Daily Devotion

Colossians 1:9-12
For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience; joyously giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light.

When a person comes to mind, turn that casual thought into a prayer for that person. Look at how the Apostle Paul prayed for the Colossians and learn from it how to pray for the people in your own life. When you get off the phone with someone who is going through a hard time, stop and pray for them. Prayer is always a right response in any situation.
God is reminding you today to make praying for others a part of your prayer habits. God works when we pray! You can help your friends more by praying for them than in any other way. And when you pray for them, you will want to help them in other ways too!

The Dangers of EmoPorn

 

We (rightly) worry and fight against visual pornography. But what about the dangers of pornography of the mind and heart?

I watched the pilot episode of Glee when it premiered a few months before the show was to begin airing regularly. It was decent enough to at least give some time to the next few episodes.  But by the end of episode two, I was getting a little uneasy. As I watched it, I was becoming aware of what the writers wanted me to feel—the good guy teacher to cheat on his evil wife with the gentle co-worker, and the main male character to cheat on his hypocritical Christian girlfriend with his female lead counterpart.It was one thing to want the characters in the show to do this thing or that, but I turned it off in the middle of a scene in which that male student finally decided to cheat on his girlfriend. It wasn’t because I was offended at the content before my eyes. Rather, in that moment, there was a transference of energy. I found myself thinking about whose girlfriend I should have stolen in high school and how easy and awesome it would have been.

Flash back to Wasco, May of 2009.  I’m driving in my Jeep, scanning radio stations. I stop on the local Christian station, and the female DJ is talking about the coming The Notebook: The Musical. She goes on to fawn over the romance in the story and how well it will be adapted to the stage. “But what about A Walk To Remember?” she says. “That would make a fantastic musical. I just loved how that made me feel. And, of course, Switchfoot would have to have some songs in it.”

There’s certainly a war against the prevalence of visual pornography in many corners of our society—especially in the Christian culture. There is an attempt to expose pornography for its promotion of unrealistic sexual expectations and exploitation of human sexuality. And that attempt is a very necessary one.

But what about the unhealthy emotional and relational expectations portrayed in so much of our media? Is there really much of a difference in the hyperbolized sexual imagery of typical pornography and the hyperbolized momentary emotional high felt in a romance film or romantic comedy that sends us looking for a “love” that doesn’t exist?

I heard an interview on NPR with a female author named Elizabeth Gilbert. She was talking about the proliferation of the “Soul Mate Complex” in our modern culture and how the film Jerry Maguire served to reinforce it with the now illustrious line, "You complete me.”

It’s not necessarily only the resulting effects of such a movie that parallels the traditional definition of pornography. Just as there is sexual excitement surrounding the mystery and allure of what flesh might be seen in a movie known for its racy reputation, so too are we drawn in with an anticipation for the emotional and physical high of a romance film.
As a result, we’re taught to crave the moment of romantic ecstasy or to live for the wedding day. We’re raised to think these are the real stories of love and relationship, and we’re confused when they are so few and far between that we aren’t sustained. So we turn back to that which led us to believe in this fantasy all along. And we’re left with an old woman sitting alone, in her love seat, in front of the television watching her “stories.”
Kids eventually understand that pumpkins don’t turn to glass carriages and Fairy Godmothers don’t grant wishes, but many girls never grow out of the idea that one day they will be rescued from reality by some magic and a fictitious prince. And little boys never live up to the fantasy of the mind or that they’re supposed to be that prince and that their spouse is an all-fulfilling princess.

Next time you’re thinking about seeing a movie, be aware of what’s pulling you toward it. If you decide to watch it, recognize the moment when you feel the emotional reinforcement of fake love. And when you walk out, recognize what you now hope for and expect.

There is such a thing as love. There are beautiful moments. But love is about God and His life through you. And that life is about the long haul.

Daily Devotion

1 Peter 5:6-7

Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.

It is so easy to feel very negative about many things in life. The news is full of reports that concern us, and our own lives have many stresses, struggles and anxieties. But the Lord is reminding us today to take those negative thoughts and translate them into positive prayers to God for His involvement in our world and in our lives.
Complaining doesn't really benefit anyone—not you, not the person you are venting your complaints onto, not the people you are complaining about! But what would happen if you turned your thoughts into prayers, not gripes? How much more pleasant you would be to spend time with! What's more, God would be acting in response to your prayers, sometimes changing the circumstance and sometimes changing you. His response may not always be just what you asked for, but you can be sure that He loves to act when His people pray.
Praying instead of complaining gives you a much more pleasant mindset about life. Your response to life becomes constructive instead of negative.
What do you feel like complaining about today? How can you turn those thoughts to prayer instead?

Daily Devotion

Ephesians 4:15-17
For this reason it says, " Awake, sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you." Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil. So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

Besides being a great song by the band Everyday Sunday. This is a great verse to challenge us to use our spare moments for prayer!

Make the most of your time. As you work to develop prayer habits, learn to turn your heart to God in those little moments of downtime. When you are waiting at the lights, or standing in a queue, or vacuuming, or mowing the grass. Turning to prayer at these times is not an obligation; it is an opportunity! It isn't some big activity you are adding to your schedule; rather, it is using what is already in your schedule to deepen your walk with God and to lift others up in prayer.
It only takes a moment to put a situation or need before the Lord and ask for His work in that circumstance or in that person's life. And it is cool also to just chat with the Lord about life and about your relationship with Him. This kind of open, frequent communication is what makes a relationship extra meaningful and deep, that puts it at the center of your life. Today God is inviting you to speak with Him often during your day.

Daily Devotion

Job 42:10

The Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he prayed for his friends.

How closely tied together are God's grace towards us and our grace towards others! Job's friends had wronged him badly — emotionally, judgmentally, spiritually. Yet he prayed for their forgiveness. (Compare this to what Jesus says about freely forgiving others in Matthew 6:12-15 and 18:21-35.)
Could that have been the final victory for God in this contest with Satan over the heart of Job (see chapters 1-2)? The final proof that Job's heart was still pure after all that Satan had done to him was his ability to forgive and even offer grace to these men who had wronged him so badly.
That was when God's grace overflowed to Job, when Job did not assert his position over those men. "God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble" (James 4:6).
Are you at the end of your rope, desperately needing God's help? Learn to be a giver of grace to others, and you will find God not only meeting your need for Him, but overflowing your life so that you become a blessing in the lives of everyone around you as well!
It is not only what God wants to do for you, but what He wants to do through you in the lives of others that matters. It may start with forgiving someone who has hurt you. Are you willing?

Is the Church Lost?

 

 Where the Church has gone wrong and how we can get back on track.

Western culture is all about the self and how to gain bigger and better things. It’s no surprise, then, that this mentality has affected the way most of us think about church. It’s easy to get stuck in a mindset that continuously assesses the quality of a church based on what they have to offer us. There is even more of a tendency to evaluate churches based on the specific desires of one’s self when searching for a new church.
Questions like, “Was the sermon good and did it move me?”, “How well did the band play and did I like the songs?”, “Does the church have fun events coming up that interest me?” and “What was the facility like and did it have a good atmosphere?” are regularly asked by churchgoers every week. A decision about returning to a church is largely based on whether the church’s programs and style are pleasing to us or not.
Church leaders are very aware that people ask these questions. As they seek to carry out the mission God has placed on their hearts for ministry, it can be easy for pastors and administrators to find themselves spending hours in meetings trying to figure out how to market their church to meet everyone’s tastes. When a church’s focus has drifted from Jesus to these external factors, the success of the church is usually then measured in terms of numerical growth, financial giving and programs.

