Christians today are guilty of a massive injustice to faith. We often hinder the move of God in our churches, in our homes, and in our lives because we have such a small view of God. What could the world look like if we actually believed that God is the greater of the universe???

There's an old song that says, "Thereis power, power, wonder working power in the blood of the Lamb." People around the world sing this song yet have never tapped into that power for themselves. We have made God into a weak, incapable grandpa in the sky that maybe could help us out if we are really good boys and girls. We hardly ever pray for miracles, and when we do, we rarely ever believe they are going to happen. Some people say, "Well, God doesn't work that way anymore." What???? Are you seriously telling me that the God who created galaxies and planets that we will never even know about can't fix your little situation because He doesn't work like that anymore?!?! That is ludacris. This is the God who sends fire from heaven to prove that He is the one true God. This is the God who splits the sea to rescue His people. This is the God who sent His son to die, then busted Him out of the grave so we could live. We forget that God is powerful. We forget when we have needs that He is capable. We forget because we treat God like He is one of us.

We we have to remember that God is not one of us. Sorry, Joan Osborne. We cannot afford to bring Him down to our level. We have to keep Him on the throne where He belongs, not on a lazy boy recliner. Think about what our church services would actually look like if we believed in the real God. Think about how it could change your work or your school or your family. Jesus came to bring Heaven to earth, but we are trying to turn Heaven into earth. We have to change our mindsets if we ever want to see change in this world. We have to make God bigger than we can even imagine, because the truth is, He's even bigger than that.

“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
‭‭1 John‬ ‭4:7-8‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Love one another. Period. If you don't, you DON'T KNOW GOD!

We live in a time of turmoil and uncertainty. People are killing, people are being killed. There is so much hatred in our world right now and with every incident, more hatred ensues. Every time the news reports another shooting, hate. There's a terrorist attack, hate. There's a scandal, hate. There's an election season, hate. I could go on and on about how much hate I see in this world. The most unfortunate part about that is that a lot of it is coming from the church.

We as "the church" have made it our mission to police the world, telling everyone who is right and who is wrong, as if it was our responsibility to keep everyone in line. We have taken a stance of "holiness" that has made us holier than thou and has caused more division and confusion of the masses than ever before. More and more people are leaving Christ because of Christians.

The verse at the top says that those who love know God, and those who don't love, don't know God. That is a sobering thought. It is scary to think that there are thousands of people running around doing hateful things thinking they know God. Jesus told a story about people who get to eternity and say that they did all these things in His name, and He responds, "Depart from me. I never knew you." What kind of twisted things have we as Christians done in Christ's name thinking we knew Him and what He wanted? Believe me, I am casting the first stone at myself. I used to condemn everyone I met for their sinful lifestyles. I was so unloving that I turned my own brother away from God. Where did we get so messed up? How did we miss everything that the Bible said about love and pervert it into something so mean and selfish? How have we as a group of people who are supposed to be known by the love that we have for one another become so hateful and condemning to the point that people would rather abandon God all together than to be like us???

It hurts my heart to see the violence and destruction that we are seeing today. I hurt for my African American brothers and sisters, I hurt for the law enforcement officers, and I hurt for everyone in between. I hurt for those who have lost loved ones. I hurt for those that are so hurt that they felt the need to hurt others. I wish that we could all feel the pain of the other side. I wish we could understand that the feelings that they have, whoever the they may be, are real and painful and true. If we all spent some time empathize Instead of pointing fingers, we might not lash out. I wish instead of riots and protests, we could spend that energy going out of our way to show love.

When I die, I hope that people will say of me that I loved others. I hope that my life will have left a positive impact on this world. If you are someone that I was hateful to in the past, I sincerely beg your forgiveness and hope I can make it up to you someday. And by the way, I love all of you.

There's a trend in churches these days. It is a disturbing trend that has been the ruin of many ministries. It gets talked about at conferences, books are written about it, and yet people experience it all the same. It's a little thing called, "Burn Out."
I know what you're thinking: we've heard all about burn out. What more can you say that we don't already know.

My answer to that: maybe nothing. I just want to take an honest look at what I believe is the main culprit for making ministers burn the candle at both ends.

I would venture to say the offender is what I like to call The Big Show. You see, as a person in ministry, there is an unspoken pressure that this week has to be better than last week, and next week has to be better than this week, and it's a never ending cycle. We are always trying to be bigger, better, more exciting, more engaging, and more attractive to the masses than we ever have been before. There's only one small problem with that: we are going to kill ourselves in the pursuit of creative growth.

