Tag Archives: Gospel of Matthew

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How we Distort the Gospel & God’s Love for Us

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gospel

I shared this on Sunday in my sermon on Romans 5:3 – 11 from The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance—Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters by Sinclair Ferguson:

Why did Jesus die?

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This comes to expression when the gospel is preached in these terms: God loves you because Christ died for you!

How do those words distort the gospel? They imply that the death of Christ is the reason for the love of God for me.

By contrast the Scriptures affirm that the love of God for us is the reason for the death of Christ. That is the emphasis of John 3:16. God (i.e. the Father, since here “God” is the antecedent of “his…Son”) so loved the world that he gave his Son for us. The Son does not need to do anything to persuade the Father to love us; he already does!

The subtle danger here should be obvious: if we speak of the cross of Christ as the cause of the love of the Father, we imply that behind the cross and apart from it he may not actually love us at all. He needs to be “paid” a ransom price in order to love us. But if it has required the death of Christ to persuade him to love us (“Father, if I die, will you begin to love them?”), how can we ever be sure the Father himself loves us – “deep down” with an everlasting love? True, the Father does not love us because we are sinners; but he does love us even though we are sinners. He loved us before Christ died for us. It is because he loves us that Christ died for us!

How do I know God loves me?

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Monday Mind Dump…

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mind dump

  • Some days after preaching you have this high that you can’t explain.
  • Some days, you feel like you trudged through the mud of a passage and came out on the other side only to see the next verse waiting for you.
  • Today, I feel like the second one.
  • If you missed yesterday on “Do good people go to heaven?” you can listen to it here.
  • Romans 1 – 3 is an amazing set of verses that sets up the amazing truths that await in the rest of Romans, but they are hard passage to preach through.
  • Grateful for a church that wants to know what the whole bible says and sit under hard passages like ones on God’s wrath and judgment.
  • Those are humbling topics.
  • Got to celebrate with someone who kept inviting someone who finally came.
  • There’s nothing better than hearing someone say, “I have prayed and asked for years and they’re coming today.”
  • It’s a reminder that every Sunday is someone’s first Sunday. 
  • Since moving to our new location I feel like we have been doing a lot of work behind the scenes of our church to strengthen our discipleship and leadership development systems.
  • Right now, our staff is working through the leadership pipeline material from lifeway.
  • Such solid stuff.
  • Can’t wait to roll this out across all our ministries this year and how it will help people move on a path to use their gifts and talents.
  • Started reading You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit by James K.A. Smith.
  • The book is not at all what I thought it would be about.
  • Not sure if that’s ever happened to you.
  • But I’m loving it despite that.
  • So there you go.
  • Took our kids to the fair last week.
  • Spent too much money on rides but made a ton of memories.
  • Went to see Zootopia with our kids and 4 of their friends yesterday, so yes, we took 9 kids to the movies.
  • Got some funny looks.
  • All in all, a good movie. Always interesting processing with our kids the messages of a movie and it was interesting the timeliness of the zootopia message about being anything you want to be as it relates to our culture.
  • I’m predicting some fun conversations at dinner tonight about it.
  • If you’re like me, you are excited about the NFL draft this Thursday.
  • If you’re not, you just found out the NFL draft starts on Thursday.
  • I love watching the draft.
  • Yes, I’m that guy.
  • I’ll be on a plane Thursday night so I’m hoping the airplane wifi is better than the usual airplane wifi.
  • Got a lot to do today.
  • Tons of follow up.
  • Back at it…
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How God Turns Shame and Guilt into Joy

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shame

Jesus’ first miracle wasn’t just about wine—it was an act of purification from the Messiah, one that saved people from generations of sin and shame.

All of us have things in our lives we aren’t proud of.

These are things that maybe you’ve done or have been done to you. Your parents’ marriage may have fallen apart, and you find yourself still feeling the effects. It may be your marriage wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. It might be a sin or addiction that you are ashamed of, something that you wish you could stop. The kind of thing that after doing it, you feel dirty like you need to take a shower. Only, there isn’t really anything you can do to feel clean.

