Tag Archives: revolution church

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When You Doubt God

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Made for Glory

I’ve seen it so many times and every time it breaks my heart: someone whose life is held back because of doubt. 

If we are honest, all of us have doubts about Jesus. We struggle some days to believe that He can forgive us, redeem our sins, use our past for good or even that He really is who He says He is, that He is God.

What do you do with doubts?

For many people, they become their doubts, they allow their doubts to take over their lives and lead them to live in unbelief, completely missing the life God created for them to live.

Doubts keep us in the dark. Doubts keep us from experiencing freedom.

And truth be told, there is a way out of doubt.

This Sunday at Revolution Church I’ll be preaching from John 12:12 – 50 as we look at how to handle our doubts, how Jesus answers our doubts and helps us to live the life we were created to live. 

A life of freedom, passion, adventure and faith.

This is a huge Sunday at Revolution if you’ve ever struggled with doubt. 

Remember, we meet at 10am on Sunday mornings at 8300 E Speedway Blvd.

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Creating a Personal/Family Mission Statement

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Family Mission Statement

Yesterday, I talked about how to create a lasting, worthwhile legacy as a man and family. Many people took the next step of “creating a personal/family mission statement.” This can be a daunting, overwhelming task.

Katie and I went through this practice last year. To help us, we each reach through Patrick Lencioni’s book Three Questions for a Frantic Family. You can read my review of the book here.

You need to know this up front:

  • This process is incredibly freeing.
  • There is no right or wrong mission statement. It is your life, your family, you get to define it. So don’t compare to others.
  • Lastly, future generations are affected by this statement. This will define how you spend your time, your money, who you are friends with, where you will worship Jesus, etc. Your grandkids will feel the affect of this statement and if you don’t have one.

Why do this?

Creating a family mission statement helps your family make better decisions.

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If you don’t do this, your family and you personally wander around aimlessly. How do you make a decision when both options seem good? Without a mission statement you guess and hope you are right. With a mission statement, decisions become easier. You are also able to evaluate things more clearly.

Let’s get started.

Start by listing all the things that describe your family. Not what you hope your family or life is, but what you really are. What is important to you? What matters most? What things will you fight til the death on? This list should be exhaustive. You are listing everything you can think of.

Now, start paring it down. Are there words that mean the same thing or can be combined? You are looking for about 5 words to describe your family or you personally. You want it to be short enough to fit on a T-shirt so you remember it.

Now that you have your statement comes a great addition that Lencioni calls “The rallying cry.” This is what you is the most important thing for your family to accomplish in the next 2-6 months. Maybe it is debt, a health issue, a learning issue for a child, your marriage. It is, outside of the normal things your family does, the one thing you have to do in the next 2-6 months for your family to go to the next level. Accomplishing this, would mean a whole new ballgame for your family.

One you have your “Rallying cry” what do you need to do to accomplish this? List all the things it will take.

A simple way to take stress and busyness out of your family calendar.

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Got it.

Okay, now share it with a close friend or two. This can be incredibly scary. Ask them to listen as you read it and give feedback. Are the words you used to describe your family, what your family is? Do they see a different value system than you do? You want to pick close friends for this.

Once you feel confident, put the mission statement and the rallying cry in a place where you will see it on a regular basis to remind you and keep you on track.

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Be Sensitive on Mother’s Day

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Mother’s Day is a big day for most churches. While Mother’s Day is a great day to honor moms in our lives, it is also difficult for many. Most pastors’ blogs will talk about honoring women, doing baby dedications, giving out gifts to mothers, etc., on Mother’s Day.

Mother’s Day is a hard day for many women in your church. For some, it reminds them of a broken relationship with their mother, of someone who is no longer there. For some, it is a reminder of the loss of a child. For some, it is a reminder that they aren’t mothers, even though their desire exists. For some, it is a reminder that they aren’t married when they want to be.

So, be sensitive.

Here are some things you can do at your church:

  • Honor all women. 
  • Acknowledge moms and the role they play. While you are being sensitive, please don’t ignore that it is Mother’s Day. It is; it’s on the calendar, and everyone knows it. You can be sensitive while acknowledging and honoring Moms.
  • If you give out a gift, give it to all women. We’ve given all women flowers in the past. This year we are doing free pictures for families, couples or groups of friends, or individuals.
  • If you want to give a gift to the moms in your church, give it to your children’s ministry to avoid drawing attention to it.
  • Encourage those who Mother’s Day is a difficult day to come forward for prayer with a leader.
  • Acknowledge that Mother’s Day is a great day for some and a hard day for others. This goes a long way in letting all women know they matter and that you see them.
  • Preach the gospel. You should do this every week, but especially on Mother’s Day. Remind women that their only hope, regardless of where they are on Mother’s Day, is Jesus.
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6 Ways to Bring the Gospel into Your Parenting

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parent

In parenting, as in all of life, the goal of what you are trying to accomplish matters. It will dictate the decisions you make, how you spend your money and time, what you emphasize and ultimately, if you succeed or fail.