Now, before you think that I am against creativity and bettering ourselves, let me first say that I love thinking out of the box and making strides to do greater things. The problem comes when that is our weekly focus and we spend all of our time and energy on the things that don't really matter.

There have been countless times that I have felt that a service fell flat. It just didn't click like we planned it to. And though I felt defeated at the close of service, it seems like every time someone tells me how moved they were or how God touched them. Why is it that my assessment of the Sunday morning service is always based on how well the plan was executed?

What would happen if we took the pressure off of ourselves? What would it look like if we just did our part and left the rest up to God? I would imagine that He would probably move more freely. If we could throw off the weight of putting on the big show, we could shift our focus to moving the heart of God, and ultimately seeing lives truly changed. Maybe, without the pressures of performance, we could just love on our creator and experience Him in a true, meaningful way.

Let's stop trying to out-do ourselves every week and just be content being ourselves. Let's cut ourselves some slack when we mess up and trust that Jesus is bigger than our perfection and can work despite our mistakes and short-comings. I hope you feel a weight lifted. Maybe you need to have a conversation with your senior pastor. Maybe he could use the permission to not be perfect. Maybe, just maybe, we won't burn out as much.

I've been giving this a lot of thought after a recent debate with someone who was talking about street preaching on facebook. Disclaimer: this blog is not meant to come across as being hateful or that I am better than anyone or know more about anything than anyone else. These are simply my opinions based on what I find in scripture. If you disagree, I would be happy to engage in conversation with you, but will not tolerate any hate talk or cyber bullying. With that being said, here we go.

When I look at the New Testament (which is our model for what modern day Christianity SHOULD look like), I see Jesus and the disciples in Acts operating under a certain way of doing things. They ALL preached on the streets. So, first and foremost, I am in no way saying that going out into a community to spread the gospel is a bad thing. When preaching though, I find a common theme in their message to the masses. You see, much of what we see in the New Testament of the "thou shall not's" are all being told to people inside the church, the people who already know God (or Jesus). Much of the talk of Jesus was aimed at Pharisees, those hyper religious people who thought they knew it all but we're really missing the most important things. Jesus would call them out for their sins all the time. He would tell them where they were going wrong. But I find that when He was speaking to those that didn't know God, He would say things like, "You must be born again," or, "The kingdom of heaven is like…" These people were shown love and compassion, being healed rather than being judged.

I find the same model when I look at Acts-Revelation. The apostles would get very strict with people within the church, giving criticism where needed for correction. But when they were preaching to the masses, they did one thing and one thing only. They preached the gospel. The gospel means the good news. The good news is that Jesus came and died for us, fulfilling the law and giving us life everlasting if we would just believe on Him. Never do I see any of them telling people on the street that they are wrong for doing certain behaviors. I don't see them telling people that they are going to hell. In fact, they aren't even starting arguments with people over who is right about certain debates. What I do see is them telling people about a better way: a way that they haven't heard of yet, a way that comes with love and compassion and is proven through signs and wonders. They would go out and meet people's needs and prove Christ through their actions. They would be so persuasive in what they said and did that thousands would come to Christ at a time.

Only after the people came to know Christ would they then start giving them instructions on how to live. You see, they knew that He who began a good work would be faithful to complete it. They weren't worried about having to change people's hearts, because it wasn't their job to do so. They had to point them to Jesus and let Holy Spirit do the work of convicting them. They would be faithful to tell them the good news, and then let the church be the place where they found conviction to change their ways. Why do we think that telling people who aren't saved that drunkenness will send them to hell will actually help save someone? When you're not saved, you don't care about hell because you likely don't believe in it. What good does it do to tell people that homosexual marriage is sin if they don't even care about sin or righteousness to begin with? 1 Corinthians 5:12-13 says:

It isn’t my responsibility to judge outsiders, but it certainly is your responsibility to judge those inside the church who are sinning. God will judge those on the outside; but as the Scriptures say, “You must remove the evil person from among you.”

We have to deal with those inside the church and let God judge the actions of those outside. All we can do for the outsider is hopefully show them enough love of Christ and tell them the good news of His death and resurrection and pray that they make the decision to follow Him.