An argument for this mentality is that trying to focus on and please people is a necessary evil in an attempt to reach more people with the Gospel. The problem with this is that when you look at Jesus’ ministry, He spent little to no time entertaining people or making sure they were comfortable. Instead, He stuck to the truths of the Gospel. Many times this approach made people uncomfortable and walk away.

The fact is, the questions we use to assess our churches are not the same questions that God wants us to ask.

In Crazy Love, Francis Chan writes: “God's definition of what matters is pretty straightforward. He measures our lives by how we love.”

This love is uncomfortable and it means sometimes listening to music that’s not your style or understanding a sermon that didn’t do much for you might have helped someone else that Sunday. It means that sometimes church isn’t big and cutting-edge, but small and simple. More so, it means not coming to a church focused on consuming, but instead coming to give and serve.

Christians must understand that God does not define “good” churches by the quality of their programs, the size of membership or the look and feel of a facility. Focusing on those things can cause us to completely miss the point of what God actually wants of His Church. God has called us to draw near to Him, share the freedom and life of Jesus, and to love and serve others. Everything else must come second to these goals.

John Ortberg describes what happens in many churches in the 2010 Spring edition of Leadership journal:
“Out of this vision [of who Christ is and what He wants to accomplish] flows a desire to do good things for such a God. And sometimes these activities may lead to results that look quite remarkable or impressive. [Eventually] people begin to pay more attention to what they are doing than to the reality of God.

"At this point the mission replaces the vision as the dominant feature in peoples' consciousness. Once this happens, descent is inevitable. For now people are living under the tyranny of Producing Impressive Results.”
Is “Producing Impressive Results” a sin? Not always. Programs and numbers and quality are all good things, but when church focuses mainly on these things instead of Christ ... it is sinful.

The original Greek word that is translated as sin in English literally means “to miss the mark.” Sin is when we go in a different direction than what God wants for us.

The direction God wants us to go is toward Him. That is the whole point of church. Church should be a group of people, regularly gathering in an effort to draw closer to God, living life together in love and service, and sharing God with others. That’s it! There are no rules or guidelines to how that specifically looks, sounds or feels. It’s not about external elements, but about our internal hearts and what direction they are facing. It’s about love for God and love for one another.

Today there are very impressive churches that meet all around the world. You can walk into an impressive building, hear incredible music, fantastic preaching and participate in some amazing programs to help others in need, all while being surrounded by hundreds or thousands of others doing the same thing. None of that really matters though. What matters is where the hearts of the leaders and members are focused.

Consider the letter to the church in Ephesus recorded in Revelation 2:
“I know all the things you do. I have seen your hard work and your patient endurance. I know you don’t tolerate evil people. You have examined the claims of those who say they are apostles but are not. You have discovered they are liars. You have patiently suffered for me without quitting.”

Jesus is saying, “You are a good church doing many good things!” However, He continues:

"But I have this complaint against you. You don’t love me or each other as you did at first! Look how far you have fallen! Turn back to me and do the works you did at first. If you don’t repent, I will come and remove your lamp stand from its place among the churches” (NLT).

This message is just as much for us today as it was for the church in Ephesus almost 2,000 years ago. As we attend, serve or lead a local body of Christ’s Church, we cannot allow ourselves to make our gatherings focus on external things that can take the place of God within our hearts. 

Instead, we must stay focused on the love of Christ—His sacrifice, His resurrection, His grace; and the impact of those things on the hearts of those who come together.

Daily Devotion

Job 7:20; 9:17

Why have You set me as Your target [God]?...For He [God] bruises me with a tempest, and multiplies my wounds without cause.

Job is in the middle of the suffering. He has no idea of the scenario being played out in heaven between God and Satan (described in Job 1-2). Job's mind sought for a reason why he was suffering. Not finding an answer in his own reasoning, he assumed that there wasn't a reason and stopped trusting God!
No wonder God's response to Job later was to say, "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge" (Job 38:2). Job didn't know about the confrontation between God and Satan. He didn't realize that he was not even the main character in the situation. He couldn't see what God's purpose and plan was. He didn't know that God would restore and bless him at the end of the test. And he lost sight of the greatness of God.
As people, we are capable of enduring almost any suffering, so long as we know there is a reason for it!
Are you facing suffering or pain today? God is reminding you to trust Him. Even when you can't imagine a reason for your suffering, you can trust God that there is a reason (Romans 8:28).  He will bring good out of this for you.

Take some time to express your trust to God right now. 

Debunking Christmas Myths

Exposing tardy Wise Men, superbabies and other seasonal inaccuracies.

Christmas. It’s all about the good times: family and friends, candlelight services, stockings, mistletoe, rampant misinformation. Few holidays are more tangled up in folktales, urban legends and outright unbiblical ideas than the one celebrating our Savior’s birth.
Not that we talk about it all that much. Disputing the time-honored verses of Christmas carols or exposing the errors of the children’s living nativity scene is a good way to get a Yule log to the head. It’s practically Scroogetastic. Nevertheless, here are a few things you may not have known about your favorite Christian holiday.

-Jesus wasn’t born on Dec. 25.
According to biblical scholars, it’s unlikely that the Christ child arrived on the day we celebrate Christmas—or even during the winter season. For one thing, we’re told of shepherds “keeping watch over their flock by night” (Luke 2:8). Decembers in Bethlehem are cold and regularly drop below freezing once it gets dark, which means most shepherds only “kept watch” in the field from April to October. In the winter, they sheltered their flocks and stayed inside.
And that census decreed by Caesar Augustus? It required travel, and no self-respecting governing authority would ever schedule such a major undertaking during the winter months—when bad weather, muddy roads and angry citizens would foul things up. Nope, these usually took place in September or October, after the harvest season.
Celebrating Christ’s birth on Dec. 25 was popularized in the fourth century as a way to steal the limelight from the winter solstice and its link to pagan feasts celebrating the Roman sun god and the Persian god Mithras. Most scholars think Jesus was born toward the end of September. And for those of you keeping score at home, it was probably the year 6 B.C., not 0 A.D.

-Three Wise Men didn't appear at Christ’s birth.
These guys are fixtures of the nativity scene. They show up at the manger accompanied by camels, and are usually dressed all glittery and stuff because they were kings. Christian tradition has even named them: Gaspar, Melchior and Balthasar. Funny, then, how none of this is in the Bible.
Matthew 2 tells us about the “wise men from the east.” Following the star and looking for the King of the Jews, they make it to Jerusalem, where they have a run-in with King Herod. Next stop is Bethlehem. There, they find Jesus—whom Matthew describes as a “young child,” not a baby—with his mother in a house. Yes, a house. Not a stable. No mention of a manger.
No indication there were three of them, either. That’s just an assumption we make because Matthew 2:11 details the three gifts of gold, frankincense and myrhh. But there could have been a dozen of these guys, for all we know. Nothing about camels or flowing capes or sparkly crowns. Nothing to indicate they were kings. In fact, most scholars figure they were astrologers. And since the passage specifies them meeting the “young child” in a house, many believe the Wise Men didn’t deliver the gifts immediately after the birth. It could have been a couple of years later.
So pretty much everything we think we know about the Wise Men comes from sources other than the Bible. Like Christmas carols. Speaking of which …

-The second verse of “Away in a Manger” is a crock.
The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes/ But little Lord Jesus, no crying He makes…
The traditional second verse of this favorite carol isn’t original to the song, which first appeared as a poem (containing what are now the first and third stanzas) in a Lutheran Sunday School book in 1885. Verse two was added in the early 1900s by Methodist minister John T. McFarland for a children’s program.
It implies that the baby Jesus didn’t cry when the cows, apparently peeved at the unorthodox use of valuable manger space, woke him up with noisy moos. Yet a fairly important precept of Christianity is that Christ was fully human—and not some blissful, preternaturally calm superbaby. This means the little Lord Jesus acted like an infant. He spit up. He peed. He left a few, um, deposits in his swaddling clothes.
He cried like a baby.