Too many parents, especially those in the church, have the wrong goal. Their parenting is not unique. What does that mean? It means, if you are a follower of Jesus, you should have a different goal and parent differently from those who don’t follow Jesus. Ask this, can you accomplish the goals for parenting or your kids without Jesus? Your kids can be successful, healthy, moral, marry well, have good values, and do all of that without Jesus.

Elyse Fitzpatrick said,

“Most parents who attend church want what most of parents want for our children. Jesus or no Jesus, we just want them to obey, be polite, not curse or look at pornography, get good jobs, marry a nice person, and not get caught up in the really bad stuff. It may come as a surprise to you, but God wants much more for your children, and you should too. God wants them to get the gospel. And this means that parents are responsible to teach them about the drastic, uncontrollable nature of amazing grace.”

Paul tells parents they need to expect their kids to obey, to honor them and to respect them. Many parents do not have this expectation. Whenever I hear a parent count to their child, they communicate, I don’t expect you to listen to me the first time. When I get to 3 will suffice. As kids get older and become teenagers, many parents let their guard down and don’t expect them to speak respectfully. It is easier to let them get away with it than put up the fight. I understand the weariness of parenting, but if God gave you children, it is time to step up to the plate.

Paul ends this section by letting us in on how to raise kids that are respectful and obedient. By discipline and instruction in the Lord. Whenever he uses the phrasing he uses in vs. 4, he is speaking about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. He is calling parents to bring the gospel into their parenting, on all occasions  whenever possible.

The word for discipline, means to “nurture, educate, or train,” and the word for instruction, means “calling attention to” or “mild rebuke,” “correction,” or “warning.”

In other words, Paul is saying that the way Christian parents are to bring children up is by nurturing, correcting, and training them in the truth of or about Jesus Christ. Paul is telling parents to daily proclaim the message about Jesus to their children and to warn or rebuke them when they forget to live in the light of what Jesus had already done. He was telling them to tether every aspect of their parenting to the gospel message.

Here are 6 ways to bring the gospel into your parenting:

6 ways to bring the gospel into your parenting.

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  1. To bring the gospel to your kids, you must be changed by the gospel. If you aren’t changed by the gospel, you won’t be able to communicate the gospel to your kids. You won’t see your need for it, their need for it. You won’t see how great and mighty and all encompassing the gospel is.
  2. A culture of the gospel. Every house, family and business has a culture. A culture is how things happen without discussion. Does the gospel influence everything that you do as a family, as a parent? Does it dictate your finances, your time, rules, entertainment?
  3. Plan to bring the gospel into your home. What is your plan to teach your kids Scripture? When will you personally open the Bible? When will you do it with your kids? What will you study? For our family, we use a mixture of The New City Catechism and the Train Up questions from Revolution. Our MC uses the Train Up questions each week with the kids. We write the question and answer of the week in our kitchen and refer to it throughout the week and discuss at dinner as a family. For more on this, read Family driven faith. 
  4. Make time. The quality time argument is a myth. Your kids don’t need or want quality time, they want quantity. A big difference. Make time for daddy dates, family meal time. You may have to give up some hobbies as a parent. I haven’t golfed in 7 years. I’ll retire one day and golf then and I’ll be terrible at it. Studies show, kids who have regular meals with their parents are less likely to do drugs, smoke, have sex, run with the wrong crowd, and they get better grades.
  5. Don’t sacrifice the mission field in front of you. This argument often comes up in the discussion of a mom working. I’ve had mom’s tell me, “At work, there are so many people who don’t know Jesus, God has placed me there.” Each one who told me that then sent their kids off to have someone else raise them in daycare. What they did, while sounding noble, “living on mission at work”, they sacrificed the first mission field God gave them: their kids.
  6. Bring the gospel into conversations when your children sin. When your child sins, talk to them about it. Ask why they did that? What is controlling them? Ask your teenager why they wear that? What does that communicate about their self-image, how they believe God made them? Ask until you get an answer. Then, seek ways to bring the gospel into that. Talk about how because of Jesus we are approved, we don’t need to control things, we don’t need to be the most important. When you punish them, don’t walk away. Remind them of your love, of God’s grace and how Jesus took our punishment but there are still consequences. For more on this, read Give them grace. 
6 ways to bring the gospel into your parenting.

