My Best Friend

August 4, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

I am so blessed to have a best friend. 

Someone who has helped me grow and mature.

Someone who helps me dream bigger,

persevere longer,

act more kindly,

live more transparently,

love more empathically,

encourage more frequently,

lead more gently,

serve more Christ-like,

and glorify God more highly.

My best friend is my confidant, my playmate, my cheerleader, my counselor, my wife of 22 years.

I love you, Betsy! I cannot imagine a better friend. I cannot imagine how much of life I would have missed if you hadn’t been by my side, opening my eyes.

The first 22 years have been amazing. I cannot wait to see what God has in store for us for the next 22 years! 

Happy anniversary!

(We love working with Michelle Wise for our photographs. Check out her amazing work here.)

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7 Quotes From “Secret Power” Especially For Pastors

August 3, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

D.L. Moody’s book Secret Power is addressed to both individual Christians and church leaders (you can read my full book review by clicking here).

I posted some quotes for individual Christians to consider yesterday. Here are seven quotes especially for pastors and church leaders:

“The Gospel proclamation cannot be divorced from the Holy Spirit. Unless He attend the Word in power, vain will be the attempt in preaching it.”

“Skeptics and infidels may say they don’t believe in it. It is not our work to make them believe in it; that is the work of the Spirit. Our work is to give them the Word of God; not to preach our theories and our ideas about it, but just to deliver the message as God gives it to us.” 

“It is not the hard work breaks down ministers, but it is the toil of working without power. …If you ministers have not the Spirit of God, you had better not preach, and your people had better stay at home. I think I speak not too strongly when I say that a church in the land without the Spirit of God is rather a curse than a blessing. If you have not the Spirit of God, Christian worker, remember that you stand in somebody else’s way; you are as a tree bearing no fruit standing where another fruitful tree might grow.”

“Man cannot preach effectively of himself. He must have the Spirit of God to give ability, and study God’s Word in order to testify according to the mind of the Spirit.”

“Thousands and thousands are sitting in darkness, knowing not of this great Light, but when we begin to preach Christ honestly, faithfully, sincerely and truthfully; holding Him up, not ourselves; exalting Christ and not our theories; presenting Christ and not our opinions; advocating Christ and not some false doctrine; then the Holy Ghost will come and bear witness. He will testify that what we say is true. When He comes He will confirm the Word with signs following.”

“I believe the reason why God makes use of so few in the Church, is because there is not in them the power that God can use. He is not going to use our ideas, but we must have the Word of God hid in our hearts, and then, the Holy Spirit inflaming us, we will have the testimony which will be rich, and sweet, and fresh, and the Lord’s Word will vindicate itself in blessed results. God wants to use us; God wants to make us channels of blessing; but we are in such a condition He does not use us. That is the trouble; there are so many men who have no testimony for the Lord; if they speak, they speak without saying anything, and if they pray, their prayer is powerless; they do not plead in prayer; their prayer is just a few set phrases that you have heard too often. Now what we want, is to be so full of the Word, that the Spirit coming upon us shall bring to mind—bring to our remembrance—the words of the Lord Jesus.”

“I have lived long enough to know that if I cannot have the power of the Spirit of God on me to help me to work for Him, I would rather die, than live just for the sake of living.”

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Pastoral Submission

August 3, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

What do you think of when you hear those words pastoral submission?

We may not be on the same page about this yet. I don’t mean people in a congregation submitting to a pastor. I mean something deeper than that.

Allow me to start with an unusual verse for this topic. Paul wrote,

When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face… (Galatians 2:11).

First of all, this is the proper way to handle an issue like this. Paul didn’t talk to others, nor run to the leaders in Jerusalem, but he went one-on-one with Peter.

Consider Paul’s relationship to Peter if there was a “corporate flowchart” for the First Century Church—Peter would have been Paul’s superior. Yet, Peter not only received this correction from Paul but continued to speak highly of Paul.

Beginning in the first chapter of Galatians we see Paul’s level of accountability. He answered to God, but he also submitted to other church leaders. Not only that, but this passage (Galatians 2:7-9) tells us that other church leaders submitted to Paul.

