Posted on

Six Ways to Encourage your Pastor & 6 Other Posts You Should Read this Weekend

by

leader

Each Friday I share some posts that I’ve come across in the last week. They range in topics and sources but they are all things I’ve found interesting or helpful that I hope will be interesting and helpful to you. Here are 7 posts I came across this week that challenged my thinking or helped me as a leader, pastor, husband and father:

  1. 7 Things Christians Should Give Up To Reach Unchurched People by Carey Nieuwhof
  2. Six Ways to Encourage your Pastor by Charles Stone
  3. Leadership Is About Emotion by Meghan M. Biro
  4. 7 Good Things to Say to Your Pastor this Weekend by Chuck Lawless
  5. Richard Branson’s 5 A.M. Workout and 5 Other Morning Habits of Successful Billionaires by Jessica Stillman
  6. How to Stop Wasting Time in Meetings by Dan Rockwell
  7. Are You on Track if You Lead a Church of Less Than 100? by Ed Stetzer
Posted on

How to Enjoy Your Marriage

by

What if I told you that one of the goals of marriage was to enjoy your spouse? Most of us would think, “Duh, Josh, that makes sense.” We want to be happy and enjoy our relationships.

I’ve read that statistically less than 20% of married couples actually say they are happy and enjoy their marriage. Sadly, of the people I’ve met and watched, that number doesn’t seem that crazy.

You and I know that stat is true. We’ve been married, we watched our parents marriage, we see our friends go in and out of relationships.

What if I told you the choices you make when dating, in engagement and through marriage will determine whether or not you enjoy your spouse? We know this. And yet most people, most couples, make decisions that lead them to a place of misery in marriage, or simply giving up on their marriage but staying together for the kids.

Anyone can stay together. Anyone can stay for the kids and be miserable, but it takes different choices to find enjoyment.

Proverbs 5 says this:

Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well.
Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets?
Let them be for yourself alone, and not for strangers with you.
Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe.
Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love. -Proverbs 5:15 – 19

So what do couples do to enjoy their marriage that you can do? Here are four things:

4 ways to enjoy your marriage.

Click To Tweet

1. Decide you’ll enjoy your marriage. This might seem obvious, but couples who enjoy their marriage decide to enjoy their marriage. They decide to last. It isn’t just that they make a commitment to each other, but they really live with the reality that divorce is not an option.

Couples who enjoy their marriage decide to enjoy their marriage.

Click To Tweet

When you decide to enjoy your marriage, you decide that no other relationship is an option. This leads into many other decisions. If divorce or not being happy is an option, that will also determine the actions you will take. If happiness in your marriage is a priority, that impacts your choices. If your needs and selfishness are your priority, that will impact your choices.

If you decide to enjoy your marriage, you will think of your spouse above yourself and look for ways to bless and encourage them. You won’t point out all their wrongs or imperfections. You know they aren’t perfect and neither are you.

This also means you will work hard at your marriage. You’ll read books on marriage, listen to podcasts and find a mentor who has a marriage you want to learn from. Katie and I are constantly talking to couples who are older and enjoy their marriages. What do they know? How do they make it to year 40, year 50, of marriage and still enjoy being together?

How do they make it to year 40, year 50, of marriage and still enjoy being together?

Click To Tweet

The reality is, your marriage will go through highs and lows. It will have incredible moments of joy and unbelievably dark lows. Every couple who enjoys their marriage has learned how to navigate these moments as a couple, and that’s crucial. You learn how to walk together no matter what life holds or throws at you.

This also means you find things to do together that you enjoy. You don’t have to enjoy everything your spouse does, but you enjoy being with them, and, as we’ll see in a minute, you enjoy making them happy.

Verse 15 tells us in order to enjoy your marriage, you must focus on it, take care of it and pour time and energy into it. A great marriage won’t just happen. If you meet a couple with a great marriage, you will see a couple that has worked on their marriage. They have protected their marriage and they have put effort into their marriage.