-People who call it “Xmas” are taking the Christ out of Christmas.
Lots of Christians start feeling like martyrs when Christmas gets abbreviated, believing this is just another way for modern, secular society to dis our faith (guys this was me even 3 weeks ago up until I did some research and personal study. I encourage you to do the same). Not exactly. The first letter in the Greek word for “Christ” is chi. And in the Roman alphabet, chi is represented by this symbol: X. So guess what? Xmas is an entirely justifiable replacement for Christmas, and it goes back a long, long way. Look I get getting upset over "Happy Holidays" just because they just want to be "Politically Correct" because it irritates me too lol. But some people who use "X-Mas aren’t demeaning Christ. Instead, they’re (consciously or not) appropriating a usage that’s nearly as old as the faith itself. We Xians shouldn’t get so upset about it.
So this holiday season, when someone invites you to attend their church’s Christmas program, feel free to point out the errors of their wise men and angels and the maudlin carols in the background.
Or, perhaps not, Ebenezer. Don’t be a jerk.

Just remember: like many of the tightly held traditions of our faith, not all of them are quite as biblical as we think. Merry Xmas!

Daily Devotion

Isaiah 9:6

For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder.  And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.—Isaiah 9:6

We celebrate Christmas in order to rejoice over God's most precious gift to us.  The birth of Jesus Christ is a gift from God that came in simple wrapping, as well as a gift we don't deserve.  But the gift of Christ also explains His purpose for humankind. 
The gift of Christ was no afterthought.  Long before there was a stable in Bethlehem, before Adam and Eve ever set eyes on each other, and even before there existed a garden called Eden, God decided to send His Son Jesus Christ to die on the cross for our sins. 
From the beginning, God knew humankind would fall short of His glory.  That is why the Scriptures proclaim that Jesus Christ was slain from the foundation of the world (see Revelation 13:8). 
God made a decision from the very beginning that Christ would come to this earth to live and die and rise again from the dead.  God's gift to us proves His purpose to redeem us.
The gift of Jesus Christ is what Christmas is all about.  Jesus came near to us so we could come near to Him. 
Christmas is not about tinsel or shopping or gifts under a tree.  Christmas is about the gift God gave on the tree where Christ died for our sins, giving us the gift of eternal life. 
That is what He has accomplished.  This is the gift He extends.  And if you receive it, you will experience the merriest Christmas of all.

Daily Devotion

Job 2:7-10
Then Satan…attacked Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. And he took a [piece of broken pottery] to scrape himself while he was sitting among the ashes. Then his wife said to him, `Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die!'
But he said to her, ‘…Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?'  In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

"Do you still hold fast your integrity?" Integrity is when the way you live matches the words you say! Job's wife was amazed that his integrity would go that far, that it wouldn't stop when the suffering got too bad.
As you read this devotion, ask yourself, "What would it take for me to let go of my integrity? What temptation or what suffering would cause me to no longer live my life to please, praise and exalt Jesus Christ?"

Then ask God to take the roots of your relationship with Him so deep that they can never be pulled up! You see, if your commitment is simply commitment to the Christian way of life, it will never stand the test. You need deep relational commitment to the person of Jesus Christ in your life to "hold fast" in faith when adversity strikes.

Daily Devotion

Job 1:13-22
A messenger came to Job and said, `…The Sabeans attacked and took [the oxen and donkeys].  They also slew the servants'…While he was still speaking, another also came and said, `The fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants'…Another also came and said, `The Chaldeans…made a raid on the camels and took them and slew the servants' …Another also came and said, `Your sons and your daughters…died.' Through all this Job did not sin nor did he blame God.

When you read Job 1 in your Bible, you see that Job was enjoying a happy, contented, blessed life, when out of the blue everything on earth that was important to him, except his wife, was utterly destroyed. He lost his 10 children, his servants, his financial security. As you keep reading you see that in spite of Job's trust and faith in God, God also allowed a terrible disease to afflict Job. Only Job's deep inner spiritual life prepared him to face such devastation!
The reality of life is that there is no time to get yourself ready to face suffering when it arrives, it's there. The deep reservoir of Job's relationship with God meant that he was spiritually prepared for those dark days of loss.
Get close to God. It is the only way that you will be able to continue to trust Him when He entrusts you with suffering. 

Militants Claim Christians Have No Right to Worship

Indonesia (MNN) ― Seven house churches in Indonesia were forcibly closed by 200 to 300 Muslim extremists last week in West Java, Indonesia.
Members of Muslim hardliner groups like the Islam Protector Front, Muslim Forum, and the Islamic Reformation Movement gathered outside the seven houses to do sudden building inspections.
The house churches were being used by members of the Protestant Batak Christian Huria Church. The militants argued that the houses contained "illegal church meetings" and forced the congregation to go elsewhere. House owners were forbidden from hosting any more worship services.
These evictions are built on a long history in Indonesia of Muslim-Christian run-ins, especially in West Java. In 2005, three female Sunday school teachers were convicted for "proselytizing Muslim children," despite the woman's protests that they had parental consent. In 2008, a church was shut down for not having enough signatures from villagers on a petition. Just this last July, Voice of the Martyrs reported an increase in death threats from Muslims to Christians. The constant push for sharia law in the country doesn't help.
Now Christians are again being threatened. Please Pray that God would use this ordeal to strengthen the church and build their platform for evangelism. Pray that believers would continue to reach out in love to those around them, persevering despite persecution. Pray that the hearts of the Muslim extremists involved in this particular attack would be changed for the Gospel.

Christmas Charity Isn't the Answer

It's a nice gesture, but truly serving the poor should require more of us than one Saturday a year.

For the years I was in Bible College the highlight of the holiday season was the day my church put together food boxes for the less fortunate in our area. One of the benefits of being a megachurch is access to mega-resources, and my church spared no expense when it came to giving out holiday food. Hundreds of volunteers from the church would show up to assemble gigantic boxes filled with every imaginable food stuff: whole turkeys, roasting pans, gallons of milk, bags of fresh apples, onions, potatoes and carrots, and whole pumpkin pies from Costco. The boxes we put together rivaled much of my own family's traditional feast, and it made me proud to know we were giving the best to those who needed it most.