It wasn’t until working on a sermon on John 2 that I began to see the significance of Jesus’ first miracle. A miracle that, according to Tim Keller, can be seen as simply fixing a social oversight, but has so much more going on:

When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. And he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” So they took it. When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him. –John 2:3–11

During this time, marriage was an enormous event. The entire town would be invited and the celebration would last for up to a week. This was not simply about the couple, but was a sign of the strength of the town and community.

For the wine to run out was not a simple party oversight. This would be seen as an insult to the town and the guests. The ramifications of this happening could be felt for decades to come in terms of standing in the community, business dealings, and overall appearance. The shame heaped upon this family would be no small thing. In the same way, the shame in our lives that we carry around often comes from things in our families past. We feel the effects of an abusive grandfather we have never met or an alcoholic grandmother who is whispered about.

But Jesus didn’t just change water into wine to save this family from embarrassment and shame.

SWEETEST PURIFICATION

You see, for the Jewish people, weddings were a sign of the Messiah. Weddings were a picture of his coming, of what heaven would be like. There were also prophecies in Joel, Hosea, and Amos indicating that wine would flow freely over a barren, dry land from the Messiah (Joel 2:24; 3:18; Hosea 14:7; Amos 9:3). This imagery would not be lost on the Jews who saw this miracle.

John also points out that Jesus had them fill up purification jars. This was not what they normally used for wine, as these were the jars the Jews used to cleanse themselves to worship God, to enter the temple, to purify them. Jesus, at a wedding, which is a picture of the Messiah coming, with wine. Using purification jars that are used to make one right with God, turning guilt and shame into joy.

Later in the Gospels, Jesus will bring his disciples together for a Passover meal, hold up wine and declare it to be his blood (Matt. 26:28). Then, in Revelation 21, John tells us that when Jesus returns, it will be as a bridegroom at a wedding (Rev. 21:2).

PERSONAL JESUS

It is easy for us to miss all this without the history and picture. But, we do another thing that hinders our joy. When we read in the Gospel and Epistles of John about God loving the world or Jesus taking away the sins of the world, we picture “the world,” a globe filled with people. We don’t picture ourselves.

This past Easter at my church, we had a huge cross in a service where we wrote down specific sins that Jesus died for. It was quite an experience listing sins that Jesus has forgiven me of, that Jesus died for. It was a great picture for me to see, Jesus turned my shame into joy through his death and resurrection.

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How to Know You’re Too Busy

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A few years ago I wrote a book called Breathing Room: Stressing Less & Living More and I’ve been asked by some people how to know if they should read the book. How do you know if you are too busy or getting tired in life? My response often is, “Well, if you are asking if you are too busy, you are probably too busy.”

But just in case, here are a few ways to know you’re too busy and need some Breathing Room:

9 ways to know you’re too busy & need some Breathing Room.

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1. What is normally easy is now hard. This is one of the first things that happens. For me it centers on preaching, sermon prep, reading leadership books. Whenever I find myself not feeling motivated in one or all of these areas, I know I am past the point of running too fast in life. To combat this, I take periodic breaks from preaching (I try to not preach more than 10 weeks in a row), and I work in books that have nothing to do with sermon prep or church ministry to give my brain a break.

You may need Breathing Room if what is normally easy all of a sudden becomes hard.

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2. Sleep is hard to come by. For many Americans, sleep is hard as it is. We go to bed too late, we don’t take enough naps, we spend too much time on technology and get worked up. I try to get to bed by 10:30. I try to not look at social media or texts after 8pm so that my brain is able to take a break. If you have to take sleeping pills, watch TV to fall asleep or find yourself going to bed at midnight or staring at the clock at midnight, you need to work on your sleep.

You may need Breathing Room if it is hard to fall asleep.

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This is counterintuitive to us because we think if we’re tired we should be able to fall asleep quickly, but that is often not the case. We have pushed ourselves so hard, our brains are not used to shutting off. We have pushed ourselves past 10pm on a regular basis, getting our “second wind,” that our body is accustomed to it. Getting back to a normal sleep pattern will take some time.

