- Audio from the main sessions of Acts 29 recent boot camp in Louisville. The theme was centered around Ambition.
- Winfield Bevins on Letting God speak to you. For many of us, the reason we don’t hear from God is because of things we are doing.
- 7 reasons Christians should twitter. It’s official, Jesus wants you to twitter. (Just kidding)
- Thoughts on your life as a story. Cody is a new revolutionary and new at blogging. Give him some love and check him out. By the way, he is a really good writer. (That’s two who think so Cody)
- Some thoughts on understanding the doctrine of the Trinity.
- Men, lead your family well. I just discovered Dustin Neeley but have gotten so much from what he has written. He says 2 things every pastor needs to hear: “Your church can get a new pastor, but your kids have one dad and your wife has one husband.”
Tonight, we continued our series How to be Rich through Matthew 6. We looked at verses 16 – 18, specifically at the spiritual practice of fasting.
Here are the different types of fasting found in the Bible:
- Normal fast. A person abstained from all food, solid or liquid, but not from water – usually to prepare for some significant event. Jesus fasted for forty days in preparation for his temptations from Satan and the inauguration of his public ministry (Matthew 4:1 – 2; Luke 4:1 – 2).
- Partial fast. Sometimes people entered into a partial restriction of diet, but not total abstention. For a three-week period of mourning, Daniel ate no meat or drank no wine, and he applied no lotion to his body (Daniel 10:3).
- Absolute fast. During a relatively short, urgent period of time, people could abstain from all food and water to discern God’s leading. Esther neither ate nor drank for three days during a period of national crisis (Esther 4:16), and at Paul’s dramatic conversion he abstained from eating and drinking for three days (Acts 9:9).
- Private and corporate fasts. Fasting is usually a private affair, but at times the people of God came together for corporate or public fasts, such as on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 23:37), in times of national emergency (2 Chronicles 20:1 – 4), or for seeking God’s guidance in prayer (Ezra 8:21 – 23).
For more information on fasting or to participate in Revolution’s fast this Monday into Tuesday, click here.
Last night, Katie and I had our weekly date night. We spent it at Montana Avenue, a favorite of ours. Wow.
Anway, I can still taste the ribeye. Just sayin. While there, we talked about many things, but we talked about what we are excited about for the holiday season. Thought I’d share some of those things:
- This is Ashton’s first thanksgiving and Christmas, not that he will remember them, but it is always fun.
- We will have a house full on Thanksgiving, 15 adults and 11 kids. Love packing out our house.
- Grilling our turkey. I know that people passionately push deep frying and bags on me, but nothing beats grilling a turkey.
- We’re getting a Wii. Really excited about this.
- My family is coming out for Christmas. Love having them in our house and love having them at Revolution when I preach. I think you would have to see my teenage years to appreciate the true irony of this.
- Celebrating the Advent season as a church. This will be a first for Revolution, but starting November 28th we will take time in each of our services to read through the Advent season. Great way to focus on this season.
- Doing a wedding on Sunday. Love being a part of people’s lives for the highs and lows, it is one of the greatest parts of my job. Weddings fit into the highs category.
- This Christmas will mark 1 year that Paul and Jennifer have been at Revolution. It still blows my mind that they joined us and so excited about what God is doing through them on our team.
- Putting up our tree the day after thanksgiving. Ava would already have it up if she got to decide, but we told her we had to wait, at least until the day after thanksgiving.
- Spending the month of December reading several books on teamwork.
- Okay, that has nothing to do with the holidays, but will be crucial to Revolution in 2010 and beyond. Our structure is shifting with our growth. Trying to see beyond our next steps to what our team needs to look like.
- Christmas music.
- Okay, that was a complete lie.
- Winterhaven, love taking the kids there.
- Having a week off between Christmas and New Years. This is one of my favorite breaks of the year, so crucial to be at full steam starting in January. We experience are second largest growth in February.
- You read that right Revolutionaries, so be ready for an explosion in February.
- Lamb on New Years Eve with Todd and Alicia. So good.
- January, we will embark on our largest and most important series ever at Revolution. It will literally set the stage for the next 5 years as a church.
- Hearing how God is moving in the lives of those who are doing the 90 day tithing challenge at Revolution. Over 25% of our church is participating. Can’t wait to hear how God is working in their lives during the 90 days.
- Having three times as many people at our Christmas Eve service this year as we had last year.
- What God is doing at Revolution is not normal and I never want to get used to seeing him work. I love being able to pray with people, challenge them and see them take steps in their journey back to God.
- Never gets old.
Those are some things I’m excited about. What are you excited about?
- The first Clash of the Titans trailer. I love movies like this.
- John Piper on When you don’t want to do what you ought to do.
- Is your church’s vision too small? I hope this can never be said of Revolution.
- Two Interviews with Matt Chander: Church planting, preaching and leadership & Celebrity, diversity & burnout.
- Download a free chapter from Mark Batterson’s new book Primal. This book is going to be awesome, waiting for my copy, any day now.
- Respecting doubts: An interview with Tim Keller. There is so much in here, so many great points.
- Kevin DeYoung on Be yourself when you preach.
Just finished Ignite by Nelson Searcy. I had to read it for the coaching network I am in.
What this book looks at is how people find your church, how does your church do evangelism, reach people. It walks through how this happens on an individual basis, corporately, the pastor’s role in this and how to keep the tempature hot in this area.
The longer a church is around, the longer someone is a Christian, the easier it becomes to not reach people or care that people are going to hell. We forget what it feels like to not know Jesus, not have an answer, live without purpose. We start to like the comfort of knowing everyone and begin to protect our turf and let other churches reach people.