So, what I'm really trying to say here is that street preaching can be an awesome evangelism tool. It can be used to find those that are lost and bring them home to God. But it also can hurt, turn away, and be completely counterproductive to people that we are trying to reach if we come at them with judgment and condemnation. If all people hear us say is that they are going to hell, they will never hear us when we say we love them. We need to change our approach, not just with street preaching, but how we approach the lost in general. With all that's happening in society today, we need our love to shine through the darkness more than ever before. Pray for God to open doors of opportunity for you to talk to people. Meet people's needs. Show the love of Christ. That is how the church wins.

Church musicians today are probably some of the most talented people coming forward that there has been within the church in the past several decades. For such a long time, there was a strong level of mediocrity in the church music scene, but over the last several years, that bar has been raised substantially. It is extremely encouraging to see people worshipping with such excellence. However, I feel like there is a problem that comes along with this new found pursuit of great musicianship. 

As our male singers get better, it seems that the keys we are singing in are getting higher and higher. For me, I have always loved that. I love challenging myself with a higher song, stretching myself musically, and having to sing a little more passionately due to the higher register. But lately, I have started to notice a trend. Men aren't singing as much. 

It bears repeating. Men aren't singing as much. As the songs get higher and higher for us trained musicians, men who don't claim to be singers clam up. Rather than try to sing something down an octave, they don't sing. Most regular guys have no clue how to sing a lower harmony on the spot these days. So, while we are on stage doing vocal acrobatics, they are in the congregation with their hands in their pockets and their mouths closed. 

This trend is troubling to me on many levels. Firstly, men are passionate people, yet they don't express that to God. We've all heard the "if you do it at a sports event, you should do it at church" scenario. But honestly, "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" has never been too high for any guy to sing along with. You put men in a room where other people might hear their voice crack and squeal and then wonder why they aren't singing. It's embarrassing! Secondly, it bothers me because many families take their worship cues from the father. We have a man not singing. Now we have a wife and kids not singing. Pretty soon we have a church that is not singing. Men in the bible were some of the most passionate singers there were. David always sang passionately before the Lord. Peter and Paul would sing in prison with no concern of the other prisoners around them. Singing used to be a huge part of our society and culture, but in an age of headphones and iPhones, no one is gathering around the piano at home with the family to have singalongs anymore. 

We as men need to rediscover our voices. And we as worship leaders need to stop showing off how great our range is, and focus on leading people to sing in worship (I'm definitely indicting myself here). Let's not lose our men. We need them to lead their families. And men, we need you to step up and make a joyful noise unto the Lord, even if it is a little out of your range. 

It's the Saturday before Easter. I'm sitting here just trying to imagine what it was like.

Yesterday, all my friends and I would have seen our mentor, our hope, the man that we thought would fix it all, be brutally murdered. I awoke this morning wishing, hoping, praying that it was all just a horrible dream. I'm numb to everything around me. I can't seem to gather my thoughts. Didn't He say that He was the son of God? We saw Him do miracles. Heck, we saw Him walk on water! So why did He let them do THAT to Him? It just doesn't make sense.

The guys are all meeting up in a little while. I just don't know if I can take it being with them all. It's just too hard. I'm emotionally drained right now. I cried myself to sleep last night and now my eyes are swollen shut.

Could it be that I've just wasted the last three years of my life? What if I left my job, my family, my home all for nothing? I wish He was here. I wish I could just ask Him what I'm supposed to do next. He would know. He'd probably tell me some parable about it. I loved His stories. Maybe I'll go fishing. Haven't been in a while. I've got to start figuring things out.

Ah, the smell of the open sea. I can always count on fishing to relax me. I can just forget about the horror of yesterday and listen to the waves crash against the boat. But I still have this feeling in my gut like its not over. I can't shake the feeling that I'll see Him again. Didn't He say something about rebuilding the temple in three days? He was always so mysterious. But I'm certain that He knew this would happen. I think He even said He'd raise from the dead. But, if you would have seen what I saw yesterday, you would know He's not coming back from that.

The ladies are going to the tomb tomorrow. If I can get myself together, I might join them. For now, I think I'll just try to sleep and pray that tomorrow is a better day.

And it was.

Every day before work, I eat a nice bowl of oatmeal. It is delicious, filling, and healthier than a lot of other choices I make throughout my day. I usually sprinkle a little brown sugar on top just for the flavor. Well, yesterday, I used the last of the brown sugar. So today, when it was time to make my breakfast, I opted to go with a cookies and cream poptart instead of my oatmeal. This poptart tastes good. It was fast, convenient, and satisfied me at that moment. Fast forward 2 1/2 hours: I WAS STARVING!!!!! It was only 10 am and I was ready for lunch. Usually when I have my oatmeal, I can go all day without getting hungry again. And that's when it hit me. I made a bad choice. 