3. It is hard to get going in the morning. Some people are morning people and can’t wait to get going; others are not. I’m not a morning person. But when I find myself having a hard time getting going in the morning, needing multiple cups of coffee to stay awake or to focus, that’s a warning sign. Think about this morning: how hard was it to get out of bed? The harder it was, the closer you are to burning out.

You may need Breathing Room if it is hard to get going in the morning.

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4. You get angry fast. When you are tired, you tend to get angry fast. Your fuse is shorter with those closest to you: family, friends, and coworkers. Your reaction to situations does not match the situation. You get angry at small things or cry without knowing why.

5. You struggle to make simple decisions and find yourself paralyzed at making a choice. It is amazing how when we are tired and too busy, normal everyday decisions can become agonizing mountains that appear like we can’t get over them. Decisions become tiring and life altering. The mood swings we have when we make a decision we regret become huge mood swings. An example for me is I’ll struggle to know what to watch on TV, what I want to eat. As silly as that may sound, it is a sign I have not taken care of myself.

Are everyday decisions hard for you to make? You may need some Breathing Room.

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6. Motivation is hard to come by. It is true that you are more motivated and alert at certain parts of the day. For me it is first thing in the morning, which is why I reserve that for sermon prep and not meetings. It is when I am most creative, and I need to give that mental time to the most important part of my job: preaching. When I find that motivation not there, I know I have a problem.

7. You have impulses to eat and drink, and you struggle to control them. You may also use things to calm down. This might be food, sex, porn, exercise, drugs, smoking, alcohol. While these things calm you down, and all of these are not necessarily sins, when used to calm us down or help us relax or sleep or “take the edge off,” we have a problem. If you think, “I just need ____ to calm down or feel better,” you have a problem.

8. You think short-term instead of long-term. You can’t get past today or what is right in front of you, and you feel completely overwhelmed by it. All of the decisions you make are simply focused on right now, and you talk about “getting through the day” or “if we can just make it to bedtime” or “if only we can make it til the weekend.” What happens is this becomes our new normal, and everyday is about making it to the weekend or the next break where we simply collapse from exhaustion.

Do you live for the weekend or bedtime? You may need some Breathing Room.

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9. You don’t laugh as much or have fun. This is connected to what we’ve already said, but if you can’t remember the last time you laughed and had fun, that’s a problem. When you are tired, the last thing you have energy for is fun or community. You are more irritable and have less courage. People are draining, and the only thing you want to do is be a bump on the log and watch TV. If you are an introvert, having fun with people, especially when you are tired, feels so taxing.

*This is an excerpt from my book, Breathing Room: Stressing Less & Living More. Click on the link to purchase it.

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The Most Important Step to Change

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Breathing-Room

For all of us, something or someone runs our lives. When this happens we find ourselves not living the life God has called us to. When we stop long enough to catch our breath, we realize how tired we are, how much debt we have, how we said yes to things we should have said no to.

If we aren’t careful we simply jump from “I need to lose weight”, to “I need to get out of debt”, to “I need to slow down”, and we try to make changes in those areas. We get on the latest diet, sign up for a financial class or clear our calendar for a week.

If you are like most people who try this approach, a month from now you’ll look up and see the same problem.

The question becomes, “What then?”

In most church counseling sessions we would look at the sins in your life. We would talk about your addiction to porn, your willingness to give your heart and body away in relationships, the pace that you keep, how you go into debt buying stuff you can’t afford, how you always gossip, or why you push yourself and your kids to be the best and attain a certain kind of lifestyle. We often want to move to fixing those things and think, “I’ll just stop doing them.”

If you’ve ever tried this approach, you know it doesn’t work. We can’t simply change our behavior and see lasting change. Until we understand why we do something, change and freedom will continue to elude us.

Have you ever been to a buffet – one where the plates are stacked, and whenever you pull a plate off, they all move up? Think of your life and sins as being like that stack of plates. Most of the time when we sin or hear about sin in a sermon, it is about the plate on top. To see true change, to see the things that crowd out our lives get conquered by the power of Jesus, we have to keep pulling up plates until we get to the last one, what we’ll call the sin under the sin.

