Problems with "Quiet-Times?"

I've personally experienced a lot of struggles over the years when it comes to finding consistency and fulfillment from a daily quiet-time with God. Yes, as a pastor, I'm confessing that quiet-times as I was taught to do them just don't work for me. Often times, I haven't even been motivated to do one either. I've went in spurts of being consistent in the routine of quiet-times throughout my entire journey with Christ, but I've finally reached a place where I'm experiencing an abundantly satisfying walk with God unlike ever before. What changed? I had to realize two things that actually go against much of what I was taught about having quiet-times with God...

#1: I can't put God in a box an expect to truly experience Him.
Here's the problem with quiet-times as we typically teach them: They are often disconnected from a continual, rhythmic interaction with God... The Holy Spirit's movement in our life can't be restricted to a certain "quiet-time/set aside" moment of our day. God is to be experienced and interacted with all day long.

For those of you who are married, think about this... Can you imagine if you told your spouse that each day you'd try to give them 15-minutes (or 30 if you're really good), but as for the remaining 1,400+ minutes throughout the day, you probably won't pay much attention to them. I don't know about you, but I'd be building my own dog house in the backyard. (I'd have to build it because we don't have a dog).

God wants your entire life, not just your quiet-time. This is what Paul's referring to in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 when he says, "Pray without ceasing." Our conversation and communion with God should be happening all the time. At work, in the car, playing with our kids, etc. While our times of solitude are important and essential, the stereotypical "quiet-time" can be very misleading and disappointing if we think this is our good deed or act of obedience for God.

#2: My "quiet-times" were self-centered.
I'm a selfish person. I don't know about you, but it's just my nature even with spiritual things. I'd open God's Word thinking "What can I take from this?" I'd pray my prayers according to how I felt. Lately though, God's been showing me that these times of solitude have to be all about Him and what He wants to say. I've had to learn to be still and know that He is God. Instead of having a preset agenda, I'm learning to listen to the Holy Spirit.

What does this look like? Well, typically throughout my day I'm living with the expectation that God wants to speak to me. After all, He is my Father. He is not the author of confusion. He wants me to know Him and His desires, so I'm eagerly anticipating Him speaking to me. When He does, I'm trying to listen and process. I want to learn and allow Him to adjust my behavior to be more in line with who He is and what He desires.

In response to this, my "quiet-time" is then a time of solitude where I can further process through what He's already been speaking to me about. Sometimes this leads to praise, comfort, and joy, but other times it leads me to repentance. I noticed when I'm setting the agenda for my quiet-time (or some pre-planned devotion is doing it for me) I tend to do very little repenting.

These two realizations have brought and continue to bring an abundance to my walk with God that I've never experienced before. I hope you'll take a few minutes to wrestle with what I'm saying because God wants you to experience Him in a non-structure, natural, intimate, way! Don't miss out any longer!

Has God Been Rejecting Our Sunday Worship?

People often leave the Sunday service and say something like, "Worship was good today!" but what do we mean by this? Typically, this means we thought the music was good or that something spoke to us or that we enjoyed it, but do you notice the recurring theme here? Each of the statements are reflections of our opinions. It's as if we are the judge of worship. Shouldn't we be asking, "God, were you pleased with our worship today?"

A couple Sundays ago, I challenged our gathering to wrestle with the concept of biblical worship. I asked the question, "Could God be rejecting our so called worship every Sunday just as He often rejected the sacrifices of the Israelites in the Old Testament?"

In the OT, the people had the routine of sacrifices down pretty good. However, what they continued to miss,  just as we still do today, is that God ultimately isn't after our acts of obedience and religious routines; He wants our lives. He wants our hearts. Because of this, He often rejected their sacrifices, asked them to stop giving them, and even asked the priests to close the doors to the temples. Check out these passages... Isaiah 1:13-19, Malachi 1:10-11

Fast forward to the New Testament. Read what Jesus says in John 4:19-24 and what Paul says in Romans 12:1. What about the reference to our bodies being the temple/place of worship in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20? What do these passages mean? Essentially, they reveal to us that if we aren't worshiping God throughout the rhythms of our daily lives, our worship on Sunday means nothing because it's not even biblical worship.

Now, let's think about this from the positive perspective. What if we truly began to worship God throughout our week? What if His presence in our lives was a daily experience? Can you imagine then what our Sunday gatherings would be like? Instead of waiting until Sunday to "worship," we would be gathering together to collectively continue the worship we've been experiencing all week.

Evaluate your worship by His standards, and let's stop assuming we're doing what God wants simply because this is what our American church culture has trained us to do!

An Open House for a Church?

I heard about a billboard that was asking people to come visit an Open House for a church. Let me be quick to say I'm not against this church. I'm honestly not even for sure which church this is. I hope they see disciples made through their ministry, but I do want to draw attention to something... the perspective on church that is communicated through this billboard essentially sums up why the Christian faith in America is declining more and more... We biblically don't understand what it means to follow Jesus according to His words and what we learn in the New Testament.

How did we get so far away from what Jesus said in Matthew 4:19?... “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.”

In this verse, I truly believe Jesus invites us to know the basis of Christianity. It's with these words that He literally launched a movement that would reach half the Roman  Empire in about 250-300 years. How and/or why did we go from Jesus' call to worship Him, live for Him, and teach others to do the same all the way to merely attend our church "building" (or even attend our Open House) and consume the ministries and facilities we have to offer?

