Tag Archives: sin

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How to Fight Your Sin

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We all struggle with something.

We all sin or have some emotion we wish we didn’t have. We carry regrets and shame from past hurts, relationships, or other experiences we hope to eliminate. But for some reason, they hang around. 

We often wonder, am I made new? Has God forgiven me for that? Why do I still struggle (Romans 7:15)? Why do I do what I do?

How to stop doing the things you wished you could stop doing.

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Throughout Scripture (Romans 8:13; Galatians 5:24; Colossians 3:5), we are told to crucify our sin, to put it to death.

But what does that look like?

Right before Galatians 5:24, Paul has two lists: a list of sins (vs. 19 – 21) and a list called the fruit of the Spirit (vs. 22 – 23).

In vs. 19 – 21, there is sexual immorality (which is all sex outside of the bounds of marriage between a man and a woman), impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies and things like these.

What is interesting about this list is that Paul seems to put them all on the same level and says, “Living in these will keep you from God” (see the end of Vs. 21). 

What Paul says, though, is these are not occasional sins. In vs. 16 – 17, he describes these as overwhelming, all-encompassing desires that you cannot control the longing of. They are your identity. These things about us follow words like “always” and “never.” I always worry, try to control things, and care what others think. I can never stop this or that. 

Those things slowly become part of our identity, which we carry as part of ourselves. 

For each person, vs. 19 – 21 is where the battle happens. And make no mistake, we all have something. 

But how do you put them to death?

This is where the fruit of the Spirit comes in vs. 22 – 23 of Galatians 5 and the freedom promised to us in Romans 8. 

I love that Paul calls them fruit. It gives this picture of a farmer, of gradual growth; a farmer, not the fruit, does that. The fruit doesn’t make itself grow; God does. Fruit does grow. Not always at the rate we expect or think it should, but it grows.

How God works in our lives.

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The question for a follower of Jesus is, do you see growth in your life in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control? Do you see how God is working on your heart in those areas?

We take the fruit of the Spirit and put our sin to death from vs. 19 – 21.

This becomes a daily thing.

Crucifixion in vs. 24 carries this idea that it will be a death. It will be painful, complex, and complicated. Freedom always involves a war.

Freedom always involves a war.

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One of the best ways to walk this road is through confession. We practice confession daily, each week, at the communion table. Why? Because “when we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us of all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). 

One thing I’ve learned about God’s grace is that many times, the reason we don’t experience God’s grace and freedom in Jesus is that we won’t allow ourselves to. 

We too often choose to stay stuck in our sins. This is why Paul talks so much about the mind in the New Testament (Romans 8:5, 12:1 – 2; Colossians 3:12). The daily choices make up our lives, and that pertains to the choices we make to sin or not sin. Paul tells us that we have the power to conquer all that lies before us (Romans 8:11), but many of us live already defeated lives. 

What if, this week, you lived as if the Spirit that raised Christ from the dead lives in you? Because He does. 

How to fight your sin.

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Church Growth and the Work of God

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We know that God is the one who makes a church grow, that it isn’t on us. This is both a comfort and a problem.

It is a comfort because we can rest. We don’t have to force things, we don’t have to make something happen. It is a problem because it can make us lazy. It can make us throw up our hands and say, “Well, I just need to preach the gospel and that’s it.” This is much like the Calvinist who doesn’t share his faith because “God will get who he’s going to get”, as one pastor told me.

Those are extremes, but they are important to point out.

Yes, Jesus grows his church. God grows the seeds that are planted. The Holy Spirit draws people, and often times a church grows and God moves with no explanation.

Other times a church grows, and while the Holy Spirit did the work, there were specific things that church did and did not do.

How much are you praying? How much is your elder and staff team praying? Not only for people in your church but for people not in your church? Are you asking God for specific people you are in relationships with? Are you praying that God will send 300, 500 people to your church this Easter? How burdened is the pastor for people who don’t know Jesus? Are there any sins in your church, leadership team or your life that you need to confess that are hindering the work of God?

How much are you, as a pastor, praying for your church?

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In your church and in your preaching and worship, are you exalting Jesus and making it simple for people to understand?

