about how tough ministry is, how difficult people can be and how hard it is to be a leader. All those things are true.

At the same time, if you are a leader, especially if you are a pastor, you have a lot to be thankful for. At the same time, as a follower of Jesus, growing in your thankfulness is a sign of your faith but also of your maturity. I know for me, when I am pessimistic, only seeing what isn’t working or how things aren’t what I want them to be, it makes me a poor leader, a poor husband and father, and honestly, a poor human.

So I sat down in the middle of a pity party, when things didn’t go how I wanted them to go at church and someone was mad at me, and wrote out things I should be thankful for. For you this list might be different, but here’s what came to mind for me:

1. My church still exists. This might seem like a weird one, but on a weekly basis I hear about another church that closed their doors. When we moved to Tucson and started Revolution church, there was a window of three years where over 20 churches were planted in Tucson (of which we were one), and only three of those are still going (of which we are one). Why? That’s God’s grace towards us.

2. I get to use my gifts. Most pastors overlook this gift. If you ask most people what their gifts, talents and passions are, they don’t know. They don’t know how God has wired them, the talents they have, how their family of origin and story have gone into making them who they are and the passions they have, but many pastors do. They get out of bed with a burning passion to see something happen for God. That isn’t a small thing.

3. My marriage. If you’re a pastor, your wife deserves more credit than you do. She endures more than you do. I know, I know. Your life is so hard as a leader, the stress, the pain, the emotional side of ministry. I get it. Yet it is nowhere near as difficult as the role your wife plays. While you can bury yourself in work and ministry as a way of letting off steam, she doesn’t have that opportunity. She endures more than you do, and you should tell her thanks. She takes the brunt of your emotional roller coaster, she walks on egg shells around you sometimes, she hears people talk behind your back, she sees the glares you don’t see, she hears what things are said about your kids that you don’t hear, she worries about you in ways you don’t understand. And yet she has stuck with you. She is your biggest cheerleader, your biggest prayer warrior.

Protect your wife to your church. Speak highly of her always, on stage and off. I talk about Katie in such a way that I want to communicate, if you speak badly about my wife, stab her in the back, you get papa bear, and you don’t want that. Too many pastors are weak when it comes to their wives and how they defend them in their church. Sadly, you have to do this because people can be mean.

4. My kids. The same goes for your kids. It is hard being a pastor’s kid. Way harder than being a pastor, so don’t put it in the same category. Don’t put more pressure on them than is already on them. When someone says in disbelief, “I can’t believe your kid jumped off the stage and over the communion table” (true story in the Reich family), shake your head, laugh and say, “What did you expect a five year old boy to do? Did he clear the table?” He did and didn’t get hurt.

I am my biggest protector of my kids. I want them to enjoy being kids. I want them to enjoy being a pastor’s kid as much as they can. When people try to put something on them that I think is unfair, I fight to take that expectation away.

5. My team. I’m thankful for my team. Most leaders are visionary, hard driving, goal setting people, which makes us difficult to be around and be friends with. The fact that people endure you as a leader is something to be thankful for. They help you, mold you and make things better. Sadly, most leaders don’t like their teams, which is the fault of the leader. You get what you allow or create.

6. I’m not 300 pounds anymore. I’m thankful for my health. When we started our church I weighed almost 300 pounds, and in the first 18 months I lost 130 pounds and have kept it off. I know it sounds silly to be thankful for your health and very cliche, but if you’re healthy, that’s a gift from God. Not everyone is.

7. God loves me. Lastly, if you are a follower of Jesus, God loves you, and because of His love for you He sent his Son Jesus to die in your place so that you could have a relationship with Him. Never get far from this truth and reality as a pastor.

But what do you do when it is hard to be thankful and ministry is hard? That happens.

One thing that was helpful was something I came across in Leadership Pain: The Classroom for Growth, where the author said to give yourself 24 hours to mope, throw a pity party and then get back on the horse and lead.

How to Figure out God’s Will

God's Will

Every time you say yes to something, you say no to something else.

This truth has had an enormous impact on how I live my life, how I make decisions, how we do our calendar as a family and how I lead Revolution Church.

But how do you know what to say yes and no to? That’s the most common question I get from someone who has read my book or has heard me say this in a talk. Honestly, it’s different for each person.

Too often we focus on what we want to do in the next day, week or month and then make a decision based on that. Let me frame it a different way for you: What kind of person do you want to become in the next month? In the next half year? One year from now, who do you want to be?

Will this involve doing something? Yes, but it changes the context.

For example, if a year from now you want to be closer to Jesus than you are today, a stronger disciple, then you will make the choice to say yes to community, yes to serving in your church, yes to reading your Bible, and yes to inviting people to church. That will then determine what you say no to.

