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.:

Bitterness

    Our sermon last Sunday was about the fruit of the Spirit.  The pastor was talking about love and referred to the opposite of love as bitterness.  I am not sure that I agree with that, as I see the opposite of love being apathy, but I can certainly see why he would feel that way.  I felt convicted that I have allowed in the past some bitterness to creep in and take root.  I want to be free from that and walk in the love that Christ would want me to love other people with.  Sometimes people make it near impossible to love or even like them.

     I didn't realize when I left the church I worked at years ago just how angry and bitter I was.  I was so disappointed that it didn't work out and that people who were initially excited about our coming turned on us very early on.  You wouldn't believe the angry and hostile emails I got from church members.  Fights about things like easter egg hunts and whether or not we would have a softball team.  It all seemed so petty and childish.  For a good year or two after I left West Virginia I couldn't even sit all the way through a service because I would remember someone and the hurtful things they said and have to leave.  I was horribly angry and after a while it took root and spread.

     I also alienated myself from the church because I didn't want to get hurt again.  Anyone reading this like to get hurt?  I don't.  So, for a while I stopped going.  The thinking is that if I am not there you can't hurt me.  A lot of people do that and I think many of the pews in churches today are empty because of that.  But, in the end, I don't go to church just for other people.  You go because God deserves your worship.  The church is imperfect, but then aren't we all.

     So, I kept trying and over time I realized how angry I truly was.  It was embarrasing and evil what some people said and did in West Virginia.  I guess I could just write it off as them being backwood hillbilllies, but I don't really see that.  I think at some point I realized that the one I was hurting the most by hanging on to the bitterness was myself.  So, over time I have had to let it go and move on.  Aware the whole time that people have it within them to be very nice, but also at times very evil.  You can't always tell either who it will be.  There is no light or cardboard sign they are carrying that says, "I will tear your heart out and eat it." 

     So, we are going back to church and have picked a new church home.  It is non-denominational and perhaps more different than any church that I have been a part of.  It is loud and the guy with the guitar is a little weird, but every Sunday I have been there God has spoken through his word.  I need that.  I need a word from God.  I need to feel that connection.  And the truth of the matter is that I am weird too just in different ways. 

     The truth also is that I have the capacity within me to be pretty mean also.  One lesson perhaps that can be taken from this is what i don't want to be like.  That I don't want to assume the worst in people.  That I don't want to be hypocritical and judgmental.  That I don't want to claim I live one way and then walk another.  That service in the church isn't about a power trip and who I can boss around.  I really see that there are a lot of modern day Pharisees in the church today.  I can remember one pastor I worked with brag about the nice chair on the platform that he sat in and the phone on the platform where he could call the soundboard guy.   We all have those dark and sinful places in our hearts and that experience is a warning to me about what I don't want to be like.  I want to live as Jesus would want me to and be a good example to others.  Not being on some power trip because of a title or a position. 

Joy in the Lord

     Recently, I applied to be a moderator on christianforums.com and started training to do this.  As a moderator, you talk to other people a lot about the faith.  I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to share what I know with others.  The forum is something I have been a part of for the last seven years.
      The moderators have a number of steps that they take to let a person know that they have  broken the rules, warnings and infractions can be imposed.  Of course, if someone does something really horrible then they can be immediately banned.  So far, I've actually banned two people while I've been in training.  Both of them were advertising web sites on the forum which is prohibited.
     One thing I have noticed about many christians is that they are harsh.  People are willing to argue and call each other names and really act ugly towards each other because someone doesn't agree with their position.  I've noticed this in the church also.  It's a shame that some churches are actually more well known for what they are against and their legalistic viewpoints than their love for others.
     I don't think it is a mistake that when Paul mentions joy right after love in Galatians 5:22-23.  It says,
"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, against such things there is no law."  Let's be totaly honest for a second and ask yourself if the church you go to, the churches that you know about are they known for these qualities?  Are these qualities you see growing in your own life?
     I think about Paul and the fact that when he was in prison with Silas they were heard singing around midnight Acts 16:25.  Having been beaten with rods that day, fastened their feet with stocks and left to bleed in the inner prison, Paul found the joy in the Lord to sing.  I honestly don't think I would be singing.  I think I would be complaining at the top of my lungs.  Paul wasn't singing abou this circumstances though because his circumstances were pretty horrible.  He was rejoicing in the Lord which he tells us to do also Phil 3:1.
     The great thing is that I can rejoice in the Lord regardless of my circumstances because he doesn't change.  I can always rejoice in the fact that he sent his son to die for me and had the power and ability to raise Jesus from the dead.  I can rejoice that one day he is coming back and will right the wrongs in our society.  I can rejoice that he has overcome sin and death and one day death will be no more.  I can rejoice that he is never too busy to hear me when I call out to him.  I can rejoice that he loves me and that he cares.  There is plenty to rejoice about despite the temporary problems and afflictions of this life.

