The leader of the women’s ministry at my new church talked about this verse at a Bible study last weekend, and what she said has stuck with me. We can’t know the frame of mind of the Israelites as they camped their last few nights in the wilderness. But peppered throughout the book of Joshua are the instructions “Be strong and courageous.” You don’t need to be admonished to do those things if you’re not in the least afraid or uncertain. So chances are, they had some butterflies. They were gearing up to move into a land owned by someone else, that they knew they’d have to fight for, and oh yeah, in the morning they were going to somehow walk through a river to get there.

Had they let their fears control them, they may have stayed camped out across from the promised land, receiving none of the blessings of their inheritance and losing an opportunity to show God’s greatness. But they obeyed, so they got to experience the wonder of waters rushing back from the Ark of the Covenant so they could walk through on dry ground.

God is working in us, on us, and around us all the time, but he does his greatest works through us only when we swallow our fears, walk to the rocky edge of our comfort zone, and step out. Hebrews 11 is a laundry list of people doing impossible, uncomfortable, and inconvenient things in obedience to God, but if that’s too remote to resonate for you, there are modern tales of inconvenient obedience all over the place. Francis Chan, Jen Hatmaker, David Platt have all written about whole churches doing it. Those one or two people you know who actually fast every now and then? They might be doing it. The kid at Burger King who says God bless you when she hands you your lunch might even be doing it.

If I’m comfortable in my life, perhaps I’m ignoring a call to do more. Maybe writing the occasional FS blog post is a skinny little pigeon type of sacrifice, when I’ve got a stable’s worth of overweight lambs in the backyard, if you get my drift. I stand at the door of my stocked pantry and complain when I can’t decide what snack I’m in the mood for, and nearly 1 in 7 people worldwide are going hungry. I want to shine for Christ among my family and friends, but I’m too worried about what they’ll think of me to say too much about it.

Crossing the Jordan takes guts, even when it’s something as seemingly simple as starting a conversation. But  when the Israelites did it, God went in before them, stood among them as they walked, and followed behind them when they reached the other side. He’ll do the same for us if we’ll only obey.

My daughter has been given a few responsibilities around the house.  For this she gets an allowance of $1.25 per week, and included in these responsibilities is the daily task of feeding the dogs and checking to make sure they have water.  Should she fail to feed the dogs even once during the week, she forfeits her allowance for the entire week.  Some may see this as a bit heavy handed, but I am trying to teach her consistency in self-discipline, and the idea that failure to hold up her responsibilities will have great consequences.

If she doesn’t feed the dogs, then the dogs who depend on her, the dogs who have done nothing wrong, would go hungry.  (To be sure, I’d feed them myself, but only after she has gone to bed.)  She might forget, and in fact, even if she remembers I have told her that she does not have to feed the dogs if she does not want to, but the dogs will go hungry if she does not, and she will get nothing for an allowance at the end of a week.  She will not be reminded of her responsibilities.  The choice is hers.

So far, she has had a few close calls, and maybe one day she will slip up and forget, but the knowledge of leaving hungry dogs outside to suffer for her own actions has made an impact on her.  What is more, the idea that she could do a whole weeks worth of work to lose it all at the end by forgetting has her leaving notes to herself, reminding herself to feed the dogs.  She is learning a lot of lessons here.

It may not seem fair to some that she should lose her whole allowance if she misses feeding the dogs once at the end of a week, but consider this; we can go our whole lives building a reputation, and lose it all in a moment.  I also believe we lose a lot more than just our reputation when we choose to do what is wrong.

I believe God has a plan for our lives, and His hand of providence is ever willing to bless us along that path.  We can choose to stay on that path, or we can choose to stray.  The choice is ours.  God will not be there hovering over us to remind us that sin is going to have consequences, we simply must choose.  Whether we like it or not, choosing to sin will abort God’s hand of providence in our lives as we kick off a chain reaction of events that sends us off of God’s plan for our lives.

A striking example of this exists early in Scripture where, in Genesis chapter four, Cain chooses to abort God’s plan for his life.  Notice how God never intervenes, even when it will cost Abel his life.  Cain always has a choice in his actions.  In the end, Abel is murdered, the parents suffer the loss of a child, and Cain is marked for life.  Even today we think rather poorly of the first child born into this world, because he had a choice, and because he chose to abort providence the earth would never grow for him ever again.  Genesis 4:12a “When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength;”

The good news is, you may choose to abort providence in your life, but God is not without mercy.  Your life may have strayed far from God’s plan, but God is in the reconciliation business as well.  This is one aspect of God that many Christians I know love to embrace for themselves, but detest when God shows mercy on others who have wronged them.

