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How to Find Rest in the Midst of a Busy Life

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rest

I talked this past Sunday about the idols of the heart and what drives us to do what we do. Yesterday after breakfast, Katie pointed something out to me in Isaiah 46.

While our idols drive us and only the gospel can transform our hearts to be driven by Jesus. We also look to our idols to carry us, to give us rest, to complete us.

We look for achievement to give us rest. When we’ve accomplished enough, we’ll have enough. When we have enough school, we’ll be enough. When we’ve taken enough vacations, we’ll have enough experiences.

When we have enough power, we’ll have enough control. We’ll have enough followers, enough employees. We’ll be important and feared because we have power.

When we have enough stuff, we’ll be able to slow down and rest. We’ll be able to sit on our new deck furniture, watch our huge TV from our plush chair.

We’ll finally be able to rest, because our idols will carry us.

Except. We lose employees. This year award becomes next year’s forgotten winner. That degree becomes not enough in 5 years when someone else gets one more degree than you. That vacation next year will be a distant memory when you hear about a new place, a new resort, a new experience. That power will fade as your company gets bought out or a new boss comes in and the game changes. And stuff rots and falls apart and last years most amazing TV becomes next month’s “last season’s model.”

Our idols fail. They do not carry us. They do not give us rest.

Isaiah 46:8-9 says:

Remember this and stand firm, recall it to mind, you transgressors, remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me.

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Why We Aren’t Healthy

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self control

John is a friend in his mid-30s who works out very little. He has never had to think about his health or his eating habits. He can eat 3 cheeseburgers in a meal and not gain any weight. Each day he eats fast food for lunch. This has created a lifestyle that is not sustainable, as he gets older. He confided in me recently that for the first time in his life, he feels lethargic after eating and is starting to feel like his clothes are getting tighter.

In high school and college Daniel was in great shape as he played sports. But then he got a job, got married and his exercise habits slowed down while his eating stayed the same. He is now almost 30 and starting to long for what he used to look like and the pace that he used to live. He always feels behind at work and home and wishes he had the stamina he once had.

Heather is single, works part-time, and goes to school full-time. She wants to get married, but has always struggled with her weight. It isn’t that she eats a lot of food; she just makes poor choices about food. She wishes that she could have more time to exercise, but with school and work, it ends up being a quick bite here, a short night of sleep there, and a Friday night with friends that leaves her feeling lonely and unhappy. Whenever she sees her friends who keep their weight off, eat whatever they like (at least in her mind) and women she sees at the mall or in a magazine, she feels heavier and heavier. She wants to have time for community and church but struggles to make this happen on top of a healthy lifestyle.

Austin is overweight by about 60 pounds. He works too many hours each week, sleeps too little, and eats too much. He never exercises. He takes time to be with his family and attend church. He doesn’t have a desire to lose weight or be healthier and doesn’t really see the need as it hasn’t affected his health–yet. In fact, he would say that his weight isn’t a problem and it certainly isn’t a sin.

Lisa is married, in her mid-30s, and a mother of 2 toddlers. She spends her days chasing after her kids and picking up after them. She’s wants to get back to her pre-baby weight, but is too tired. She looks at magazines, which never help her to feel better. They only remind her of the body she used to have. Her husband doesn’t complain, but she is unhappy. She feels like a failure as a mom because of how tired she is, longing for 5 minutes of quiet, a hot shower and to know that she is making an impact on her kids. She misses the romance she and her husband used to share and laments the feelings she has whenever her husband asks her about sex because of how she feels about herself.

Any of these sound familiar?

The problem for many people is that these things are so normal and so accepted that we don’t think twice about them.

Let me ask you this. Do you find yourself eating mindlessly? You start a snack and before you know it, the bag is empty? There are leftovers on the counter or food on your spouse’s plate that you just eat? When you have a long day at work, do you find yourself eating to numb the pain or bring some comfort? If a meal you make is so good, you find yourself having seconds and then a third trip?

Answer yes to enough of these questions and you are addicted to food. If so, you are not alone. Most Americans are.

In fact, if you attend church, it is one of the addictions you can have that no one will call you out on. Think for a minute. When was the last time you heard a sermon on weight or eating habits? We talk about overindulgence, but always in relation to alcohol or money. Pastors typically stick to the really “big” sins partly because it is easier, and partly because most pastors are overweight.