Many times I’ll have pastors ask me to listen to their sermons, and all I can think the whole time is that I have to have a seminary degree to understand what he is talking about. Being simple is not being shallow. Being simple is being helpful. The gospel is complex, deep and robust, but it is also so simple that my four year old can explain it to you. Our kids can draw a picture of the gospel, so our preaching should reflect that to a certain degree.

One of the ways we evaluate this in our church has to do with communion. When we move from the sermon to communion, is it an easy transition or does it feel like a hard right turn?

We’ll talk about systems in a minute, but do you have a clear vision, a clear strategy and a clear picture of what you are shooting for? For example, can you articulate in simple terms what a healthy, mature disciple looks like? Many times in our churches, we can’t. I’m sad to say, in our church we waited too long to articulate this, and it did a disservice to our people.

I think the work of God is deeply connected to our ability to clearly help our people grow. They are connected. If Jesus builds his church and the gates of hell will not prevail, what kind of people will withstand those gates?

Many times churches do not know what they are trying to build in people. They don’t know what a healthy, mature disciple looks like, so they aren’t sure what they are aiming at. For our church, we took too long to define this clearly, and I think that hurt us as a church.

Why?

Not only did it not serve our leaders and people well, we weren’t able to ask God for specific things to build into our people. It hinders the ability to focus a sermon calendar on those important discipleship aspects.

Let me leave you with an important question for churches, boards and staffs: What kind of disciples are you building? Is that what the New Testament calls us to? Do you have a clear path to accomplish that?

What kind of disciples is your church building?

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How to Forgive, Let Go & Deal with Hurt in Relationships

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Forgiveness is tough. In a sermon, giving forgiveness sounds so easy and clean. Yet in real life it is difficult and messy. The reality, though, is that we forgive as much as we believe we are forgiven. Whenever we withhold forgiveness we deny the power of the cross. Whenever we say, “I can’t forgive that person”, or, “I can’t let go of that situation”, we deny the power of the cross. We deny the power of what God redeemed us to do.

How to Forgive, Let Go & Deal with Hurt in Relationships.

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Before walking through giving forgiveness, let’s look at what forgiveness is not.

In his book Rumors of God, Jon Tyson said there are six myths about forgiveness:

  1. Forgiving is the same as forgetting.
  2. Forgiving is the same as reconciling.
  3. Forgiving is the same as excusing.
  4. Forgiving will make you weak.
  5. Forgiving is a simple act or decision.
  6. Forgiving depends on the perpetrator admitting wrong.
6 myths about forgiveness.

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Forgiveness is letting go, canceling what is owed to you, letting go of the control the offender has over you. It is giving up revenge, and as we see in Romans 12:19, it is leaving it in God’s hands.

As you walk through this door and grant forgiveness, here are a few of things to keep in mind:

3 things to remember when you forgive.

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1. Forgiving someone does not mean pretending it didn’t happen. Forgiving does not mean forgetting, as the old saying goes. Those scars still exist. They are still there. Forgiving means acknowledging it happened and the pain associated with it. It is facing the hurt.

2. Giving forgiveness means bearing the other person’s sin. There is a cost to forgiveness. You must bear their sin. The cost of forgiveness is always on the person granting forgiveness. This is why forgiveness is so hard. C.S. Lewis said, “Forgiveness is a beautiful word, until you have something to forgive.”

3. Forgiveness is possible because Jesus bore your sin and the cost of your forgiveness. When we look at the cross, we see how Jesus bore our sin, knowing we would fail again and again. Yet, he forgave us. The power of this moment is what enables us to forgive the way Jesus did.

How to forgive, let go of your hurt and move forward in relationships.

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How to Deal with Your Shame as a Leader

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leader

Many pastors and leaders live lives that are filled with shame.

The problem is, many don’t know it.

Shame shows up in a number of ways:

  • Drivenness.
  • Working too much.
  • Compulsions to drink.
  • Compulsions to exercise a lot.
  • Isolation.
  • Overindulgences.
  • Feelings of disappointment and emptiness.

The list goes on and on.

Left unchecked, many pastors find themselves moving in and out of shame.