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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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15 Ways to Improve Your Marriage

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marriage

Katie and I often get asked about how to improve your marriage, survive a hard season or simply take your marriage to the next level so that it last til “death do us part.”

Here’s a list I put together on 15 ways to improve your marriage (in no particular order):

  1. Deal with all your junk right away. Everyone brings baggage into a marriage and some couples work through as much as possible as fast as possible and others don’t. I think when a couple has been married for 2 – 3 years, you can tell if they have worked on their baggage.
  2. Understand your roles and live in them. Too many couples think they can have a roleless marriage and it will work. The Bible clearly lays out roles, what a husband is and what a wife is. Too many wives do what their husbands are supposed to do which lead to men doing nothing.
  3. Be intimate, a lot. It’s no coincidence that every marriage book, every couple who says they are happy, all say they are intimate, a lot. 1 in 5 couples has what is called a sexless marriage (less than 10 times a year). The average for a married couple is 1 – 2 times every 10 days. Wonder why couples aren’t happy? Those stats are a place to start.
  4. Date night. I’m stunned at the number of couples who do not have a regularly scheduled date night. I won’t go into much detail here because I just blogged about this the other day (you can read that here). Bottom line, you need a weekly date night, every week, protect it with your life and make it a priority and make it happen.
  5. Your relationship is more important than any other relationship (except God). Too many couples make their jobs, parents, friends, and kids more important than their marriages. Guess what? A day is coming when it will just be you and your spouse. Make that relationship the most important.
  6. Pray together. This is a great way to connect, especially at the end of a long day. It is a great way to thank your spouse for things out loud. This is especially good if you had a long day or a huge fight at night. This is something EVERY couple should do every day.
  7. Play together. Admittedly, this might be more of a man need but do fun things together. If you are both into football, go to a game. Go shopping. Play golf or tennis. Run together. Do something fun that is just the two of you.
  8. Find a mentor. Every couple should have a mentor. From the time of our engagement, we have had other couples speaking into our marriage. They have helped us get to where we are right now.
  9. Put the other person first. One thing marriage brings out is how selfish we are. All over the scriptures when it talks about marriage, it talks about serving each other. If you make it your goal to outserve the other person, you will win at marriage.
  10. Decide that you will stay married even if it kills you (and it probably will). This may sound obvious, but even though couples don’t get married planning to get divorced, so many couples are willing to call it quits really quickly. If you are going to work through all your junk (see #1), you will need the confidence that no matter what, this thing will make it to the end. If you decide to stay married even if it kills you, you can really do anything and get through anything. It will be hard, but deciding this ahead of time will go a long way.
  11. No secrets. It is amazing to me the number of couples who keep secrets from their spouse. I have had men tell me something and then say, “Don’t tell my wife.” Uh, if you don’t, I will. No wonder marriages implode, they don’t trust each other.
  12. Work out of your gifting. While there are specific roles for men and women in marriage (#2), there are many things in marriage that it doesn’t matter who does them. Things like finances. Some are gifted at it, others aren’t. Do the things you are good at, let your spouse do what they are good at.
  13. Men, lead. This has to do with roles (#2), but too many men do not lead and take initiative in their marriages and consequently, their marriages suffer. Men are called to take initiative, to lead with a servant’s heart, to passionately pastor their wives and kids. With Jesus as our model, this is something that will save you a lot of heartaches.
  14. Stay pure. This is not just for men. This is not just a physical thing. It is an all-encompassing thing. Are you physically, emotionally, spiritually, relationally, mentally attached to someone you are not married to? Your spouse is the person who should meet these needs more than any other person.
  15. Boundaries. Because of what I do, Katie and I have put into place some specific boundaries (you can read about those here). The point is, you must protect yourself, your heart and the purity of your marriage. It is hard to commit adultery if you don’t put yourself in the position to commit adultery.
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Discerning the Idols of Your Heart

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Tonight in my sermon we worked through some of the questions that can help you discern the idols of your heart. Each person has a default idol of their heart, what pushes them to make the decisions they do, both good and bad. Tim Chester points that each of us have an idol that is either for power, control, comfort or approval. They overlap and we might have all 4 at different times, but these 4 things push us to sin, succeed and live our lives.

