Pastors can only fulfill their calling as shepherd leaders with the vitalizing power of prayer, and must pray for themselves first. A healthy, prayer-full pastor is an effective pastor. My newest book is to help pastors in this vital discipline of prayer.
Amen Indeed fuels growth by providing more than 100 prayers for pastors to pray for their own mental, physical, spiritual, and relational growth. Each is sourced from Scripture and rings with the “Amen” that Jesus promised to add (2 Corinthians 1:20).
“There is one assured way for our prayers to be answered: It is to pray the will of God.
“There is one assured way to pray the will of God: It is to pray Scripture.
“As ministers of the Gospel we would be wise then to primarily pray Scripture, for ‘the word of our God stands forever’ (Isaiah 40:8).” —Dick Brogden, Founder of the Live Dead Movement
“When it comes to prayer, we need some help. And in Amen Indeed, help is at hand. Whatever is keeping us from prayer, Craig Owens can help us push through to a more consistent and more consistently joyful and fruitful life of prayer.” —T.M. Moore, Principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe
Slavery abolitionist William Wilberforce wrote a powerful book 200+ years ago that sounds like it could have been written today! Here are just a handful of the numerous passages I highlighted in Real Christianity. Be sure to check out my full book review here.
“What a difference it would be if our system of morality were based on the Bible instead of the standards devised by cultural Christians.”
“The Bible is one of God’s greatest gifts to humanity. It tells us of the greatest gift that men and women have longed for throughout the ages and of which the prophets spoke about for centuries.”
“Even the majority of professing Christians tend to think that the nature of humanity is basically good and is only thrown off course by the power of temptation. They believe that sin and evil are the exception, not the rule. The Bible paints a much different picture. The language of Scripture is not for the faint of heart. It teaches that man is an apostate creature, fallen from his original innocence, degraded in his nature, depraved in his thinking, prone toward evil, not good, and impacted by sin to the very core of his being.”
“Not that the Bible needs affirmation, but the world around us demonstrates that there is a kind of sowing and reaping that affirms the destructive nature of ignoring the things the Bible teaches.”
“When we do not take our problem seriously, we do not seek the solution God offers with the measure of sincerity and intensity that our true condition requires. If we don’t understand how seriously ill we are, we don’t pursue the remedy with the required diligence. If we are slightly ill, we take an aspirin. If we are dying, we passionately pursue a cure. The cure is not forced on us; it is offered to us.”
“The appropriate response to these facts would be one of great excitement, true humility, hatred of sin, humble hope, firm faith, heavenly joy, ardent love and unceasing gratitude! But here is where we find a problem with the experience of those who hold to a cultural Christianity. … Cultural Christians might talk about religion or church in generic terms, but you will rarely hear them use the name of Jesus or speak of His death on the cross or His resurrection. … Cultural Christians probably have no understanding of the work of the Spirit in the life of the believer. Since they do not strive for effectiveness in their own spiritual lives or attempt to live with character consistent with followers of Christ, they have no experience of their own inability to achieve such things without the Holy Spirit’s help.”
“Authentic faith will often be accompanied by an appropriate zeal. But zeal can often be devoid of any accurate understanding of authentic faith. The product of such zeal is often justified in the name of Christianity, but in reality it has virtually nothing to do with believing in Jesus Christ.”
“Our inability is our great asset; it creates a humility that becomes dependent on God’s grace working in us.”
“It is virtually impossible to get to the place where you recognize your need for the Spirit and depend upon His working when you have created a safe religiosity that is perfectly manageable by means of your own abilities.”
“Authentic Christianity is a way for the most wayward of men and women to enter into a right relationship with God based solely on the fact that ‘while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us’ (Romans 5:8, KJV). They have confused the outcome of getting right with God with the means of getting right with Him. Only when we have come empty-handed to the foot of the Cross and cried out for God’s mercy and grace, and been reborn by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, can we even begin to live the life to which God calls us. Some seem to think that Christ has made it possible for them to be right with God because His death has somehow lowered God’s standards to the level of their performance.”
“It makes no sense to take the name of Christian and not cling to Christ. Jesus is not some magic charm to wear like a piece of jewelry we think will give us good luck.”