When I know God has called me, and I am doing my work for His approval alone, and when I know God has called others, and they too are ministering only for His approval then we can mutually submit to one another.

It’s not a top-down hierarchy in the church, except for Jesus being the Head and all others are below Him. All others (clergy and congregation) in the Body of Christ are on equal standing—no one is more important than any other. Therefore, as we submit to Christ’s Headship, we can also mutually submit to others in the Body.

What keeps us from doing this? Pride! We say, “What will others think of me if I submit?” Pastors think, “If I submitted to someone in my congregation, how could I ever lead this church? People will take advantage of me! No one will ever listen to me again!”

Not true!

When I am fully submitted to Christ, there is no stronger grounds for SERVANT leadership.

I don’t pastor to lead; I pastor to serve. 

I’m not building my church; I’m building Christ’s church. 

I’m not growing my followers; but followers of Jesus. 

Holy God, help me to know who I am in You. You have called me to pastor, so I am Your servant. Help me kill my pride! Help me serve and submit. Help me to build Your Church.

UPDATE: This post was one of the seed thoughts that went into fashioning my book Shepherd Leadership: The Metrics That Really Matter.

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8 Quotes From “Secret Power”

August 2, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

D.L. Moody’s book Secret Power is addressed to both individual Christians and church leaders (you can read my full book review by clicking here).

Here are eight quotes for Christians to consider.

“Joy is love exulting; peace is love in repose; long suffering is love on trial; gentleness is love in society; goodness is love in action; faith is love on the battlefield; meekness is love at school; and temperance is love in training.”

“Before we pray that God would fill us, I believe we ought to pray Him to empty us.”

“The reason why the Church cannot overcome the enemy is, because she doesn’t know how to use the sword of the Spirit. People will get up and try to fight the devil with their experiences, but he doesn’t care for that, he will overcome them every time. People are trying to fight the devil with theories and pet ideas, but he will get the victory over them likewise. What we want is to draw the sword of the Spirit. It is that which cuts deeper than anything else. …The sword of the Spirit is the Word of God, and what we need specially is to be filled with the Spirit, so we shall know how to use the Word.”

“The fact is, we are leaky vessels, and we have to keep right under the fountain all the time to keep full of Christ, and so have a fresh supply.”

“The Holy Spirit tells a man of his faults in order to lead him to a better life. In John 16:8, we read: ‘He is to reprove the world of sin.’ Now, there are a class of people who don’t like this part of the Spirit’s work. Do you know why? Because He convicts them of sin; they don’t like that. What they want is some one to speak comforting words and make everything pleasant; keep everything all quiet; tell them there is peace when there is war; tell them it is light when it is dark, and tell them everything is growing better; that the world is getting on amazingly in goodness; that it is growing better all the time; that is the kind of preaching they seek for. …It is my work to preach and hold up the Cross and testify of Christ; but it is His work to convict men of sin and lead them to Christ.”

“I think there is no way so sure to win our families and our neighbors, and those about whom we are anxious, to Christ, than just to adorn the doctrine of Jesus Christ in our lives, and grow in all these graces. If we have peace and joy and love and gentleness and goodness and temperance; not only being temperate in what we drink, but in what we eat, and temperate in our language, guarded in our expressions; if we just live in our homes as the Lord would have us, an even Christian life day by day, we shall have a quiet and silent power proceeding from us, that will constrain them to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. But an uneven life, hot today and cold tomorrow, will only repel. Many are watching God’s people.”

“Love will rebuke evil, but will not rejoice in it. Love will be impatient of sin, but patient with the sinner. To form the habit of finding fault constantly, is very damaging to spiritual life; it is about the lowest and meanest position that a man can take.”

“Oh, the privilege, the blessed privilege, to be used of God to win a soul to Christ, and to see a man or woman being led out of bondage by some act of ours toward them. To think that God should condescend to allow us to be co-workers with Him. It is the highest honor we can wear.”

(You may also be interested in quotes from this book that are especially for pastors and church leaders, which you can read by clicking here.)

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Thursdays With Oswald—Let God Be Original

August 2, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Oswald Chambers. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Oswald” in the search box to read more entries.