For years, other like minded-volunteers and I would cram our cars with several food boxes and set off to deliver them to different parts of the city. The boxes would go to neighborhoods I rarely found myself in, given to families who either didn't speak the same language as I or who were simply too exhausted to try. Most of the deliveries left me with a heartwarming moment—carrying in all the food, watching the eyes of the children grow wide as they stared at the huge assortment, merrily shouting, “God bless you!” as I left. Other experiences weren't quite as positive, like the single mom who screamed into her cell phone the entire time I lugged in food (it took several trips), barely registering I was there at all. For the most part, however, delivering the feast was one of my favorite holiday traditions.

For the past several years, I have started to rethink all the warm fuzzies I got from these experiences. What is a single Hispanic mom with no money to pay the electric bill going to do with several boxes of stuffing and cans of green beans? More importantly, I began to question the very nature of complete strangers delivering food to the poor one day out of the year.

What if I had a relationship with the single mom who seemed to be having a really rough day? What if I knew the story about the middle-aged shut-in who lived in the apartment complex specifically designated for drug addicts in recovery? What if I knew my neighbors well enough to be invited in for a cup of tea, instead of dropping off food like an underling for Santa Claus?

I realized that one of my main problems with Operation Food Box was the fact that many of the households we delivered to were addresses given to us by other aid organizations—very few of the families and individuals were known by members of the church. What does that say about a church if they have to outsource in order to find the poor and needy? For me, it meant there was a big enough disconnect between my desires (help the poor) and my reality (where are they?). I found that they were, indeed, all around us, and in order for myself to feel good about giving food, it needed to be more about the relationship with the people and less about having a "BIG outreach."

While food boxes definitely have their place in the modern Christian tradition of giving, I can't help but think an attitude of food sharing would be more beneficial. It would mean knowing our neighbors well enough that “the poor” is not a mere concept—and the “hungry and thirsty” aren’t an abstraction, they’re real people. Developing relationships and networking with organizations to empower families to never be hungry, regardless of the holiday season, is more in line with the teachings of
Jesus than delivering one goody-filled box.

In this new year let's actually change the way we live our lives. Let's begin to get involved in peoples lives. Even if it's just one person. Let's involve our lives in theirs and reach out to them with the Love of Christ year around instead of cramming all of this into one day or one month.

Daily Devotion

Exodus 33:12-14
Then Moses said to the Lord...‘If I have found favor in Your sight, let me know Your ways that I may know You'…And He [the Lord] said, `My presence shall go with you'…

To respond rightly to God you must know the presence of God!

All this week our devotionals have been focusing on right responses to God from Psalm 99. But notice that we are talking about RESPONSES. Too often our Christianity is something initiated by us.
But Christianity really only works right when we are responding to God's initiatives. As long as your Christianity is simply your attempt to live the way you think God wants, rather than a personal response to His presence in your life, you will struggle with frustration.
God is present and active in your life. But you must stop and pay attention and learn to recognize His presence and activity. God is speaking to you through His Word. But you need to change the way you read, so that you are not just reading content, but listening for the Holy Spirit's voice coming to you personally through the Scriptures.

Ask God to meet with you in prayer right now. Ask Him to begin to help you be more aware of His presence and His initiative in your life. Make your whole life a response to God. Like Moses, say to God: "let me…know You."

Will the Real Santa Clause "Please Stand Up"

Taking a deeper look at good ol' St. Nick.

Saint Nicholas is possibly the most popular saint worldwide, though much of his fan base is largely unaware he is a saint. They know even less about the life of this man who would eventually become a symbol for Christmas.
Nicholas was born sometime around AD 280 in Lycia to wealthy, Christian parents. Not unlike many saints, the tales of Nicholas’ life focus on his goodness. He is said to have shown remarkable piety even from birth. There is at least one account of Nicholas, on the day he was born, standing up and praying to God in the middle of his bath, and there are numerous reports of the infant Nicholas refusing to nurse on days of fasting. It is hardly surprising, then, that from a young age, Nicholas was known to enjoy church and memorizing songs and Scriptures.
When he was still a boy, Nicholas’ parents died in a plague, leaving him with great wealth. He continued in their charitable work, striving to use his money for good. His uncle, the Bishop of Patura, became his guardian and ensured his education in the church. Nicholas was an exceptional student and became a priest at a very young age.
Once, while traveling by sea to Jerusalem, a storm threatened the safety of Nicholas and the ship’s crew. Legend has it that Nicholas prayed to God and immediately the storm was calmed. Upon returning from that trip, he visited a church in Myra. A priest was outside the church waiting. When Nicholas arrived, the priest asked his name. As Nicholas answered, the priest began praising God. He explained that God had told him to wait outside the church and the next person to come by, named Nicholas, would be the new Bishop of Myra. While Nicholas at first humbly refused, claiming unworthiness, he eventually became their Bishop. He was called the Boy Bishop, because of his age, and was supposedly loved by all.
The stories of miracles performed by Nicholas are numerous—increasing grain cargo on a ship in order to feed his people, appearing to an emperor in a dream to save three wrongly accused men, again calming a stormy sea, bringing a drowned boy back to life and many others. It is said that he performed at least 20 miracles in his lifetime.
Two stories of Nicholas are more popular than others, perhaps because of their connection to the image we have of Saint Nicholas today. It is said that during a famine, an innkeeper captured three boys, chopped them up and put them in a barrel of salt water, with plans to eat them. Nicholas somehow found out, imprisoned the innkeeper and brought the boys back to life. Because of the story of this miracle, as well as others,

Nicholas gained a reputation of protecting children.

The other popular story is that of a man with three daughters. The man was poor and could not afford dowries for his girls. At the time, this meant they would have to succumb to a life of prostitution. Hearing this, Nicholas dropped a bag of gold down the chimney (or, according to some, threw it in the window) on the night before each girl needed a dowry for marriage. One story says the last bag of gold Nick threw in landed in a sock, hanging to dry above the fireplace. Sound familiar? Another version of the story tells of Nicholas’ request to remain anonymous until after his death.
From these stories, it is easy to see how Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, eventually morphed into the Saint Nick we’re familiar with today. He is the patron saint of children, so the custom arose of giving gifts to children in the name of Saint Nicholas on his feast day, December 6. The Dutch eventually brought this tradition to America. Their name for Saint Nicholas—Sinte Klaas—eventually evolved into Santa Claus.
Saint Nicholas (as well as our modern Santa Claus-version) was known for his generosity, his love of children and his care for the poor. Because of these qualities, and his December death-day, he has become associated with Christmas. It makes sense, given that Christmas is the time when we celebrate the birth of Jesus, the One who perfected generosity and love for children and the poor.

This Christmas, instead of complaining about Santa Claus taking over, we can strive to remember the life of a man who is known for living out Christ’s love. May we, too, be aware of the needs of those around us and be willing and generous enough to help.

Daily Devotion

Psalm 99 
He [the Lord] spoke to them in the pillar of cloud; they kept His testimonies and the statute that He gave them.

Obedience is a right response to God!

We talk so much today about how you can find God's help for your life, for your finances, for your relationships, for your work, that we can gradually come to think that the universe, and even God Himself, exist for us — that we are the center of all things.
How important to remember that God is the one who sits on the throne of the universe. He is the one around whom all things revolve. He is God and we are just creatures. We are so wrong when we take God's directions for life as mere guidelines — general suggestions that we should take into account.
The reality is that God has set two ways of living the Christian life before us. One way leads to life and blessing and fullness of joy. The other way leads to frustration and emptiness and wasted life.
Today God is inviting you to live the way of obedience to Him. If you choose to keep enough Christianity to appease your conscience, but still live for yourself, you will come to the end of your life full of regret at how you wasted it.
Respond to God's invitation to you today by bringing your whole life under His leadership. Listen when He speaks.