2. Fight for purity in your marriage (before and after you get married). This one is important. Purity is one of the things that protects your marriage from adultery, yet it also helps move you to enjoyment.

When you are looking at porn, fantasizing about someone you aren’t married to, reading romance novels, getting emotionally attached to a co-worker or a neighbor, you aren’t protecting your marriage. When this happens, you start to think, “This person gets me. This person listens. This person meets a need my spouse doesn’t meet.” In that moment you have not only moved into dangerous territory, but now you don’t enjoy your marriage.

Let’s be honest, porn, whether you are a man or a woman, is easier. It takes less effort, there’s no possibility of rejection or hurt, it takes no work, and it is enjoyable for that moment. But you miss connection and intimacy; it leaves you longing for more because it doesn’t live up to its promises.

Verse 17 says, “Let your bodies be for yourself alone (this is referring to your marriage), not for strangers with you.”

How a 30 day sex challenge can take your marriage to a new level.

Click To Tweet

In years past at Revolution, we’ve challenged married couples in our church to do a 30 day sex challenge. To pray together each day, read your Bible together each day and do something sexual together each day. Every time someone will ask me what it means to do something sexual with your spouse each day. My answer? Look at your spouse and say, “What does it mean for us to do something sexual together, with no one else (digital or not) each day for the next 30 days?” Then do that. Here’s what you’ll find: your affection goes up and your pursuit of each other goes up. If you know you’re connecting sexually today, that changes what you do that day. You might not eat that spicy food, you brush your teeth again or get a shower. That expectation goes a long way in a relationship.

3. Rejoice in your spouse. Verse 18 says, “Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth.”

Rejoice carries the idea of fun and enjoyment.

It is to feel joy, enjoyment and happiness from your spouse but also to bring joy, enjoyment and happiness to your spouse.

First, do you strive to bring joy, enjoyment and happiness to your spouse? Do you know what brings them joy and happiness?

Second, are you a cheerleader for your spouse, or do you fight against them? Bringing them joy means cheering them on, being excited about what excites them. If something goes well for them, you are excited for them. You don’t get jealous of them or irritated when things go well for them. You rejoice when they rejoice and you weep when they weep.

On the flip side of rejoicing is walking through pain with them. Katie always tells me, “Josh, you hold a crying girl.” This is great advice for dads of daughters and for husbands.

How to rejoice in your spouse.

Click To Tweet

4. Strive to be great servant lovers. Verse 19 says, “Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated by her love.” We’ll talk more about this in two weeks, but let me say this now.

Couples who enjoy their marriage are great servant lovers. They are drunk with love. Yes, old age and gravity affect us all, and you don’t look like you used to, but that doesn’t mean your sexual relationship can’t be great.

Couples who enjoy their marriage are great servant lovers.

Click To Tweet

If you meet a couple who has been married for more than a decade and are happy, here’s what I bet you’ll find: a couple who are great servant lovers. They have worked hard on their sexual relationship with their spouse. They know what turns their spouse on and what they don’t like. They are affectionate, they gross their kids out with all the kissing and dancing they do in the kitchen.

Let me give you a few ideas on this:

  • Find out what your spouse finds attractive and try to do that. It might be to throw that shirt out. If you stay at home with kids, your husband might say, “Could you shower by the end of the day?” Whatever it is, talk it out instead of being frustrated by it.
  • Clean out your underwear drawer every year. That alone will go a long way.
  • Pursue each other and have a weekly date night (even if it is at home). I don’t care what you call it, but have a night each week that is set aside to build into your relationship. And empty nesters, unless you are intentional, don’t tell me every night is date night. Simply being in the same house doesn’t count.
  • In the bedroom, find out what they like and don’t like. I know guys, you are awesome in the bedroom, in your mind. My guess is, if you asked your wife what turns her on, she will surprise you because it isn’t what you think.

The reality is, to enjoy your marriage it will take work. It will take making decisions other couples don’t make. Why? Not every couple enjoys their marriage, so to enjoy yours, you must make different choices. You must walk a different path.

