What Can I Change In Me?

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When a shepherd leader is bitten by a sheep under their care, it’s quite natural to say, “What’s wrong with them?” Let me highlight that word: natural. 

In my book When Sheep Bite, I contrast the natural response with the supernatural response. It takes a lot of work because “natural” comes just so, well, naturally. But to respond supernaturally is going to take some re-training. 

We need to be able to reflect after we’ve interacted with a biting sheep. If we reacted in an inappropriate way, we need to ask forgiveness and attempt to make things right. Then we need to engage in some Holy Spirit-led introspection to switch the natural question of, “What’s wrong with them” to the supernaturally-led question, “What can I change in myself?” 

In a recent interview with Karl Vaters on his Church Lobby Podcast, we talked a bit about this topic. 

One chapter in my book is titled ‘Is God Trying to Get My Attention?’ Here’s an excerpt—

     Pain always takes priority. It always gets our attention and demands to be attended to immediately. We don’t schedule painful things on our daily “To Do” list, but that painful item will become the one and only thing which clamors to be addressed. 

     The same thing is true when the sheep bite and kick their shepherd. It hurts, it demands an immediate response, and it seems to become the only item on our agenda. But I would like to advocate that we don’t respond immediately. Why? Because our primal, gut-level response is almost always very shortsighted, and frequently, upon reflection, we later end up second-guessing what we said or did. 

     I believe there is also a more important reason we need to delay our response to those slights: We need to make sure the bites we receive are not God’s attempt to get our attention for being dull in our shepherding. God told Jeremiah, “For the shepherds have become dull-hearted, and have not sought the Lord” (Jeremiah 10:21 NKJV). As a result, God had to send something painful to those religious leaders to make them aware of the dullness that had set in. 

I conclude this chapter with a prayer for shepherds who have been bitten—

     Father, Your sheep continued to wallow in the unhealthy habit of biting the hand that fed them and cared for them. In Your perfect love, You knew just how to discipline them, always with a heart of drawing these wayward sheep back to You. I ask You to please cultivate this loving heart in me. 

     Jesus, even as You were nailed to the Cross by the very sheep You came to save, You didn’t lash out in anger but lovingly prayed, “Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing.” You know how much it hurts when my loving shepherding of these flock under my care is repaid with bites and kicks and abandonment. Jesus, help me to learn to respond in loving forgiveness as You did. 

     Holy Spirit, as David prayed, so I pray, “Search me.” As I do, please show me where my words, actions, or attitudes have rubbed the sheep under my care the wrong way and prompted them to lash out. Help me to repent, forgive, and ask forgiveness. Even if the attack was unprovoked by anything I have done, my heart’s desire is for none to be lost so please help me learn how to bring about restoration. 

     I pray this in the name of my Good Shepherd, Jesus. Amen.

To find out more about When Sheep Bite, or to pick up a copy for yourself, please click here.

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Don’t Stumble In The Homestretch

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We’re up to Psalm 131. After this step, only three more steps to go until we reach the top! We’re almost there. We started in a dark valley surrounded by enemies that wanted to keep us in the valley, but we persevered, we matured, and now the end it almost in sight! 

Notice that David wrote this Song of Ascent, and I think he may have had a particular instance from his history in mind when he did. 

(Check out all of the verses in this post by clicking here.)

At the height of David’s success, the Bible says that, “David knew that the LORD had established him as king over Israel and that his kingdom had been highly exalted for the sake of His people Israel” (1 Chronicles 14:2). So David used his position to do something very noble: return the ark of the covenant of the Lord to Jerusalem. This was a popular decision that “seemed right to all the people” (13:3). 

But it turned out disastrously! 

One of the priests overseeing the transportation of the ark of the covenant was killed, and as a result David became angry at God and fearful of Him. 

After a cooling off time, David humbled himself. He admitted that he hadn’t “inquired of the Lord” before undertaking this task and then he looked to the Scriptures to find out how to move the ark the correct way (15:12-15). 

It’s quite possible David had this incident in mind when he wrote the Song of Ascent for people coming to worship God in the temple where the ark of the covenant of the Lord would be housed. 

The opening words sound the tone of humility—“my heart is not proud” and “my eyes are not haughty.” I think in the context of this opening verse of Psalm 131, pride can be defined as:

  1. trying to handle things on my own 
  2. concerning myself with things outside my control 

That means that humility is trusting that God is in total control. 

