Can You Trust God?

trust

A common question that people ask is, “How do I know I can trust God?”

We talk about how to trust God when life falls apart, when the bottom falls out of a relationship, when we hit hard financial times or we get a phone call we didn’t expect.

What about just trusting God each day, whether things are good or bad?

There are promises all over the Bible about God, His character, what He will do and will not do. But how do you know those are real and will not fail?

That’s the question the apostle Paul is seeking to answer at the beginning of Romans 9.

Trusting in God is a hard thing to do, but when we do, it leads to our joy.

One of the things I often encourage people to do who struggle to trust in God is to ask themselves why they don’t trust God. What keeps you from that? Is it something you think God should have done? Is it because of a past hurt or a relationship that fell apart?

Often without realizing it, we don’t trust God not because of God but because of ourselves.

Once we are able to see why we don’t trust God and what keeps us from taking that step, we are able to deal with that.

It isn’t as simple as “just trusting God more.”

The reality, though, is all of us trust in someone or something in our lives.

We trust in people everyday.

Yet the reverse is true, and we know it to be true.

Misplaced trust does not lead to joy.

One of the things that I find most fascinating about Habakkuk chapter 3 is how Habakkuk reminds himself of how God has moved in the past. He recalls how the nation of Israel began, how God brought the nation of Israel out of slavery in the book of Exodus and gave them the 10 Commandments.

What Habakkuk is doing is reminding himself of how God has moved in the past. Often our struggle is with trusting that God will show up. Habakkuk is showing us, “God worked in the past, so I can trust He will work now and in the future.”

This doesn’t mean that God will work in the same way as the past. It doesn’t mean He will work on our timetable, but we do know He is at work.

You may be in a place where you need to remind yourself of how God has worked in the past of your life. Maybe you need to journal or make a list of things He’s done, prayers He has answered. Maybe you need to determine why you don’t trust God, what is holding you back and how to move forward in that. What things are you placing your trust in that will ultimately let you down and take away your joy instead of giving you joy?

Why Marriage Is Better Than Cohabitation & 6 Other Posts You Should Read this Weekend

leader

Here are 7 posts I came across this week that challenged my thinking or helped me as a leader, pastor, husband and father. I hope they help you too:

  1. 7 Things Pastors Should Do Every Monday by Kevin Lloyd
  2. 7 Characteristics Of Volunteer Leaders Pastors Should Want In Decision-Making Roles by Brian Dodd
  3. 5 Words which Can Keep a Church From Growing by Ron Edmondson
  4. Why Marriage Is Better Than Cohabitation by Tim Challies
  5. What The Movie ‘Sully’ Can Teach Us About Leadership by Forbes
  6. 5 Unique Books That Are Loved by Successful Entrepreneurs by Inc.
  7. 36 Years Of Ministry: One-on-One With Erwin Lutzer

Wednesday Mind Dump…

mind dump

  • I’m finally getting to this, although a little late because of the holiday on Monday.
  • We did a staycation at a hotel in Tucson with my cousin and his kids.
  • Super fun time playing in the pool and relaxing.
  • My kids told me they want to live at the resort.
  • Me too I told them. Me too.
  • It was perfect timing because of the busyness of starting the fall ministry season and getting back into they rhythm of school.
  • The last 2 weeks at Revolution have been intense topics.
  • Preaching on free will, election, God’s grace, choice, hardening hearts.
  • For me, it was exciting and difficult walking through those passages.
  • If you missed them or want to watch again, you can do so here.
  • I’m really excited about the journey Katie and I are on as we are going through the Leaders Journey with Acts 29 West.
  • It deals with a lot of leadership health, family of origin, baggage and sin patterns and how they affect you as a leader and those you lead.
  • It has been uncomfortably helpful.
  • That’s the best way to put it.
  • Two books we’ve read that have been really convicting and helpful are Surrender to Love: Discovering the Heart of Christian Spirituality and The Deeper Journey: The Spirituality of Discovering Your True Self.
  • I don’t know about anyone else, but the fact that football is back on is amazing.
  • I don’t follow any other sports so I love when the end of August rolls around.
  • Excited to have another local guest worship leader this Sunday at Revolution.
  • It’s been awesome to see how our team has stepped up at Revolution without a worship leader and how worship leaders throughout Tucson have been willing to come and serve our church.
  • Love it.
  • Many of you have asked if we’ll hire another worship leader. Yes.
  • When? We don’t know.
  • We want to go slow and find what our church needs right now, but also what we’ll need as we move closer to planting a church.
  • One of the things I’m most excited about at Revolution right now is the leaders group that started this morning.
  • Every year, I take 8 – 12 leaders through a training program to help them become better spiritual leaders.
  • We look at work, family, relationship with God, theology and self leadership.
  • I’ve gotten some questions from other pastors about what I do, so be waiting on a blog post coming soon.
  • The first book they read is Do More Better: A Practical Guide to Productivity.
  • If you struggle with time management and productivity, start with that book.
  • Well, halfway through the week.
  • Almost 24 hours til real NFL football (the Broncos lose tomorrow by the way).
  • Back at it…