In Future Grace: The Purifying Power of the Promises of God, John Piper says shame comes from three causes:

Shame comes from 3 places: guilt, shortcomings and improprieties. @JohnPiper

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  1. Guilt. This is the one many of us know well. The addiction, the hidden sin, the abuse we don’t talk about, the affair, the divorce, the poor parenting, our failure at work and in life. Many pastors carry around the guilt of hidden sins, hidden failures and hidden hurts. Many pastors have no one who knows them or gets close to them. We carry around guilt for ourselves and often without thinking, for others. When guilt becomes public knowledge, we have shame. Now we are known for what we have feared.
  2. Shortcomings. Shortcomings and failures are something all of us experience. Some of them are real and others imagined. Some are life shaping, and other shortcomings we simply shrug off. It is the ones that are life shaping that lead to shame. When our frame of mind says, “You are a failure, you aren’t good enough, you aren’t beautiful, strong enough or worthwhile”, we experience shame. Many pastors feel like they don’t measure up. Either they tell themselves or their congregation tells them they aren’t good enough, or they feel like they are failing God. This last one many pastors know well, and it shapes how they preach and interact with God personally. If you are driven like I am, you carry a sense of failing God because your church isn’t larger.
  3. Improprieties. These are the experiences in our lives where we feel silly, look stupid or are embarrassed. We make a mistake, and it feels like everyone knows about it. This can be saying something in a meeting, a misstep in a sermon, missing a key opportunity or sitting in a meeting and feeling out of our element. When this happens, most leaders won’t admit a weakness or a need for help, which leads to shame.

Without knowing it, many leaders pass their shame on to the people they lead. For example, if a pastor carries around shame, this will come through when he preaches. He will pass on to his congregation the shame he carries. He will paint a picture of a God who shames us instead of frees us.

A pastor unknowingly passes his shame to his congregation.

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If a pastor feels like a failure in his marriage or because his church is not going as he expected or isn’t as big as he expected it to be, he will pass this to his congregation. He will push harder, burn out those around him, give the impression that God is only impressed with numbers and the success of something instead of faithfulness on the part of the individual.

Here are six ways to move forward from your shame as a leader:

1. Name your shame. This is a crucial step for anyone, but especially for leaders.

We are so used to simply helping other people, being there for others, listening to them and helping them identify their shame that we often overlook our own. We need to step out of leading and helping mode and shepherd our own souls.

What shame drives you? What shame do you carry around?

Is it a hidden sin or addiction? An abuse you can’t forgive? Have you been hurt by another leader or person in your church?

I remember struggling with whether or not I was a good pastor or cut out to be a pastor. I’ve often been envious of others who were so good at shepherding others and helping them in that way. I still remember someone telling me they thought I wasn’t a good pastor, and that reinforced the shame I’ve carried for most of my life. That I’m not good enough.

For me, naming it has been incredibly helpful. When you name it, you are able to start the process of freedom.

If you can’t name your shame, it will continue to have power over you.

If you can’t name your shame, it will continue to have power over you.

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2. Identify the emotions attached to it. Many leaders try to stay away from emotions or they rely too heavily on them. Emotions are crucial, though. They show us not only what we are feeling, but what dominates us. Our emotions are able to override our thinking and judgment many times.

Don’t believe me? How often do you do the exact opposite of what you want to do? Most pastors who fail morally know they shouldn’t do something, but their emotions get the better of them.

What emotions are attached to your shame? If you don’t identify them, you will fall victim to them.

3. Confess the sins that are there. What sins are involved will depend on what your shame is. If it is something like abuse or abandonment, you don’t have a sin in that. Someone else sinned, and you are dealing with the brunt of that. You have to face that, though.

Are there sins on your part to confess? Are you holding yourself accountable for the sins of someone else?

Many leaders do, and many are driven by the sins of others. We do this to prove someone wrong, and our shame continues to keep a strong hold on us.

Maybe your shame drives you to drinking, overwork, overeating, bouts of anger. In this case, you have sin to confess, things you must face.

4. Grieve the loss. Many leaders will struggle with this. The dream that you have in your head for your church, your life, your marriage may never come to fruition. Will you continue to lead and follow God?

As leaders we don’t handle loss well. We have trained ourselves to not feel because we have people leave our church, a fellow pastor betrayed us, an elder lied to us, our spouse trusted someone, only to be betrayed. Because of this, we have closed off our hearts from feeling. This is one way we last in ministry, but it keeps us from actually ministering.

To stay in leadership, you must learn to grieve losses.