A Lying Tongue

   Over the past 7 years, I have been working in a variety of mental health settings.  From hospitals, to the community in a variety of settings and variety of ages.  My youngest client on my case load was three and my oldest was around 65.  People have sought help for a variety of reasons including housing, managing symptoms, needing medication and sometimes just needing some support and an ear to listent to their story.  In some cases, I have enjoyed the people I have worked with and in some cases I have been glad to move on.  In most cases, I think I can say without being prideful I have been helpful, but not always.
     One of the hardest things to deal with is when people are less than truthful about their situation.  People come to treatment for a variety of reasons.  Sometimes they come because others want them there.  Other times, they come because they want records showing they sought help due to a disability claim or because of a court case.  In some cases, they actually want to get better and are willing to do the work required.  In many of these cases, clients are motivated to cover up or lie about some things they don't want you to know about such as drug use.
      One of the reasons this is hard to deal with is that it is hard to help someone when you don't have all the facts.  It also erodes the ability to trust the person and what they are telling you.  In mental health work, giving false or misleading information can lead to a misdiagnosis which can lead to the wrong treatment being provided.  It wastes time and can lead to the proper treatment not happening.  In a time when we are experiencing managed care time is very important.  Have you ever thought about the importance of telling the truth.  Have you ever considered that in John 8:44 Jesus refers to the devil himself as someone who has no truth in Him and is the "father of lies."
      There are a number of places in scripture that talk about how much God hates lies.  Proverbs 6:17; Proverbs 12:22, Colossians 3:9; Ephesians 4:25 all talk about lying and the importance of not lying.  I like how in Hebrews 6:18 says that God himself cannot lie.  That is really important because we can know and rely on the fact that God keeps his word and can be relied upon.  This means we can trust God.
      Telling the truth is important in so many ways.  It is important in personal relationships.  We need to know we can trust people to tell the truth and to not hide important information or feelings from us.  It is important in court cases, so that witnesses tell the truth.  It is important in government that our congress and President tell the truth and give us all the facts about their decisions.  I believe we suffer now because many do not trust their government to tell them the truth.  We should be careful to consider our words and to remember how much God hates lying and loves it when people tell the truth in love.

Damascus and Syria

    I do not claim to be an expert on the Middle East or even on prophecy.  I've read the Bible cover to cover at least 20 or more times though and have seen people every time there is a conflict in the Middle East talk about the end times.  It happened last times rockets fell on Israel and when we attacked Iraq.  In a way it is good since it shows that we are trying to fit what the Bible says into our news today.  But, over time I think it makes people insensitive to the signs around them.  Like the little boy that cried wolf, when there really is trouble nobody believed him.

    The Bible makes several references of Damascus and the place where many people died within the last week by chemical weapons.  Most of these references have to do about a time long since past when Israel was carried off into captivity by the Assyrians.  I would point out to you that these Israelites never returned back to their homeland.  The Assyrians ruled in an area now within the boundaries of modern day Iraq.

    One reference is in Isaiah 17:1-3 an oracle against Damascus "Behold, Damascus is about to be removed from being a city, And it will become a fallen ruin. The cities of Aroer are forsaken; They will be for flocks to lie down in, And there will be no one to frighten them. the fortified city will disappear from Ephraim, and sovereignty from Damascus and the remnant of Aram; They will be like the glory of the sons of Israel, Declares the Lord of hosts."

     I have heard people say that because Damascus is referred to as a place of fallen ruin and that they don't believe this has happened before that perhaps it is in reference to a chemical weapon attack or nuclear attack.  I don't think this is necessarily the case and a case in point where the boy has called wolf when no wolf is there.  This is a reference to Damascus being emptied out by the Assyrians, nothing more and nothing less.

    Some related verses that a student of prophecy should consider is verses such as Jeremiah 49:23-24; Zech 9:1 and Micah 1:6.  Does that then mean that the war in Syria is irrelevant to end times.  No, it does not.  Look at what Jesus said in Matthew 24:6 "And you will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not frightened, for those things must take place, but that is not yet the end. For nation will rsie against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes.  But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pangs."

     And for years now we have heard of wars and rumors of wars.  Our country is in some ways tired of wars since being in Afghanistan and Iraq for so long.  We have seen famines and earthquakes.  We have seen horrible things such as 9/11 and other tragedies.  We have seen false prophets rise up as it says in Matt 24:11 and we have seen many people's love grow cold Mathew 24:12.  We have seen many if not most of the signs that Jesus talked about.  This is cause us to consider the times that we are in the end days.

    But, to say that these things have happened so that one day or a particular day Jesus will return is foolish.  We don't know when he will return.  I think it will be soon, but I could very well be wrong.  Jesus said that "The Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will." matthew 24:44.  Our job as christians is not to predict, but to be ready.  We are to be alert and also to be ready and busy until he returns.  Are you busy doing His work?