Verse 2 starts with an important word: But. Instead of the fretting of pride, David chooses the trusting of childlike humility. David says that he has “stilled and quieted my soul.” He has chosen childlike humility. 

This is exactly what Jesus told us: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3-4). 

Just look at the differences between childlike and childish! 

The consistent message throughout Scripture—from Creation in Genesis 1 until the realization of our eternal reward in Heaven in Revelation 22—is childlike trust in our Heavenly Father. 

We can trust God to handle…

  • …every care—1 Peter 5:7 
  • …every step—Proverbs 3:5-6 
  • …every reward—Luke 12:32 

Don’t let pride cause you to stumble in the homestretch. The closer we get to the end of the journey, the more childlike we should become. 

If you’ve missed any of the other messages on the Songs of Ascent, you can find them all here. 

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Links & Quotes

Leaders should be able to use mistakes as growth opportunities. Check out these wise words from the book Spiritual Leadership.

I have lots of new content every week, which you can check out on my YouTube channel.

T.M. Moore encourages Christian to be ready to help their neighbors answer their burning questions: “Christians, Charles Taylor insists, must not be guilty of crushing human flourishing by a too-small vision of God and an unloving or unenergetic approach to our neighbors. Instead, we must study and prepare to ‘respond most profoundly and convincingly to what are ultimately commonly felt dilemmas.’ We must be ready to guide our neighbors out of the dark woods of wrong belief into the radiant meadows of the Sun of Righteousness, risen with healing in His wings. But to do this, we must be ready guides. We must anticipate the questions our groping neighbors will ask and prepare to answer them clearly and intelligently (1 Peter 3:15).”

True strength and courage only come to the one who thinks God’s thoughts and does God’s deeds (see Joshua 1:7). The strong and courageous leader is never self-made, but unshakably God-dependent. 

On the latest Craig and Greg Show podcast, this the quote from Andy Murray that I shared: “A great team begins to happen when you have the right people on the bus in the right seats and the bus breaks down…. They work through the crisis, they get back on the bus, they’re sweating and tired. All of the sudden something magical happens: They begin to talk to each other. Culture happens through crisis. Unfortunately, many team environments have structured the crisis out.”

Mabel Dean went to Egypt at 40 years old and stayed there for nearly 40 years without taking a single furlough! “All of Dean’s life, people did not expect her to amount to much. Despite what others said, Dean believed that she had a mandate from God for missions work in Africa. She later stated, ‘I was the only homely one in my family. Yet I was the one that He chose for His work.’”

One of the prayers in the Songs of Ascent calls us to mature (or ascend) in our prayers for those who have hurt us.

“There is always a better way of doing things, and either you or your competitor will find it.” —Brad Anderson

Links & Quotes

In what may be the best-known parable that Jesus told, what’s the difference between the hard path where the seeds failed to produce anything and the fertile soil where the seeds produced an abundant harvest? The fertile soil had a plow applied to it. In the same way, God wants to “plow” the hard places in our life so that there can be an abundant harvest! Check out this full sermon here.

I have lots of new content every week, which you can check out on my YouTube channel.

“The greatest reason for a loss of reality is that while we say we believe one thing, we allow the spirit of the naturalism of the age to creep into our thinking, unrecognized.” —Francis Schaeffer, in True Spirituality 

“The glory of God is a silver thread, which must run through all our actions.” —Thomas Watson 

“Christianity is not the removal of weakness, nor is it merely the manifestation of divine power. Rather, it is the manifestation of divine power through human weakness.” —Dr. Donald Stamps, Life In The Spirit Study Bible, commenting on 2 Corinthians 4:7-9, 12:9-10 

“In our media-rich, secular age, we must be especially vigilant against unbelief finding its way into our hearts [Hebrews 3:12]. The heavenly calling of God is really real, and we can really partake of it. But we’ll need to be continuously on guard against ideas and messages that can undermine our confidence, stifle our boasting, rob us of the reality of our experience of Christ, set us adrift from the Lord, and end up proving us to be someone other than we thought.” —T.M. Moore

“If you don’t want responsibility, don’t sit in the big chair. To be successful, you must accept full responsibility.” —Pat Summitt 