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If you can’t grieve a loss as a leader, you will be stuck. You will become callous, you will keep people at arm’s length, you will protect yourself from getting hurt, and ultimately you will miss out.

The strongest leaders are the ones who can talk about loss, feel loss and move forward.

5. Name what you want. Leaders can name what they want for their church or organization, but will often struggle to name it for themselves. This is a good and bad thing.

It’s good because it keeps leaders from being self-serving.

It is bad because many leaders aren’t sure what they want or desire.

Many leaders (and this is a struggle for me) are not sure if God wants to give them the desires of their hearts. Many leaders struggle to name the place they want to be, how they’d like God to use them or the hopes they have for their lives and families.

Dreams for pastors tend to be about numbers and platforms (not always bad), but rarely do we think in terms of purpose and fulfillment.

6. Identify what God wants you to know about Him. The antidote to our shame is the truth of who God is. If your shame is that you are unlovable, the antidote is the truth that God is love.

For me, as I read through the gospels, I am blown away by how slowly Jesus moved and how little He seemed to do to move the mission forward. From a type-A, entrepreneurial perspective (me), He didn’t do a lot. Yes, He taught, prayed, shepherded, spent time with people, but I’m blown away by how slowly He moved. Right now, this is what I need to know about God. That Jesus walked through life and enjoyed it. He had fun. He had long meals, took naps, spent time with His Father in prayer, took fishing trips with His friends.

6 ways to move forward from shame as a leader.

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For many leaders, we spend so much time trying to help others move forward that we rarely work on our own hearts to move forward. But, and here is why this matters, your shame follows you around until you face it.

Your shame follows you around until you face it.

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How to Handle Your Shame

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shame

All of us to one degree or another carry around shame. Things we’ve done, things done to us. Things we’ve said, things said to us. Things we wished we had done, and things we wish that others had done. Shame shows up in all kinds of places and in all kinds of people.

What we often overlook is how much shame shapes our identity and our lives. It becomes a driving force in our lives, how we work and how we relate to others and God.

In Future Grace: The Purifying Power of the Promises of God, John Piper says shame comes from three causes:

  1. Guilt. This is the one many of us know well. The addiction, the hidden sin, the abuse we don’t talk about, the affair, the divorce, the poor parenting, our failure at work and in life. We carry around guilt for ourselves and often without thinking, for others. When guilt becomes public knowledge, we have shame. Now we are known for what we have feared.
  2. Shortcomings. Shortcomings and failures are something all of us experience. Some of them are real and others imagined. Some are life shaping, and other shortcomings we simply shrug off. It is the ones that are life shaping that lead to shame. When our frame of mind says, “You are a failure, you aren’t good enough, you aren’t beautiful, strong enough or worthwhile”, we experience shame.
  3. Improprieties. These are the experiences in our life where we feel silly, look stupid or are embarrassed. We make a mistake, and it feels like everyone knows about it.

What do you do with your shame?

According to Romans 10:11, if you are a follower of Jesus, you will not be put to shame.

Yet shame is a driving factor in the lives of so many.

Shame is a driving factor in the lives of so many.

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Here are six ways to move forward from your shame:

6 ways to move forward from your shame.

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1. Name your shame. If you don’t name something, it takes ownership of you. This is a crucial step. You must name the hurt, the guilt, the shortcoming, the impropriety, the embarrassment, the abuse, the loss, the misstep, the sin. If you don’t, you stay stuck.

Whatever you can’t name in your life takes ownership of you.

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I’ve met countless people who couldn’t say the name of an ex, name the situation of hurt or talk about something. This doesn’t mean that you are a victim or wallow in your pain, but naming something is crucial. Without this first step, the others become difficult to impossible.

The saying, “Whatever we don’t own, owns us”, applies here. This is a crucial, crucial step.

2. Identify the emotions attached to it. Many times when we are hurt, we are an emotional wreck and can’t see a way forward. All we know is that we are hurt, that life isn’t as we’d hoped, but we aren’t sure what to do.

What emotions are attached to your shame? Is it guilt? Loss? Failure? Missed opportunity? Sadness? Hopelessness? Indifference?

Name them.

Name the emotion that goes with your abuse, abandonment, divorce, failed business, dropping out of school, not meeting your expectations or the expectations of someone else.