It is so accepted in our culture to be overweight. It is almost expected.

Let’s Talk about You

I’ve spent some time talking about my story, so now it is time to talk about you.

Where do you fit into this? Do you have an eating disorder where you won’t eat anything or throw it up out of fear of what you look like or trying to look a specific way? This tragic thinking affects so many people, particularly women. I remember talking to a college student who couldn’t have weighed more than 100 pounds telling me how fat she felt. It was heartbreaking.

Maybe you are on the other end of the spectrum and you can’t stop eating. At the end of a long day you find yourself not eating one Oreo, but the whole box. It seems there are many foods that you can’t eat just one of.

Another is when we work out and can’t take a rest day. If you workout and enjoy it like I do, if you miss a day do you get angry? Frustrated that you will not be building the muscle that you want?

The Image of God

So how do you think about your body? Many people who attend church regularly every week and follow Jesus do not believe the truth of Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” And, 1 Corinthians 6:19 – 20 says: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”

Together, these two verses lay out a simple truth that many followers of Jesus know in their heads, but fail to live out in their lives. Why do we not connect the dots on these two key verses? If we truly believed that we were created in the image of God, we would look at our bodies with more wonder, more joy and gratitude for how we were made instead of thinking about why I can’t be thin or even lose weight. We live as if God messed up in the process of creating us and gave us the wrong body.  We often take 1 Corinthians 6 as simply a suggestion, yet rarely take it seriously and think through how we honor God with our bodies, how we treat them, and what we put into our bodies. We thank God before a meal, and then stuff thousands of calories into it, slowly destroying the body God has given us.

It’s popular in our day to think our bodies belong to us. We think, “No one can tell me what to do with my body!” In fact, in our culture nothing is more essential to our identity than the freedom to express ourselves and use our bodies as we choose. But God says our body belongs to him, not us. We are temples of the Holy Spirit and members of Christ (1 Corinthians 6:15). The body is no longer for self-gratification, but for God-glorification (vs. 20).

Let’s go back to Genesis 1 for a minute. If you and I are made in the image of God, then that means we are not an accident. The body, DNA, and genetics you have when it comes to how you burn through food, or not, are not an accident. They were planned. According to Ephesians 1, God planned these things before he created anything. Think about your body and what you would change. Maybe it’s your nose, love handles, legs, or arms. Those were planned and created by God, in his image.

1 Corinthians reminds us the price that God paid for us. Jesus went to the cross to redeem our bodies. They are broken; sin is real and has brought havoc to us in the form of our eating habits and how we think about our bodies.

The only time I’ve heard 1 Corinthians 6 mentioned has been in connection with why someone says a Christian shouldn’t smoke or drink alcohol as we stuff chicken wings into our mouths. Our view of this verse is too small and misses the grandness of its intentions. Taken together, these verses reflect how our body is to be a reflection of God to the world around us. On top of this, we see God’s love and care for us in our body that he has created.

Self-Control

Several years ago my brother-in-law asked me when I was at my heaviest, almost 300 pounds, “How can you challenge people in your sermons to have self-control if you don’t have any?” It’s a tricky question. Why do people lack self-control? Is it just born in them (or not in some cases)? Are some people just more strong willed than others and that’s it?

The reality is that personality-wise, some people tend to be more driven and strong willed than others. As a follower of Jesus, though, self-control is something we’ve been given by God. In Galatians 5, after Paul lays out how followers of Jesus have been set free by Jesus, he tells them how to see this truth in their lives in verse 22. He says that they will have fruit, evidences in their lives of this change, in the form of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (emphasis added).

The Holy Spirit has given followers of Jesus the power of self-control. This has enormous implications in how we eat, exercise, look at our bodies, sleep and work. Those moments of weakness when you want to eat another piece of pie or stay up and watch one more show, you have the power through the Holy Spirit to control yourself. The moments that you find your mind drifting and thinking about the body you wished you had or are trying to please in appropriate ways, you have the power through the Holy Spirit to control your thoughts and focus on how God created you. Sound impossible? But is anything that is worth doing not hard in the beginning but gets easier as you commit to it?

Do this: when you are finished reading this, go and stand in front of a mirror. I know, I know. For some of us, mirrors are our enemies, but hang with me for a minute. As you look in the mirror, look at the things you would change. Now remind yourself that God created those things for a purpose before the foundations of the world.