Often we hope that something will happen. We will simply become kinder, more generous, thinner or smarter without putting in the work or even be willing to make a choice towards something. If you want to become a person who is known for ________, then you will have to make decisions for that to happen. A wish and a hope are not enough.

Take your marriage or another relationship. What if six months from now that relationship was stronger? It would mean that what you are doing right now would have to change. You would need to make more of an effort, you would have to say yes to giving time and energy to that relationship and saying no to something else (ie. golfing, sleeping in, working too late).

We often think we have no power over where our life goes, what our marriage becomes, the relationship we have with God or how kind we are. Yet we do. Every day we make decisions that get our life somewhere.

Here’s the problem: we never sit down to ask, Where do I want to end up?

Why You Parent the Way You Do

parent

Recently I made a comment on Facebook about babywise and quickly learned that discussing parenting styles on Facebook is akin to talking about global warming and vaccines.

But I learned something in the process, something I didn’t expect.

I learned two things about Christian parents that day and I think it can be incredibly dangerous.

The first, when it comes to parenting, Christians are very relative.

In fact, let me make a bold statement. By and large, most Christian parents care very little about what the Bible says about parenting and what science says about parenting.

Parenting styles aside for a minute.

There were almost 50 comments on the thread (which I deleted because it hurt my heart and made too angry), but almost every comment started with, “Well for my kid…”

No one ever started a sentence with, “The Bible or scientific research says…” Or, “my goal as a Christian parent because of the Bible is…”

It largely boiled down to what is easiest as a parent.

Now, we couch that in language about how its working for our kids, but I know for years I fell into the parenting trap of what is easiest and most convenient for me.

No Christian would ever say they don’t care what the Bible says about parenting, but many of the ways we parent say otherwise. It doesn’t matter what your parenting style is, how you communicate with your child or how you discipline them. If you are a follower of Jesus, what the Bible says about those things is way more important than what you think works for your child. For the most part, you are guessing at what you think works for your child because you don’t know until it’s over and they’ve moved out. That’s why what the Bible says and what scientific research says is so important.

When it comes to scientific research, I realize some Christians can get weird about that and start to wonder if God was taken out of the picture. While that happens, at the same time, there are incredible discoveries being made about our brains, how we are created and wired and all of that comes from God, whether a Christian discovers that or not. While this might be another blog topic, I think Christians needs to stop fearing science and start seeing how it confirms our Creator and his great plan for us.

The second thing I learned about parents is, we don’t really want to learn anything new. 

Almost no one in the over 50 comments asked, “How did you come to that conclusion? What do you know that I don’t? What books have you read that led you to that?”

Not wanting to learn or be stretched is an incredibly dangerous place to live, but many Christians stay in that zone when it comes to a lot of issues.

Are there things that Christians should reject out of hand without researching? Yes. This is why it matters so much to know what the Bible says about parenting (stay tuned for another post on that).

Now, like the first, no Christian parent would ever say they don’t want to learn. In fact, most feel incredibly inadequate as a parent (I know I do more times than not), but I think in an effort to feel better about ourselves as parents and what we are doing as parents, we shut down anything that might be new because we don’t want to be told we may have been doing the wrong thing.

I know a couple of years ago when we were going through our adoption classes and reading The Connected Child: Bring Hope and Healing to Your Adoptive Family and The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind, all I could think of was “how did we mess this up as parents?” What I learned in those resources and classes had way more to do with how I and Katie parented all of our kids than just how to relate to the kids we adopted.

As a parent who claims to be a follower of Jesus, don’t settle for “this worked for me or my friend.” We have way more wisdom than that out there. What does the bible say about parenting? What are you called to be and do as a parent? That’s where we should start.

Next week I’ll share what I think is the most important question for any parent to answer as it relates to your child. It is the question that shapes our parenting style, the books we read, how we communicate, discipline and teach our kids. It is that big of a deal and most parents never even think about it.

14 Top Posts of 2014

book

In the month of December, I’ve been sharing my favorites of the year. You can read my favorite books of the year here.

Below are the 14 most read posts of 2014:

14. 10 Ways to Know if You’re Putting Your Kids Before Your Spouse

No one gets married thinking they will put their kids before their marriage, but over time without being intentional, it happens. It’s easy to do. Kids need our attention, they scream for it (literally). We also rationalize that it’s easier and the right thing to do. Or, we rationalize that we will have time for our spouse later in life, but later in life rarely comes.

13. Sometimes When People Leave Your Church, that is God protecting You

Whenever someone has left our church, no matter how much it hurt me personally, God has always shown himself faithful and allowed our church not to skip a beat. In fact, each time a volunteer or staff member has left, our church was stronger after they left and by God’s grace, we could take the next step.My point is, when people leave, sometimes it is for their good, your good and the good of the church because it is God protecting you.