5 Ways to Fight Insecurity and 4 Other Posts You Should Read this Weekend

leader

Here are 5 posts I came across this week that challenged my thinking or helped me as a leader, pastor, husband and father. I hope they help you too:

  1. Pastoral Ministry does not have to be Sedentary by Erik Raymond
  2. 5 Ways to Fight Insecurity by Ron Edmondson
  3. 5 Tips to Manage Yourself by Paul Sohn
  4. The Pressure of Being a Pastor by Shawn Lovejoy
  5. 5 Things to Keep in Mind when Raising Boys by Sarah Anderson

Wednesday Mind Dump…

mind dump

  • I feel like I’m still playing catch up from 2 weeks ago.
  • Katie, me and our 5 kids flew to Boston to see my cousin get married on Cape Cod.
  • It was beautiful, breezy, sunny.
  • It was awesome seeing family and horrible flying through 3 time zones.
  • Last week, the Acts 29 Arizona pastors and their staffs got to spend time on a zoom call with Larry Osborne and talk about leadership development, small groups, discipleship and breaking growth barriers.
  • So enlightening.
  • Sunday was one of those days that pastors know well.
  • We’ve been going through Romans this year at Revolution and Sunday we got to Romans 9.
  • I love theology, but trying to explain Romans 9 in a relevant way to someone who has know idea about calvinism, free will or predestination.
  • I ended up preaching 2 different sermons between our 2 services.
  • Not really a good thing but it happened.
  • Here’s what pastors know well: your feelings on how church went rarely line up with how church went. 
  • Some of the books I’ve enjoyed in prepping for Romans 9 have been Chosen for Life: The Case for Divine ElectionPROOF: Finding Freedom through the Intoxicating Joy of Irresistible Grace and for the theological beatniks, The Justification of God: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Romans 9:1-23.
  • I’m reminded that your church really likes it when you tackle hard topics.
  • Unchurched people especially because they have no idea this is in the Bible.
  • So ready for football to start this weekend.
  • I let my 2 oldest boys create a fantasy team this year.
  • They couldn’t believe how excited they were about drafting their team.
  • According to Yahoo, I won the draft and got the highest grade (even though I didn’t draft a defense).
  • So you know I’ll go 2-14 this year.
  • People often ask what books me and our leaders are reading.
  • Here’s one we’re about to start: The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals.
  • Really excited about it.
  • Our entire team loved his talk at the leadership summit.
  • I have my pastors covenant group meeting today.
  • Honestly, at first I was skeptical about joining, but it has been a huge blessing to me.
  • I meet once a month with 4 older pastors, I think I’m 20 – 25 years younger than all of them.
  • Pastors need other pastors to confide in, pray with and share ministry with.
  • Got to celebrate my Mom’s 60th birthday last night.
  • She’ll be embarrassed when she reads this that I told you, but we’ll keep it between us.
  • I love being able to watch my kids interact with and laugh with my parents.
  • Time to get back at it…