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
If anyone is known for attentively doing their duty, it is the members of our military. Duty is drilled into them over and over and over. Civilians could learn a lesson from this. We tend to be reward-motivated, that is to say, if we feel some sort of reward for our effort, we may stick to our commitment. But duty-bound soldiers stick to their commitment regardless of how they feel or what the circumstances are.
We need to be especially on guard against Christian duties that seem to be thankless, or else we may forget about doing them or do them only reluctantly.
Some of you might be saying, “‘Christian’ and ‘duty’ doesn’t sound right in the same sentence. Isn’t everything we do for Jesus supposed to be delightful?” Paul said to Timothy, “Join with me in suffering, like a good soldier of Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:3).
Suppose one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, “Come along now and sit down to eat”? Won’t he rather say, “Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink”? Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.” (Luke 17:7-10)
Why does the military drill the idea of duty into every soldier? Because doing your duty is indispensable to success in battle!
In the New Testament, we meet three Roman soldiers who did their duty. Only one that we know of became a follower of Jesus, yet all three were pivotal for two key leaders in the early Church. These Roman soldiers were important because doing their duty helped Peter and Paul get where God had called them.
Peter—Jesus called on Peter to be one of the foundational leaders of the Church (Matthew 16:18). But Peter never stepped fully into this role until a Roman centurion named Cornelius did his duty.
In Acts 10:1-7 we meet Cornelius who followed the command of an angel without question, just as a dutiful soldier would. This dutiful act helped Peter understand what God was calling him to do (10:15-16, 22-28), and then helped him explain what the rest of the Church was supposed to do (11:18; 15:7-11).
Paul—Lysias was the commander of the Roman garrison in Jerusalem. He saved Paul from literally being torn limb-from-limb by an angry mob, and then he safely transported Paul to Caesarea to avoid the assassins who were laying in wait to ambush Paul (Acts 21-22).
Then when Paul was being sent to stand trail before Emperor Nero, a centurion named Julius also went to extraordinary lengths to see that Paul made it safely to Rome (Acts 27).
All three of these Roman soldiers were merely doing their duty—obey orders from their commanding officers—but their dutiful service allowed Peter and Paul to get to the places where God needed them to be.
Earlier I asked if the Christian life was supposed to be delightful. It may not be delightful here, but doing our duty may be tough at times. Paul said he rejoiced in the difficulties (2 Corinthians 12:10).
Truly, doing our duty here is noticed by our Commander and King. Allow me to paraphrase Matthew 25:21 for the reward that Jesus gives those saintly soldiers who do their duty—
Our Commander will reply, “Well done, good and dutiful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!”
Do your duty—for your sake, for the benefit of others, and for the glory of our King.
If you’ve missed any of the other messages in this series called The Lord’s Army, you can find them all here.
A cold-case detective examines the universe as he would a crime scene. “The universe is an incredibly complex, finely tuned environment—so precise that carbon-based life like ours can exist at all. This point isn’t just made by those who believe in God; it’s widely recognized, even by critics and naturalists who try to account for the remarkable, razor-edge calibration of cosmological constants like the weak and strong nuclear forces, as well as electromagnetism. These are set within the narrowest tolerances. Just a slight deviation, and our universe would not be capable of sustaining life—yet, here we are.”
InThe Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis gives these words to Screwtape about politics: “About the general connection between Christianity and politics, our position is more delicate. Certainly we do not want men to allow their Christianity to flow over into their political life, for the establishment of anything like a really just society would be a major disaster. On the other hand we do want, and want very much, to make men treat Christianity as a means; preferably, of course, as a means to their own advancement, but, failing that, as a means to anything—even to social justice.”
A Christian brother or sister says or does something just a little “off.” How do you respond? “Now you’re pretty sure you should say something. But you’re also busy. Or you think someone else might be in a better position to bring it up. Or you hate uncomfortable conversations. (Or all of the above.) So you convince yourself to stay quiet.” Scott Hubbard shows us from Scripture why staying silent is not an option for Christians who love each other.
“According to Big Bang cosmology, we should be seeing these very distant galaxies, not as they are now, but as they were shortly after the Big Bang. Since star and galaxy formation should take many millions of years, theorists were not expecting to see many galaxies in the ‘early’ universe, and those that did exist were expected to be unevolved and immature. Yet data from the James Webb Space Telescope have been shattering these Big Bang expectations.” Check out this astronomical evidence that points to an all-wise Creator.
