The Most Important Thing I’ve Learned in the Past 5 Years

I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed and so it won’t surprise anyone to know that I just figured out that the First Commandment of the Big Ten is First for a reason. If you obey the first commandment, then everything else in life works. If you break the first commandment, keeping the other nine won’t help much.

Soren Kierkegaard taught that every person seeks a way to justify their existence. What they choose to define them will be what they worship. If it is not God, your life won’t work they way God created it to.

Tim Keller in the chapter ten notes section on page 275 of his best selling book The Reason for God provides a list of God-substitutes and their impact on a life. A God-substitute is something or someone a person would use to center their life around to worship and be defined by other than God.

Here’s the list:
· If you center your life and identity on your spouse or partner, you will be emotionally dependent, jealous, and controlling. The other person’s problems will be overwhelming to you.
· If you center your life and identity on your family and children, you will try to live your life through your children until they resent you or have no self of their own. At worst, you may abuse them when they displease you.
· If you center your life and identity on your work and career, you will be a driven workaholic and a boring, shallow person. At worst you will lose family and friends and, if your career goes poorly, develop deep depression.
· If you center your life and identity on money and possessions, you’ll be eaten up by worry or jealousy about money. You’ll be willing to do unethical things to maintain your lifestyle, which will eventually blow up your life.
· If you center your life and identity on pleasure, gratification, and comfort, you will find yourself getting addicted to something. You will become chained to the “escape strategies” by which you avoid the hardness of life.
· If you center your life and identity on relationships and approval, you will be constantly overly hurt by criticism and thus always losing friends. You will fear confronting others and therefore be a useless friend.
· If you center your life and identity on a “noble cause,” you will divide the world into “good” and “bad” and demonize your opponents. Ironically, you will be controlled by your enemies. Without them, you have no purpose.
· If you center your life and identity on religion and morality, you will, if you are living up to your moral standards, be proud, self-righteous, and cruel. If you don’t live up to your standards, your guilt will be utterly devastating.

So, how can we keep the First Commandment? Love Jesus with all you are. Keep Him first in all you do. Obey Him no matter what because you love Him. Remember, you love Him because He first loved you – don’t get arrogant. Be defined by His love for you, His grace and the cost He paid for you and nothing else.

Almost Did It Again

WKU Men's Basketball team almost did it again. With seven minutes left in the game the guys had overcome a 21 point deficit at half time to be within 3 points of taking the lead.

They just couldn't squeeze out another victory.

Thank you players and coaches for an outstanding season. Thank you for being men of integrity with the 100% graduation rate you post.

It has been a joy for me to journey with these players this year. I began meeting with them for a weekly Bible study back in October. We had almost 100% participation at each study.

I am excited about the future of each of these men. Pray for them and ask God's blessing on their lives. Pray for those who are on their journey with Christ that they will stay close to Him and fulfill their destiny in Him. Pray for those who have not yet started that journey that they will.

You can find a list of players and coaches by clicking here.

What I'm Reading and Listening To

I was just at another pastor's blog and he had a list of the books he is reading right now. I think that's a good idea to let people know what the leader is reading and listening to.

So here's what I'm reading right now:

The Reason for God
Tim Keller

The Theology of the Book of Revelation
by Richard Bauckham

Jesus and the Eyewitnesses
by Richard Bauckham

Made to Stick
by Chip and Dan Heath

I'm also listening/watching a pastor's conference that was offered by Resurgence in February, 2008. Some of the speakers include Mark Driscoll and John Piper. You can watch it by clicking here.

Outstanding Insight Concerning Barack Obama's Pastor

This was written by Dr. Russell Moore. He is one of the treasures at Southern Seminary.

What is disturbing to me is that too many Christians have been diagnosing the particular political aims of Reverend Wright and his church as though this were the preeminent problem.

But what is the root? Liberation theology has been with us since the 1960s, in too many incarnations to count, always offering a version of the same message. The liberation theologians see the Gospel of Christ crucified and resurrected, the message of deliverance from the reign of sin and death through repentance and faith, as too "pie in the sky." In contrast, liberation theology offers economic and political salvation in the here-and-now, sometimes through pulpit rhetoric and sometimes at the point of a gun.

Liberation theology is seeker sensitive. The first waves of this movement, in Latin America, were designed to make Christianity appealing to the people by addressing their felt needs, the desire for armed revolution and Marxist economics. Liberation theology only works if one can connect with real or perceived oppression and then make the Scripture illustrative of how to navigate out of that situation. The Kingdom of God is a means to a social, economic, or political end.