Motivational Tips From People At The Top & 7 Other Posts You Should Read This Weekend

leader

Here are 8 posts I came across this week that challenged my thinking or helped me as a leader, pastor, husband and father. I hope they help you too:

  1. 5 Tell Tale Signs Your Church is Insider Focused by Carey Nieuwhof
  2. A Communications Tip From A Church Secret Shopper by Greg Atkinson
  3. Why People Volunteer At Some Churches But Not At Others by Paul Alexander
  4. The Senior Pastor as the Chief Clarity Officer by Brian Dodd & Michael Lukaszewski
  5. 4 Myths About Delegating by Art Rainer
  6. 6 Terrible Ways to Recruit Volunteers by Thom Rainer
  7. 4 Types of People a Leader Should Not Listen to by Eric Geiger
  8. Motivational Tips From People At The Top by William Vanderbloemen

How to Recruit and keep the Best Volunteers

volunteers

If you get a group of pastors or church leaders together and ask them about their biggest challenges, volunteers and leaders will come up. The idea of recruiting volunteers is overwhelming and difficult at times. There never seems to be enough people, and the ones who are serving are often tired and feel like they are the only ones serving.

In light of that, there are some crucial things to keep in mind as you invite people to use their gifts and talents at your church and keep them engaged in those roles. Note, the words you use are incredibly important.

1. Know who you are and what you need around you. Many times we are simply looking for a warm body, and no one wants to sign up for a role that anyone can do. When you are inviting people to use their gifts, you need to know if they fit who you are, the team you have in place and the role you are inviting them into. This means as a leader you need to know your personality, strengths and weaknesses so you can effectively build around you. You need to know the makeup of people already on your team, what kind of personalities they have and what is missing. You also need to know what kind of people you need on your team.

2. Don’t say no for anyone. This is easier to do than you would think. We have a need or opening, and we have in mind the perfect person. But they are busy, so we don’t ask. Yes they are busy, but that doesn’t matter. Don’t say no for anyone. Let them say no. Remember, if you don’t ask you rob them of an opportunity. Who knows, they might say yes.

3. The most high capacity and talented people are busy. This is a truth that took me awhile to figure out. The most talented and high capacity people in your church are probably busy, but that’s because they are high capacity and talented people. Notice, I didn’t say they were doing too much, I just said they were busy. They do a lot because they are talented and have a higher capacity than other people. Just like #2, these are the people you want but won’t say anything to. Don’t. Ask them.

4. Don’t be afraid to ask. Hopefully you are picking up on a theme of what it takes to get the right people on your team at your church. Ask.

Remember: People don’t sign up to volunteer because of a big announcement; they say yes because someone asked them.

We have this idea in churches that if we show enough videos, make enough pleas from the stage, guilt and shame, then maybe people will sign up. But you don’t want those people. They won’t stay, and then you’ll have people on your team that don’t fit and don’t want to be there because they signed up because they felt bad.

Now I’m not saying you don’t use announcements, but they aren’t as affective to building your team as you often think they are. They help make a need get on someone’s radar.

But the people you want are the people you need to ask.

I said this to a room full of volunteers at our church once and got some pushback. Then I asked everyone to raise their hand who served on their team because of a stage announcement and who served because they were asked by someone. Over 90% served because someone asked them.

5. Why you do something is more important than what you do. This is how you get people on your team and keep people on your team.

When most team leaders invite someone to join their team, they talk about what they’ll do, how they’ll do it, expectations, etc. Those are all well and good.

But people only serve and stay because of why you do something.

In fact, this is one of the biggest reasons volunteers burnout and quit; they don’t remember why they are doing something.

One thing I do every week is pull every volunteer at our church together and remind them in just a few minutes why we are doing something. That it will be someone’s first day at church today, and we need to be ready for that. I also thank them for what they do and how hard they work.

When was the last time you did something nice for your team? When was the last time you said thanks to them?