4 ways to enjoy your marriage.

Click To Tweet

Posted on

6 Things to do When Someone Insults You

by

insults

You know the conversation. Someone in your church asks to meet with you, or you set up the meeting because you know they are angry at you, the church or a decision that was made.

The conversation is going well. You are making some headway and figuring out what the issues are (which is really important), and then the unexpected happens.

Not really unexpected.

You should have seen it coming.

The insults. The ‘several people’ comments. The, “I’ve asked around” comments.

What do you do? Do you defend your honor? Pushback? Take it like a man? Try to win?

If you as a pastor have not found yourself in this conversation, it is coming. When it happens, here are six things to keep in mind:

6 things to remember when you’re insulted.

Click To Tweet

1. It will surprise you who it is. This is always the case. You will be blown away at who is angry at you and who hurls insults at you. Whenever I’ve made a change or decision at our church, the people who are mad and leave over it are never the ones I expected. In the same way, the ones who will criticize you unfairly, spread rumors about you, talk to a “bunch of other people about an issue” will surprise you. They will not be who you expect.

You will almost always be surprised by who gets mad at you in your church.

Click To Tweet

This is one reason it hurts so much when it happens.

2. Don’t stoop to their level. It is easy in this situation to defend your honor, try to win (this is my default mode), prove your point, point out their shortcomings and sin (because they are there), or try to explain yourself. More than likely, in this meeting (there might be a second one) they are simply wanting to vent and “get something off their chest.” For the person this meeting is often not about reconciliation, understanding your perspective or seeing that they might be wrong. That will hopefully come later, but the reality is, they have been angry for quite some time and they have some pent up anger.

When someone is angry at you, have character and don’t stoop to their level.

Click To Tweet

3. Listen as best as you can and figure out what the actual issue is. Often, not always, but often when someone comes and says, “I’m leaving _____ church because…” Or, “I’m angry because ________”, those are rarely the issues. They think they are the issues, but they aren’t. People will give you a reason for leaving your church that you won’t be able to argue with. This is the reason why “I’m not getting fed enough” or “God told me to leave” are such popular reasons.

In seminary I took one counseling class, and I got the best piece of advice in my entire seminary experience. A professor told me, “When someone’s life is out of control, they have sin in their life they can’t handle, they are angry at their spouse, parent, child, boss or feel letdown in life and don’t know what to do, they take their anger out on the closest authority figure they can find, and that tends to be a pastor and the church.”

I can’t tell you how many meetings I’ve had over the years with people who want to leave the church I lead or meet with me because they are angry at a decision we made, and more than half the meeting is about what frustrates them about their spouse, parent or child.

In an intense meeting, do your best to find the real issue.

Click To Tweet

Once you are able to determine what you think is the real issue, start talking about that. Help them to see what the real issue is. This isn’t always possible. You might be told that isn’t the issue, but if your gut tells you that is the issue, it usually is.

4. If they want to leave your church, let them. As a pastor you want everyone possible to be a part of your church. Why? Because you love and care for them. You’ve walked with them, labored over sermons for them, prayed for them, listened to them, seen them grow, discipled them. You don’t want them to leave. It hurts every time it happens.

But it happens.

Don’t try to talk someone out of leaving your church.

Now, if they are leaving for a bad reason, tell them. If they are leaving for an immature reason, tell them.

But don’t stop them.

Why?

That might be God’s way of protecting you.

Sometimes when people leave your church, that is God protecting You.

Click To Tweet

If they met with you and are angry at you, hurling insults at you (yes, people say horrible things to pastors), and they say they want to leave your church, don’t try to talk them out of it.

In fact, and this might be controversial so hear me out, you might need to encourage them to leave your church.

Their staying might not be healthy for them, their family, for you or the church.

5. Debrief with someone you trust, who loves you, to find the truth in what was said. The meeting is over and you feel like you have been punched in the gut (hopefully only figuratively).