Often times we feel shame when we have a different emotion attached to it, but shame is far more familiar to us. Do you feel neglected or hurt or sad? What emotion is conjured up from a memory?

3. Confess the sins that are there. Do you always have sin when you feel shameful? No. Sometimes it is misplaced shame. It is shame you have no business owning. You didn’t sin; someone else sinned against you.

Sometimes, though, there is a sin on your part. You may have sinned, and that’s why you feel shame. Sometimes your sin might be holding on to that person or situation.

Sometimes you need to confess that your shame is keeping you from moving forward and keeping you stuck.

Bring those sins to light.

4. Grieve the loss. When we have shame, there is a loss. This loss might be a missed opportunity or missed happiness. It might be bigger than that and be a missed childhood, a loss of your 20’s, a loss of health or job opportunity.

It might be a relationship that will never be, something you can never go back to.

As you think about your shame, what did you lose? What did you miss out on? What did that situation prevent you from doing or experiencing? What hurt do you carry around? What will never be the same because of that situation?

5. Name what you want. This one is new for me, but it has to do with your desires.

Often the reason we stay stuck is because we know what stuck is. We don’t know what the future holds. Beyond that, we don’t know what we actually want.

We carry shame around from a relationship with a father who walked out. Do you want a relationship? Do you want to be in touch?

We carry shame from a failed business. Do you want to get back in the game?

Can you name, in the situation associated with your shame, what you want?

Sadly, many people cannot.

If you can’t name what you want, if you can’t identify a desire, you will struggle to move forward.

6. Identify what God wants you to know about Him. When we carry around shame, we carry around a lie. In identifying that lie, we are identifying the truth that God wants us to know about Him.

If you feel unloved, the truth that God wants you to know is that you are loved. If you feel unwanted, God wants you to know you are wanted. If you feel dirty, God wants you to know the truth that in Him you are clean.

All throughout scripture we are told that God is a Father, that He is as close to us as a mother nursing her child, that God is compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in love, gracious, tender, strong and for us.

The list goes on and on.

In that list, though, is the truth, the antidote to your shame and what you need to remind yourself of to move forward and live into the freedom of Jesus.

6 ways to move forward from your shame.

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Freedom is hard.

Let’s be honest, freedom is difficult. Living in sin, shame, guilt and regret is easy. It is what we know. It is where most people live and reside.

Freedom is scary. Freedom is unknown. Freedom leaves us vulnerable. Freedom leaves us not in control.

Yet, this is what it means to be a child of God. To live in freedom. Overflowing freedom.

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4 Ways to Survive when Life Gets Hard

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The reality of evil and suffering is one that a lot of people have argued about and questioned God on, and it is one of the main roadblocks to trusting God and following Him.

In my years as a pastor, I’ve sat with couples who have buried a child, adults burying their parents, I’ve wept with people who just found out they had cancer and a short time to live, listened to the brokenhearted stories about the end of a marriage, a child who wants nothing to do with the family or God, the loss of jobs, financial difficulties, addictions that can’t be beat.

It’s heartbreaking, and those are just the ones I’ve been party to. This doesn’t even count national and international tragedies and natural disasters we see on the news.

What to do when the storms of life beat you down.

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Personally, I’ve walked through the loss of friends, difficulty in family and work relationships, loss of jobs, setbacks in life, difficulties in starting our church. I’ve looked at mountains in my own life that seemed impossible to get past, hurt that felt so painful I thought I could never recover, betrayal that ran deep.

And then sits Romans 8:28 – 30. One of the most quoted verses in the Bible, it’s been used for encouragement over and over in the lives of thousands since Paul wrote it.

It says: And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

Right now you might be in the midst of a storm in life. You might not be. If you aren’t, the reality is your storm is coming at some point.

Here are a few questions to help you see where you are, where God is in the storm you are and how to have the faith to walk through what you are in and what is ahead:

4 questions to help you trust God when life feels out of your control.

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1. What storm are you facing? It is important to identify the storm you are facing. Often we don’t know what it is. We simply feel down or something feels off from what used to be or what we hope. Often it isn’t a storm we’re in the middle of; we’re simply tired or burned out. Other times we are in the dark place of the storm, and the waves are crashing around us. Also, without identifying our storm, we will struggle to see anything that God is doing because we’ll simply go into survival mode or become jaded.