Why Is It Hard to Be Broken in Church?

A While ago, I asked a question to a number of students I was working with at the time, “What’s one thing you feel you can’t say in the church?”

I didn’t anticipate the response it would receive.

 This question obviously struck a chord with a lot of people. I thought and thought about the comments for months. I wrote some out and kept them on my nightstand, trying to understand the scope of why so many people felt they couldn’t say so many different things in church. Surely there had to be a common denominator.
Fear was obviously there. Shame. Rejection. But those feelings were more of the why people didn’t speak up more often.

I was looking for the what.

What did things like poverty and being gay, worship, money, porn, sex, depression and abuse have in common?

One night months later, it hit me:

Brokenness

Whether it’s as a result of sin, or fear of the response we’ll get by speaking up about something like politics or relationships or mental health in a broken world, it all boiled down to brokenness.

And if this fracture in whatever part of our lives threatens our reputation, our character or our dignity, we hide.

If something in our spiritual life is broken or is confusing to us, we hide.

If a relationship is broken, we hide.

If there’s an unhealthy habit we fall back on, we hide.

If there’s a controversial political or social issue confronting us, we hide.

We ultimately want to hide what’s broken, whether it occurs individually or in a community. The Bible is filled with broken people, most of whom at some point or another tried to cover up their brokenness. Yet it seems like the people who are the most broken, the most helpless, are the people God often uses the most.

King David committed adultery and murder, yet he was considered a man after God’s heart. Rahab was a prostitute, but she understood her culture and helped protect Joshua’s spies. (She later gave birth to Boaz, making her the great-great-grandmother of King David, whose lineage continues on to Jesus.)

The disciples were considered spiritually worthless in their culture and had already been rejected by various rabbis (that’s why they were all working in their respective family trades when Jesus found them), and they were the 12 people Jesus most closely associated with.
Through church experiences and relationships in my own life as a child and as an adult working in a church, the pressure to be perfect and to have all the answers strongly influenced my decision to keep quiet about a lot of broken things. Some were decisions I was making that were sin. Others were the result of the sin of others, or simply questions about my faith and my God.

We’ve all seen how dangerous it can be to be vulnerable in the church. But now, we have the chance to do something about it.
The church is supposed to be a safe place for everybody, especially the people who are the most broken, right? The Bible says the Kingdom belongs to the poor in spirit—those so broken they have nothing to offer. Jesus came to heal the sick.

Although unofficial in title, the concept of the church being a refuge dates back to the time of Moses and Joshua. In the Hebrew culture, there are historical records of fugitives seeking protection at altars, which recognizes religion’s role in protecting human life even for the most terrible offenders.

The Christian church adopted the right of sanctuary in the fourth century. Because of Christendom’s strong belief in the sanctity of life, clergy and priests began acting on behalf of the criminals, defending them from unfair judgment and execution. It wasn’t an easy out for the criminal; they were often restricted in their daily activities, but at least their lives were safe in the church until they received the king’s pardon or a fair punishment.

Anyone was welcome to take safety in the church at this time—not only criminals, but slaves who escaped cruel masters and those who couldn’t repay debts. Village townsmen, women and children who came under attack from outlaws could take refuge in the church.
However, as time went by, people with power interfered with the system and began excluding specific groups or crimes. At first, those who had committed treason or murder were no longer allowed to find safety. Over the next few centuries, slowly, fewer and fewer crimes were given the right of sanctuary, until the end of the 18th century, when it was abolished altogether.

Outside of the legal system, hundreds of years ago, when a person confessed certain sins or doubted or renounced their faith, some Christians refused to welcome that person back into the church, even if the person had truly repented. These kinds of Christians felt like the church was better with these so-called sinners out of the picture.
I find it interesting that in our current culture, we identify the church as a safe place for broken people to find refuge. Church is a place for us to claim the right of a modern-day sanctuary where we can name our sins or ask our questions, and be protected and sheltered while we search for grace, forgiveness and answers.

Yet as history shows us, for hundreds of years, churches have been sacrificing the beauty of confession and brokenness for religious trappings and the malady of perfectionism. In some cases, if we don’t measure up to a manmade cocktail of moral codes and checklists—if we aren’t “good enough”—we no longer feel welcomed in a church or around other Christians.

We feel ashamed.

We feel ashamed that we don’t measure up to the “holiness” of others.
And shame tells us to keep those ugly, messy parts hidden. Without our secrets showing, maybe then we can be accepted.
We think, and in many cases have experienced, that if we share our secrets or our questions, we’ll be rejected. And alone.

And so people—broken people like you and me—feel pressured to choose.
Either we can conform to an institutionalized and over-organized product of religion, masking and repressing our secrets or questions or shortcomings, or we can escape the walls of the church and find a place outside a faith-based environment where we are free to share all of who we truly are.

Most of us choose to live in one of these extremes: conforming or escaping. Few can find peace living in the tension of both. Those of us who do wonder if we’re too idealistic to believe a faith community can be a hospital for our wounds to be welcomed and healed. That true sanctuary can be found both within the walls of the church and outside the church as well.

At the risk of sounding overly idealistic, I’d like to say that for those of us who believe the church should be one of the safest and most grace-giving places a person can experience here on earth, it’s time to reclaim what our faith stands for.

It’s time for us to politely but passionately disagree with those who make church a “safe” place by removing all the messiness.

It’s time for us to put all we have out in the open—not for the sake of self-depreciating exploitation or attention, but for recognizing the things the Cross stands for and left for us: ultimate love and undiscriminating grace.

Daily Devotion

2 Corinthians 1:3-7 

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.

There is a story about a little girl who was being tucked in to bed by her mommy. The little girl was scared to be left alone and asked her mom to stay in the room with her. The mother kindly answered, "Honey, it's okay. Jesus is with you." The little girl said back, "But Mom, I need someone with skin on."
People need to see and feel Jesus through us. We have heard repeatedly that God loves us. However, sometimes, we do not sense that love. God does not use His arms to physically touch us because it is our spirit that responds and testifies to the love of God. But sometimes, others need to see Jesus and feel Jesus to accept His love. God does that by using us. Think of Moses when He was called by God in Exodus 3:7-10:
"And the Lord said: "I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. Therefore, I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians. Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring My people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt."  
God was saying to Moses that He was going to answer the Israelites' prayers by sending Moses to free them. Moses became "Jesus with skin on." He is asking us to do the same thing today. 

Daily Devotion

Psalm 99:6-7
Moses and Aaron were among His priests, and Samuel was among those who called on His name; They called upon the Lord and He answered them. He spoke to them in the pillar of cloud.

Calling on the Lord is a right response to God!

In the Bible, "calling on the Lord" means asking God to be involved in areas where you need His help. When you study those who were men and women of God in the Bible, you find that those who were more Godly called on the Lord more. That is, they recognized that they needed God's involvement in every area of life!
Sometimes they called on the Lord for forgiveness (see verse 8), or for help in battle, or for guidance, or for His anointing on their work for His Kingdom, and the list goes on. When "they called...He answered."
As you read this devotional today, God is inviting you to change the way you approach life so that you involve Him in every aspect of your life. What relationship do you need to call upon the Lord about? What decision do you need to bring before Him? What ministry are you trying to accomplish with your own abilities and resources?