You see, there's nothing inherently wrong with poptarts. The problem lies in the fact that I chose something cheap and easy over something that would be filling and satisfying. I chose the short term over the long term. And that's how it is in life all too often. We will make decisions that will effect us long term, merely thinking about the immediate results. We often pass on the things that will be most fulfilling for things that will let us down. 

In John 4, Jesus is talking with a Samaritan woman at a well. She is drawing water when Jesus asks her for a drink. He then tells her that she should have asked Him and He would have given her living water. She didn't get it. She was more concerned with the water she was getting from the well than what Jesus was offering her. He was trying to talk to her about eternal life. The choice to follow Him and make your life better forever! 

While the Israelites were in the wilderness, God supplied them with Manna, a bread-like substance which would only satisfy them for one day. But Jesus said that He is the bread of life. There is no satisfaction outside of Him. We can chase the pleasures of this world, and they might seem good at the moment, but ultimately, our only joy will be found in Him. 

I would much rather choose the thing that is going to fill me and sustain me, rather than the thing that is going to leave me hungry for more. Don't try to make a poptart a meal. It's a snack at best. Fill up on the oatmeal that will carry you through the day. 

At work, I often have to dig holes. Just using a post hole digger can be exhausting. Carolina red clay make it worse. But the worst scenario is when you hit rocks and roots. You have to really get serious about digging when you start to hit that stuff. So, I was putting up some posts when this concept hit me: rocks and roots will save our lives.

Many of the Christians today do not have any foundation to their faith. They hear a good message, their hearts start beating, they get the butterflies, and they give their lives to the Lord. That is an awesome thing. However, it is what happens after that that is most important. If a person merely "gets saved" but does not begin to work on their faith through knowledge and experiencing who God is, chances are, their faith will fail.

Jesus said that He is the cornerstone of our faith. He is the rock of our salvation, the stone that the builders rejected. It is upon the rock that He built His church. See where I'm going with this? He is the rock!!! We need to have rock solid faith if we are going to make it through this life and persevere. When I'm digging and I hit a rock, it jolts my whole body. I KNOW when I hit a rock that I can't break through. That's how I want Satan and the world to feel when they try to dig up my faith. I want shock to spread all through them as they hit the rock of my foundation. When there's no rocks, holes are easy to dig. Once there's a hole, it can be filled with something else.

Roots are just as important as rocks. If your faith doesn't take root, it can be pulled up without any effort. Jesus tells the parable of the seeds, and the only seeds that make are the ones that set up roots. There are many different sizes of roots. Grass has really small, weak roots. But I've hit some from trees that no matter how hard I dug, there was no getting through. Roots so big that it took me getting a saw to cut through them. That's the kind of roots I want. Roots so big and deep that you can't put a hole in my faith. You won't change my mind. I am as deep as I am high, and wide too. The only way to develop a root system like this is to spend time in the Bible learning about who God is (and who He isn't). We have to spend time in prayer and communion with Him. And we have to have the Holy Spirit living inside of us to give us strength to be strong in this corrupt and broken world.

Though it's a real pain while I'm digging, I love rocks and roots. I thank God that I'm firmly established in my faith, and I pray that you will also begin to develop a system of rocks and roots that will help you through the rest of your life.

As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. “Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing. (‭John‬ ‭9‬:‭1-7‬ NIV)

I've often wondered why Jesus didn't just tell this man to open his eyes and let him see. He had the power. It could have been done instantly. Jesus was funny about doing strange things to make points.

Last night at church, our small group was talking about accountability within the body of believers. We discussed how we are in fact supposed to bring to light the things that we see our brothers and sisters struggling with. People forget that after Jesus said not to take the speck out of someone's eye before you remove the plank out of yours, He continued to say THEN go to your brother and take the speck from his eye. We were made for accountability in community.

Sometimes, accountability gets messy. It's dirty and uncomfortable. Sometimes people don't want to hear what we have to say. It's kind of like putting mud on a blind person's eyes. It seems like we're just trying to add more dirt to their lives, but all we are doing is trying to help them see. And though it can get messy, when they finally do see, I promise, just like the blind man, they will be very happy and appreciate your willingness to get a little dirt on yourself for their sake.