If you are ever tempted to sin, take a moment to realize you have a choice here.  You can choose to do what is wrong, and God will not come down from heaven to stop you.  Regardless of how awful your sin might be, God will not intervene.  You must fight that spiritual battle yourself, but know that if you lose that spiritual battle and give in to temptation, there will be vast and unintended consequences, and you will abort God’s providence in your life.

If you are someone who realizes how far off God’s plan for your life you have strayed, there is still hope.  God is a God of judgement, but only against the unrepentant heart.  God is also a God of mercy to those who would come before Him with a humble heart.  James 4:6 “But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.”  Psalm 51:17 “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.”

So this leads me to think about my class.  I am teaching on Heaven which is a subject that I am wildly passionate about.  I wish everyone was more excited about heaven, and that is one of the big goals of the class for me.  However, only God can provide eyes,  ears, and hungry hearts to hear His truth.  This has lead me to pray like this, “God please, please let me interpret and teach your word faithfully.  Please, please, please give your people ears to hear and eyes to see your truth from Scripture.  More than all of this, God, please forgive your sinful servant.  Please, dear Lord, may I not be a impediment or speed bump on the path to your Gospel truth.  God, please help a straight Truth come from this crooked man.”

I have been more fervent in this prayer than any in a while (teaching Sunday School is scary), and yet as I look at my prayer, it applies equally as much to how I act as a husband, father, friend, and general witness for the Gospel.  So due to that, I am trying to pray it for all areas of my life.  May He grant this prayer request for His glory, and His glory alone.

“In Paradise there are many Saints who never gave alms on earth; their poverty justified them. There are many Saints who never mortified their bodies by fasting or wearing hair shirts; their bodily infirmities excused them. There are many Saints too who were not virgins; their vocation was otherwise. But in Paradise there is no Saint who was not Humble.” (from Humility of Hear by Fr. Cajetan Mary da Bergamo

Whether or not I learn much from the rest of this book, I suppose I would do well to reflect on this paragraph every little while.

Luke 3

And he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none.7 And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?’ 8 And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. 9 Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’” (ESV)

As I was reading this parable a couple of things occurred to me.  The first is that the tree isn’t expected to bear fruit without the work of the vinedresser.  The second is that there seems to be a limit to how long the master will wait for the tree to become useful.

Who is the vinedresser in your life?  Is there someone who is spreading…well let’s call it fertilizer and giving you the spiritual sustenance that you need?  Are you helping someone else to grow?  I don’t think that as Christians we can really be alone and expect to grow in our faith and our work.  We need help and we need to help each other.

The other thought is a little scarier to me.  While I am waiting around trying to figure out what the Lord wants me to do, time is running out.  I know that I have a tendency sometimes to sit back and wait for answers, to pray and be still and listen, but not to act.  I think that the parable is a warning that God won’t wait forever on us.  This is why the vinedresser is so important.  The vinedresser takes responsibility for the tree.  He doesn’t want the tree to be destroyed so he does the work necessary to give the tree the best chance of bearing fruit.

What do you think?  Are you being a vinedresser to someone?  Are you doing everything you can to help those around you bear fruit?  If not, what can you do that will help others?  What can others do to help us?

My wife and I have been having some very serious discussions about some die-hard beliefs we have held to for a long time without any real understanding about why we feel that way.  For some of those long-held beliefs, we have discarded them simply because they were not Biblical and more preferential, for other long-held beliefs, we needed more insight either to continue to hold to them, or let them go entirely.

One of those die-hard beliefs comes from an oft repeated verse in the Bible from Fundamental Independent Baptist pulpits.  Let me be clear, I have a strong Baptist background, and this post is in no way meant to be derogatory, however, there are a lot of religions, churches and groups out there (including the Fundamental Independent Baptists) who could stand a large dose of intense Bible study by the individuals who claim those titles.

The verse in question comes from Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”  The premise taught for so long being we are sinful wicked creatures with a heart bent toward evil deeds.  Whether saved or unsaved, you are degenerate and only by the grace of God does anything good ever come into or out of your life.  This is what I had been taught and believed for pretty much my entire life.  Then a book came across my path over the past few months:  “Waking the Dead”, by John Edlridge, which put forth a counter claim.  In the book Edlridge claims that the verse in Jeremiah only holds true to a person who has never accepted Christ as Savior, and that once a person accepts the blood of Jesus for payment for sins, they get a new heart.  The process of being “born again” is the awakening of the Holy Spirit of God in you wherby God now lives in you, in your heart, and as such, your heart is no longer “desperately wicked” but rather your heart is good!