What to do When You Can’t Stop doing Something

stop

We all have things about ourselves that we hate; things we do, things we think, things we feel and things in our past. We spend a lot of energy trying to change these things. We hope that something will be different tomorrow. Maybe we’ll magically stop looking at porn, stop being so desperate for love, stop feeling lonely, stop saying things at the wrong moment. Maybe that memory will finally go away.

So, we read our Bibles.

Struggling with sin is the normal Christian experience. Not because we don’t have power over sin, we do have power because of the work of Jesus on the cross in our place and rising from the dead. We have the power through the Holy Spirit to battle our sin and win, but we often lose.

In Romans 7, we see this struggle in Paul. Tim Keller lays this out as to why this is the present Christian experience:

  • In the beginning of chapter 7, Paul is talking in the past tense, in verse 14 he changes to the present tense.
  • In  7 – 13, Paul talks about sin killing him, he’s dead, but in verse 14 Paul begins talking about an ongoing struggle with sin. He is fighting sin, struggling but refuses to surrender.
  • In  18 Paul says “I know that nothing good dwells in me.” Those who don’t know Jesus are unaware of being lost and sinful. Without Jesus, we think we can save ourselves or are good on our own.
  • In  22 Paul says, “I delight in God’s law.” If you don’t know Jesus, you can’t delight in God’s law.
  • Keller concludes, “Often we repent of past sin and think it’s done, but God wants to show us how to hate it when the seeds come up again.”

To move forward in freedom, it is important to name, to confess, those things you do that you hate. Those struggles you battle with. To admit what dwells in you. Often we have an inflated view of our goodness, but to experience grace we must understand the depths of our brokenness. Otherwise, what do we need God’s grace and forgiveness for?

I think the process Paul walks through in this passage is instructive for us as we hate our sin:

  1. Do you hate your sin?
  2. Are you willing to fight your sin? To put things into place to win the battle against sin? This might mean you stop going to places, get rid of something, stop spending time with that person.
  3. Do you know how lost you are apart from the grace of Jesus?
  4. Do you delight in the law of God?

Longings, Desires & When I’m Letdown

desires

Often times it is hard to know what our longings mean. They can be sinful and good. They can reveal things about us, past hurts, pain, things we hope and dream for the future. They can be hard to trust, and they can also reveal who we really are, who we wish to become, and sometimes the people we wish to leave behind.

Our longings, though, also reveal deep within us what God has in store for us.

Our longings are a reminder that God has something more, something different; that our bodies and our world are broken and not how God intended them to be.

G.K. Chesterton, who lived in the early 1900’s, is believed to have said, “A man knocking on the door of a brothel is knocking for God.”

Our lives reveal a longing.

This week let me give you a challenge as you think about your longings and what they reveal about you. Here are some questions to ask:

1. What do you most want out of life? Out of this week and month? Many of us do not spend enough time thinking about what we want out of life. These desires, as we’ll see in a minute, not only reveal a lot about us, but they can also be from God. He created desires in us, desires for relationships, for joy, for hobbies and for the place we live.

2. What would truly make you happy in life? This begins to get to the heart of our desires. Does it have to do with relationships, housing, a trip, hobbies, a career, your body? Again, right now don’t judge if it is sinful or not. Simply list out the desire you have.

3. Is that a sinful desire? This is the moment we begin to evaluate our desires and what they show us. Is that desire selfish, for my glory, about my wants? Is it destructive to others? Does it serve me or God? Is this desire all encompassing in my life right now? Does it drive me like an addiction?

4. What do I do if it is a sin? Many of our desires are sins that we need to handle, confess and bring before God. Our desires also reveal our need for God and His grace in our lives. The desires you are convicted of, confess those to God. Confess those sins where you need to, and ask God to change your desires if need be. But don’t hold on to them; bring them to the cross.

5. What do I do if it isn’t a sin? Not all desires are bad. In fact, many of the greatest things people have done for God have been borne out of desire. Those are things that bring passion to our lives and joy that are from God. They are also God’s good gifts. It is good to enjoy a good meal with friends. It is destructive to make that an idol our lives revolve around.