The reality is, the person who talked with you might be right, they just did it in the worst way possible. So, you have to find the truth. Is what they said on target? Do you have any sin or shortcomings you need to confess or work on? Don’t waste what was said simply because it hurt or you don’t agree. They might be right, or at least partly right.

6. Reconcile to the best of your ability. It isn’t always possible or healthy to have a second meeting. It can easily become the two of you trying to remember what all was said. If you need to reconcile over an issue, try to. The other person may not want to, and you don’t always need to talk to them to reconcile it, but you need to make sure you don’t allow them to take up space in your heart over an issue.

6 ways to handle someone who is mad at you.

Click To Tweet

Posted on

The Weight & Joy of Being a Pastor: Communicating God’s Word

by

One of the best parts of being a pastor (or a Christian for that matter) is seeing God use you. There is nothing like using the gifts God has given to you.

Recently I’ve been sharing some of the weights and joys of being a pastor to help people who attend church understand what it is like to be a pastor and how they can support their pastor and his family, but also to encourage pastors to keep going and not give up, as so many do.

Being a pastor is unique. It isn’t harder than another job, just different.

If you’ve missed any of the weights or joys I’ve covered, you can see them here: Preaching God’s word every week, You can’t change people, God’s call on your life, Seeing life change, People under you are counting on you, God using you and What God thinks of you.

Joy #4: Communicating God’s Word

While this is a weight that pastors carry, this is also a joy.

To have the ability to open God’s Word and share it with others is a huge joy. To have people come to hear what God is saying through his Word and you is unbelievable. It is humbling, holy and scary all at the same time. For me, because teaching is one of my top gifts, I love being able to preach every week.

I love to see the way God chooses to use the work that I have put in and the time I have labored on a talk. It is something that is difficult to describe. It goes back to God using us.

For me, a sermon starts about six to eight months before I preach it. I lay out where I feel God is taking our church over the coming year and begin meditating on those passages, researching, finding articles, books and commentaries to see what others have to say on those topics. By the time I get up to preach something, I have been sitting with that topic for quite some time. To see more of how I prep a sermon, you can read that process here.

I am always blown away at how, even though we plan in advance, our church seems to be in the place where what I’m preaching on is what they need. Countless times God has shown up where we are going through what I’m preaching on. I used to be surprised.

By far this is more work, but at the same time it is so worth it. To be a part of God’s work in the world in this way makes what I do worth it.

Too many pastors, while they enjoy preaching, get lazy at it. They don’t plan ahead, they are trying to figure out Saturday night what to say instead of getting a good night’s sleep. They simply download someone else’s ideas instead of doing the hard work of figuring out what God wants to say to the church they serve. Or, they get up and say too many things instead of doing the hard work of editing.

Preaching is a weight, and according to the New Testament something you will get judged twice for. So if you preach, it is a joy as well as a weight. If it is not a joy, do something else in your church, or ask God to make preaching a joy to you.

When you see this task as a joyful weight, you finally get it. In that moment, a lot changes as a communicator. You are humbled by the opportunity, how God works but also that God will move through your prayers, confession and study. Those are never wasted in this weighty joy.

Posted on

Love Is… (1 Corinthians 13)

by

I know that loving people is hard. It can be exhilarating and bring us so much joy, but it can also bring us heartache.

Last week Katie and I were with one of our mentors, and he said, “The people God has placed in our lives are there to activate what God wants to transform.” That is hard because everyone in my life isn’t always easy to live with. They can be messy, difficult, get in the way and get on my nerves. I can do the same to them as well. That is what relationships are like.

The people God has placed in our lives are there to activate what God wants to transform. -Rich Plass

Click To Tweet

I want to encourage you to continue thinking through how you can bring love to your relationships, especially the most important and closest ones to you.

If you aren’t familiar with 1 Corinthians 13 on love (a very popular wedding passage), let’s remind ourselves:

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

Love is patient. We are impatient people. We want food fast, internet fast and we get annoyed when Netflix buffers. We are also impatient relationally. This plays out by being demanding, bulldozing people and pushing too hard. It’s the worst with those closest to us, pushing them, expecting them to be what we want, to do what we want. Yet love says, “However long it takes for you to get your act together, I’ll be here.” Our culture says, “If they don’t change fast enough, if they hold you back, move on.”