I immediately recognized and latched on to the truth of that statement.  How can anyone possibly operate from a core that is pure evil and hope to influence anyone in a positive way?!  However, if my heart is good, then from that central core where Christ lives, I can begin from a positive stance to begin to influence the world around me in a positive way.  My wife, however, needed more than a book to tell her this.  She needed something from the Bible.

To her credit, during an intense Bible study not related to the heart, she came across another verse in the New Testament.  Hebrews 10:22 “Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.”  Here, in this verse she actually stumbled upon while conducting an unrelated Bible study, we see the words and process by which our “desperately wicked” heart is made good.

The whole passage actually starts at verse 19 and goes through verse 25, and having it in its proper context only lends greater strength to the truth she realized.  The Old Testament required a process of purification by which the High Priest could enter the presence of God in the Holiest place of the tabernacle or temple.  That process included the ritualistic purification by water and the sprinkling of blood upon the horns of the altar – a picture of what was to come.

Verse 22 is the full realization in the life of the believer of that ancient practice, when, as born again believers we are encouraged to “draw near with a true heart.”  What kind of heart?  A heart that is deceitful and desperately wicked?  No, but rather “hearts sprinkled” with the blood of Jesus Christ (see verse 19 of the same passage).  Sprinkled to what purpose?  The purpose of purification, to have our hearts washed “from an evil conscience” so that we no longer have to bear the guilt and weight of sin.  Finally, we are “washed with pure water” so that we can appear unblemished before God.

This verse completely counters the claim made by so many that the verse in Jeremiah is describing the hearts of all men.  For the heart of a man who has laid his faith in the blood of Jesus Christ is no longer wicked, his heart is good.  Your heart, my fellow warrior in Christ, is good.  This is great cause for celebration indeed, for it gives a new hope not just for today, nor only for the next year, but for every future endeavor of your life.

In the bathroom my wife was pressing a wet wash cloth on the mouth of my youngest daughter while the oldest just stood there looking pale and worried.  Whatever had happened, blood was definitely involved, and the oldest was obviously feeling guilty and responsible.  Shaking off the exhaustion from hours of travel, I asked calmly, “What happened?”

What ensued was an animated and worried explanation by my oldest daughter of how she accidentally slammed the door to the bathroom into the face of her younger sister who was busy being nosey while my oldest was trying to get some privacy.  “Tell her you’re sorry.”  My oldest apologized.  “Guess you will leave her alone when she needs to use the bathroom from now on won’t you?”  My youngest nodded.

I hugged my oldest, telling her that everything will be fine, and that she was not in trouble.  I believed her when she told her story, not so much because she is not capable of lying, but that she has a home-grown fear of the consequences of lying that far outweigh any fear of discipline for whatever she has done.  I then went to my youngest, picked her up, and just hugged her, too.

Within 30 minutes, it was as if the incident had never happened, and life restarted in our house with our little family.  Thing is, such small emergencies are much bigger than most men realize.  If I had over-reacted, I very well could have wounded the spirit of my oldest.  Ignore it completely, and the youngest would be left to wonder if she mattered at all.  I’m not saying I handled the situation perfectly, or even the best way possible, but I handled it keeping both of my daughters in mind.

This was not a medical emergency, it was an emergency of priorities.  Your children need to know that they matter to you.  No matter how big or small the incident, when things go wrong in their lives they want to know you care enough to take some time out for them.  If my children had been boys, I might have handled it differently, but with a household full of females, a slap on the back and a “shake it off” simply would not be good enough here.

Whether it is a broken toy, some hurt feelings, a skinned knee, or a busted lip, your kids will come to you with all sorts of emergencies.  Many of them will not require more than a few minutes of your attention, but those moments are so very important.

I think that a lot of kids who grow up starved for attention did not come to that point all at once.  Rather, it was the missed moments of small emergencies that accumulated over time, and eventually these kids learn that only the most egregious actions will ever warrant attention, and so they go there.

To keep from having those really big emergencies that are self-inflicted by your children, take advantage of the small emergencies to give them attention and show you really care.  What small emergencies, what opportunities to show your children you care are passing you by?

reposted from www.menrising.com

If you have been paying attention, and if you have read the previous three articles, you have been wondering what all this was building up to, and where it was all going.  The only problem with the Fearless Christian life is that I believe so many Christian men wrongly believe they are there.