If you as a church are not reaching people, if you personally are not building relationships with people who don’t know Jesus, you are telling your city to go to hell. This always gets me in trouble with well-meaning Christians, but follow the logic. If someone doesn’t know Jesus spends eternity apart from Jesus in hell, if you don’t reach them and don’t care to reach them, what are you saying by that? You are saying, “We don’t care if you go to hell.”
At Revolution, this is not acceptable. We will not be that church. Period.
I’ll be talking about this in a few weeks, but who right now are you building relationships with that you are going invite for Christmas. Over 70% of our first time guests come with a friend. Over 85% of Americans say they would go to church if someone invited them.
This book lays out how a church creates a system where inviting people to church and into a relationship with Jesus is normal and happens all the time.
Definitely worth reading.
The longer you are a Christian or the longer your church exists, the less likely you are to reach people who are not (yet) Christians.
Every follower of Jesus needs to be building relationships with people who don’t know Jesus. We need to be praying for them, asking God for the opportunity to share life with them, the opportunity to invite them to church, and the opportunity to share the gospel with them.
A great way to think about this is, who are the 3 – 10 people right now you are building relationships with, spending time and praying for?
As we are going through this series and specifically the tithing challenge, I have gotten a lot of questions about giving back to God and what that means practically. The biggest question centers around what to do if you are barely making ends meet right now, how do you give back to God?
The conversation will go like this, “After we pay all of our bills, there is not 10% left to give back to God, so do we just tithe and not pay our bills?” This is a completely valid question and one that many people have, and one that I had for awhile. The answer to this question is actually not the answer to this question.
Here’s what I mean. It is coming at it from the wrong perspective.
Tithing like anything fits into a budget. As Dave Ramsey says, “Every dollar has a name on it.” We decide whose name goes on each dollar that comes in and out of our home. Tithing for the first time means you will have to think about your budget differently and probably redo your budget. Your current budget does not have it in there.
When Katie and I first started to see our money differently, we had to budget differently.
This means creating a budget where you give back to God first, before anything else. Then you fill in your budget with the rest of your bills and family’s needs. This means, you may not have some things in your budget that you do now. You may cut cable, not eat out as much, not buy as many clothes as you used to.
This is where many people get tripped up. For me, this has created a sense of freedom from stuff as well as a contentment I didn’t know existed. Some of the stuff “I couldn’t live without” are now things I can’t imagine having.
But you may ask (as many do) “If I sell something like my car, I may take a loss or not be able to afford the same kind of car. Would God want me to take a loss?” Again, this is a valid question but it looks at God incorrectly. Here is my follow-up question, “Does God want you to honor Him with your finances?” If you believe the answer is yes (as I do and I believe the Bible teaches this) then we need to do what we can to make that happen. If that means we sell some stuff and take a loss on it, I think that can honor God. Getting more and more into debt and not giving back to God does not honor Him with our finances.
Many Christians, especially pastors are against “church marketing.” I will hear how it is unspiritual, we aren’t pushing a product like a book or shirt, we are sharing the gospel. We can’t market that.
The reality is, as a person, as a church, we are always marketing. We are always talking. Even when we don’t say anything. Even when our building sits vacant on a Monday morning. Even when our signs sit in the middle of the day. Everything we do as a church, everything someone hears about a church, everything someone sees about a church is marketing. We are always communicating to people about Jesus and the gospel.
The question is not, “Are you marketing?”
The questions is, “What are you saying?”
Just finished Tim Keller’s new book Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters. I read this in prep for my talk on the Lord’s prayer. I know that it doesn’t have anything to do with the Lord’s prayer, but I believe the Lord’s prayer shows the idols that we have and what we hope things in our life will do and the Lord’s prayer shows the response to those things and that God is the only hope to answer those longings.
According to Keller, “idolatry is the most common sin committed today.” The funny thing is that most everyone would say they don’t have a problem with idolatry. I’ve never met with someone who confessed to having an idol problem. It is so common that we don’t see it.
An idol is “anything that we look to for things that only God can give.” The reality is that idols are often not bad things. Some of them are, but by and large they are good things that we make into ultimate things. Keller said, “Idolatry is always the the reason we ever do anything wrong.”
Idols can be kids, our jobs, dreams, our money, retirement, friendships, sports teams, political parties. The list goes on.
What Keller does is show what the idols of our culture are, what personal idols we have, what physical, spiritual idols we have. He then shows how they become idols, the hope and faith that we put into those things. How good, everyday things become ultimate things that we stake our whole future on and the hopelessness of that.
He ends with what to do with them. For me, this was the only area that I felt was lacking. After spending 150 pages on what idols are and identifying them, he spent less than 30 pages on what to do. I personally would have liked to have seen more in this area, the application side.
Regardless, this is a fantastic book and one worth reading, thinking and praying through and working through what your idols are and how that affects your relationship with God.
The reality of idolatry is that it is the first sin. We do not sin without the sin of idolatry, this is why, according to Martin Luther, the 10 commandments start with, “You should no other gods before me.” We have to break the first commandment to break the other 9.
Not sure what your idols are, here is a list of questions to work through to discover your idols.
“When idolatry is mapped onto the future – when our idols are threatened – it leas to paralyzing fear and anxiety. When it is mapped onto the past – when we fail our idols – it leads to irremediable guilt. When idolatry is mapped onto the present life – when our idols are blocked or removed by circumstances – it roils us with anger and despair.” – Tim Keller, Counterfeit Gods