Then, think about what you ate today, the pace you have kept with work, and exercise and sleep in the last week. Are you honoring God with your body in those areas?

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Two Ideas that Should Change how We Think about our Bodies, Weight Loss & Food

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food

For many of us, when we think of addictions we think of things like drugs and alcohol. In our culture, depending on your background, you may now toss pornography or sex into those categories. Yet, in most churches and among Christians, these aren’t the only addictions that plague us. And no, I’m not talking about debt and money, although those certainly are addictions that plague many people.

What I’m talking about has to do with weight loss, body image and food.

My name is Josh…and I’m addicted to food.

If you are like me, you love food. You might be one of those people who just love to snack. You always seem to have a bowl of candy on your desk, grab a bag of chips mindlessly. Sitting in front of the TV you find yourself eating something. It isn’t anything big, it isn’t a meal, but you are just always eating.

Maybe for you it is dessert. You can’t go to bed without eating dessert. It is a comfort when life seems out of control. A long day is made better with a bowl of ice cream, a piece of pie, or some chocolate.

For me, I was never much of a snacker. When my wife Katie and I would take road trips, I never really wanted snacks. But I couldn’t resist the stops we could make for a hearty meal.

There is something else we might have in common. For you, it might not be food that is a problem; it is how you feel about yourself. The constant comparison to magazine covers or TV ads, the inferiority complex you have as you compare yourself to that guy in your office, the one who can eat whatever he wants and lose a pound, the woman who always looks put together. Your sibling who always seems confident, looks great, and feels great. Kind of like an annoying commercial.

Across the board in America, there is a problem when it comes to food addiction, weight loss, stress, health and body image. Today, there are more people overweight and obese than ever before. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, as many as 35.7% of adults are overweight or obese, and 17% of children (or 12.5 million) are overweight or obese. And consider this: 44% of U.S. women are on a diet, 29% of U.S. men are on a diet, 80% of U.S. women do not like how they look, and $109 million is spent in the U.S. every day on diet and weight loss products. Among those who lose weight while on a diet, 95% will regain all of the weight they lost within the first 5 years. And as far as stress, 43 percent of U.S. adults suffer adverse health effects from stress, according to an American Psychological Association (APA) study.

Is This It?

Maybe you have gotten to the place where you’ve asked, “Is this it? Is this really how life was meant to be lived?” Envying the bodies of someone else, envying the pecs, six pack abs, butt or hips of someone else?

My change began 6 years ago. There wasn’t a magic pill of any kind, I didn’t have a surgery, but things in m heart began to change, which led to things in my life changing.

I wasn’t always overweight. In fact, in college I played soccer all 4 years but when college ended, I continued to eat like I played soccer year round and then my metabolism came to a screeching halt and well, you can guess the rest. I ballooned up to almost 300 pounds. Someone looked at our wedding pictures recently and asked how much weight I lost. When I told them I lost 130 pounds, they said, “You lost a jr. higher.”

Maybe you are reading this and think, “I don’t have an eating problem. I’m not overweight, but I can’t stop looking at the bodies that others have. I starve myself to look a certain way, to feel beautiful.”

Maybe you are like a guy I had lunch with recently. He eats like he doesn’t know fruit or vegetables exist, but he doesn’t gain any weight. For him, weight is an issue others deal with, but he doesn’t view his body the way God does.

Our Bodies and the Gospel

Often, when it comes to our bodies, the only time we bring the gospel into the conversation is if we are talking about sex. This is too small. If the gospel changes everything, if the gospel one day restores all things, then our bodies, health, body image and weight loss should fit into the discussion.

Two ideas have changed how I think about food, weight loss, health, pace in life, body image and how I talk about them. The first is found in the first chapter of the Bible in Genesis 1 where it tells us that we as humans are made in the image of God. Most Christians do not believe this. How do I know? We envy other people’s images instead of celebrating our own.

The second idea is a verse that gets quoted to encourage Christians to not smoke or drink, at least, that is how the pastor of the church I grew up in used it. In 1 Corinthians 6:19 – 20 it says, do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

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6 Common Struggles of Pastors

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pastors

Over the past week, I’ve been doing a series on The Sins of a Pastor. These sins are not necessarily unique, but I believe most pastors struggle with them. They are also sins that can be easily hidden, seen as spiritual things, the right thing for a pastor to do and they are often things the church or elders of the church encourage without realizing it.