God wants you to learn to take every daily issue of life to Him.

A More Materialistic Christmas

One of my favorite things about December is celebrating the birth of Jesus—the God of the universe. But on a lighter note, one of my other favorite things is watching everyone walk around like Charlie Brown asking, “What is Christmas really all about?”
When we look a culture at large, Christmas is undoubtedly about stuff. Super sales, money, discounts, stockings and a (if you really think about it weird) myth about a fat guy in red who brings stuff down chimneys.
But no matter what your faith, unless you want to invite scorn, skepticism and have everybody look at you like you’re the Grinch, you probably won’t say outright that Christmas is about stuff.
Even in American culture, nobody says that. Here are some examples:

“I don’t want a lot for Christmas ... all I want for Christmas is you.”
—Mariah Carey
“Christmas is all about forgiveness.”
—Finn from Glee, “A Very Glee Christmas”
“Let’s get back to the real meaning of Christmas: being with family.”
—My Friend   
See? When anyone gets serious about Christmas, they don’t talk about stuff, they talk about relationships and abstract concepts like joy or forgiveness. But going metaphysical with Christmas doesn’t necessarily get you anywhere. And I for one think followers of Jesus could get more materialistic in talking about Christmas. Here’s why.

What Christmas Is Really, Actually, Really All About

The celebration of Christmas is actually seriously really about the incarnation of God into human form. And while this has VAST implications for all of philosophy, life, eternity and other abstract things, one thing it also implies is that we should reconsider what we think about stuff. Plain things. Materials.
The incarnation is the divine affirmation of material things, because it’s the crazy point in history where God took on material form and lived in the material world.
Christians aren’t used to this view. We like to think that the “spiritual” will always trump the “physical.” Perhaps it’s the lingering philosophical residue of Gnosticism, perhaps it’s just contemporary wisdom. But whatever it is, it isn’t biblical.

Stuff the Bible Is About

The Bible is filled from beginning to end with stuff.
Start with Genesis 1 & 2. It’s a marvelous picture of the Grand Triune Artist flinging stuff around like Jackson Pollack throws paint. And the thing He keeps yelling is “Tov! Tov!” (Roughly, “Its good.”)
Think about Exodus when God instructs the people of Israel how to worship Him. He guides them in an ultra-specific (picky like Michelangelo) process of “stuff-creating” that involves golden lamp-stands, acacia tables and robes woven from blue and purple yarns.
Then, when Jesus comes He catches a lot of flack for “eating and drinking”—which entails pouring wine, carpentering tables and roasting fish.
Later, Paul promises us that when we rise from the dead, we’re going to be like Christ with new bodies.
Finally, in Revelation we read about the New Earth where we walk streets of gold, gates of jasper and trees with leaves of healing next to rivers.
The point? God loves stuff. He made it, He sent His Son in the form of it, and the New Heavens and the New Earth are filled with it. And since in no way does He seem to want to get away from it, why should we?

Worshiping Stuff? Nope

So materials aren’t bad! In God’s created order, things are the stuff through which we experience, understand and come to know Him in His fullness. Not in spite of them, but through them!
God is our rock. Jesus is bread and water. God is my shield and portion.
If we’re not well acquainted with the material world, then we certainly won’t be well acquainted with Him—because God is always comparing Himself to things.
Of course that doesn’t mean we should worship stuff. Materialism in a bad way is when things (iPhones, designer shoes, a new baseball glove) become our little Baals. We look to them for a happiness they can’t bring. (Far be it from me to suggest we become more materialistic in that way.)
But the possibility of loving stuff too much doesn’t make stuff bad. It means loving wrong. It means we need Christ to order our loves so that all things (concrete like your new car and abstract like your ego over it) are means through which you worship, not forget about Jesus. And that’s what Jesus came to do when He came to Earth to die and rise—to redeem all things.

Worshiping Through Stuff? Yes

So we need to be more materialistic in the sense of loving God through stuff. We need to be good at mimicking Him and shouting, “Now that is really Tov!” when we see and experience good stuff He created. And the incarnation makes that possible because now we have Jesus’ life in us.
One way of course is through gratitude to and reflection on Him.
In each thing the world presents to us—a chip of pottery, the magnolia blossom, a sleeping girl—lays a possible epiphany, a startling occasion for gratefulness and worship. These things are telling us something about Him if only we have the ears to hear and the eyes to see. And if we don’t praise Him through them, then that stuff (like the rocks) will cry out and praise Him instead.
But another way of worship is simply by enjoying stuff unto Him.
We ought not be limited to worshiping God at Christmas through prayer, songs and Scripture reading—but also through enjoyment of His earthly gifts. At Christmas, for example: the startling white of snow, the curious texture of eggnog, the refracted light on tinsel, the warmth of slippers.
It’s worship just to engage with this stuff and call it good like God called it.
What’s at stake in all this talk about stuff is this—will we worship God in fullness or in fractions.
If we get the point—that Jesus became man incarnate, lived a material existence and still now at the right hand of God exists in a body—then we might see that all this stuff surrounding Christmas are matters of worship. (The word “matter” was chosen carefully.)
When we spend eternity with Jesus, we won’t be doing it in some sort of disembodied spiritual meditation, but rather we’ll be feasting in a scintillating world that delights the bodily senses and spins the heart like a top.
I suggest we begin practicing that now by proclaiming the incarnation of Jesus in all its implications—material ones included.
What’s Christmas all about? That Jesus came as the salvation of our souls and our bodies—and proper celebration of the Incarnation will require both.

Daily Devotion

Psalm 99:2-5
The Lord is great in Zion, and He is exalted above all the peoples. Let them praise Your great and awesome name. Holy is He. The strength of the King loves justice; you have established equity; you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob. Exalt the Lord our God and worship at His footstool. Holy is He.

Worship is a right response to God!

There are three words in this passage that express how we respond to God: praise, worship and exalt. We praise God for what He has done; we worship God for who He is; and we exalt God in the eyes of other people.
If you truly come to an awareness of the presence of God in your life, these three things will be the natural result. The more you realize of what God has done for you, the fuller your heart gets, until you just have to praise Him for it.
"Worship at His footstool." The more aware you become of who He is, the more you will become aware of how very little you are; you will realize that the world does not revolve around you, but around Him, and you will want to direct the energy and worship of your life toward Him.

And the more God becomes the center of your life, the more you will look for ways to help others see Him for who He is.

Daily Devotion

Psalm 99:1
The Lord reigns, let the peoples tremble; He is enthroned above the cherubim, let the earth shake.

Trembling is a right response to God!

Sometimes we get very used to the idea that God is there for us, that He is involved in our lives, and we begin to take Him for granted. We can even begin to ignore Him and think nothing of it.
If God was distant, not involved in this world, then we could safely ignore Him. But when the Supreme Being, the maker of all that is, the one who holds all the power that exists, the God of purity and purpose — when HE gets personally involved in your life, you dare not ignore Him or get used to Him.
Just as standing beside a massive, thundering waterfall can make you gulp and respect the power of water, so being in the presence of God makes us gulp and fear and respect Him in a new way. We are secure in His love, but we recognize that He is not tame. As C.S. Lewis wrote of Aslan the lion, "He isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King."
God is not building His life around us; rather, we must build our lives around Him.
Have you gotten used to God's presence in your life? Take some time right now to remember who is on the throne of this universe and re-orient your life around Him!