Can you imagine Jesus saying, “You aren’t changing fast enough, so I’m done with you”, or, “You aren’t responding to me fast enough, so we’re done”? This is difficult, especially if you are a control freak in your life.

Love is kind. Kindness is actions, words, emotions and so much more.

In your relationships, do you use your presence and words to show kindness, or do you tear the other down? Kindness often is keeping your mouth shut when you’d love to open it. Not in a way to cover sin, but in a way to say, “That isn’t a big deal; I’ll let that go.”

Love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. Envy is a longing for something that isn’t currently ours. Boasting is puffing ourselves up, focusing on ourself and our needs over the needs of others. Arrogance is thinking we’re better than we are. Rude is controlling the agenda and everyone around us.

When we envy others, boast, are arrogant or rude, we push people away.

Often we do these things to be right, but also to protect ourselves from getting hurt. If I envy you, then I can blame you for my problems. If I boast, I can put you down to make me feel better. The same is true of being rude. If I’m arrogant, I protect myself from getting hurt. If I’m not proud, I’m willing to open up my heart to hurt, yes, but I also open up my heart to love.

All these emotions and actions do is isolate us. In this passage Paul is inviting us to let go of these desires.

Love does not insist on its own way. Many times love is self-seeking and about what we want.

Why do we insist on our way? For protection, fear, pride, anxiety, control, just to name a few. Love gives in relationships; it doesn’t take.

Love doesn’t insist on perfection. In our photoshopped, air brushed culture, we insist on perfection. We take and re-take selfies. We only post our highlights or our low lights in a way to get love. Think the next time you post something, are you posting it for affirmation? Most of us do.

But love says, “I’ll accept you. I’ll walk with you.” Love says, “I won’t have an independent spirit.” This doesn’t mean you are co-dependent, because that’s unhealthy, but do you bring an independent, “I’m going to do what I want when I want” spirit to your relationships?

At the end of the day, this is empathy and a willingness to see from the other person’s perspective in a relationship.

Love is not irritable or resentful. We all know people who are resentful and always irritated. They keep a list of wrongs in relationships, reminding people of past hurts. They also always expect the worst in relationships.

Do you know where this comes from? It comes from their family of origin, but often it comes from the picture they have of the relationship.

For me, I am often my biggest critic. Every situation I am in with anyone, I have a picture in my mind of what that interaction and time will be like. What this does is prevent me from enjoying the moment. I have to constantly battle this. Multiple times a day I have to remind myself, “This is good enough. The world won’t end.” When we let go and enjoy, we more easily let go of hurt, we more easily let go of things that didn’t go the way we wanted them to go.

Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. This goes with the last one.

Do you rejoice over the mistakes of those closest to you? Being able to say, “I told you it would go that way”, which puffs us up to show that we are right. We look at people who make mistakes in our lives and think, “How did you not know that would go that way?”

This also gets into the area of being historical in relationships. Do you find yourself saying, “Remember when…”, “You always…”, or “You never…”? Don’t miss this: No strong relationship is filled with the words always and never.

But what if the other person in my life is hard to love? What if my spouse is difficult? What if my child is hard to get along with? What if my parents or in-laws are always getting into our relationship?

Paul ends with what I think are the hardest parts of this passage, because they cost us the most.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things. This is the hardest part of love. This last verse shows us not only what God’s love towards us cost Him, but it shows us what love will cost us. It also shows us how strong love is.

Love can bear all things when we love the way God loves us. Love does not give up hope. Love is not naïve, but love is powerful. The love that Paul has been talking about in these verses is love that can bear all things, believe all things and hope all things.

But what if the other person doesn’t love like that?

Love endures all things. That’s why Paul ends with love endures all things.