If you missed any of them, here they are:

  1. Your Bible is for more than just sermon prep.
  2. Untouchable.
  3. The Pastor’s Family.
  4. Need to be needed.
  5. Letting your wife shoulder the load at home.
  6. Lazy.
6 common sins of pastors.

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Why Pastor’s Should Take a Summer Preaching Break

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I am coming off of my summer preaching break at Revolution. When we started the church 5 years ago, I preached almost 100 times in the first 2 years. While it seemed necessary at the time, it was not unwise and certainly not sustainable.

It is always interesting to me when pastors hear about the break I take each summer. They often tell me how they could never do that or what they would do if they did that. I’ve talked to church members who don’t know what to do with a pastor taking a break. I get quizzical looks and then they say, “It would be nice for me to take 4 weeks off.” Which totally misses the point, but it would be nice to take 4 weeks off.

Here’s what I do on my break & why you as a pastor should take one:

  1. Rest. During my break I go on vacation, spend longer time with Katie and the kids than I normally do. I take more retreat days to be alone with Jesus and work on my heart. In the flow of a ministry year, it is easy to get busy and drown out the voice of the Holy Spirit. While I take my day off each week and try to take a retreat day each month, it is easy to skip these. A break gives me no excuse. During a break, I’m able to read my bible longer and journal more, pray more and work on me as a man, a father, a husband and a pastor. If this were the only thing a pastor gained from his break, his church would be better off, but there’s more.
  2. Let the church hear from other communicators. I would love to think I’m the greatest communicator my church has ever heard, but that isn’t true. In fact, they get tired of me, how I say things and what I say. I start to run out of interesting things to say, my stories get dry and don’t connect and I get tired of the series we are in. This happens every series we do, 10 weeks into it I’m ready for the next one. A break lets other people preach, which develops other communicators who God is calling into ministry or preaching. It allows my church to hear a different way of preaching, a different lens of reading the Bible and new insights and stories. Depending on how well they do, it might also give your church a greater appreciation for you. Some notes on guest speakers: they must line up with you theologically, don’t preach heresy on your week off. They must be good. I knew one pastor who booked speakers who weren’t as good as he was so when he came back people were excited he was back. I want Revolution to be great 52 weeks a year, regardless of who is preaching.
  3. Get your love and passion for preaching back. Preaching is hard work. It is tiring and draining. I love to preach and prep a sermon. It is one of the favorite parts of my job, but it is physically, emotionally, spiritually and mentally tiring. Pulling back for a few weeks is incredibly important. Two weeks into your break, you will want to preach again and have the itch. This is good, then enjoy the last 2 weeks. For me, I’ve learned that I need to take a week off from preaching every 10 weeks. Every pastor is different, but that seems to be my limit.
  4. Evaluate the church. Andy Stanley calls this “working on the church, not in the church.” When I’m not working on a sermon, it gives me a chance to pull back and look at everything. This summer we and my leaders spent a great deal of time evaluating Missional Communities, talking about our first Revolution Church plant and what that will look like, and how we will get from 250 to 500 in attendance and what needs to change for that to happen and what will change because of that. In the normal flow of a ministry year, it is hard to have these meetings because they take time, but the summer is the perfect time to pull back and evaluate.
  5. Look ahead. Right along with evaluating your church, you can look ahead. You can read for upcoming sermons and series. You can work ahead on things. This summer, I started to work on the series we will begin in January. This is a huge help to our church because it allows us to have resources, daily bible study questions, mc guides, and study guides to educate our people in Scripture. None of these things happen at the last minute.
  6. Grow your leadership through books and conversations. Taking a break gives you extra time to read outside of sermon prep. I love to read and it seems I am always reading 5 books, but a summer break helps me read more and from a wider variety of books and topics. It also helps me have time to talk to other leaders, ask them questions, learn from them to benefit our church. This summer, I’ve spent time talking to pastors of church that are in that 350-500 range to see what is next. I’ve talked with pastors who have planted a church and what they learned in the process.
  7. Gives you energy for the fall. In most churches, the fall is the second biggest growth time of the year. The spring is the biggest for Revolution. Taking a break in the summer, pulling back gives you the energy for the season that is coming. If you go into the ministry season at 85%, you will burnout and not make it. If you go in at 100% you will push through and be of greater use to your church and Jesus.

