Special Services - Let's Give Thanks!

This Sunday morning, November 22, our new senior pastor Jeff Elliott will preach from Luke 7:36-50, “A Uniquely Christian Thankful Heart.” This is a needed message at a time when people are beginning to forget what the purpose of Thanksgiving is... sadly, it seems to be seen by many people as "Black Friday Eve" rather than the highlight of the entire year, in which we give thanks to a God who bountifully gave His Son for us.

Sunday evening at 6 PM Pastor Elliott will be officially installed as our senior pastor. This is a worship service, following which there will be a time for fellowship together.

Also, on Wednesday evening (the night before Thanksgiving), we will gather together for a Thanksgiving Service at 7 PM. Growth groups will not be meeting that evening, and we will take a special "thanks offering" for the deacons’ fund which helps those in need.

We hope to see you in the coming days!

Great and Greatly

This weekend I'll be preaching on "God the Almighty" from Revelation 4. In that text we see in colorful imagery what is spoken in Psalm 145:3:

God is great, and greatly to be praised,
And His greatness is unsearchable!

God is great: He is the almighty God. Concerning His throne, we are told that heaven and earth flee from it. He has endless reserves of power, and uses them. He does His will. He has His way.

God is greatly to be praised: Our worship should correspond to the magnitude and majesty of God. This means all our emotion, energy, and artistry should be fully employed in worship. No second rate worship. No reserved, respectable, restrained worship. It should go to 11.

God's greatness is unsearchable. We have trouble conceiving of this because we see so little of God--He is crowded out by a roomful of idols, a variety of TV shows and sporting events, and other interests. But the handbook of praise called the Psalms tells us more than once that those who love God become students of God (see Psalm 111 and again 145). The more you learn, the more you will worship--even as you learn that there's always more to learn!

Tim Smith of Mars Hill Church in Seattle put it well (I heard him speak on Wednesday, and actually he was simply summarizing John Piper). "Scripture commands that we respond to God's glory with the full range of both inward and outward expression."

Or, to put it differently, "God is great and greatly to be praised."

Weakness and Strength

We want to be strong. Therefore, we pursue those activities that will make us strong. This may mean lifting weights or it may mean obtaining the best education possible. It may mean saving up money or it may mean gathering the "right people" around us. In a church setting, it may mean redoubling our efforts or commitments.

And yet... God seems to often have a different plan. When God wants to use us - that is to say, when God wants to expand our service to Him - He does not make us strong. He makes us weak.
In fact, I think there are three indicators that God is making us a more useful instrument in His hand.

1. He brings weakness. By this I do not mean sin, as in "I gave into my weakness." No, by this I mean trial and difficulty, as in, "I have nowhere to turn...but to God." I recently heard Rosemarie Miller say that we tend to look around us to be rescued, but God is ever trying to make us look upward. Weakness makes us...finally...look upward.

2. He brings repentance. Though our trials may not be a result of our sin, they do expose the self-centered ways we deal with difficulty. They expose attitudes. God leads us to see these, mourn over these, and seek His forgiveness and grace. It's the beginning of real change.

3. He gives His Son and gives His Spirit. When God first breathes spiritual life into us, it happens as we see our need (weakness), ask forgiveness (repent), and receive Jesus Christ as Savior. The pattern remains throughout our life. We are not "unsaved" and "resaved," but we are continually growing in Christ - and when God wishes to make us more useful, more faithful, He grants to us a fresh turning to Jesus and experience of His Spirit.

So if you are looking for God to make you more useful to Himself - look to see if God is answering your prayer by making you weak, repentant, and Christ-centered.

Note: Some of these thoughts emerged from reflecting on Ephesians 6 and the phrase "be strong in the Lord" (not in ourselves) and on 2 Corinthians 1.

Does Your Family Have a Story?

Has God been gracious to your family? Are you prepared to tell your children the story of God's grace?

The classic passage on instructing children, at least in the Old Testament, is Deuteronomy 6:1-9. There we are told to continually talk with our children about God's law (His word, His rules, His ways). What might be a little less familiar is the end of the chapter, where we are told to tell our children stories. And not just cute stories but serious, glorious, stories of God's works.

“When your son asks you in time to come, ‘What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that the Lord our God has commanded you?’ then you shall say to your son, ‘We were Pharaoh's slaves in Egypt. And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. And the Lord showed signs and wonders, great and grievous, against Egypt and against Pharaoh and all his household, before our eyes. And he brought us out from there... (Deuteronoomy 6:20-23a.)

In other words, our children are bound to ask us at some point, "Why do we believe all this stuff?" Certainly they'll be asking when they are a teenager if not sooner!

