Some struggles

    It is my desire to be as transparent as possible with folks who read my blog here in the hopes that my sharing will help others.  With that in mind, I want to share with you some of my struggles and how my faith has helped me deal with some of my issues.
    Since I was a teenager, I have struggled at times with feelings of depression.  For months I can do very well only to struggle occassionally.  At this stage in my life, I am doing better than I have in a long time, but I can't honestly say those feelings don't come back sometimes because they do.  One thing that helped me is that I remember that God sent his only son to died for me.  God sent his very best for me because he loves me that much.  If God was willing to sacrifice like that then I must be pretty important to him.  And if God feels that way about me and he created me then I should also be able to accept myself.  After all, God is our creator and if he thinks that much of you then who else's opinion matters more?
     I will also be honest with you and say I remember being bullied a lot as a young person.  I had friends, but not many though the ones I did have friendships with they were usually good ones.  Ironically, there are people on facebook who want to "friend" me now that wouldn't talk to me when we were in school.   I remember being called names from people on the bus in junior high on a daily basis.  After hearing people call you names for years you start to believe it.  Maybe that is why after so many years my experience in an abusive church hurts so much, because church was typically one place I felt safe and that is no longer the case.
     When I first came out of seminary, I went to Virginia to work in a church as a education/youth minister.  The pastor there in Petersburg was a bully.  His way of controlling people was to embarrase them.  This was the church where I met my wife, but I still left that position after a year and one month.  To be honest, if it wasn't for her, I wouldn't have stayed as long as I did.  I can recall one time when the pastor was yelling at me during a youth committee meeting.  He was calling me names.  I told him that I was sorry that he didn't like me, but God accepted me the way I am and his opinion was more important to me than the pastors.  I then left that meeting, so I didn't have to listen to him verbally abuse me.  I had a hard time listening to him after that because he discredited himself and his witness.
       It saddens me when I look at the news and see how much violence and abuse there is in the world.  It seems we live in a culture that devalues people and how important they are and uses people.  We don't realize the enormous value that God puts on people.  When you hear about child abuse and abortion (which is nothing more or less than murder), rape and terrorism, I can tell you right now that God isn't pleased.  He should have judged our country many years ago.  We really are on borrowed time.  I pray everyday that he will return soon and end all the violence.
       I don't think there is anything more important to God than that we love Him and then love other people (Matthew 22:37-40).  As a christian, it is my job to show to others by the way I treat them that they are of enormous value to God and also to me.  There is no excuse for name calling or abusing people verbally or otherwise.  You have to remember that God not only loves you, but also sent his son to die for that other person as well.  That isn't just the people who are funny or attractive or smell good, but also to the homeless, the alcoholic, the addict, the person in jail.  There is an eternal value in people despite what they have done.
       This is a  witness that must be lived out on a daily basis.  In how you do your job, in how you treat other people, in whether or not you keep your word.  There are a lot of people who claim to be christians who simply can't be relied upon. They say one thing and do another.  Are you a person of your word?  Do you do what you say?  Do you try to be nice to people when your not feeling well?  Do you regard for others and respect even when you disagree with people?  All of those things matter when it comes to our witness.
        This is one of the reasons I try to work as hard as I do at my job.  I see my job as my ministry where God has placed me.  The people he has given me to work with are people he wants me to help.  So, I try to do the best I can.  I know that my time is limited with them and so I want to make the best use of my time.  I would suggest to you that regardless of what your job is that God has also placed the people around you for a reason.  These are the people God wants you to minister to regardless of what your job title is.  You are there for a reason.   It is not an accident.

Renew Your Mind

    Our pastor is in the middle of a series about the fruit of the Spirit.  As I have been thinking about that I thought about one thing that I think is so important for everyone who calls themselves a believer including me.  I think it is important that we renew our minds daily with God's presence and Word.  I have been trying most mornings to start off with a short time of prayer and Bible reading.  I need it.  It helps me prioritize my day and helps me to focus on what is really important.

     In several places in scripture it tells us to renew our minds.  Some people will say they don't have time.  Yet, those same people won't have a problem going to a football game for 3 hours or more or going to the lake.  You have time if you want to have time.  We make time for what we enjoy.  What your really saying is that you don't enjoy it, so you don't do it.  You can do it if you want to.