If you are an elder or a church member who has the power to encourage your pastor to do this, do it. The benefit to your pastor, his family and your church is enormous. If you are a pastor, stop making excuses about this. Educate your elders, vision cast and lead up. I had to at the beginning as my elders didn’t understand why I’d do this. To them it felt like I was taking a month off. That’s okay, but don’t let that stop you.

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Stop Assuming the People You Preach to Agree with You

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Two things happened recently that has really made me think about my preaching and the preaching of others.

One was at the Preach the Word conference where Justin Anderson made the comment, “Stop assuming people agree with what you believe. Unchurched people don’t agree with your beliefs, most of the churched people don’t agree with your beliefs, stop assuming.” He went on to say, “Pastors need to say less and prove more.”

Think for a minute all the statements that pastors make in their sermons, with little context or explanation. Assuming that everyone is on board with basic biblical truths like: everyone is a sinner, apart from Jesus you’ll spend eternity in hell, God loves you, Jesus rose from the dead, you have an idol that you worship.

Let me be the first to say, I am guilty of this. I have really been growing in this area in the last year thanks to the mentoring of Justin and others.

Then, in the aftermath of the tornado in Oklahoma came this interview on CNN:

Here are a few things this means for pastors:

  1. Explain things more. One of the things a good communicator does is explain what they mean. Too many pastors and communicators simply think everyone knows what they are talking about. I will very rarely use the words justification, sovereignty of God, sanctification, or gospel. I believe in all of them and love the truth of them. The problem is some people have no idea what you are talking about or have the wrong idea. I used to say gospel over and over in a sermon and one day someone asked, “Why do you keep saying gospel in your sermon? You aren’t preaching from a gospel.” Others see the word gospel simply as what gets you to heaven. Instead of saying sanctification I’ll talk about becoming the person Jesus created you to be. Now, as a pastor if you do this, you’ll get push back from the people who want “deep” preaching. That’s okay.
  2. Talk about why you believe things. If a pastor says something in a sermon, something they believe to be true about God or the gospel, explain why you believe that. If you are talking about grace and forgiveness, talk about why you believe those things. Show from Scripture and from your life how you’ve seen them to be true. Too often pastors simply give the finished product. They wrestle with a text or concept alone in their study and then say, “Here’s where I landed.” It is helpful to show some of that struggle and share some of that for your church.
  3. Have less points. I’ve talked about this too many times to count. If you have more than one point in a sermon, you are wasting a lot of time. Your church can’t remember more than one point and you can’t remember more than one point. Say your one point, a lot.
  4. Affirm the questions people have, don’t dismiss them. You as a pastor have questions, so do the people in your church. You don’t have to answer them all every week in every sermon, but affirm that their questions exist and are real. People wonder why God doesn’t heal them, why their spouse walked out, why getting fired could be God’s plan for them or if they are being punished for something. They wonder if hell exists or if Jesus really is the hero of all things. Affirm those questions. Tell them they are real and okay to ask. People in Scripture have doubts and unbelief and Jesus engages them.
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Why Celebrating Valentine’s Day can Reveal Marital Problems

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book

Today is Valentine’s Day. Today, countless couples will spend thousands of dollars on flowers, dinner and gifts. And because it’s Valentine’s Day, they will pay more than they should.

Valentine’s Day also reveals something and it could be a problem if you are married. For couples, men will pursue their wives. They will make plans, get a babysitter, buy her a gift and make it a special night, all about her. What’s wrong with that you may ask.

Read that paragraph again and see if you see it.

A couple of years ago, Katie was talking with some other mom’s around Valentine’s Day. All the mom’s were excited about a night away from their kids, with their husband and the things he was doing for her. They asked Katie what we were doing. This year Valentine’s Day fell on a Monday and our date night is Friday. She looked at them and said, “Josh isn’t doing anything tonight for me.” They looked sad, poor girl. She looked at them and said, “He doesn’t need to, every week we have date night so I know he pursues me each week and I have his undivided attention every week.”

Silence.

What if, the energy you spent on Valentine’s Day, you spent that each week for a date night? Now, there’s no way you or I could afford what you spend to make Valentine’s Day special. What if you took that energy and money and spread it over the year?