You have the choice to endure all things, in love, even when things are the hardest and the darkest. Even when facing your hurt is painful, even when that person hurts you emotionally, you have the choice to love.

Will they return that love? Maybe not.

We love those around us the way we believe God loves us (1 John 4:19), whether we believe in God or not.

For example, if we believe God is indifferent towards us, this is how we approach most relationships. If we believe God is holding out on us, we will hold out on those closest to us in relationships. If we believe God has a short fuse, we will tend to have a short fuse. If we believe God doesn’t care what we do, this is how we will treat those closest to us.

1 Corinthians 13 shows us how to love each other, but also how God loves us.

Click To Tweet

How do I know this?

1 Corinthians 13 is a picture of God’s love toward us. All of these remind us of what God’s love is like.

God is not impatient or unkind with us. He is not pushy. God does not say to us, “Do you remember when you…”, or, “You always…” Instead, we are told that when we take the step of following Jesus and confessing our sins and need for Jesus, God remembers our sin no more. It is hard when we are hurt, carry around shame and regret and guilt from past relationships to see the truth. We are so used to seeing that relationship and all relationships through the lens of pain. Yet Jesus sets us free from our shame, regret and guilt. He is the power to overcome those experiences.

But why is love so hard?

Because, “The people God has placed in our lives are there to activate what God wants to transform.” So, as you read through the list in 1 Corinthians 13, you begin to see what God wants to transform in your life through what is difficult for you to live out.

Think of one thing, one relationship, and work on that. Change and growth take time, so don’t feel like you need to fix every relationship you have. That’s not possible. Give yourself permission to take your time. God isn’t in a rush.

1 Corinthians 13 shows us how God loves us.

Click To Tweet

Posted on

Body Image, Weight Loss & the Nasty Mirror

by

I was sitting with Katie in a room with 50 other people. All of us were in ministry of some kind, and the speaker (who also is the counselor that Katie and I meet with) asked the question that stopped me in my tracks.

“How many of you are comfortable in your body?”

How many of you are comfortable in your body?

Click To Tweet

Now before I go on, there is something you need to know.

I’m 37 as I write this and I weigh 190 pounds. I do Crossfit four days a week, and I’ve never been in better shape or as strong as I am right now. That wasn’t always the case, though. In fact, when I was 28 I weighed 300 pounds, wore a 2 XL shirt and had a 42 inch waist.

As I sat there and thought about this question, the answer was, “No, I don’t feel comfortable in my body.”

Not a day goes by that I don’t look in the mirror and see a 300 pound 28 year old who hurts when he wakes up, sweats at the most inopportune moments and gets out of breath from walking up a flight of steps. I struggled to get on the floor to play with my kids.

And I still see that guy. I stare at myself in the mirror and think about it.

When I see body builders talk about having a cheat day, I cringe. Why? A cheat day is simply a step back to 300 pounds, is how my mind thinks. This often takes away the ability to enjoy food and simply relax. My wife is so kind, but I’m sure I drive her nuts when I miss a workout or feel off my game with food.

Food, body image, the dreaded mirror and being comfortable in your own skin.

Click To Tweet

Is it possible to be comfortable in your body? Notice, the question is different than comfortable with your body.

I think it is.

Part of it has to do with accepting who you are, accepting the parts of your body that you would change (everyone has those). It also means celebrating the parts of your body that you do like. Yes, it also means enjoying food. Probably in moderation, though.

This past year, after eight years of counting calories (to teach myself how to eat), weighing myself almost daily, being insane about what I eat, I stopped. I still eat really healthy, but I’m working on stopping when I’m full. I’m enjoying life and what goes in my body. Yes, I punish myself at the gym, but that’s more out of a desire for strength and enjoyment of that punishment than trying to reach a certain body.

Am I comfortable in my body?

Not yet.

I’m closer than I was when I heard this question six months ago.

Do you feel comfortable in your body?