“Metabolomics is the study of chemical processes involving small molecules that were part of fats, proteins, amino acids, and nucleic acids.” This study has recently been applied to fossilized bones that have been excavated. The results: “Tiny chemical clues trapped inside ancient bones are revealing what animals ate, the diseases they carried, and the environments they lived in.”
“[God] unrolls before Job a long panorama of created things, the horse, the eagle, the raven, the wild ass, the peacock, the ostrich, the crocodile. He so describes each of them that it sounds like a monster walking in the sun. The whole is a sort of psalm or rhapsody of the sense of wonder. The Maker of all things is astonished at the things He has Himself made. This we may call the third point. Job puts forward a note of interrogation; God answers with a note of exclamation. Instead of proving to Job that it is an explicable world, He insists that it is a much stranger world than Job ever thought it was.” —G.K. Chesterton
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
Greg and I took some time to discuss some of the best traits we’ve experienced in some memorable leaders in our work careers. Three traits are linked together in a powerful combination.
You may also want to check out a blog post and video I shared previously called “Speak the Truth in Love.”
And speaking of leadership models, my book Shepherd Leadership calls us back to the leadership model that is most consistently used throughout the Bible.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
Leadership is influence.
Influence doesn’t try to get a following, but people naturally follow a leader who quietly, consistently, and effectively shows up for them.
Jesus saw the needs of people and was moved by compassion to relieve their distress. Peter said He simply went around doing good (Acts 10:38). He gave value to the overlooked, He touched the so-called untouchable, He embraced the rejected.
Jesus said, “I didn’t come to be served but to serve and to give My life away” (Mark 10:45).
This commentary from the folks at He Gets Us is spot-on:
So often our idea of leadership is about asserting dominance and wielding authority; Jesus on the other hand revealed a radically different approach to greatness.
Jesus chose a path that seemed almost counterintuitive, especially to many of those around Him. He showed that true influence doesn’t come from throwing your weight around or flexing your authority—it comes from genuine empathy, authentic care, and intentionally seeing people and going toward them.
Instead of building a platform or demanding attention, Jesus moved quietly through communities, transforming lives through genuine relationships.
He didn’t network with the powerful or chase prestigious connections.
He sat with the overlooked.
He listened to the ignored.
He gave dignity to those society had dismissed.
Jesus’ approach to influence and greatness wasn’t about commanding rooms or dominating conversations—it was about creating spaces where others felt seen, heard, and valued, demonstrating great love in those moments.
When He had opportunities to grasp power, He chose instead to empower others.
His visible leadership wasn’t built on titles or positions, but on authentic relationships He cultivated and the lives He transformed through His genuine care and concern. (‘What is Greatness?’)
My advice is wholesome. There is nothing devious or crooked in it. My words are plain to anyone with understanding, clear to those with knowledge. (Wisdom in Proverbs 8:8-9)
wholesome/hōl′səm/
Conducive to or indicative of good health or well-being.
Conducive to or promoting social or moral well-being.
Contributing to the health of the mind.
There is nothing as wholesome—healthy and beneficial—as the Wisdom which is found on the pages of Scripture.
And so, my children, listen to me, for all who follow my ways are joyful. Listen to my instruction and be wise. Don’t ignore it. … For whoever finds me finds life and receives favor from the Lord. (Wisdom in Proverbs 8:32-33, 35)
Greg and I challenge you to take a phrase from our amazing military personnel: Change “I work here” to “I serve here.” Then just as we express our thanks to our active duty and retired service members—“Thank you for your service”—others at our workplaces can say the same thing to us.
“The human mind never goes so fast as that except when it has got into a groove.” —G.K. Chesterton
“In the opening paragraph of Revelation, we’re met by the encouragement, ‘Blessed are those . . . who keep what is written in [this prophecy]’ (1:3). Then at the conclusion we’re reminded, ‘Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book’ (22:7; see also 22:9).” Justin Dillehay then outlines three ways Christians can “keep” the Book of Revelation.