From the 1440 Daily Digest: Congratulations, America—July 4, 2024, marks the 248th commemoration of the day the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Second Continental Congress. Through the centuries, the US has grown from 13 colonies with about 2.5 million people to 50 states and 14 territories with a population of more than 330 million. The economy has swelled to over $27T. Advances in public health have cut the child mortality rate from over 45% to under 1%, while our citizens live over 35 years longer on average. Scientific achievements in the US have delivered everything from the light bulb, modern flight, and the internet to air conditioning, movies, and the polio vaccine. More than 2.7 million miles of power lines electrify the country across over 4 million miles of paved roads, with over 90% of households accessing broadband internet. The US has also been responsible for more than 800 human visits to space—the most of any country.

Still Maturing

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Have you ever said to yourself… 

  • …I should have known better?  
  • …why I am going through this again?  
  • …I thought I was over this hurdle? 
  • …you would think I would have matured enough by now to not have to deal with this?  

Maybe the author of Psalm 129 felt this way: “Here I am on the 10th step and I’m still having to deal with this! When will I finally arrive at the top and be done with these issues?” (compare Psalm 129:1-2 with 124:1-5). 

(Check out all of the Scriptures I use in this post by clicking here.) 

I think those statements—“I should have known better” or “I thought I was over this”—pre-suppose that we will reach a point in our life where we “arrive.” If nothing else, this psalm is a reminder that we are still on the journey, that we are still a work-in-progress, that the saint-ification process is still ongoing. It’s clear from Scripture that we never “arrive” until we arrive in Heaven and hear our Master say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” 

While we are ascending up toward our heavenly home, these great oppressions and plowings remind us that there is still work to be done in us and through us to bring glory to God (Romans 5:3-4; James 1:2-4, 12). 

Of his Soviet prison, Alexander Solzhenitsyn said, “I bless you, prison—I bless you for being in my life—for there lying on rotting prison straw, I learned the object of life is not prospering as I had grown up believing, but the maturing of the soul.” 

The reality is God is using all of those things for my good and for His glory (Romans 8:28). 

What happens as I am oppressed and plowed? 

(1) I am refined—Psalm 66:8-12, 16-20. God is removing the impurities from my life. 

(2) My prayers are matured. Psalm 129:5-8 is an imprecatory prayer, a prayer that says, “Get ‘em, God!” These have their place, but for us they are to be our emergency release valve (which I discuss in more depth in my book When Sheep Bite). But Jesus calls for our prayers to mature from imprecatory to intercessory (Matthew 5:43-45). In my book I write, “This is the highest level of Christian maturity: To pray like Jesus did for those who insulted Him, slandered Him, and crucified Him, ‘Father, forgive them for they don’t understand what they are doing’ (Luke 23:34)” 

(3) I develop more intimate God-dependence—2 Corinthians 1:8-10. 

(4) I am better equipped to help others—2 Corinthians 1:3-6.  

(5) Others feel more inclined to pray for me—2 Corinthians 1:7, 11.  

“God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength.” —Vance Havner 

Oppressed? Yes! Defeated? No! 

Plowed? Yes! Enslaved by the plow’s cords? No! 

God uses this to bring us closer and closer to Him until He can eventually say to us face-to-face, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” That’s when we truly arrive! Until then, we keep on ascending. 

If you’ve missed any of the other messages in our series looking at these songs of ascent, you can check them all out here. 

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The Goals Of Confrontation

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Say the word “confrontation” and many people cringe. “I try to avoid confrontations with others,” people will quickly say. 

The origin of the word comes from a derivative of the word for “forehead.” The original intent of confrontation was simply putting the facts in front of someone’s face so that they could acknowledge them. 

The problem for most of us (myself included) is two-fold: 

  1. I don’t like to be confronted with things I may be doing incorrectly or incompletely. 
  2. I don’t like making others defensive when I confront them with the things they may be doing incorrectly or incompletely.

As a result, we usually don’t confront others and they usually don’t confront us. Sadly, this can keep us from maturing in areas where we may be able to soar if we could only make some minor changes. 

Christians should be especially open to confrontation from a brother or sister. After all, Solomon told us, “Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy only multiplies kisses” (Proverbs 27:6). And Jesus warned us, “Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets” (Luke 6:26 NKJV). 

The best confrontation is self-confrontation in the presence of the Holy Spirit. After we have submitted to that loving spotlight, then we can proceed with our loving confrontation with our brothers and sisters. 

Remember this: 

The goals of Christian confrontation are restoration and maturity. 

We want to see wandering saints return to God’s path, and we want those saints who are immature to blossom into Christ-like maturity that brings glory to God. 

I have prepared a flowchart that can help you with a biblical framework for the work of confrontation. Please work through this flowchart slowly and prayerfully. Don’t rush any step, but make sure you can answer an honest “yes” to each question. When you get to the last step, keep in mind these three Ms:

  1. Maturity—self-confrontation and confrontation of others should always be moving us toward maturity. 
  2. Mutual accountability—agree to stay involved in this process, with each of you remaining accountable to each other. 
  3. Mercymercifully restore the one who has strayed so that the entire Christian body of believers can be strengthened.

Here are some resources to help you:

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Moving Toward Maturity

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

Our sixth spiritual discipline—confession—is at the pinnacle of our growth as maturing saints. That’s because many of the other disciplines will culminate in one saint confessing to another saint. Confession not only keeps us strong as individuals, but it keeps the whole Christian community in a strong, healthy place. 

The story has been told about two monks who had woven plenty of baskets to sell in town on market day. On the way to town they devised a strategy where one monk would sell at one end of the market and the other at the opposite end. At the end of the day they would meet at a designated place to go back to the monastery. One monk sold all of his baskets and returned to the meeting place. He waited, and waited, and waited. It wasn’t until the next morning that the second monk appeared. 

“I cannot return to the monastery with you,” he told his waiting friend. “I have committed a terrible sin. I was tempted, and I gave into the temptation and committed fornication last night. I have broken my vows to my brothers and to God, so you will have to go back without me.” 

The first monk listened to his friend and then answered, “Come, my friend. We will go back to the monastery and repent together.” 

He was really saying to his friend, “I can identify, because under the same circumstances I might have done the same thing. Perhaps if I had stayed at your side I could have held you accountable, so I bear mutual responsibility for your stumble.” 

The early church is described in terms of togetherness. James, the early leader of the church in Jerusalem, was a part of this togetherness and used it as an important conclusion to his book of instructions to the saints—

Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. … My brothers and sisters, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring that person back, remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of their way will save them from death and cover over a multitude of sins. (James 5:13-16, 19-20) 

James wants the saints to be together in prayer, together in worship, together in confession, and together in rescuing their fellow brothers and sisters. The word he uses for “confession” means an out-loud profession or agreement. When he says, “confess your sins” he uses a word that means a deviation from a standard, or a falling short of God’s word. 

James sees this ongoing confession as a preventative to “a multitude of sins.” In this instance, the word he uses is an outright violation of God’s laws. In other words, the small deviations can add up to something deadly. 

Paul uses a similar idea when he writes, “Let us purify ourselves” (2 Corinthians 7:1). The implication again is that we are confessing both individually and corporately. I can be a huge blessing to my brothers and sisters by going first in confession (Matthew 7:1-5). 

Confession also helps others know they are not alone (1 Corinthians 10:12-13). 

As an individual saint I mature by continually closing the gap between realizing a shortcoming in my life and confessing that shortcoming to God and to another saint. Then as saints together we can love, encourage, help, and hold each other accountable. I have said before that I think confession may be the most under-used resource for Christians to gain power in prayer and victory over falling into temptation! 

In each of our previous five spiritual disciplines I’ve shared a “so that” statement to help us keep perspective of why we need to employ those disciplines. For confession, here’s our focal point: I confess to other saints so that we can be mutually accountable in our growth toward purity and maturity. 

Confession is good for us individually and corporately, so let’s continue to use this to strengthen everyone. 

If you’ve missed the messages covering the other spiritual disciplines, you can find all of them by clicking here. 

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Is Your Love Growing?

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Are you a more loving person today than you were a year ago? If you said, “Yes,” how do you know?

Check out this episode of The Podcast.

Resources mentioned in this video:

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Saints Together

Throughout the New Testament the word “saints” is always in the plural form. This is a clear indication that none of us can develop into the full-fledged Christians we were meant to be on our own. 

We all need each other. More specifically, we all need the most mature version of each other. 