If we aren’t careful this sin under the sin starts to drive our lives. What makes this easy to miss is that it is often something good that we give prominence to in our lives. Things like our kids, a job, money, keeping a clean house, retirement, a dream house or another goal.

These things are what drive us to go into debt, to run at an unsustainable pace on our calendar, which leads to an unhealthy lifestyle. This is the why.

The most important step to change is knowing why we sin.

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Let me put it another way: often when we sin, without realizing it we are looking for meaning. We sin from a place of emptiness.

We sin from a place of wanting to be filled up, a hope to feel better, more alive, a part of something, or to take away the fear of missing out on something. The search for meaning drives many of our decisions, and ultimately it’s the driving factor in our search for breathing room.

Often when we sin, without realizing it we are looking for meaning.

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*This is an excerpt from my upcoming book, Breathing Room: Stressing Less & Living More. Click on the link to purchase it.

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Praying for Your Kids

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Praying for your kids

After posting on why we parent the way we do and the gospel and parenting, the response is interesting. What most Christian parents say when you ask for advice (especially if their kids turned out well) is, “We just prayed and by God’s grace it worked.”

Now, on one hand this is true and good. Prayer is an enormous part of parenting. Most of the praying I do as a parent, though, feels like it comes out of desperation more than anything else.

What this communicates to younger parents is, “Just pray and everything will work out.”

Let’s think about Luke 15 and the prodigal son. God is represented by the Father in that parable. Was God represented for the whole parable or just at the end when the son came home? I’d say in the whole parable we are seeing what God is like.

My point from a parenting perspective is this: The glory of God is the goal of God. That’s what we are called as Christians to pursue and do, to glorify God.

Let me say something that is hard to hear and doesn’t get said enough: God might be most glorified through your child’s rebellion. He might draw more people to Himself that way. He might draw you as a parent to Himself that way, and ultimately His plan to draw your child to Himself might be through a long, dark season of rebellion.

God might be most glorified through your child’s rebellion.

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If Ephesians 1 is true (and I believe it is) that God knew before the foundations of the world who He would draw to Himself, how do I know if my child is one of those? I will pray, cry out to God, bring the gospel to bear on my kids’ hearts, but ultimately God changes them.

This isn’t to bring a dark cloud into parenting. Parents do that well enough on their own. It is to bring a realistic view to parenting and the so-called “best practices” and “what worked for me” conversations.

If the glory of God is the goal of life (and God), how do I most glorify Him as a parent? How will my kids most glorify Him?

This becomes a matter of trust as a parent. This is us placing our kids in the hands of God, which is an incredibly scary proposition because we aren’t sure what will happen. As parents, we like controlling the outcome for our kids. We do it with school, church, sports teams, dance and band practice. We send them to camps to get an edge so that we can control the outcome. We say we do all those things for their betterment and the experiences they are having as kids (and that’s partly true), but we mostly do those things to control the outcome.

God does not give us control over the outcome.

God does not give us control over the outcome as parents.

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Does this mean that kids who turn out well, following Jesus as adults, had parents who prayed for them more than kids who don’t turn out that way? I’m not sure.

Take parents who raise two kids. One follows and loves Jesus as an adult, the other doesn’t. Did the parents only pray for the one kid? I doubt that.

The question is: How is God most glorified in and through that person’s life?

Parenting should drive us to our knees for our kids, for their hearts, for their future, for the person they will marry. Parenting should drive us to our knees because of their sin and our sin. And while we are on our knees, we can ask that our parenting will glorify God as God sees fit.