This is not the Gospel as proclaimed by the prophets and apostles, a Gospel that centers on Jesus Christ and Him alone. We should be outraged by the clips of the Wright sermons. But we should be outraged first as Christians, not first as Americans. The most egregious aspect of the Wright sermons is not what he is saying about America, but what he is not saying about the Gospel.

Read this in its entirety by clicking here.

I Wonder Which Church We’ll Be

I am already getting excited and preparing for 2009. In 2009 I will be preaching through the book of Acts and our focus will be on “Sharing the Word – Missional Living.”

As I read through Acts each week, I see two models of church. There are certainly more of course, but there are two that are striking to me. There is the church at Jerusalem and the church at Antioch.

The church at Jerusalem started with a bang, but then got comfortable. They got into an institutional mode. They stopped living as an organic body and settled into an immobile structure. The church got off of the ground great, but then lost its sense for urgency. The people got used to grace and stopped sharing it. They got satisfied with the fact that they were saved, but lost interest in those that had not yet heard of Jesus. God had to bring a Saul into their world to persecute them (Acts 8:1) to stir the church to go as God commanded them to in Matthew 28:19-20 and Acts 1:8.

The church at Antioch got started and kept their organic urgent attitude. This church was living as a missional community. They didn’t seek mere stability. They sought to honor Christ and the mission He’d given them. They were the ones who first sent out Paul and Barnabas on their mission journey (Acts 11). This church understood that their church didn’t exist to make the converted comfortable. They understood that the church exists to make Christ known. They understood that the only time a church should be comfortable is when each member is living as a missionary and are sacrificing and surrendering their lives so that those around them might know Christ.

So, what about us? Is Living Hope a Jerusalem church or an Antioch church? We need to be like Antioch - on mission. The only way that will happen is if each member of our church realizes they are on mission for God and that their primary role in life is helping people Get to God. After we share Christ and baptize them, each member is to help the person they led to Christ to Grow in Christ and get them involved in a small group or ABF and participating in personal devotions. At the same time each member must help the person they led to Christ Give to Others and share their faith and serve the church. That is our process. Our mission is the discipleship process. This process is what we need every member involved in.

Fortunately, some of our people are living on mission. But we need all of our members to live as missionaries. This is more than a core value. This is a must for us.

The days of people coming to Living Hope only because of good preaching, a relaxed atmosphere, and upbeat blended worship are over. We need to get busy living on mission or get busy becoming irrelevant and unnecessary to the Kingdom of God, our city, nation, and world. The choice is ours.

Get on mission and help someone Get to God, Grow in Christ, and Give to Others this week!

My Baby Knows The Easter Bunny Is Bogus

Easter is the Super Bowl of the Christian faith. On this day we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Having died to take the punishment for sin for all who believe, Jesus was placed in a tomb. Many thought that was the end of Him. They were wrong!

Jesus is alive! We will celebrate this victory tomorrow.

To prepare for it (and other Lord's Days) here are some things you can do:

1. DON'T WORRY SO MUCH ABOUT WHAT TO WEAR. Dress nice, but remember this is not about you. This is the day we celebrate the ultimate victory of Jesus and praise Him. Jesus has won the victory over death and sin.

2. Pray for those who will be presenting the message from Scripture. This is not just the pastor. This includes the worship leaders and the classroom teachers for all ages.

3. Prepare your heart by reading from Scripture and praying. Pray that God will reveal Himself to you in a fresh way.

4. Recontact the person you are bringing to church with you tomorrow and confirm that they are coming and let them know how excited you are that they will be celebrating with you tomorrow.

5. Pray that everyone in attendance will draw closer to God.

6. Pray that the end result of the service will be the glory of God and the passion of believers to seek to help others know Christ.

Enjoy the day. There are special meals and events that take place around this once a year celebration. But train your children in the truth and remind yourself regularly that Easter is about Jesus and not the candy or that rather large and strange bunny at the mall.

Missional Church Training

On Thursday the staff and I headed to First Baptist Hendersonville where we spent a special day with a couple of buddies of mine and made some new buddies.

We had the opportunity to sit under the missional guru, Ed Stetzer. Ed is a dear trusted friend to me and I was excited for our team to get to glean from his knowledge. My friend Brady Cooper, who serves as pastor of New Vision Baptist Church, met us with his staff at First Hendersonville to enjoy the training as well. Ed is currently the interim pastor at First and so they hosted us and we got the chance to meet them and learn from this as well.

It was a great day of learning and discussion. After getting to hear Ed teach from 9-12, we gathered around tables with our counterparts from the other two churches and discussed what God was doing in our church and how we hoped to live out the missional mandate given to us by Jesus.

You can read some thoughts on our missional mandate and our need to get over our doubts about it at our church prayer blog, where I provided my bimonthly post.