“For it is not so much of our time and so much of our attention that God demands; it is not even all our time and all our attention; it is ourselves. … When we try to keep within us an area that is our own, we try to keep an area of death. Therefore, in love, He claims all. There’s no bargaining with Him.” —C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
T.M. Moore also wrote about the Intimate Glory we have in Jesus: “The greatness of our great salvation is to be known in the Presence of Jesus, God With Us, and the intimacy of peace, safety, rest, and joy we know in Him. Take away all the outward trappings and benefits of our salvation, and we will still, like Peter, be overjoyed just to be with Jesus. The hope of sharing in His glory—not just then and there but now and here in all we do—refreshes and excites our soul and energizes our bodies for daily obedience.”
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
What do you want people to remember about your leadership? It’s an easy question to overlook, but striving to be remembered well can help you to be a better leader every day. In today’s episode Greg and I discuss the attributes of a memorable leader and reminisce about past leaders in our lives.
[0:00] Introduction
[0:42] Here’s a really important leadership question to contemplate about your legacy.
[1:53] Memorable leaders give us freedom to use our gifting.
[3:48] We debate going negative.
[4:07] Memorable leaders believe in us.
[7:10] Memorable leaders are calm in turbulent times.
[8:16] Memorable leaders love us enough to tell us the truth.
[10:20] Memorable leaders show us a preferable end goal.
[11:22] Memorable leaders are complimentary.
[12:46] Memorable leaders let us take the victory lap for the wins, but they take the blame for the losses.
[13:29] Memorable leaders give us grace for second chances.
[15:16] What’s one word we would like on our epitaph?
[17:59] Memorable leaders have an abundance mindset.
[18:41] How do you start becoming a memorable leader today?
[22:14] People are watching how you, as a leader, treat others.
[22:53] The value of a coach is so impactful for leaders who want to become more memorable.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
Does this sound familiar? “We live in difficult times. Pray for this nation. We have all the marks of a declining civilization. Pray that the God who hears and answers the prayers of His people might intervene on behalf of our country and bring a spiritual renewal that might save the nation.”
What if I told you that an esteemed and influential politician wrote this?
What if I told you that he wrote this in 1797?
The politician was England’s William Wilberforce, the man who tirelessly led the crusade to abolish the British slave trade, but the topics he addressed in Real Christianity sound as though they are topics that we are still wrestling with today.
Throughout this book, Wilberforce contrasts the many ways that cultural Christianity—or people who are Christian in name only—differ from the real Christianity that is outlined in the pages of the Bible. Wilberforce wrote, “I find it necessary to affirm that the problems we face nationally and internationally are a direct result of the decline of faith and morality in our nation. My only hope of a prosperous future for this country rests not on the size and firepower of our military, nor on the wisdom of its leaders, nor on the spirit of her people, but only on the love and obedience of the people who name themselves after Christ, that their prayers might be heard and for the sake of these, God might look upon us with favor.”
I found this book encouraging, in that I can see how human nature has remained the same and that the answers we so desperately seek are still found in the Holy Bible.
I also found this book convicting, as Wilberforce continually challenged me to review my own life to ensure I wasn’t unknowingly slipping into a cultural Christian mindset. I was also confronted by the numerous calls to prayer that Wilberforce made throughout this book.
It’s a relatively short read, but it is power-packed. I recommend Real Christianity to anyone who is frustrated by the state of affairs in our nation, and is desperate to see a true return to the biblical values of Christianity.
About 14 years ago I wrote a blog post called “More and More” in which I was challenging myself and other Christians to keep setting the bar higher.
As for other matters, brothers and sisters, we instructed you how to live in order to please God, as in fact you are living. Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more. (1 Thessalonians 4:1)
I pointed out that in the Greek language the phrase “more and more” in 1 & 2 Thessalonians is just one word. It means…
More willingly
More readily
Sooner
I asked, “When the Holy Spirit speaks to me, do I respond and obey more willingly? more readily? sooner?”
So here I am again looking back—all these years later—and asking myself: Am I still wanting more and more? Am I growing more and still more? Am I loving more and still more? Am I leading more and still more?
It’s a lifelong pursuit chasing after more and still more.
Pastors can only fulfill their calling as shepherd leaders with the vitalizing power of prayer, and must pray for themselves first. A healthy, prayer-full pastor is an effective pastor. My newest book is to help pastors in this vital discipline of prayer.
Craig T. Owens 