Here is how we pray for our kids:

  1. Their salvation. You should pray for your kids salvation, that the gospel of grace would grip them, that they would see the depth of their sin and need for God. Nothing else matters in parenting, this right here is the ball game.
  2. God’s direction in their life. Pray that Jesus would be not only their Savior and redeemer, but that He would be their King. That He would rule and reign in their lives, that they would see their lives as being lived under King Jesus. This affects the choices they make, the way they choose to live, purity, friendships, major in college, career moves, etc.
  3. Their future spouse. No other decision has more ripple affects than who one marries. Nothing else impacts your life more than this choice (outside of following Jesus). The two things you pray for your kids, you should be praying those things for their future spouse.
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12 Ways to Keep the Passion Alive in Your Marriage

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Keep the passion alive in your marriage

I came across this list in Daniel Akin’s book God on Sex: The Creator’s Ideas about Love, Intimacy, and Marriage and thought it was really helpful:

12 Ways to Keep the Passion Alive in Your Marriage

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  1. Work at it. A lifetime of love and romance takes effort. Few things in life are as complicated as building and maintaining an intimate, passionate relationship. You need to work on it constantly to get through those trying periods that require extra work.
  2. Think team. When making important decisions, such as whether to work overtime or accept a transfer or promotion, ask yourself this question: What will the choice I am making do to the people I love? Talk with your mate and family. Make “we” decisions that will have the most positive impact on your marriage and your family.
  3. Be protective. Guard and separate your marriage and your family from the rest of the world. This might mean refusing to work on certain days or nights. You might turn down relatives and friends who want more of you than you have the time, energy, or wisdom to give. You might even have to say no to your children to protect time with your spouse. The kids won’t suffer if this is done occasionally and not constantly. It will actually be beneficial for everyone!
  4. Accept that good and not perfect is okay when it comes to your mate. No one is perfect other than Jesus! You married a real person who will make real mistakes. However, never be content with bad. Always aim for great, but settle for good!
  5. Share your thoughts and feelings. We have seen this one over and over. Unless you consistently communicate, signaling to your spouse where you are and getting a recognizable message in return, you will lose each other along the way. Create or protect communication-generating rituals. No matter how busy you may be, make time for each other. For example, take a night off each week, go for a walk together on a regular basis, go out to breakfast if you can’t have dinner alone, or just sit together for 30 minutes each evening simply talking, without any other distractions.
  6. Manage anger and especially contempt better. Try to break the cycle in which hostile, cynical, contemptuous attitudes fuel unpleasant emotions, leading to negative behaviors that stress each other out and create more tension. Recognize that anger signals frustration of some underlying issue. Avoid igniting feelings of anger with the judgment that you are being mistreated. Watch your non-verbal signals, such as your tone of voice, hand and arm gestures, facial expressions, and body movements. Remain seated, don’t stand or march around the room. Deal with one issue at a time. Don’t let your anger about one thing lead you into showering the other with a cascade of issues. If different topics surface during your conflict, note them to address later. Try to notice subtle signs that anger or irritation is building. If you are harboring these feelings, express them before they build too much and lead to an angry outburst. Keep focused on the problem, not persons. Don’t turn a fairly manageable problem into a catastrophe. Emphasize where you agree.
  7. Declare your devotion to each other again and again. True long-range intimacy requires repeated affirmations of commitment to your spouse. Remember: love is in both what you say and in how you act. Buy flowers. Do the dishes and take out the trash without being asked. Give an unsolicited back or foot rub. Committed couples protect the boundaries around their relationship. Share secrets with each other more than with any circle of friends and relatives.
  8. Give each other permission to change. Pay attention. If you aren’t learning something new about each other every week or two, you simply aren’t observing closely enough. You are focusing on other things more than one another. Bored couples fail to update how they view each other. They act as though the roles they assigned and assumed early in the relationship will remain forever comfortable. Remain constantly abreast of each other’s dreams, fears, goals, disappointments, hopes, regrets, wishes, and fantasies. People continue to trust those people who know them best and who love and accept them.
  9. Have fun together. Human beings usually fall in love with the ones who make them laugh, who make them feel good on the inside. They stay in love with those who make them feel safe enough to come out to play. Keep delight a priority. Put your creative energy into making yourselves joyful and producing a relationship that regularly feels like recess.
  10. Make yourself trustworthy. People come to trust the ones who affirm them. They learn to distrust those who act as if a relationship were a continual competition over who is right and who gets their way. Always act as if each of you has thoughts, impressions, and preferences that make sense, even if your opinions or needs differ. Realize your spouse’s perceptions will always contain at least some truth, maybe more than yours, and validate those truths before adding your perspective to the discussion.
  11. Forgive and forget. Don’t be too hard on each other. If your passion and love are to survive, you must learn how to forgive. Ephesians 4:32 must always be front and center. You and your spouse regularly need to wipe the slate clean so that anger doesn’t build and resentment fester. Holding on to hurts and hostility will block real intimacy. It will only assure that no matter how hard you otherwise work at it, your relationship will not grow. Do what you can to heal the wounds in a relationship, even if you did not cause them. Be compassionate about the fact that neither of you intended to hurt the other as you set out on this journey.
  12. Cherish and applaud. One of the most fundamental ingredients in the intimacy formula is cherishing each other. You need to celebrate each other’s presence. If you don’t give your spouse admiration, applause, appreciation, acknowledgement, the benefit of the doubt, encouragement, and the message that you are happy to be there with them now, where will they receive those gifts? Be generous. Be gracious. One of the most painful mistakes a couple can make is the failure to notice their own mate’s heroics. These small acts of unselfishness include taking out the trash, doing the laundry, mowing the lawn, driving the carpool, preparing the taxes, keeping track of birthdays, calling the repairman, and cleaning the bathroom, as well as hundreds of other routine labors. People are amazingly resilient if they know that they are appreciated. Work hard at noticing and celebrating daily acts of heroism by your mate.
12 Ways to Rekindle the Passion in Your Marriage