Here’s a successful date night (at home or going out):

  • As a husband, you plan it. This communicates she’s worth your time. She feels pursued. You are able to serve her. 
  • Planning means, you know where you are eating, what you are doing and got a babysitter.
  • If it is at home, you put the kids down so she can relax.
  • Turn your phone, computer and TV off.
  • Look her in the eye and give her you undivided attention.
  • Do this each week.

If, like most married couples you choose to do this once every 52 weeks, you’ll have the marriage most married couples have (which isn’t very good).

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4 Ways to Maintain Community

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community

There is no doubt that our culture desires community. This is why Facebook, twitter, instagram, pinterest and other social media sites are so popular. We even put social in the name to emphasize how much we want community from them. The problem is that these sites bring connectivity to our lives, but not community. Those aren’t always equal. It is deceptive to the point that people think because they are connected and have 1,000 facebook friends, lots of twitter followers or instagram likes, they have community. They have connection, not necessarily community.

In Ephesians, Paul lays out what the church in Ephesus knew in their heads, but struggled to know and live out in their hearts. We easily do this with community. We know what it takes to have community, know we should have community, yet we struggle to live that out. Paul gives us 4 ways to maintain unity in relationships, whether that is a church, a missional community, a marriage or family. The interesting thing he says is not to create unity, simply maintain it (Eph. 4:3). It is given to us by Jesus through our relationship in him.

Because of this change in our lives, finding our identity in Jesus alone (Eph. 4:1), we are empowered by the Holy Spirit to maintain unity through:

  1. Humility. This is the basis of the Christian life. To follow Jesus, one must humble themselves and admit they are broken and that without Jesus, they continue this way. Relationships are destroyed because of pride. Pride elevates one person over another, elevates one agenda over another. Keeps people from serving each other. Pride keeps people from receiving help when needed. I can’t tell you how many times people have complained about their struggles and when I ask who they’ve asked for help from, they say “no one.” Pride.
  2. Gentleness. This is being caring in a relationship. Not berating someone, not bringing up history in a relationship, not reminding someone what they’ve done wrong in the past. This is caring for the other person, seeking their best, not yours. This gets into how you speak to someone. If you say something and immediately have to say, “I was just kidding” that’s sin. You weren’t kidding, there’s some truth in that statement.
  3. Patience. Community will require patience. People will let you down, intrude in your life. You can’t have a relationship and always get your way. I meet so many people who are alone and the reason is because they aren’t willing to give up what they want. Patience also requires you to allow people to grow and change. If Jesus is the basis of our relationships, then we believe He is powerful enough to not only save us and those we’re in community with, but also powerful enough to change them. Stop trying to change those around you, let Jesus do that through you.
  4. Love. Biblical love is not an emotion first. In our culture that’s all love is. This is why people tell me right before they sin, “You can’t choose who you love.” Biblically, you can. Love is an act of the will (a choice), followed by an emotion. One author said, “To love means you start loving a person and on the way to loving that person, you begin to feel that love.”

While these 4 things are incredibly basic and all of us know them. They are difficult to live out. If they are lived out, the gospel is seen clearly. Community is one of the most powerful pictures of the gospel because people in our culture do not stay in relationships long. Lasting in relationship, often is one of the best ways to show the gospel has a changed a group of people.

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Kids Take Their Cues from their Parents

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kids

I’m often asked how to change a child. How do you make a child follow Jesus? How do you make a teenager make better choices?

There are a few realities of parenting I’ve learned. One is, you can’t change a child or a teenager. The Holy Spirit can. I’ve talked before about how you need to be praying for your child, but there is something you can do beyond that.

What is important to you often becomes what is important to your child. Think about it, there is a good chance you have a hobby because one of your parents had a hobby. Maybe you like working on cars because you used to do that with them. You might like camping or hiking because they did.

What is important to you often becomes important to your child. Choose wisely.

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In our house, our kids have a deep love for music, for nature, sports in general and the Steelers. Why? Because Katie and I love those things. We pass on what we love.

The reality of parenting is that if our kids are not growing in their love for Jesus, the first place we need to look is our own lives. It isn’t the church’s fault, it isn’t our kid’s fault, the fault often lies with us. If Jesus isn’t important to us, why should we expect it to be to our kids? They pick their cues up from us.

I remember talking with two dads a few years ago who each had teenage kids. One of the dad’s was lamenting that their kids were seniors in high school and wanted nothing to do with church or God. The other dad looked at him and said, “How can you be surprised? You’ve spent the last 6 years skipping church and missional community for basketball and soccer. You’ve taken your kids all over the state for competitions. You’ve spent 6 years telling them that sports are more important than God, they are just doing what you taught them.”