What is striking to me is this. We are not told to engage in a heavy philosophical debate, such as, "Well, son, the Christian worldview is the one belief system that makes sense of the world as it really is..." This would be my natural approach. And there's a place for this kind of reasoning, to be sure.

What we're told to first tell our children is much more dynamic. We are told to tell them a story of God's grace--"We were in desperate straits. Apart from God we'd still be in a terrible mess. But He delivered us. So we're going to follow Him!"

The most profound story that we all share is the story of redemption in Jesus Christ. But I believe we should also tie that grand story to our personal story of God's redemption. For example, I can tell my son when he grows up, "I had no meaningful relationship with my dad. My mom was an example of faith, but I rebelled against God anyway and became an arrogant, foolish young man. But God rescued me; He saved me and changed my heart radically. And He put role models in my life to teach me His ways, and He blessed me with your mother who is a very wise woman. Apart from these graces of God, who knows what mess our family would be in. So we're going to keep following Him!"

What's your story? Have your kids heard it yet?

Who's Got Time?

From Leland Ryken, in his book Redeeming the Time--commenting on the biblical injunction to, you guessed it, "redeem the time."

"One of the features of contemporary life is therefore a prevailingly personal attitude toward time; with time felt to be so hurried, people are almost forced to protect their time as their own possession. This is especially true of time apart from one’s job, since one-the-job time is pretty much coerced and not felt to be our own.

The result of personalized time is a loss of shared time. People feel less obligation to give their time to others than they once did, and so the social dimension of time is in jeopardy today. While influential social critics ascribe this to individualism and self-absorption, I am inclined to attribute it to current attitudes toward time. It is partly our time famine that leads people to think that they have no time to share.”

Who owns your time?

The Lost Art of Loving God (w/Scriptures)

This past Sunday we looked at a variety of Scripture passages related to self-deception and proper self-examination concerning our love for God. For those whose pen, pencil, or iPhone couldn't keep up--or for those who would just like to review these verses again--here's the breakdown. There are some bonus passages included here too. (You can look any of these up quickly by going over to www.biblegateway.com)

God's greatest commandment is 100% love for Him and our neighbor:
Matthew 22:33-40

Three passages that reveal our self-deception, telling ourselves that we are accepted by God based on other criteria:
Revelation 2:1-7
Revelation 3:1-6
Matthew 7:21-23

Overview of deception in Scripture:
Satan is a deceiver: Genesis 3:13, Revelation 12:9
Sin is deceitful: Hebrews 3:13
Satan's followers are deceived: 2 Timothy 3:13, 2 Corinthians 11:13
(Notice the deadly 3:13's!)

Big problem. Our hearts are deceitful:
Jeremiah 17:9
Galatians 6:3, 7
James 1:26
1 Corinthians 3:18
1 John 1:8

Deceptive Unbelief:
Romans 1:18ff

Deceptive Immorality:
Ephesians 5:6
Galatians 6:7

Deceptive Morality:
Revelation 2:1-7
Luke 18:9-14 and 18:18-30

A prayer to keep ourselves in the love of God:
Proverbs 30:7-9

An exhortation to keep ourselves in the love of God:
Jude v.21

Promises that we will be kept in the love of God if we are in Christ:
Romans 8:31-39

The love of God is an art, not a science. Remember your first love!

Every Pastor Needs a Pastor

Every pastor needs a pastor. This is because every pastor is a human being and therefore needs shepherding in the form of advice, instruction, admonition, and example. Most pastors I know seek to find this through fellowship with other pastors, or through a "coach" of some sort.

I would also recommend that every pastor download sermons from a respected fellow pastor, every week--religiously. Just as we expect others to come to church each Sunday to hear God's word preached, we should make this weekly commitment to hear God's word preached from someone other than ourselves.

This is a great way to remember that we are Christians first, pastors second.

Some tips:

1. Commit to one particular pastor. Don't listen haphazzardly to whatever looks interesting on iTunes each week. (Just as you wouldn't want the people of your church to rotate between a half dozen churches.)

2. Set aside a time each week to listen and take notes. Don't just listen while you're driving or jogging or otherwise multitasking. Take it seriously.

3. Choose either a well-known "pastor to pastors" such as Tim Keller, John Piper, or Mark Driscoll, or someone who was a personal mentor to you. If that pastor puts his sermons on the web, your relationship with him can continue as you listen to his weekly messages.

4. If you choose the well-known "celebrity" pastor, be careful. Don't let the listening be mere entertainment or curiosity.

5. Take the message seriously. Put it into practice. Not just as a pastor/leader, but as a Christian, husband, dad, soccer coach, etc.

6. Be careful not to listen to too many messages per week. One is plenty to pray over, repent over, and put into practice.