12. 5 Things Productive People do in the Morning

Productivity is something everyone would like to raise in their life. To accomplish more is a goal most people have. Recently, I’ve been doing a lot of reading on time management, productivity, cutting things out of your life and how to step your game up. It seems like productive people accomplish more than everyone else and it isn’t because their life is easier or they have more hours in the day. They do specific things that everyone does not do.

11. Surviving a Hard Season in Your Marriage

If you are in a hard season that simply means you are married. Too many couples look at a hard season and want to throw in the towel, don’t. Your marriage means too much, the ripple affects to how your marriage goes are enormous. Don’t believe me? Talk to a friend who grew up in a broken home and ask them how that has impacted their life. Fight for your marriage.

10. 10 Books Every Christian Leader Should Read

I often get asked about leadership books that pastors should read. If you haven’t read these books, I highly recommend them. Let’s just say, these are 10 books every Christian leader should read.

9. The Pain of Breaking the 200 Barrier

Most churches in America never break through the 200 barrier, in fact, only 15% of churches break through it. Some pastors talk about it like it is the mythical unicorn. There are books, podcasts, webinars, and articles on how to break it. For years, Revolution would bump up against the 200 barrier and then go back down. We’d have seasons where we would stay above it and I thought we were through. Finally, we broke through it.

8. Dear Worship Leader

I love worship leaders. I love that at Revolution, almost half the service is music. I want you to be great. If you don’t serve with a pastor that wants you to be as great as possible, go find a new pastor to work with. The people who show up each week show up wanting to meet Jesus and you are a big part of that. You help us encounter Jesus in a personal, emotional and logical way. I want you to be great and I don’t want anything to stand in the way of you being the worship leader God called you to be.

7. How a Wife Flourishes

The idea of roles in marriage is filled with land mines. Many people have misused and misinterpreted the beautiful verses in the Bible to make them say what they want to. Few people have actually seen healthy couples live out roles well and often have incorrect views of Biblical roles. We have visions of quiet wives who say nothing, men who dominate and abuse their families all based on Ephesians 5, completely missing the point of this passage. In thinking about how a husband helps his wife flourish and become all that God has called her to be, here are 5 ways men often fail and how to work against these problems to create the picture described in Ephesians 5.

6. The One Thing Destroying Your Marriage That You Don’t Realize

On a regular basis I will hear from a parent, “My child is disrespectful to me or to my spouse and I don’t know what to do about it.” Or I’ll hear this from someone, “I can’t seem to connect with my spouse. We don’t connect sexually. We don’t connect emotionally or relationally.” What is going on? I’m about to pull my hair out. I don’t know what to do. Your kids reaction to you is a mirror of how they see you react to your spouse.

5. How Your Church can Reach Men

I was recently asked to join a team that helps to put events on for men in Arizona. I started to ask around about the organization because truth be told, I thought it was interesting since Revolution doesn’t have a men’s or women’s ministry. Essentially, we see our church as those. I asked someone who knew them well what he thought of this organization and he said, “Their meetings are a bunch of talk about ideas, what they’ll do but in the end, no action.” I looked at him and said, “So, like a men’s ministry.”

4. Vague Pastors

When you don’t preach on something, you are preaching on that thing. You are just saying what you think won’t be as controversial or the thing that won’t lose you your following.

3. 11 Ways to Know You’ve Settled for a Mediocre Marriage

It is so sad when I meet a couple that is unhappy. Whether it is stress, finances, kids, in-laws or sin, too many couples simply settle for a mediocre marriage. They carry around this look that says, “I’m not happy, but this is as good as it will get.” I’m sorry, but if I’m going to be in a relationship for the rest of my life, I want it to be better than a sigh followed by, “this is as good as it will get.”

2. Pastors Can Make the Worst Friends

For most pastors, church is something they are always thinking about. The next capital campaign, new ministry year, next sermon series, next issue, hiring a new person. It never stops. They spend all their time with people talking about church. They sit with their wife on date night and talk about church. It is not just a job, it is their life. It is who they are and this becomes unhealthy.

1. Thoughts from a White Dad of a Black Son on Ferguson

One of my sons is black. I will raise two kinds of boys to become men. Three of them white and they will see the world, be treated by the world and interact with the world one way. Then, another son who will see it differently, interact with it differently and be treated by it differently. Three of them will walk around with little fear of violence or being arrested. They will walk around as young adults and not fear police officers. One of my sons will.

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Surviving a Hard Season in Your Marriage

marriage struggles

Let’s be honest for a minute, at some point in your marriage you are going to hit a hard season. It could be caused by a busy schedule, a child is born, difficulty getting pregnant, some kind of sickness, debt or bills, health of in-laws, drama with some kind of family member or friend, loss of job, the list is endless.

But how do you know if it is a hard season and not something else?

Here are some things that are true of a hard season: lack of intimacy and sex, lack of communication, long silences between you and your spouse, constant arguing, a lot of misunderstandings or miscommunications, or just the feeling that you are ships passing through the night.