    What I do and have done for nearly 30 years of being a believer is that I try to read about 3-4 chapters of the Bible a day.  I would recommend picking both New and Old testament passages.  I don't ever recommend just the Old Testament.  Your a New Testament believer and need to stay in the New Testament.  Make sure to spend some time in prayer.  Remember not just to ask for things, but to also praise him and thank him.  This helps us get our focus right.

    Our world bombards us with images and an agenda that simply is not of God.  The world is caught up with cooking shows, celebrity shows, who is wearing what and who is dating who and who said what on twitter.  I mean, really, who cares what someone said on twitter?  The world gets caught up in image and the outward and beauty that is only skin deep.  It is shallow and that is why many of the so called celebrities end up in rehab and killing themselves with drugs and alcohol.  God wants you to get his perspective on the world and the only way to do that is to spend time with him.

    John 15:1-5 is one of my favorite passages in the Bible.  It talks about how we cannot bear fruit apart from him.  And those who do bear fruit are pruned.  Part of this pruning is the refining fire of God's Word that helps burn away the thoughts, motives and actions of this world.  It helps us to become useful for His service.  There are no shortcuts that are available.  it simply means spending time with God and allowing him to transform you into the likeness of His Son.

Born of Water and the Spirit

          The other day in the small group I attended there was a discussion about the nature of salvation. One man noted that when we ask people to “pray a prayer” to receive Christ it seems that in some ways it may be that we are making it too simply. As we have looked for a church over the last few years, that struggle has been something I have also become familiar with. To me, it seems in many cases Baptist simply ask for someone to pray a prayer and then don’t follow up very well in calling the person to discipleship. While, the Methodist churches I have been in seem to make it more about a process and never seem to call a person to make a decision. One seems too simply, the other too drawn out. So, who is right?


           Let me backtrack a little a share a story with you, back in 2005, I was a pastor of small church in West Virginia. I call it “the church that enjoyed hurting me”. It was a church where the previous pastor was very different from me. The church seemed to have trouble dealing with that adjustment as much as I did. They seemed very critical. Some of the criticism came from the deacons and leaders who I thought had my back. Then, one night the youth leadership told me that a young man had given his heart to the Lord. After dealing with people who claimed to be “saved” and yet lived like Satan’s spawn I wasn’t that excited to hear that. In fact, I wasn’t joyful about it at all. I took the attitude, “Okay, we will see if it lasts”. Which was the wrong attitude for me to have. But, I was tired of seeing so called Christians who didn’t walk the talk.

         The pastor’s wife in the church we attend now is very pregnant. In fact, she is due in about two weeks, but it would not be a surprise to see her go into labor beforehand. I thought about that and how Jesus refers to salvation as being “born again”. In John 3:5 it says, “Jesus answered “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.” So, is being born an event or it is a process? It would appear to be born it is both. Labor and being born are both a process of many months, but there is a definite period when there is a birth.

         I think people can get stuck though once they are born and not develop correctly. They become saved and satisfied with where they are. We shouldn’t confuse this with the sometimes painful slow process of sanctification. Just like when you put a seed into the ground, you don’t expect the plant to bear out of the ground and bloom on the same day. In fact, it would be foolish of me to stand over a seed and yell at it because it hadn’t bloomed yet. It takes time and from what I have seen, growth is best seen in retrospect.

         When I was little, my grandparents would sometimes come to visit on holidays. They would look at me at the airport or once we got home and remark about how much I had grown. I would look at them like they were crazy. I had not noticed the growth because I was there everyday. But, growth did occur because over the years clothing became too small and shoes too little. I didn’t see it because it was so slow, but it was there. Likewise, I think sometimes spiritual growth is often small steps that lead to big paths. We can get caught up in trying to look like other believers or comparing ourselves to others. But, God doesn’t want us to do that. He wants us to realize that he is causing the growth in us. And he causes the growth in order that we might bear fruit. Talk about this in 1 Corinthians 3:6-7 Paul said, “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labors.: