Thursdays With Oswald—Two Ways To Handle A Crisis

February 21, 2013 — Craig T. Owens

Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible. 

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.

Two Ways To Handle A Crisis

     A man must decide whether he will be identified with the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, which will mean the turning out not only of the “old man,” but of the old responsible intelligence, the old bondage, the old legalism, the things which used to guide the life before, and the forming of a totally new mind. 

     It works out this way: in your practical life you come to a crisis where there are two distinct ways before you, one the way of ordinary, strong, moral, common sense and the other the way of waiting on God until the mind is formed which can understand His will. 

     Any amount of backing will be given you for the first line, the backing of worldly people and of semi-Christian people, but you will feel the warning, the drawing back of the Spirit of God, and if you wait on God, study His Word, and watch Him at work in your circumstances, you will be brought to a decision along God’s line, and your worldly “backers” and your semi-Christian “backers” will fall away from you with disgust and say, “It is absurd, you are getting fanatical.” 

From Biblical Psychology 

When you have to deal with a crisis, there are two options:

  1. Use your common sense and the good ideas of others
  2. Do it God’s way

God’s ways usually defy the world’s common sense.

“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts,” says God. (Isaiah 55:9)

For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and…the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. (1 Corinthians 1:25; 3:19)

If you want to try to do it the “common sense” way, go ahead. God will let you try it, and a lot of people will encourage you to keep at it. But I think you will quickly find that the “God sense” way is so much better! Although very quickly your former “backers” and “cheerleaders” will look at you as a fanatic.

“There are two kinds of people: those who say to God ‘Thy will be done’ and those to whom God says, ‘All right then, have it your way.’” —C.S. Lewis

You must decide how you will respond in a crisis.

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Don’t Settle

January 20, 2013 — Craig T. Owens

C.S. Lewis at his deskI shared this quote with Calvary Assembly of God this morning to remind us that we shouldn’t settle. God wants us to pray BIG and to pray LONG. He wants us to claim His promises. He wants to be glorified by answering our prayers.

“If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures…like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” —C.S. Lewis

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Watch Out For Pride

November 30, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.

This post is especially for my fellow pastors, but it would be thoughtful reading for anyone in a leadership position.

Let me state it simply: Pastor, you need to watch out for pride.

Listen to the words of A.W. Tozer—

“A clergyman is a man, and often he has a proud little kingdom of his own, a kingdom of position and often of pride and sometimes with power.”

Pride is so insidious that it can creep into the hearts of leaders at anytime.

  • When things are going well. We think to ourselves, “Look what I’ve done” or we even spiritualize it a bit to say, “Look what God’s done through me.”
  • When things are going poorly. Pride causes us to look out the window at others, instead of looking in the mirror at ourselves.
  • When we’ve successfully handled a situation. We think, “Wow, I’ve really got it!”
  • When we’ve dropped the ball and we make excuses instead of asking for forgiveness.
  • And on and on it goes….

One of the things that has helped me immensely is the thoughts Kenneth Blanchard and Phil Hodges shared in their book Lead Like Jesus. They point out that every leader has an ego. The issue is what kind of ego is it?

It can be negative: E.G.O. = Edging God Out 

It can be positive: E.G.O. = Exalting God Only

So what do we do to make sure we have the God-honoring E.G.O.?

  • Look in the mirror. James says the Bible is the perfect mirror. So how does your life line up with the Scripture? Don’t sugarcoat it … Don’t make excuses … Say the words “Look at me” or “Wow, I’ve got it” out loud. Do you find those in God’s Word? If not, root it out!
  • Get some tough guys around you. You need some loving people around you that aren’t the ones writing your press releases. You need people around you that can boldly say, “Ahem! You appear to be getting off track.”
  • Monitor your gut-level responses. If you feel defensive, or if you feel the need to justify or make excuses, watch out because that’s pride’s signature.
  • Stay on your knees. Not only in prayer, but in service too. It’s awfully hard to get full of yourself when you’re washing feet, or scrubbing toilets. If you ever think any job is beneath you, watch out because you may have been infected by pride.

“Depth under depth of self-love and self-admiration. Pride! It was through Pride that the devil became the devil; it is the complete anti-God state of mind. Pride is essentially competitive in a way the other vices are not. Pride is a spiritual cancer.” —C.S. Lewis

I have two companion chapters in my book Shepherd Leadership: The Metrics That Really Matter that dive deeper into this topic: “A confident leader’s attitude adjustment” and “A humble leader’s attitude adjustment.” I hope you will pick up a copy.

►► Would you please prayerfully consider supporting this ministry? My Patreon supporters get behind-the-scenes access to exclusive materials. ◀︎◀︎

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Just Passin’ Through

September 9, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

This world is not my home. I’m just a traveler passing through. At times this world sure is beautiful! I love the sunsets, and the thunderstorms, and the oceans, and the forests. I love the animals, and the art, and the music.

But this is not my home. C.S. Lewis wrote—

“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”

And the Apostle John gave me this warning—

Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world. (1 John 2:15-16 NLT)

This is not my home. I’m just passin’ through, and enjoying the scents and echoes of my Heavenly Homeland!

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“Prayer Is Irksome”

July 29, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

I shared this quote from C.S. Lewis this morning—

“Well, let’s now at any rate come clean. Prayer is irksome. An excuse to omit it is never unwelcome. When it is over, this casts a feeling of relief and holiday over the rest of the day. We are reluctant to begin. We are delighted to finish. While we are at prayer, but not while we are reading a novel or solving a crossword puzzle, any trifle is enough to distract us…. Now the disquieting thing is not simply that we skimp and begrudge the duty of prayer. The really disquieting thing is it should be numbered among duties at all. For we believe that we were created ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ And if the few, the very few, minutes we now spend on intercourse with God are a burden to us rather than a delight, what then?… The painful effort which prayer involves is not proof that we are doing something we were not created to do. If we were perfected, prayer would not be a duty, it would be a delight. Someday, please God, it will be.”

Why don’t we pray more? Why does it seem like prayer is not a regular part of our lives?

Perhaps… We don’t know what to pray. The Bible is an amazing prayer book! Just use the words of Scripture to form your prayers. You can use the psalms, or go to the New Testament where Jesus or the other New Testament writers say something like, “This is my prayer….” Borrow their words, personalize them, and it will be an incredible prayer.

Maybe… We don’t have time to pray. We always have the Holy Spirit with us, and He reminds us of the Word and helps us pray. So we can pray anytime, anywhere, no matter what we are doing.

It could be… We run out of things to say. The Bible gives us so many things on which to meditate. This word means to mull over, or to even talk to ourselves. Combining Bible reading and prayer helps us continue to talk to God all throughout the day.

Try these simple steps and you will begin to realize, as C.S. Lewis said: “If we were perfected, prayer would not be a duty, it would be a delight. Someday, please God, it will be.”

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Busted!

July 17, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

C.S. Lewis nails me with this quote from Letters To Malcolm—

“Well, let’s now at any rate come clean. Prayer is irksome. An excuse to omit it is never unwelcome. When it is over, this casts a feeling of relief and holiday over the rest of the day. We are reluctant to begin. We are delighted to finish. While we are at prayer, but not while we are reading a novel or solving a crossword puzzle, any trifle is enough to distract us….

Now the disquieting thing is not simply that we skimp and begrudge the duty of prayer. The really disquieting thing is it should be numbered among duties at all. For we believe that we were created ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ And if the few, the very few, minutes we now spend on intercourse with God are a burden to us rather than a delight, what then?… 

The painful effort which prayer involves is not proof that we are doing something we were not created to do. 

If we were perfected, prayer would not be a duty, it would be a delight. Someday, please God, it will be.”

I don’t know about you, but this convicts me.

I want to be delighted for my prayer times. When I think that the Creator of the universe wants me to spend time with Him in prayer, how could this not be a delight?!

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5 Quotes From “Questions Christians Hope No One Will Ask”

June 16, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

Earlier this week I reviewed Questions Christians Hope No One Will Ask Them (you can read my review here).

I wanted to share some of my favorite quotes from this book:

“When we fail to answer someone’s questions and objections, we become just one more excuse for them to disbelieve.” —Walter Martin

“I cannot believe that our existence in this universe is a mere quirk of fate. … We are truly meant to be here.” —Paul Davies, a physicist, cosmologist, and atheist

“Consider what you’d need for a protein molecule to form by chance. First, you need the right bonds between the amino acids. Second, amino acids come in right-handed and left-handed versions, and you’ve got to get only left-handed ones. Third, the amino acids must link up in a specified sequence, like letters in a sentence. Run the odds of these things falling into place on their own and you find that the probabilities of forming a rather short functional protein at random would be one chance in a hundred thousand trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion. That’s a ten with 125 zeroes after it! And that would only be one protein molecule—a minimally complex cell would need between three hundred and five hundred protein molecules. … To suggest chance against those odds is really to invoke a naturalistic miracle.” —Stephen Meyer, a Cambridge-trained philosopher of science

“Here’s the key point to remember: there never was a time when the earliest community of followers of Jesus did not regard Him as far, far more than a good teacher.” —Mark Mittelberg

“If a good God made the world, why has it gone wrong? … My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? … Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist—in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless—I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality—namely my idea of justice—was full of sense. Consequently, atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.” —C.S. Lewis

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The Truth About Forgiveness (book review)

June 11, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

One of my favorite quotes about forgiveness comes from the pen of C.S. Lewis. He wrote: “We all agree that forgiveness is a beautiful idea until we have to practice it.” How true that is! In this short, but power-packed book, The Truth About Forgiveness, John MacArthur shares how beautiful and freeing true forgiveness is.

You may know John MacArthur as a preeminent Bible teacher. If so, you will not be disappointed in the content of this amazing book. Pastor MacArthur eloquently explains the need for forgiveness, how unworthy we are of God’s forgiveness, how unthinkable it is that God forgives us anyway, and how we should now live as people who regularly ask for forgiveness.

Pastor MacArthur’s Bible teaching skills are on full display as he digs deeply into well-known scriptural stories, and places us squarely in the middle of the character’s lives. In fact, one story he so beautifully portrays through the lens of forgiveness, but I had never seen it that way before!

This is not a long treatise on forgiveness, but it is a easy-to-read guide into new thinking about forgiveness. Trust me, after reading The Truth About Forgiveness, you will never look at forgiveness the same way again.

I am a Thomas Nelson book reviewer.

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Getting Out Of The Hole

May 28, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

Yesterday in part two of our Immersed series, we looked at how helpless we are in trying to break free from sin’s pull on our lives. That is, we are helpless to help ourselves.

But with the Holy Spirit’s help, we go from helpless to hopeful!

In Romans 8, there are all of these contrasting statements about the sinful life versus the Spirit-led life. Our hope to move into the Spirit-led life turns on this phrase in verse 15: but by the Spirit. It is only by God’s Spirit that we can break free. To help illustrate this point, I read a rather long passage from C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. Several people have asked to see this, so here it is—

“Now what was the sort of ‘hole’ man had got himself into? He had tried to set up on his own, to behave as if he belonged to himself. In other words, fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who need improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms. Laying down your arms, surrendering, saying you are sorry, realizing that you have been on the wrong track and getting ready to start life over again from the ground floor—that is the only way out of a ‘hole.’ This process of surrender—this movement full speed astern—is what Christians call repentance. Now repentance is no fun at all. It is something much harder than merely eating humble pie. It mean unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means killing a part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death. In fact, it needs a good man to repent. And here comes the catch. Only a bad needs to repent: only a good man can repent perfectly. The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person—and he would not need it.

“Remember, this repentance, this willing submission to humiliation and a kind of death, is not something God demands of you before He will take you back and which He could let you off is He chose: it is simply a description of what going back to Him is like. If you ask God to take you back without it, you are really asking Him to let you go back without going back. It cannot happen. Very well, then, we must go through with it. But the same badness which makes us need it, makes us unable to do it. Can we do it if God helps us? Yes, but what do we mean when we talk of God helping us? We mean God putting into us a bit of Himself.”

When we invite Christ into our lives, He places “a bit of Himself” in us: the Holy Spirit. That enables us to be perfectly forgiven.

But then when we allow the Holy Spirit to immerse us in Himself, it’s not just “a bit of Himself” we get, but all of Him. This opens the door to deeper intimacy, greater closeness, and a more God-glorifying life!

I want to live immersed!

If you’ve missed any of the messages in the Immersed series, you can find them all here.

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Thoughts From C.S. Lewis

May 16, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

I’ve been re-reading some of my notes that I made on a collection of essays from C.S. Lewis. He is one of my favorite authors, always helping me to see the spiritual realm in a whole new light.

These are just a few quotes that have me thinking…

“A live body is not one that never gets hurt, but one that can to some extent repair itself. In the same way a Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man who is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over again after each stumble—because the Christ-life is inside him, repairing him all the time, enabling him to repeat (in some degree) the kind of voluntary death which Christ Himself carried out.”

“There are two ways in which the human machine goes wrong. One is when human individuals drift apart from one another, or else collide with one another and do one another damage. The other is when things go wrong inside the individual—when the different parts of him either drift apart or interfere with one another.”

“Those cautions which the tempter whispers in our ears are all plausible…. That is the truth in the temptation. The lie consists in the suggestion that our best protection is a prudent regard for the safety of our pocket, our habitual indulgences, and our ambitions.”

“When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less. … Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.”

If you haven’t read C.S. Lewis for yourself, he writes in so many different genres that you can find something for almost any taste: science fiction, children’s fairy tales, theology, apologetics, and on and on. He was truly gifted by God to see our world in a different light, and you will be greatly enriched by reading as much as you can from this master author.

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