God's made it clear to me that no one person can change this American perspective on church. However, I can change my perspective. I can also challenge the people in my sphere of influence to embrace a more biblical model of following Jesus and being the church. Therefore, I'm not going to merely complain about the status quo of Christianity. I will do something about it. My family will seek to join with other families to intentionally be the church and embrace the call to follow Jesus through the words of Jesus Himself. I will bring my kids up to understand that "church" is who we are. It's not a building that we tour or go to for a service.

At the same time, I know there's a cost here. It means I'll never be a megachurch pastor and that many in the "church world" will look at my efforts as failures, but I'm okay with that. Most people viewed Jesus as a failure because He wouldn't embrace the religious culture of His day. I'm not out to be a rebel, but I will strive to be who Jesus wants me to be even if it goes against the grain of American church culture.

So what about you? How are you following Him? I'm not asking do you go to church. Are you open to the Holy Spirit leading you in your everyday life or are you simply looking for the newest, coolest, most attractive church to attend? How are you teaching your kids to think of "church" and following Jesus?

The more things change.....

The more things change the more they stay the same. The old saying is as true today as it has ever been. Especially when it comes to culture, spirituality and our problem as humans. The tension even in the garden of Eden was not really as simple as good versus evil, light versus dark, or even God versus Satan. It was the beginning of a worship war that is fought in the spiritual realm with human minds as the battleground, human hearts as the targets, human will as the ammunition, and human souls as the objective. You see Adam and Eve lived in perfection. Perfect environment with an unpolluted earth, perfect companionship with each other, and most importantly perfect fellowship with their Creator. Satan who is actually a fallen angelic worship leader, planted in their minds the thought that their object of worship was not worthy. He fertilized their hearts with a longing for "more" than God had already provided. And finally he watered them with the thought that God's word could not be trusted. Satan knew that the first shot fired was him being kicked out of heaven and that his next move in the battle would be to show up in the garden and plant his own seed that would lead to what he felt was the knockout blow in the war of worship. What he was growing has been and will always be at the core of humanity's issue. Once he planted, fertilized, and watered Adam and Eve, the fruit of "selfish ambition" was grown. At the core of original sin and at the core of every sin from that point forward is selfishness. The world has changed a lot since the creation account but one thing is the same. Our self centeredness is what separates us from God. The only reason that Satan's counterpunch was not the knockout blow to humanity is the everlasting love and unlimited grace God displayed through the redemptive work of Jesus. Jesus is the antidote to the disease of selfishness. We have somewhat mislabeled sin in the sense that we are often referring to the acts of disobedience as "sin" when in reality that is the fruit of sin. At the core of Sin with a capital "S" is selfishness. This explains why so many people make professions of faith but lose heart when they still struggle with disobedience. We tend to look for outward change without considering whether a new heart has been formed through the new birth. This is why it is important to understand that at the core of salvation is a death to self and not an intellectual belief in religious structure. It is a giving up not a "try harder" attitude. It is a surrender of will, not a prayer of hope. It is a dying to live, not a living better to earn God's love. It is why Jesus calls it being born again, it is why Paul says I have died but yet I live, it is why James says do nothing out of selfish ambition, and why James also says to "humbly" accept the word planted in you. So you see, the more things change the more they stay the same. The war is still waging and it is "self"versus "death to self". It is won or lost by seed planting. The seed of self produces sin which produces death. The seed of Christ produces righteousness which produces life. Go fight the war and plant Jesus!

Perspective: Our nearsighted problem

Perspective: our nearsighted problem

Our God is a God that is in a constant activity of restoring and creating. The problem is our minds are so weak compared to the spiritual reality of what is going on that we rarely see the big picture. Our insecurities and preconceived thoughts of how things should be make us latch on to certain phrases or circumstances. Once we latch on it is hard for us to hear, see, feel or be aware of anything else that is said or done. I see this in my own life, in the life of churches and even in bible passages. In Mark chapter 8 we see this played out in verses 31 through 34. It begins with Jesus presenting "plainly" to His disciples the most important crossroads of human history. He explains a process that will change our path to redemption forever. His rejection, the cross, and the resurrection will tear the veil between us and God as Jesus would become the high priest once and for all. But instead of rejoicing Peter immediately rebukes Jesus and wants to stop the process. What was Peter's issue? Jesus describes Peter's nearsighted problem in verse 33. Jesus says the reason Peter doesn't see the big picture is because of a wrong perspective. He describes it as having his mind set on the things of man and not the things of God. Jesus never struggled with nearsightedness because He was always focused on the "will" of God. Jesus even taught us to pray with the attitude of God's will being done on earth as it is being done in heaven. Jesus calls Peter "Satan" in this passage because that is where our nearsighted problem originated from. Even in the garden of Eden Satan was getting mankind to focus on what was directly in front of him and ignore the bigger picture of a kingdom mindset. As long as we focus on our selves we will never experience true health or growth. As long as churches focus on themselves they will never experience true health or growth. That's just the way Satan like us and the church; nearsighted, insecure, fear filled, believe it when we see it, earthly grounded, worldly minded, self absorbed, self centered, self preserving, weak humans. The problem is this sort of nearsightedness leads to blindness. Then we become blind guides leading blind people which puts us both in a pit of despair. Once we lose vision we lose life! Let's celebrate daily the big picture of God's love and His plan for us and the rest of mankind. Never taking our eyes off the treasure that is set before us in the author and perfecter of our faith, JESUS!