Identifying a storm is a key to getting through the storm.

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2. Are there any sins that need to be confronted? By this I mean, have you sinned to get you into the place you are in or has someone else? Take finances for an example. This can cause an incredibly stressful storm, but many of our financial issues are out of our control (housing market, retirement, etc.). Other financial storms are in our control (debt, spending, saving, giving, etc.). Or relational storms: did you hurt someone, are you holding onto something you need to let go of, is there someone you need to confront or forgive and let go?

3. Look back at a storm, hurt or pain from your past. With some distance from that situation, are you able to see God’s hand? I know in my life, the further I am from a situation, the more clarity I have. I will often see my pride and sin more clearly, but I also see God’s hand more clearly. Now the reality is, this side of heaven, we will not have answers for everything that happens to us. We aren’t promised that. We are promised that God will never leave us or forsake us, that all things do serve a purpose in God’s plan and that all things will bring about God’s glory and our good, if we are called by Him and love him. (Romans 8:28 – 30).

Sometimes you must look back to go forward.

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4. What does looking at your past help you to see about God with what you are facing? What is He trying to do right now? The reason I like to look back in my life is that it often helps me to move forward. This is why God had the nation of Israel do things to remember how He moved in the past. This is why as followers of Jesus we do things like communion and baptism, to remember how God worked in the past, because that has an enormous impact on our faith into the future.

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What to do When You Can’t Stop doing Something

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

So, we read our Bibles.

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

What do you do when you keep doing what you hate?

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

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

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

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

How to hate your sin and run from it.

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

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Longings, Desires & When I’m Letdown

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

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

Our longings can reveal deep within us what God has in store for us.

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

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

Our lives reveal a longing.

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

5 questions to ask about your desires and longings to see if they line up with God’s will.

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

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

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

Are all your desires and longings a sin?

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

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

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5 Ways to Get the Most out of Reading Your Bible

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One of the ways we battle condemnation, guilt, regret, shame, and hurt is through our mind. Our minds are incredibly powerful things. They determine our steps, our feelings, what bothers us, what we think, and the decisions we make that have an enormous impact on the people we become. We often think our minds aren’t that important, that we are feelers, or emotional people making emotional choices.

But we aren’t.

Our minds drive much of what we do. In fact, the New Testament often talks about the battle of our mind, and in numerous places the apostle Paul encourages us about what to think. In Philippians 4:8 he writes, “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” Why? Because what we think about determines so much.

So, how do you change your thinking? How do you battle your sin in your mind? This is important because much of our sin comes from thinking. We often think we sin and “it just happened.” But it didn’t. We chose to be there, chose to open that website, chose to say those words, chose that person as a friend.

In the same way, through the power of Christ, we can choose to not be there, to say no and not hang out with that person.

To do that, though, requires intentionality and putting on the mind of the Spirit. (Romans 8:5) The best way to do this is through reading the Bible, words inspired by God, authoritative, true and sufficient for our lives. One of the things I love about our church is that we produce daily devotional questions to go along with the sermon that you can subscribe to by emailing here.

5 questions to ask if your bible reading has grown stale.

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As you read through your Bible, it can be daunting. Here are some questions I use to put on the mind of the Spirit:

  1. What does this passage say (not to me, but actually say on its own)?
  2. What words or phrases stood out to me in this passage?
  3. Why do I think those words or phrases stood out?
  4. What is God trying to show me through that?
  5. Are there any sins I need to confess, changes I need to make or steps I need to take because of what I’ve read?
How to get the most out of reading your Bible.

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Why You Do What You Do

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Do you have something in your life that you wished weren’t true? Something you want to stop doing but can’t? A feeling or emotion you wished you didn’t have? A memory you can’t shake?

Do you know why you do what you do?

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The book of Ecclesiastes is one of the most interesting books in the Bible. If you’ve never read it, here are the CliffsNotes. The writer of Ecclesiastes is called the Preacher. It might have been Solomon, but we aren’t sure. We do know that the Preacher was wealthy, had a lot of land, buildings, crops, money, and servants. He had influence, the life that people long to have. Yet he was miserable.