Those words have stuck with me; they are just doing what you taught them. Our kids do what we teach them. They pick up their cues from us. If we tell them something is more important than church, reading your bible, praying, giving, attending a missional community, they will learn that lesson.

Here’s the question to wrestle with:

  1. Are your kids growing in their love for Jesus?
  2. If your kids left home right now, would they be reading their bible?
  3. Would they look to join a missional community or do they not know how important biblical community is?
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What Do People Feel From You as a Leader

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leader

If you are a leader, what do people feel when you are around? There is an expectation that people have of leaders, that they will be confident, visionary, know where they are taking a team or organization, but also not full of themselves in the process.

What happens though, when you as a leader don’t know where you are going? You don’t know the next step for your church or organization. Do you fake it til you know? What about when you don’t feel like leading or doing your job?

These feelings will come at some point. You will have a sermon to preach you don’t feel prepared for or are too tired to preach. Yet, it is the weekend.

The reality of leadership and teams is that the team feeds off the leader. A church begins to reflect the leader.

Last year, I walked through a season where I did not live with margin. Emotionally I got burned out through things going on at church (a church merge among them), as well as stress in my life with health issues, car accidents, and our adoption. I did not keep myself fresh and found myself burned out. Crispy. Toast. Whatever word you want to use.

Most weeks I did not feel like leading. I did not feel like preaching. I had no energy to give. I didn’t feel very visionary.

Here’s the sad part, it was reflected in Revolution. Revolution feeds off the attitudes of its leaders. If the leaders are tired, that is felt in the church. If the leaders don’t feel like being there, that is felt and reflected in the church. If the leaders are dry spiritually, that is felt and reflected in the church.

One might think, the answer is simply that pastor’s need to fake it, act like they want to be there and everything will be fine. That isn’t the answer, because faking it will be obvious eventually.

What this does for me is reveal what is the most important thing I do as a leader. The most important person I lead as a leader is myself.

So, how do you lead yourself?

First, you must know yourself. What are your limits physically, emotionally, spiritually, relationally. These are different for each person and will often change as you age. I could handle more physically when I was 23 than I can at 33. As an introvert, my limit relationally is different than an extrovert.

Second, as a communicator, how many weeks in a row can you preach before being exhausted and run out of things to say? For me, I’ve learned that 10 weeks is about my limit. Every 10 weeks I need to have at least 1 week where I don’t preach. This helps me to regroup, helps Revolution hear from other communicators and it gives me time to physically recover. I’ve met guys who have longer or shorter reaches on this.

Third, what robs you of energy and what gives you energy? There are people and situations that rob you of energy, do your best to eliminate these from your life. The reality is, this might take some time. You may need to move things around in your life. I’ve learned how many meetings a week I can have with people, how many lunches I can have while making sure I have time to work on my sermon and to make sure I don’t kill myself relationally. On days that are intense relationally, the next day I am sure to schedule introvert time and work on a sermon.

Fourth, deal with those things in your life that have hurt you emotionally. At the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011, these were the hardest months for me since we started Revolution. We had an elder roll off our elder team that was hard for me personally because of my friendship with him, but God was clearly moving him to a new adventure. It was still hard. Then we had to discipline a different elder and ultimately remove him. While this was going on, we were merging with another church. The merge was harder than I expected it to be and a lot of relationships. All of this begins to add up, stacking is what one author calls it. If you don’t deal with these, figure out how to take a break from them, you will burn out emotionally.

Ironically, most of the talk about burn out has to do with physical limits, but I think the emotional part of the equation is what burns most people out.

All of this gets into what people feel from you as a leader. If you are tired physically, not sleeping or eating well, not exercising, it will show. If you are moving further and further away from God in your relationship with him because you are so busy doing work for God and helping others with their relationship with him that you have nothing left for your own, that will show. If you have emotional baggage that you have not dealt with, that will begin to show.

This isn’t a call for a super leader. That isn’t the answer, because that isn’t possible. Instead, this is a call to be real about life. To know your limits, to lead yourself so that you can lead others.

This much is true, your attitude, feelings, excitement as a leader are felt throughout your organization, team or church. There is no way around it. Because of that, you need to lead yourself first, so you can lead others well.