Click To Tweet

Posted on

Leaders Answer the Questions No One Asks & 8 Other Posts You Should Read This Week

by

leader

Each Friday I share some posts that I’ve come across in the last week. They range in topics and sources but they are all things I’ve found interesting or helpful that I hope will be interesting and helpful to you. Here are 9 posts I came across this week that challenged my thinking or helped me as a leader, pastor, husband and father:

  1. My Big Predictions For Social Media In 2017 by Steve Fogg
  2. 5 Questions to Up Your Parenting Game by Sherry Surratt
  3. How to Be a Real Leader And Great Manager by Lolly Daskal
  4. Why Kids (and Parents) Need Routine by Jenna Scott
  5. 7 Ways To Live Out The Gospel in a Post-Truth, Post-Fact Culture by Carey Nieuwhof
  6. Three Probing Questions every Pastor should Ask Himself by Charles Stone
  7. Leaders Answer the Questions No One Asks by Jonathan Pearson
  8. 6 Things Millennials Need From Pastors by Joe Hoagland
  9. How Senior Pastors Can Schedule Their Week For Maximum Impact by Brian Jones
Posted on

Five Ways Men Lead Their Families That Are Destructive

by

The idea of roles, headship and submission in marriage is obviously filled with land mines. Many people have misused and misinterpreted these beautiful verses to make them say what they want to. 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.

Yet most couples tend to have arguments and frustrations around who does what in a family and marriage. If a couple doesn’t decide who will do what, they will often run into issues. A wife will do what she saw her mom do or what she thinks a woman should do. The husband will do what he saw his dad do or what he saw in a movie.

Before deciding, though, here are five things a man is not supposed to do when it comes to leading his home.

What a husband does.

Click To Tweet

Spiritually apathetic headship. This husband completely abdicates his role as the spiritual leader of his family. He often will not go to church with his wife and kids, and if he does he is very passive. Not getting involved, not praying with his wife or kids, not praying at dinner, not guiding his kids spiritually, not asking questions, not reading the scripture to them. He leaves that up to the church or his wife.

Workaholic headship. This husband sees headship simply as providing for the needs of his family. While that is part of headship, there is more to it than making money so there is a roof over their heads, clothes on their backs and food on the table. This type of headship is disconnected from the family in some very important ways.

Dictatorial headship. This husband uses headship as a way to control and get his way, all the time. It doesn’t matter how he gets his way, and it doesn’t matter what happens because he has gotten his way. He just wants his way. Often he will use Bible verses to get it. This husband will treat his wife and kids as slaves and order them around. Often this will lead to physical abuse, which is nowhere near what Paul had in mind when he called men to be the head of their house.

Emotionally detached headship. This is the husband who is the head of the family in name only. He has nothing to do with his wife or kids. He does not lead them in any form. He simply sits by, dictating when he doesn’t like something, letting his wife take on his role and responsibility, basically doing everything he is supposed to do. Emotionally he does not know how to relate to his wife and kids. He does not know how to connect to his family; he is distant.

Are you emotionally detached from your wife and kids?

Click To Tweet

Irresponsible headship. This is the husband who buys things without consulting his wife, makes decisions on his own and generally puts his family in financial, relational, physical and emotional danger because “he is the head of the house.” This husband sees headship as a club to get to do what he wants.

5 ways men harm their marriages & families.

Click To Tweet

Posted on

The Weight & Joy of Being a Pastor: What God Thinks of You

by

When God thinks of you, what comes to mind?

This is a hard question for many of us to answer. We often think the answer is failure or disappointment or unloved.

Yet, none of those are true.

What you believe the answer is to that question shapes much of your life. This is especially true if you are a pastor.

There is a weight that pastors feel that I don’t know translates into other jobs. I think that people in churches can know about it, but not fully understand it. I know that as a youth pastor, I didn’t truly understand the weight of pastoring until becoming a lead pastor. For no particular reason, it just worked that way.

While there are many weights that a pastor carries, some of them are just human weights that others carry (including parenting), but I thought up five that I think pastors particularly carry on a daily basis because of what they do each and every week. There is an important distinction here. These are not pains; they are the weights of pastoring. There is a huge difference between pain and weight (so no one misses that).