The book of Ecclesiastes is written at the end of the Preacher’s life, and he looks back on what he accomplished, the search for meaning that he went on. He searched for meaning in sex, in building, land, jobs, money, career, relationships, and food and wine. You name it, he tried it.

Yet he came up empty.

Three thousand years after the book of Ecclesiastes was writ- ten, you and I still try to prove the Preacher wrong. “He may not have been able to find meaning in running from one thing to the next, but I will. He may not have found meaning in relationships and giving his heart and body away, but I will. He may not have found meaning in food and wine, but I will.”

We don’t say this, at least not out loud. But when we sin, we do so out of a desire to find meaning. We sin from a place of emp- tiness. We sin from a place of wanting to be filled up. The search for meaning drives many of our decisions, and ultimately it’s the driving factor in our search for breathing room.

The Idol You Worship

Every time we sin, we do so because we don’t believe Jesus is truer or better. At that moment we believe that sin will bring us more happiness, joy, and satisfaction. We sin because of something.

Maybe you’ve seen the emptiness that comes from simply trying to stop something. It is impossible because you haven’t uncovered the root cause. You can get rid of the effects of the mold or the mildew in your house, but until you fix how it gets there, it will just come back.

Our sins are the same way.

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 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.

Here are a few questions to uncover what that is for you. As we go through them, take some time to write down your answers.

  • What is the first thing on your mind in the morning and the last thing on your mind at night?
  • How long does it take you to check Facebook in the morning?
  • Do you daydream about purchasing material goods that you don’t need, with money you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like?
  • What do you habitually, systematically, and undoubtedly drift toward in order to obtain peace, joy, and happiness in the privacy of your heart?
  • When a certain desire is not met, do you feel frustration, anxiety, resentment, bitterness, anger, or depression?
  • Is there something you desire so much that you are will- ing to disappoint or hurt others in order to have it?
  • What do you respond to with explosive anger or deep despair?
  • What dominates your relationships?
  • What do you dream about when your mind is on idle-mode? What, if you lost it, would make life not worth living?
How to find the idol of your heart.

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What came up while reading through those questions? Do you find yourself daydreaming about people liking you or accepting you? Do you find yourself checking to see how many people liked your Facebook update? Do you have a desire that you have to fulfill every day?

I talk to a lot of guys who tell me they are addicted to porn, masturbate, or cheat because a man “has needs.” My response to that is, “Have you ever heard of someone dying from a lack of sex? Ever been to a funeral, and when you asked why they died, the answer was, ‘It was crazy. All of a sudden Bob’s wife stopped having sex with him, and he just died.’” No. Many of the things we put in the“need”category—sex, shopping, work, adrenaline—are not needs but desires. Many of them are good desires given to us by God that are corrupted by our sin.

That last one is a crucial question. The answer to the last question will begin to uncover the idol that drives your life. Idols in our hearts are the things we worship and serve instead of Jesus. They are the good things in our lives that we make great and ultimate.

What if you lost your job or your house? What if a relationship ended? What if your business closed?

For example, we love our kids. I can’t imagine the devastation of losing a child. I’ve sat with parents who have, and as a father, it scares me to think about such a thing. But if losing a child would make life not worth living, what does that say about my view of Jesus? What does that say about how I have elevated the view of my kids in my life?

Now, here is what you will learn about your idols. They are usually not bad things. My kids, my wife, my job, pastoring, writing, working out, spending time with friends, going to the beach, taking that dream vacation, watching my Steelers play, enjoying a great cup of coffee or a good bottle of wine—good things.

They become sins when we make them ultimate things. They become sins when we put them ahead of Jesus. They become sins when we look to them to give us our identity, to give us hope, to meet our needs and make us happy.

We buy into this thinking often in our relationships and our careers. Everyone can quote Jerry Maguire saying, “You complete me.” When couples get married or are engaged, if you were to ask them why they are getting married, they might tell you the other person completes them.“I can’t imagine my life without them.”This is a good thing, but it can also reveal the brokenness in our hearts.

Our lives quickly become connected to this identity. We find our identity as Bobby’s mom, as Julie’s husband, as the business owner, as the teacher, as the guy who works out, as the person with the cool house, as the Bible guy, or the woman who is put together.

If we aren’t careful, what is good in our lives quickly becomes the defining aspect of our lives. When that happens, we believe a lie.

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

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