A key component of an individual saint’s development is the time spent alone being forged by the discipline of the Holy Spirit. Maturing saints then come together with each other to continue to strengthen and sharpen everyone in the church. Strong individual saints make a strong church, and a strong church makes strong individual saints! 

Join me for our new series called Saints Together. We will be studying the six spiritual disciplines that each individual saint must put into practice so that they can use their newly developed strengths to help other saints in their own development. 

Check out all of these messages here:

Flatten The Rollercoaster

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I’m not a fan of rollercoasters, but I know a lot of people who really like them. Some even travel all over the world to experience unique rollercoasters. The anticipation as the cars climb slowly up the big hill, knowing that there’s no stopping this thing now! Then the rush of emotions, a deep breath and a laugh at the end (usually laughing at our friends’ responses while on the ride), and then we just walk away. The moment of anticipation leading up to the big drop was usually longer and more intense than the ride itself. 

Not only do people travel all over to find rollercoasters, some people seem to have their emotions perpetually on rollercoasters. 

One of the telltale signs of someone with an immature mental health is the way every situation gets blown out of proportion before anything even happens. Then as an event unfolds, their exaggerations continue: the molehills are mountains, every valley is the valley of the shadow of death, the night is a nightmare, the “crisis” is lasting forever, no one has ever gone through what they’re going through, and the list goes on. 

To break out of this habit requires us developing emotional capacity. John Maxwell describes it like this: “Emotional capacity is the ability to handle adversity, failure, criticism, change, and pressure in a positive way.” Just as athletes have to develop lung capacity or muscle capacity, developing emotional capacity takes time, patience, and diligence. 

Increased emotional capacity is not escaping from our problems or even learning coping skill. Escapism never allows us to confront the things that are keeping our emotional capacity immature. On the other hand, maturing emotional capacity is learning to pause to get perspective so that we can avoid turning every mountain into a molehill, and every challenge into a do-or-die battle.  

Mentally healthy people don’t try to escape, but they learn how to de-escalate by getting a new perspective. Or to use the language of our first mental health strategy, they get off their old, well-worn paths. 

Let me illustrate this by looking at two emotions which seem to be the most rollercoaster-ish. 

(1) The first rollercoaster emotion is anger 

Out-of-proportion anger can either burn everyone around us when we explode, or it can eat away inside us if we hold it in. Neither of these are healthy emotional responses. Jesus got angry at the religious crowd that was keeping people away from God’s kingdom, but He didn’t ride the rollercoaster that led to a sinful expression of His anger. 

God asked Jonah a very helpful question: Have you any right to be angry? (Jonah 4:4). When we feel the Holy Spirit asking us this question, our defiant first response is almost always, “Yes! I didn’t do anything wrong! It was all him!” Solomon would counsel us to cross-examine that thought (Proverbs 18:17). 

Sometimes God will bring someone else across our path to help us pause to get perspective—to flatten the rollercoaster. For instance, God used Abigail to help David (see the story in 1 Samuel 25). However the Holy Spirit cross-examines us, we need to learn to truly listen. James told us: 

My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. (James 1:19-20)

(2) The second rollercoaster emotion is fear 

Fear usually causes us to fight or flight. Those are the natural responses, but the supernatural response is to pause to evaluate. I love the reminder that F.E.A.R. means false evidence appearing real. 

As with anger, our first pause to get perspective on this potential rollercoaster that can plunge us into a deep, dark valley should be to cross-examine the false evidence of fear. 

When the group of ladies came to the tomb of Jesus on the Sunday following His crucifixion, they were already battered and bruised in their emotions. Finding an empty tomb brought even more fear in their hearts. But there is a keyword in this account that will help us: 

In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men [angels] said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; He has risen! Remember how He told you, while He was still with you in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’” Then they remembered His words. (Luke 24:5-8)

The Holy Spirit can help us remember the truth in God’s Word to counteract the fear-inducing false evidence (2 Timothy 1:7; John 14:26), but we must pause to listen to this evidence before this rollercoaster emotion picks up speed. 

The bottom line: Don’t try to escape your strong emotions. Pause. Cross-examine the evidence with the help of God’s Word, the Holy Spirit, and a friend to get a healthy perspective. This can help you flatten the rollercoaster before your emotions run away with you. 

If you’ve missed any of the other mental health strategies we’ve already covered in this series, you can find the full list by clicking here. 

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