I’ve been sharing these weights and joys recently so that those who attend a church know what it is like to be a pastor and how to best support their pastor. When those two (a pastor and the congregation) work together, some amazing things happen. When they work against each other, it is a disaster.

To see the other weights and joys, you can read them by clicking on the links: Preaching God’s word every week, You can’t change people, God’s call on your life, Seeing life change, People under you are counting on you and God using you.

Weight #4: What God Thinks of You

Pastors do not answer to their churches, boards or anybody else. Ultimately, they answer to God. Even though it is incredibly biblical, most Christians don’t like to hear it.

While pastors do answer to boards in their job, we ultimately do not answer to people. I remember having a conversation once with a guy who was upset about something we decided to do, and he said, “I give here. You answer to me. I should get to say what happens because I give here.” It is a whole other post, all the inaccuracies in that statement. I looked at him and said, “I don’t answer to you. I answer to God, and that scares me a whole lot more than the idea of answering to you.”

While this is true and biblical, most Christians do not like this idea. (Side note: This isn’t a ticket for pastors to do whatever they want.)

And it should scare a pastor to death. It should keep him humble and on his knees.

The idea of God judging how I lead Revolution, how I preach, how I shepherd, scares me. But I think it is a holy fear and one that should drive all pastors. Will God approve of what I did? Will God be glorified with what I did?

Before many pastors can answer those questions, though, there are some things they feel but never deal with. Many pastors get into ministry to help others, but many carry around approval idols. Not dealing with this causes them to put the emphasis on what people think of them instead of what God thinks of them.

Don’t miss this: Whichever one you think is more important will have an enormous impact on your leadership and the kind of church you lead.

Posted on

Rivalry, Partnership & Your Marriage

by

Rivalry in marriage? Couples don’t fight against each other, do they? They are always on the same side.

Is your spouse your rival or partner?

Click To Tweet

We are naive if we think that is true.

We all know couples who fight against each other, work against each other, undermine the other.

Paul says in Philippians 2:3 that we should not do things out of rivalry or conceit but look to the interests of others. While this is written specifically to a church, it has implications for Christians who are married.

Yet, Katie and I talk to countless couples that fall into rivalry in their marriage. It is easy to fall into, because deep down we are all very selfish and we are good at it. I remember talking to a wife who said, “I stopped doing laundry because he didn’t take out the trash or do enough around the house. I just let it pile up.” I’ve heard guys tell me, “She won’t have sex with me, so I won’t talk to her when she says she wants to talk.” Women have told us, “I’m not having sex until he does _______.” I could literally list hundreds of things, but at the end of the day the goal is to get their way. At the end of the day, these couples want to get their way, and they are willing to fight for it. They are also being selfish.

While many in our culture would say, “That makes sense”, biblically, it doesn’t. Marriage is not a contract. A contract says, “I’ll do this, you do that, and as long as we keep our end of the bargain, we’ll stay married and be happy.” That’s not what God calls us to, nor is it even possible. There are times that I have more energy than Katie, and so I pick up the baton of bedtime, baths, etc. There are times when that burden falls to Katie. One of us gets sick and takes care of the other. A contract says, “I’m sorry you are sick, but it is your turn to clean the kitchen, so get out of bed and keep up your end of the bargain or else.”

Whenever someone says something like this to me, my response is, “Let me say that back to you so you can hear what I just heard.” I think until someone else says it to us, we don’t realize what we sound like. We sound like rivals instead of spouses. We sound like people who are looking out for ourselves instead of the interest of our spouse.

You don’t serve your spouse because they deserve it or because they do it for you; you do it because you are called to. You don’t meet your spouses needs because they meet yours; you do it because you are called to.

If you’re married, here’s a simple question for you: What if you and your spouse stopped working against each other and began working together towards something? What if rivalry was not what dominated your marriage, but selflessness and teamwork?