Daily Devotion

Ephesians 3:17-19 
…So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

There are two different kinds of knowledge mentioned in the last lines of this passage. If we write those two different meanings into the translation it would go like this: "…to know-by-experience the love of Christ which surpasses intellectual-knowledge…"!
When you think about all the amazing things God does for us and you ask, "Why would God do that for me?"—so often the answer is simply, "Because He loves you!"
But when you go back one step further and ask, "But why does He love me?", our minds are left groping for an answer. King David put it this way in Psalm 139 — "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is too high, I cannot attain to it."
God has revealed so much of Himself to us in His Word. But He is infinite in all His ways, and there is so much beauty in what goes on in the mind and heart of God that we have not seen yet.

Take a moment to respond to the immeasurable love of God today.

Daily Devotion

Romans 8:35-39
Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?…I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

God's love is dependable!

If you have begun a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, then you have an anchor for your soul that will hold you steady no matter what you face in life.
No matter what person on earth rejects you, there is One who will "never leave you, nor forsake you" (Joshua 1:5). No matter what things crumble away beneath your feet, you will find that "underneath are the everlasting arms" (Deuteronomy 33:27). No matter how many of the things you once found security in suddenly disappear into clouds and darkness, the lighthouse of God's Word will always shine this message into your heart—"I will not leave you comfortless; I will come to you" (John 14:18).
Even if you are walking through the valley of the shadow of death, He will be with you every step of the way. This makes you different from every person who does not have Jesus Christ.

The love of God. You can depend on it.

Daily Devotion

Psalm 145:2
Every day will I bless thee; and I will praise thy name for ever and ever.


Janet, Ann, and Jenny all agreed. This year they were going to get together daily to pray together and share their experiences. Over the past few months they had spent more time in fellowship with one another, and it was the best part of their weeks. They all worked in the same office, ate lunch together, went to church together, and they lived close enough that they could meet at one another's homes when necessary. In covenant with God and one another, they promised to get together for praise and prayer.
Perhaps such a set-up is not realistic for everyone, but it is easier and more enjoyable when we can share our faith with others. Other people hold us accountable to the commitment we make in a way that God does not. He will not force anyone to make time for Him. It is from a willing heart that God wants our time with Him to come. Friends and prayer partners can help us remember God every day, and help us praise Him always.
  Every day will I praise You, Lord. I will try to take time each day to reflect on the great gifts I have been given and the wonderful love that is in my heart. Thank You for that love.

12 Things I HATE about Youth Ministry

Yesterday, I reflected on 12 things I love about youth ministry—it was hard to keep the list to just 12! Serving in youth ministry is great, but sometimes I allow my priorities to get mixed up and give it more than I should. When the needs of the ministry consume and devour my life, and it results in no margin, no accountability, and no joy…it’s time to change things. Here are some of the warning signs, 12 things I hate about youth ministry:
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1. Fatigue can result in poor leadership decisions. This season, I need to get some rest!

2. The nagging feeling that I may have given up too early on that one high maintenance kid.

3. Overload leads to taking short cuts and doing what’s easy rather than doing what is best (or right).

4. Sometimes I am tempted to skim in my spiritual life since people really don’t know if I skip my personal time with God.

5. I can take criticism personally and use it as a club to beat myself up.

6. I believe the lie that the youth ministry is the most important one in the church. I become territorial and build high walls around youth ministry within the church.

7. Insecurities and fears feed one another until they’re consuming. While cocooned, I rest, refuse to take risks, and become satisfied with the way things are.

8. My drive to be faithful and grow the ministry can move us from honest persuasion to manipulation.

9. I feel like an unsung hero, wallow in self pity, and then feel guilty for having the need to be affirmed.

10. I get confused or indignant when other leaders seem to love the ministry as much as I do.

11. I let success feed the self-deception that says, “I did this on my own power…or…I can do this on my own power.”

12. The pressure to perform and please others distracts me from trusting God.

Christmas is a great time to step back and remember the important things in life: God’s love for us is unchanging, uncompromising, and unconditional. He loves all of my students more than I do and is working within to draw us closer.

Daily Devotion

Read Luke 15:11-32
I will get up and go to my father, and will say to him, `Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me as one of your hired men'.  So he got up and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him, and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. (vv. 18-20)

God's love for you is unconditional!

This parable is usually called The Prodigal Son, but some people call it The Parable of the Father's Heart. That is a good name for it, because Jesus used this parable to show people how He feels toward those people who are rejected by the self-righteous (see vv. 28-30).
Do you feel that you have sinned and offended God to such an extent that you cannot approach Him, that He does not want to see you? That is how the son in this parable felt. But when he finally decided to come back to his father, he found his father waiting for him with open arms. As soon as his father saw him returning, his father took off running to meet him.

Even if you feel "a long way off", as soon as you turn back to God in your life, He is running to meet you, with embraces and kisses to welcome you back!

12 Things I love about Youth Ministry

The Christmas season has a lot of movement. People are usually stressed and borderline psycho during a time when they should be slow and reflective. The pace quickens: Christmas parties, visiting family, special church services, and last minute shopping. Everything seems more urgent.
With a little intentionality, this season can become a natural time to reflect on the important things in life. So, instead of singing the 12 days of Christmas (which I would love to do, but you would hate it), I thought I would share 12 things I love about Youth Ministry

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1. Youth Ministry is fun! How often do you see the ushers or senior pastors playing red rover while blindfolded?

2. Youth Ministry makes a real difference for the Kingdom. Teenagers are not the church of the future, they are the church of TODAY.

3. Youth Ministry helps students connect to their passion. Students are old enough to be discovering WHAT MOVES THEM, but not yet old enough to be dulled by disappointment and lulled into apathy.

4. Youth Ministry is direct, teenagers often speak their mind even if it’s not polite or acceptable…which I find refreshing.

5. Youth Ministry attracts fun people, and it’s great to be serving alongside the most fun people in the church.

6. Youth Ministry is strategic. The decisions teenagers make during adolescence have implications for the rest of their life.

7. Youth Ministry is catalytic. Students can be quick to take risks and rise to challenges without a lot of excuses or “experience” that holds them back.

8. Youth Ministry lasts longer than pop culture. When teenagers return from college to volunteer in youth ministry you can laugh at their fading fads.


9. Youth Ministry is a constant stream of blessings. I know the secret: working with teenagers produces fruit in your own life. Sometimes it’s so great doing youth ministry that I feel guilty for calling it “ministry!”


10. Youth Ministry lasts longer than the annoying students. I can outlast them because they will eventually graduate from our ministry. It’s okay, I can be thankful for that reality, I am just keeping it real!
lol jk I love you all!!!

11. Youth Ministry “feeds” students who are so hungry to know Jesus.

12. Youth Ministry is unpredictable. CHAOS: At Anytime and Anywhere  Anything can happen. It’s fun and exciting and often painful. lol

Most of all I love working with Teenagers because I once was a teenager. And NO it was not during the Cold War only a few short years ago lol. And I know what it is like going through those years with so many different emotions, questions, and struggles. I do not have it all figured out but one thing I love is living this life among them and helping them discover the Love of God and the Plans He has for them!!