Let God Be Original

     We continually want to present our understanding of how God worked in our own experience, consequently we confuse people. Present Jesus Christ, lift Him up, and the Holy Spirit will do in them what He has done in you. …

     Experience as an end in itself is a disease; experience as a result of the life being based on God is health. Spiritual famine and dearth, if it does not start from sin, starts from dwelling entirely on the experience God gave me instead of on God Who gave me the experience. …

     Whenever I put my experience of life, or my intelligence, or anything other than dependence on God, as the ground of understanding the will of God I rob Him of glory. 

From Disciples Indeed

I need to let God be as original with others as He was, and is, with me.

My experiences with God—the Word He revealed to me, the emotions I felt, the decisions I made, the conversations I had, the prayer I prayed—is just that: MY experience. If I try to force someone else to experience God exactly as I experienced Him, then I am really asking them to be someone other than who God created them to be.

When I look throughout the Bible, I see so many ways God encountered people. They were all unique experiences because they were all unique people. 

Father, meet with me uniquely. And help me to remember to let You meet with others uniquely as well!

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Secret Power (book review)

August 1, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

Dwight L. Moody is my kind of pastor: he said exactly what was on his mind. He wasn’t worried about political correctness, or couching his words in comfortable words. He was a modern-day prophet of his day, clearly stating, “Thus says the Lord!” Thankfully for us in our day, D.L. Moody’s books sound just like his sermons. In Secret Power, Moody calls Christians and churches back to a fuller understanding of the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Moody writes:

“How much we have dishonored Him [the Holy Spirit] in the past! How ignorant of His grace, and love and presence we have been? True, we have heard of Him and read of Him, but we have had little intelligent knowledge of His attributes, His offices and His relations to us. I fear He has not been to many professed Christians an actual existence, nor is He known to them as a personality of the Godhead.”

I am convinced that this is true. The Holy Spirit seems “spooky” or out-of-date or inapplicable in many churches. Moody explains this is the reason why our churches are not experiencing the same miracle-working power that was seen in the New Testament church.

As a result, individual Christians are lacking in power in their personal lives, too, because they are not being taught about the role of the Holy Spirit in their churches. As a result, Christians are not soul winners as were New Testament Christians.

A secondary title for this book is “The Secret Of Success In Christian Life And Work.” That success can be yours today if you will only allow God to operate in your life and church in all of His fullness. 

If you are thirsty for this sort of fuller relationship with the Holy Spirit, I encourage you to read this book! You may also want to check out some quotes I shared from this book here and here.

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Got Wisdom?

August 1, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

Solomon advised us to pursue wisdom:

  • Get wisdom, get understanding; do not forget my words or swerve from them. (Proverbs 4:5)
  • Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding. (Proverbs 4:7)
  • How much better to get wisdom than gold, to choose understanding rather than silver! (Proverbs 16:16)
  • Buy the truth and do not sell it; get wisdom, discipline and understanding. (Proverbs 23:23)

I like T.M. Moore’s insight on this…

“Wisdom is that skill in living which comes as Christ is formed in us and lives His Word, in the power of His Spirit, through our lives. The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God (Psalm 111:10). But we’ll have to work hard and in many different ways to bring wisdom to a higher state in our lives. Solomon prayed for wisdom, but he also applied himself diligently to studying and contemplating a good many subjects in order to acquire that which he was trusting the Lord to give him. So we too, if we would increase in wisdom, must devote ourselves to ‘getting’ it by all the ways God makes available to us.”

In other words, we can (and should) pray for wisdom, but then we need to get busy to actually get the wisdom. God won’t simply pour wisdom into our hearts and minds.

Wisdom is earned through experience

Godly wisdom is earned through experiences that the Holy Spirit helps us evaluate and assimilate. The experience might be pleasant, or it might be painful. It might come through reading your Bible, or it might come through prayer. It might come in a pastor’s message, or it might come in a friend’s words. You might get it by going to your job, you might get it while taking a stroll along the beach on your vacation.

God’s wisdom is constantly being revealed to us. Are you getting it?

If not, what are you going to do to get it?

Whatever you do, GET WISDOM!