Go back to the Floundering Christian life for a moment, and realize that when you ask God to use you, and God begins to take you into the deeper waters, there is panic.  There is unease.  There is a complete loss of control.  When God intervenes, and we are taken back to the safety of the Favored Christian life, there is a tendency to pat ourselves on the back for having made the effort – never to try again.  As God calls us again though, we begin to resist, and there is the danger.  God wants us to grow, and he will nudge us to grow, and He will call us to grow, but God will never force us to grow.

Peter walked on water!  He also got distracted, sank, floundered, and had to be rescued.  How Jesus responds to him at that moment is telling.  It is not a clap on the back and a “You did really well out there for a few moments!” comment followed by other accolades.  His words are ones of disappointment of what could have been . . . Matthew 14:31  “And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?”

It is a powerful story, because later this same Peter continues to Flounder.  Ready to die with Christ one moment in the Garden of Gethsemane as soldiers come to take Christ away, he soon denies he even knows Christ by the fireside and runs away . . . runs back . . . returns to his old life as a fisherman . . . back to the favored life he once knew where all was safe, everything was OK, and the floundering could cease.  However, Christ was not finished with him yet.

How many fearless men in the Bible can you name?  Moses, fearless before Pharaoh.  Abraham, fearless to offer his own son.  Joshua, fearless to raid the land of Canaan.  Paul, fearless before many trials and afflictions.  What makes these men fearless?  For some, the time of their Floundering is aparrent, but for others the Bible does not focus on this and it is less clear.  Still, I submit to you that each of these men had their doubts, their fears, their time to flounder before coming to the point they were fearless.  Why do I say this?  How can I know this?

Return to the pool.  Go back to the time of learning how to swim.  Floundering in the water, flailing wildly, desperate to extricate yourself from the situation, you slowly built the foundation and the mechanics of swimming.  I remember those times, but I also know that today I am comfortable jumping into any body of water with the sure and fearless knowledge that I can swim.

God has a greater purpose for every man’s life, and it is not to continue to live the Favored Christian life either.  I believe God wants to use you, too, but to get there, God has to take you into the deeper waters and allow you to Flounder.  There He can teach you, train you, allow you to learn who you really are, and where your talents and strengths God has given you reside.  Coming through all that, you gain a knowledge of your purpose, your place, your identity, and who you really are as a Christian man.

The problem is, too few are ever willing to enter the Floundering Christian life, and so they rush back to the Favored Christian life as quickly as possible.  There are some out there though, dissatisfied with the Favored Christian life, who know there is a Fearless Christian life to be lived with a name and an identity, but they do not want to Flounder.  They resist the unknown, and so they enter and step back, again and again, trying to work up the courage to surrender to the process God has for them.  Of those who enter the Floundering Christian life, it seems all too few ever emerge Fearless.

Look around you.  Who among you has given up and allowed “Failure” to be stamped on their life?  Who among you would rather live the “Favored” Christian life?  Who among you resist the “Floundering” life?  Though they want God to use them, they refuse to endure.  Who among you, is truly Fearless?

It was easier for me to look at Galatians 5 and feel good about myself before I began to see myself through the eyes of my four-year-old daughter. Before, I believe that I thought I had most of the fruit well in hand. I would look at the list and say to myself, “Well, I think most people would say I am kind and loving, gentle, faithful, even joyful.” But my blind spot was spelled out in the first part of that thought: “I think most people would say …”

That is how I view my character: through what other people think of me. So it’s instructive now to be subject to the all-day, every-day gaze of a child who listens and watches intently, picking up and mimicking my true values — the ones I have done a wonderful job hiding from myself over the years. When she screams at the dog for a petty offense I know it’s because, even though I identify myself as an animal lover, too often my first reaction to my dog’s needy character is a shove and a yell. When my daughter lets out a theatrical, irritated sigh after being asked to do a chore she doesn’t feel like doing, I have to realize, even while I lecture her for her bad attitude, that she hears that sigh coming out of my mouth whenever I’m trying to do something and she interrupts with that extra question or that extra request that just doesn’t seem critical to me.

See, the fruit of my spirit, sadly, is anger, impatience, inconstancy, jealousy, self-pity, and the king of them all, pride. And my daughter will have a hard time bearing better fruit than me if I don’t start showing her what it looks like. I pray God will give me the right fruit, so my kids can be closer to Him as they grow.