Daily Devotion

John 3:16
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.

God's love extends to all!

Are you a part of this world? Then by Jesus' own words in this verse, "God so loved you, that He gave His only begotten Son."
Have you ever allowed yourself to truly feel the depth of what it means to be loved by God? It is not that we all deserve to be loved and so He loves us. Just the opposite! We have hurt His feelings, offended His justice, defied His authority, rejected His love, broken His laws, ignored His self-revelation, grieved His Spirit, and ignored His truth.
Yet He loves us, and reaches out to us, and introduces Himself to us, and softens our hardened hearts, and helps us see our need for Him, and offers us forgiveness, and welcomes us into His family.
"The free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:23). Still, just like any gift—no matter how much it cost, no matter how valuable it is, no matter how much we need it, no matter how much love is in the heart of the giver — the gift must be accepted and received by the person to whom it is given.

Have you received God's wonderful gift of love?

Daily Devotion

Hosea 11:8
"How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I surrender you, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart is turned over within Me. All my compassions are kindled.

God's love does not change!

Some people refer to "the God of the Old Testament", as though God changed when the New Testament started. But God did not change. When you read the Old Testament stories of God's relationship to Israel, they show God relating to that nation just like He relates to us as individuals today.
God loved them. He forgave them time and time again as they continually went through a process of returning to Him, then falling away, then returning again in repentance. Each time they turned back to God, He was waiting to restore their relationship with Him, waiting to bless them again.
Romans 8:35 asks, "Who will separate us from the love of Christ?" And the answer—"Nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord!" (vv. 35-39, NLT).
That same kind of persistent love as God expressed to Israel, He has for you today. Are you one of God's children? His heart is full of compassion for you.  Stop worrying that God will stop loving or receiving you, and focus on loving Him back!

Daily Devotion

Matthew 4:19-20
And He said to them, 'Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men'.  Immediately they left their nets, and followed Him.

If you want to get to know God more, you must learn to respond immediately to God's leading in your life!

When Jesus called the disciples, they immediately left everything and followed Him. That response was the beginning of such a wonderful journey of growing relationally close to Jesus.
Matthew also tells the story (Matthew 19:21-22) of another young man Jesus invited to leave everything and follow Him. The next verse after Jesus' invitation says, "But when the young man heard this statement, he went away grieving; for he was one who owned much property." He valued the comfort of keeping things the way they were more than he valued responding to Jesus' invitation.
The way to increase your sensitivity to what God is saying is to respond to what God is already making clear to you. If God is speaking to you about something in your life right now, and you ignore it, your heart becomes hardened toward Him and your relationship with Him suffers. But if you learn to respond immediately to God's leading, your relationship with Him soars.

In faith, the fishermen left their nets. The rich young man also had a net—a safety net. But he couldn't give it up. What do you need to respond to God about today?

Daily Devotion

Mark 1:35-37

In the early morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went away to a secluded place, and was praying there. Simon and his companions searched for Him; they found Him, and said to Him, `Everyone is looking for You'.

Jesus' relationship with His Father, while Jesus was walking the earth as a man, shows us what our relationship with God can be like!

Jesus certainly had an ongoing conversation with God taking place behind the scenes at all times. But even when you have learned to speak with God throughout the day, you still need to set aside special time that is for nothing else than communication with God — speaking to Him, listening to Him, and just being quiet in His presence.
Jesus' relationship with His Father needed these "quiet times" and so does ours! These verses describe one of the busiest times in Jesus' ministry.  The only time He could find to spend with God was "in the early morning, while it was still dark." You may choose a different time of day, but do not neglect this crucial part of a growing relationship with God.
It is true of every relationship in life.

The only way to get closer to someone is to spend focused time with them. Find a "secluded place" and a quiet time and get alone with God today. You need it, and He deserves it.

Daily Devotion

John 11:41-42
Then Jesus raised His eyes, and said, ‘Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. I knew that You always hear Me; but because of the people standing around I said it, so that they may believe that You sent Me.'

Want to get to know God better? You may need to change the way that you pray!

Remember, you're not trying simply to learn more about God, you're trying to know Him better on the personal level. Learn to have conversations with God — just like Jesus did, speaking naturally to His Father in the middle of this event!
Resist the urge to let your prayers be just a shopping list of things you're reciting, that you hope God will do for you. By all means bring your requests to God, but learn to make your prayers much more than that. Learn to be responsive to God. When God speaks to you in the Bible, interrupt your reading and respond to Him. When God speaks to you through someone's preaching, immediately respond to God in your heart.
All other kinds of prayer originate from us (request, praise, intercession), but responsive prayer is completely relational. It is you responding to what God is saying and doing in your life.

Learn to start your day in a conversation with God. As you wake, say, "Good morning Lord!" And then carry that conversation throughout your day. He's always listening.

Daily Devotion

Psalm 119:103
How sweet are Your words to my taste! Yes, sweeter than honey to my mouth!

Jesus said, "You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me." (John 5:39)

He said these words to people who searched the Scriptures for the wrong reasons. But for those of us who have a living relationship with Jesus, these words of His  draw us to search the Scriptures for the right reason!
Because we love Jesus, we love the Bible. We want to get to know Jesus more, and so we soak our lives in the Word of God.
If you have a relationship with another person, and you want to get to know them better, you have a conversation with them. You listen carefully to what they share with you about themselves. You focus on them.

It is the same with your walk with God. God is speaking to you; but as long as your Bible is closed, you miss out on so much of what God wants to say and do in your life. The Bible can be dry if you approach it academically. But if you approach it with an open heart, listening for the voice of God in your heart, it will be "sweeter than honey to your mouth."  

No one can taste it for you. You must open your Bible and savor its sweetness for yourself.

Prove them Wrong

Worried about failing? About rejection? About falling on your face?

Don’t bother (worrying, that is).

For everyone with high expectations on you, there’s someone who thinks you’re going to bomb.

Prove them wrong.

And if you don’t prove them wrong, then so what? So that last effort was a misfire? Hey, everybody misfires.
They’re thinking you’re gonna pack it up and go home now.
They think you’re done.

Prove them wrong.

Show them you have something to say, that you aren’t going anywhere, that you started this for a reason.
Show them you WILL put the time in.
Yes, Allen Iverson, we are talking about practice.
It doesn’t make perfect, but it makes better, so keep at it.
The expectations are low.
Or the expectations are unrealistic.
And the expectations will always take you down if you let them.

Forget the expectations.

Life’s too short to live scared, so go ahead.

Prove them wrong

Daily Devotion

John 1:1-14
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory

Why was Jesus referred to as "the Word"? Because He is God speaking to us—God wants you to know Him! Jesus expressed in word and action what God is really like.

The whole Bible is about God revealing Himself to people. Even in your own life, God is constantly reaching out to you, inviting you every day to live your life in close relationship with Him.

That's why He has given us the Bible, which is also called "the Word." God wants to be totally involved in your life today. He doesn't just want you to be a "committed Christian"; He wants to walk with you through your day on a relational level.

I encourage you to make your life a pursuit of God! When the Bible talks about "seeking God", this is what it means. It means that you look for any way, any opportunity to get to know God better on the personal level.
As you read this devotional and think about this day, ask yourself: how can I personally get to know God better? God is inviting you to a closer walk with Him. He wants to live with you. Use this devotion to journal your own response back to God.