The hope we have is that they will bring us the fulfillment we long for.

For example, when a man works a ton of hours to provide for his family, he is doing a good thing to provide for them. But he might be doing it so that his family will approve of him or that he will have the comfort he longs for.

Or, when one tries to control a situation through organizing every detail, keeping things in order. They might say they are organized or a detailed person, which might be true. It might also mean that it comes from a place of insecurity where they need to control everything instead of trusting in God.

Here are some questions we worked through tonight to discern what the idols of your heart are:

  1. What do I worry about?
  2. What do I use to comfort myself when life gets tough or things don’t go my way?
  3. What, if I lost would make me think life wasn’t worth living?
  4. What do I daydream about?
  5. What makes me feel the most self-worth?
  6. What do I lead with in conversations?
  7. Early on, what do I want to make sure people know about me?
  8. What prayer, unanswered would seriously make me consider walking away from God?
  9. What do I really want and expect out of life?
  10. What is my hope for the future? What will complete me?
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Losing Weight Part 7: The Idol of Being in Shape

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I’ve been chronicling my journey of losing weight this week. It is by far the thing I get questions about the most. You can read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5 and part 6 here to get some background on this post. I talked in part 2 about the idol of food, one thing I want to end on is the idol of being in shape.

In the same way that it is easy for us to make an idol out of food. It is just as easy to make an idol out of exercise, being in shape, looking fit. This hits a different idol. While food can often be for comfort, the idol of being in shape often hits approval.

When I got assessed for Acts 29, they asked about my weight loss. The reason is because most church planters put on a ton of weight. The stress of church planting, the meetings at restaurants and coffee shops, the long hours, sleepless nights lead a lot of guys to put weight on. I was the opposite. I think that is one of the reasons we were able to make it through the hard start up months of Revolution.

As I described my journey, which you’ve read this week and talked about the idol of food one of the guys asked me at the end of the story, “Has exercise become your idol?” I think at first, as I was losing weight it did. If I missed a workout I would get angry, like I used to if I was hungry. It is natural for this to happen. When you lose 100 pounds, 12 inches off your waist, you want to keep it off. This makes sense. But it doesn’t make it right to make it an idol. It is easy to trade one idol (food) for another idol (being in shape or working out).

Now, I am not as tough on calories or working out as I used to. Our church has grown significantly, so has our family. It is harder and harder to make time to workout, so I’ve created a plan that fits my life. In fact, I went 10 days without working out to see if my food plan would allow me to not gain weight, and it did. If you have lost a bunch of weight and are working out, go a week without working out. If you just gasped, you may have an idol of working out that you need to deal with.

Don’t mishear me, there is nothing wrong with working out, being in shape, wanting to be healthy. Only when we elevate it to a high status in our lives. When we find our identity in working out or being in shape.

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Fighting Temptation

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All of us have things we wish we didn’t do. Maybe it is something small that doesn’t seem like a big deal, or it might be something that if discovered could destroy your world. It might be that you can’t stop talking about other people, you can’t stop eating, maybe you have to buy something every week and now have a closet full of clothes you don’t use, or maybe you can’t go a day without looking at porn.

Whatever it is, we all fight temptations.

What if there is a way out? What if there was a way to be free of falling into temptation? What if you could really fight temptation?

That’s what we will talk about this week as we continue our series in the book of James from 1:12 – 18.

I think this week has the potential to really bring freedom to a lot of lives.

Remember, we meet at 5pm at 6620 E 22nd St.

See you Saturday.

 

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Discerning Your Idols

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We often talk about idols of the heart and the gospel at Revolution. I will get questions about how you determine what your idols are, what is it that your heart longs for, how do you discern them and learn how the gospel transforms them.

Recently, I came across some great diagnostic questions in the Porterbrook curriculum that we will be using for our Surge School to discern what the idols of your heart are:

  • If you are angry, ask, ― Is there something too important to me? Something I am telling myself I have to have? Is that why I am angry — because I am being blocked from having something I think is a necessity when it is not?
  • If you are fearful or badly worried, ask, ―Is there something too important to me? Something I am telling myself I have to have? Is that why I am so scared — because something is being threatened which I think is a necessity when it is not?
  • If you are despondent or hating yourself, ask, Is there something too important to me? Something I have to have? Is that why I am so down — because I have lost or failed at something which I think is a necessity, but which is not