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Want to Work at a Church? Go to a Church.

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work at a church

I keep seeing a trend. It probably isn’t new, but it has struck me recently.

I’ve talked with different guys who want to plant a church or pastor a church. They are talented, charismatic and smart, but they all have one thing in common.

They don’t attend a church.

Want to work at a church? Attend a church.

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They have different reasons: burned out, hurt, overlooked, or often they feel like they know more than anyone else. This last group is always interesting to me because the first step of leadership is being a great follower, being humble and teachable.

If you find yourself too burned out for church, too hurt from church, than you need to pull back and not be in leadership at a church. Don’t rush back in. Take some time to heal, to catch your breath. Too often I think we lose sight of how God wants to use our whole lives and get focused on this day. We don’t have to accomplish all that God has called us to today. Right now may not be your time to accomplish. Right now might be your time to be with God, build your relationship with Him and allow Him to shape some areas of your life to prepare you for what is next.

If you are too burned out or hurt to attend church, don’t try to lead.

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So what do you do if you want to work at a church but it isn’t happening like you want?

  1. Attend a great church. This whole post is about this, but don’t miss this point. Find a great church and plug in. Learn all you can. Find great leaders to talk to, read great books and listen to great podcasts. This is a great time to learn because when you are leading, continuing to learn and grow becomes very difficult.
  2. Ask, “Why not now?” I think we get so focused on what we want, and get disappointed or bitter when it isn’t happening, that we fail to ask, “Why isn’t God opening the doors I want right now? What am I not ready for?” Don’t miss that last question. I believe God often keeps us from things because we aren’t ready for them.
  3. Focus on what God is teaching you and what you can learn right now that will be helpful in the future. Once you uncover why not now, dig into that. What does God want to show you from that right now? I remember a hard season 10 years ago when God had us in a holding pattern and I was not doing any leading. God was shaping me for what would come. It was hard and painful, but it was one of the most fruitful times of my life because I am still reaping the benefits of that learning time.
How does God want to use the in-between time to prepare you for what’s next?

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  1. Be great at whatever you do at a church. Too many young leaders want to simply lead and get paid for it right now. That may be the case for you, or it might be later or never. Don’t be so focused on a full-time job; focus on leading and using your gifts wherever you are. If you do great work, have integrity, do much with what you are given, God will honor that. On top of that, churches will want more of what you do and will place you into leadership. So become indispensable to a church.

While you may feel like a failure if you want to be a pastor and you aren’t right now, you are not a failure. We have elevated pastoring above leading in the marketplace or being a teacher or lawyer or owning a small business, and it is hurting many people who otherwise would be productive Christians. Not everyone should work full-time at a church.