7. Pray for this pastor, just as you hope your people pray for you!

Pastor According to God's Heart

Today I'll be preaching on leadership within the church, based on Ephesians 4:11-12 in particular. The leaders Jesus provides to His church are gifts, as Ephesians says. In fact, they are long-promised gifts, as Jeremiah 3:15 prophesies:

"I will give you pastors (literally shepherds) according to Mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding."

John Shaw preached a sermon on this passage from Jeremiah back in the day... August 25, 1752. It is in print as a short but helpful booklet: The Character of a Pastor According to God's Heart.

Here's a snippet:

"Ministers according to God's heart are men of prayer. They are much in prayer. ... Verily, they may preach even to paleness and faintness, until the bellows are burnt, until their lungs and vitals are consumed, and their hearers will never be the better, not one sinner converted until God is graciously pleased, by the efficacious working of His Spirit, to add His blessing. ... All will be in vain, to no saving purpose, until God is pleased to give the increase. And in order to this, God looks for their prayers to come up to His ears."

They are not only men who pray but who lead godly lives:

"If not afraid of running into the fire themselves, will they be zealous to pull their hearers out of the flames? If they do not tremble at the thought of trifling themselves with heaven and hell, with salvation and damnation, will they faithfully warn their hearers against doing so?"

Lord, help us to be faithful men!

Prayer is not an ATM

I wrote this as a comment on a blog devoted to prayer, and afterward thought a modified version would be helpful to share here. This is something I need to always remind myself!


I think that we (meaning I) often think of prayer as a way we make a transaction with God. I do this thing called prayer and the Lord, in turn, does what I ask. This confuses exactly who is "Lord," but nevertheless, this is how we (meaning I) often look at things.

When that transaction is not completed--that is, when God doesn't dispense the desired answer to prayer quickly and efficiently--we begin to doubt His goodness. We think our divine ATM machine is broken. We might even bang it with our fist, though that doesn't help.

But in reality, prayer is not fundamentally about getting stuff from God. It is most fundamentally about fellowship with God, our heavenly Father. This includes requests, just a child looks to his father for his needs, but is much more. And even the requests are not transactions intended to prove or disprove whether God is really there caring for us, as if we could put him to the test.

I recently asked someone who is just getting to know the Bible (he learned John 3:16 recently) what he thought prayer was for. I assumed his answer would be something about asking God for stuff. Instead he said, “I guess it’s a way to be close to God.” That’s a great answer!

I hope we (meaning I) will answer the same way when asked.

Don't Waste Your Easter

Jeff is a good friend of mine from seminary. I learned, when we were in seminary together, that he's not a morning person. At least, he wasn't back then. He was the type to roll out of bed and into class, whether class started at 8:00 or 9:00... or 10:00. On the other hand, I tended to rise pretty early.

Jeff loves the outdoors. In fact, I became friends with Jeff during an 18-mile hike... lots of conversation can happen over 18 miles.

One day we decided to go hiking early in the morning, before class, at a park not far from the school. Since I was the morning person and Jeff was not, it was my job to wake him up. So at some early hour, before it was quite light outside, I walked over to Jeff's apartment pondering just what it would take to get him out of bed.

It didn't take much. His eyes opened right up. In fact, it was unclear whether he had even been asleep. And off we went.

In the first-century narratives of the Resurrection that we find in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, there are a few consistent themes. Worship and joy are on the list, for example. But N.T. Wright points out something that we often fail to notice--that these gospel accounts consistently give us the following message:

"He is risen! We have work to do."

For example, in Matthew 28, the women grab Jesus' feet to worship him. He send them off to tell the disciples that He has risen. He appears to those disciples later... and tells them that as Risen Lord He is sending them out to share the news. Each account moves quickly from Resurrection to Commission. From joy to joyful duty.

The message is not: "Hey, this guy Jesus rose--how cool is that?"

Instead, the message is: "Jesus is the Risen Lord. And He is using his infinite capital to put us to work."

Here's where my friend Jeff comes in. When we think of "work," especially connected to religion, it's often a very negative connotation. Work is something that we do because we must...forced labor. (Aren't there laws against that kind of thing?) But the work we are called to is one we do because we enjoy it--in fact, can barely help it. Like my friend Jeff--it was hard for him to sleep, not hard for him to rise, when the task involved something he truly loved.

If Easter is something less than stimulating, I fear it is because our affection for Jesus Christ is fairly platonic. We might appreciate Him or applaud Him, but perhaps we don't truly love Him. As a result, the fact that He is Risen Lord doesn't get us so excited. But I think that the more we come to understand the beauty of His majesty--and how glorious it is that He is Lord rather than so many other rascals!--we will desire to do the work to which He calls us.


(In case you weren't there--this post is based on a short message I gave at our Easter Sunrise Service.)