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10 Quotes From The “Necessity Of An Enemy”

July 31, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

I was intrigued by the title of the book: The Necessity Of An Enemy. But I was even more intrigued by what I read in Ron Carpenter’s thought-provoking book. You can read my full review by clicking here.

Here are 10 quotes that caught my eye from this book:

“You will never be an exceptional person if you only fight ordinary battles.”

“Because you have a God-given purpose, this means the devil’s painted a bull’s-eye on your back. …It’s good to have enemies and the trouble they bring—it means you’re in the game.”

“When Paul wrote in his letter to the Ephesians that ‘we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory’ (Ephesians 1:12), he didn’t tell them to just give God praise. He urged them to be a praise. … In New Testament terminology, glory actually means ‘likeness’ or ‘to resemble.’ In other words, for you to bring glory to God means that God is hard at work making you become something that resembles Him, something that more clearly bears His image. It comes as no surprise that this reality makes someone very upset: The devil isn’t concerned with fighting something that you’re doing; he fights who you’re becoming.”

“God’s definition of winning is fulfilled when you fight the battle and, after it’s over, you are even more established in the identity He designed for you.”

“God knows the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10). … So the fact that He started the area of your life where you’re now facing a challenge from an enemy is the very evidence that He’ll bring you through the battle to complete the thing.”

“A good teacher does not use a test to teach you something…a test measures what you already know.”

“Negative people, allowed to speak into your life, will become agents of destruction of your purpose. An enemy will always try to weaken your passion for your dream.”

“Sometimes it’s easier to super-spiritualize something and blame the devil than to understand a need or personal flaw and take ownership for it.”

“An enemy is someone who increases, strengthens, encourages, or enables an area of weakness in you that God wants to remove from your life.”

“In your progress toward God’s purpose for you, anything you hang onto that God wants you to drop is an enemy.”

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The Scriptures Foresaw

July 31, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

Check out this passage from Galatians 3:8-9—

The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.” So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

God’s Word is a living Word. They are not merely ink on a page. They are the very words of God.

God’s Word never stops working. God made a promise to Abraham 3000 years before Paul saw it being fulfilled in the Galatian believers. And now, another 2000 years after that, it’s still being fulfilled in ALL who come into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ!

These words are not past tense—those who have faith ARE blessed. They apply to me, today, now, just as much as the day they were spoken by God 5000 years ago! And they apply to you too.

Let this soak in…

Not one promise in the Bible will expire. 

Not one command will become irrelevant. 

Not one precept will ever be out-of-date.

Living. Active. Personal. Real. Present tense. Now!

Do you believe it?

Do you live like you believe it?

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The Necessity Of An Enemy (book review)

July 30, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

Have you ever wished that all of your enemies were totally defeated? Have you ever prayed to ask God to defeat all of your enemies? I’ll be honest with you: I have. But according to Ron Carpenter, Jr. that may not be the best prayer for you. In fact, his book might say the exact opposite; it’s called The Necessity Of An Enemy.

Ron uses his personal story of being attacked and personally vilified to show us—as the subtitle states—how the battle you face is your best opportunity. Near the beginning of the book, Ron states:

“I have some important news for you: to fulfill your purpose and stay true to your calling, you’ll need to understand the reason for enemies. If you do that, then when they rise up against you, you will quickly recognize what’s happening.” 

Many of the enemies we face are to prepare us for the greater purpose for which God created us. We cannot simply run away from every battle or ask God to subdue every enemy we face, because those battles and enemies may be preparing us for something greater. Think about David: before he fought Goliath, he had to learn his stone-slinging skills by fighting off a lion and a bear. What if he had asked God to simply scare away the lion, or strike the bear dead? What would David had learned from that?

This book is divided into several sections, and each section has several very short chapters. This format, combined with the study guide at the back of the book, makes it ideal for applying the principles slowly in your life, or for having a great small group discussion with others.

God wants you to be victorious, but He doesn’t want you to take shortcuts to get there. He allows enemies to help build your spiritual skills, and The Necessity Of An Enemy can be a great part of your battle strategy as well.

I am a Waterbrook book reviewer.

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