The reality is, at some point you will feel like this, you may even feel like it right now. So what do you do?

Here are 7 ways to not only survive a hard season, but to come out of it stronger:

  1. Identify why you are in this season. Both spouses know when they are in this season. Men would like to ignore it, bulldoze through it or just fix it to move forward. Sometimes you need to spend more time talking about something to fix it, sometimes it is so obvious that you can quickly fix it and move on.
  2. Talk through what got you to this season. Don’t just identify that life is hard, that your marriage is in a tough spot. Identify how you got there. Is it overscheduling? Do you need to cut back at work? Do you need to pick up the pace on date night? Do you need to communicate more? Do you need to have more sex in your marriage?
  3. Apologize for any sin on your part. Make things right. If you are in a hard season as a couple, both of you sinned. Almost every problem in marriage has sin from both spouses, don’t just point fingers at the other. Own your sin, apologize and make it right.
  4. Figure out the weaknesses in your marriage that need to become strengths. You may have gotten to a hard season because you aren’t organized, don’t have a plan to get out of debt or you aren’t doing well to get everything done at work so you are overworking. Find a couple, find a person who is can help. Someone who is smarter than you at your weakness and ask for help. I think when we look for coaches, we often look for someone who can help us with everything, that is foolish. If it is finances, get with someone who has no debt and is doing great with their finances and say, “help me.”
  5. Get rid of what got you to this place. Recently, Katie and I walked through a hard season that came from adding kids to our family, my job expanding and getting busier and I was saying yes to too many things. We pulled back on some activities as a family, made some changes to how we do our schedule and cut some things out. This is hard, but you have to let go of or change what got you to this season. You may need to not sign up for an activity, back out of the PTA or say no to a promotion at work. Why? Your marriage needs you to.
  6. Outlast the season. If you are in a hard season that simply means you are married. Too many couples look at a hard season and want to throw in the towel, don’t. Your marriage means too much, the ripple affects to how your marriage goes are enormous. Don’t believe me? Talk to a friend who grew up in a broken home and ask them how that has impacted their life. Fight for your marriage.
  7. Plan to not repeat this season. No one plans to have a tough season in marriage, but it happens. It often happens because we lose our bearings, we let sin enter our hearts or we don’t have a plan to protect our marriage. Have a plan to protect your marriage: how will you stay out of debt? How will you protect a weekly date night? How will you keep communication and sex a priority in your marriage? If you don’t talk through this step, you will end up repeating a hard season and they are much harder the second time around because you will feel even more defeated and helpless than you already do.

Sometimes When People Leave Your Church, that is God protecting You

leave your church

As a pastor, when someone leaves your church, it hurts.

It doesn’t matter if it is because they moved away, stopped believing in the vision, helped to start a new church across town or just simply decided they were done with church. They all hurt. Some more than others.

In the history of Revolution Church, whenever someone has left, God has always shown himself faithful and allowed our church not to skip a beat. In fact, each time a volunteer or staff member has left, our church was stronger after they left and by God’s grace, we could take the next step.

I was in a funk the other day.

Pastors know this feeling.

You start to think about the past year, people who have left, people you were pouring into and you start feeling sorry for yourself.

It is natural.

It is also sin.

In that moment of reminiscing the Spirit very clearly impressed upon me, “Josh, when people leave your church, sometimes it is for your and the church’s protection.”

Here’s what I mean.

Soon before we planted Revolution, one of our core leaders just up and quit our launch team. That hurt and made no sense. Within one year he and his wife divorced. That would have been horrible as a new church plant to walk through.

We had another influential person who left and then within 6 months said he didn’t believe in God or want to follow him anymore.

My point is, when people leave, sometimes it is for their good, your good and the good of the church because it is God protecting you.

What I Doubt about God

doubt

I had a conversation recently with some friends and they asked how you discern the idols of your heart. We talk about this quite a bit at Revolution and what the gospel truth is. While there are some questions that others have developed that are very helpful, they pointed out that for them it seems to be a moving target.

One thing I pointed out that has helped me is discerning idols of the heart is what you doubt about God first or most.

For me, with a Reformed lens, I love the sovereignty of God. I rest in it, trust in it, believe in it wholeheartedly. It makes sense, I see it all over Scripture. It answers the deepest questions I ask. It is one of the easiest things for me to believe about God. When life does not go as I planned, seems out of my control, the sovereignty of God is the first thing I doubt.

Think about the approval idol. Someone who wrestles with this has a hard time believing they are loved by God. When they sin, the have doubts about God’s grace, forgiveness, that he will accept them in spite of their sin. They need to grow in God’s grace.

When it comes to comfort, in the moments of doubt and sin, those who struggle with this don’t believe God is good. They believe there is something else that is better than God in that moment.