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Is It Biblical for a Church to have a Target?

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church

Recently, I did a series of posts on why a church should have a target, why every church has a target and how to make choices to reach that target (you can read them here). After the series, I got some questions about whether or not it was biblical to have a target. After all, are we told anywhere in the bible that a church should have a target.

The answer is yes.

In the book of Acts, we see how Paul had a target of the Gentiles (Acts 9:15; Galatians 2:17) and how Peter had a target of the Jews (Galatians 2:17). Jesus in the great commission even gave the disciples a road map of who they were to reach and the order in which to do it (Matthew 28:18 – 20).

As you look at the New Testament, you see that certain people were better suited to reach certain people. Their backgrounds, the way they talked, how they understood certain world views, enabled them to be more effective in taking the gospel to places. The courage of some allowed them to plant churches others never would.

Does this mean that Paul never shared the gospel with a Jew? Or Peter with a Gentile? No, in fact we have evidence of them doing that. It means they were focused though and knew who their primary target was.

Churches are the same. The style of preaching lends itself to reaching a certain person. The pastors who have effective ministries are largely effective because of where they are located. That isn’t an accident. Instead of fighting against this, churches need to be clear about this. And, they need to support church planters who go to places they don’t.

Let’s admit a tension here: it sounds unloving to say we are better suited to reach a certain kind of person as a church. This is a reality though. Dress, style of music, age of the people on stage, how programmed or organic a church is. All of these go into who a church is best suited to reach. A church will reach people outside of the norm, but by and large, they will reach a certain kind of person more easily. When we fight against this, our effectiveness goes down. This is one reason that church planting is so important. It enables a church to reach different kinds of people within a city.

I think that is one reason God blessed Peter and Paul’s efforts. They led from their natural gifts, didn’t fight with each other about it (at least after Acts 15, so you can see what happens when we look down on each other) and they then encouraged each other by planting more churches in a variety of places with a variety of leaders.

 

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Don’t Hide Behind “God Isn’t Moving”

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God

Pastors and churches often find themselves in a predicament. They want their church to grow, they want to see people start following Jesus, marriages saved, people get baptized, use their gifts, but many do not see that happen. What’s worse is when the church down the road sees these things happening, which let’s be honest, simply means they are preaching an easy gospel or at the very least, “watering down the truth.”

Recently, I heard a pastor say, “My church isn’t growing because God isn’t moving.” I heard another church say, “God just isn’t blessing like he used to.” And then they both talked about how hard our culture is towards God, etc.

I’m sorry, but these are simply excuses.

I know, the church down the road has a bigger budget, more staff members, better staff members, cooler music, they have a building, they meet in a school so they don’t have the traditional trappings, they are a church plant, they an established church so people don’t think they are playing church like a church plant.

Excuses.

What pastors and churches uses these excuses for is to push off having to deal with issues as to why a church isn’t healthy or growing.

If people aren’t getting baptized, why not? Is it unclear? If people aren’t taking that first step to follow Jesus, why not? Do you present the gospel each week?

When these thoughts creep into my mind and they do and have. We’ve had weeks at Revolution where I preached to 11 people, our offering was $84, no one responded to anything, we cancelled baptisms and went 6 months without seeing a salvation.

Here are a few questions for pastors, leaders and churches to ask when “God isn’t moving” the way they would like or think he should be:

  1. Is there any sin I or our leaders or church need to confess?
  2. When preaching a sermon, are next steps clear?
  3. Is the gospel clearly presented each week with a call to take that step?
  4. How clear is the strategy of the church? How clear is the next step for a person from sunday morning?
  5. How complex and busy is the church? The busier the harder it is to know what is important.
  6. Are you being the church God called you to be or are you trying to be the church down the road or the one from the conference you just went to?
  7. How clear and compelling is our vision?

Churches that aren’t healthy and effective often don’t have good answers to these questions. Next time, when your church hits a plateau, instead of giving up or getting jealous about the church down the road, celebrate how God is moving at that church and begin working on why God isn’t working in your heart and church the way you’d like to see him.

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