Greg and I both have confessions to make about areas we fell short in our earlier careers. But we have learned that those stumbling points can be launching points for greater growth.
“Without God, there could be no American form of Government, nor an American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first—the most basic—expression of Americanism.” —Dwight D. Eisenhower
Greg Morse calls out the way pornography addictions are hamstringing the church. “My intention is simply to kindle the abhorrence that every saint should have for this sin. I hate pornography. I hate what it does to young men; I hate what it does to marriages; I hate what it does to older men and even older ministers who trip while crossing the finish line. I hate its accessibility; I hate its covertness; I hate how it is designed by satan to disable the men and women who were made for so much more.”
“But the question is not what we intended ourselves to be, but what [God] intended us to be when He made us. He is the inventor, we are only the machine. He is the painter, we are only the picture. How should we know what He means us to be like? … We may be content to remain what we call ‘ordinary people’: but He is determined to carry out a quite different plan. To shrink back from that plan is not humility: it is laziness and cowardice. To submit to it is not conceit or megalomania; it is obedience.” —C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity
“Leadership development is synonymous with personal development. As leaders grow personally, they increase their ability to lead. As they increase their capability to lead, they enlarge the capacity of their organization to grow. Therefore, the most crucial objective for any leader is personal growth. … The most important thing spiritual leaders do is cultivate their relationship with God (John 15:5; Jeremiah 7:13).” —Richard and Henry Blackaby, in Spiritual Leadership
Here’s a quote from John Piper that got me thinking: “God loves His people. He loves for them to get good food, rich food. He knows how to put His shepherds in the vice of affliction and squeeze out of us authentic, prayer-soaked, desperation-flavored insight—the unsearchable riches of Christ for the joy of His people.” Pastor, God wants to use you to shepherd the flock He’s placed under your care. So trust Him to give you what you need. And check out my book When Sheep Bite to help you along through this journey.
“Do more than go to church; be the church. Find a place to serve in the promises of your pastor and fight for that vision like it was your own. Do more than give what’s left; give what’s right. Do more than show up as a consumer; show up as a partner, knowing the day will come when you will need partnership to see your dream come to pass. If your promise is concerning business, then be the best employee of the people for whom you work. If your promise will need generous people involved to make it happen, then be generous in the promises of others. If your promise is about your family, be a blessing to the families of those who are around you. Make their dreams come to pass and you will plant the seeds that will, in time, become the fruit of your God-given why.” —Jim Wiegand, in Why is Greater Than What
“You have noticed, I expect, that Christ Himself sometimes describes the Christian way as very hard, sometimes as very easy. He says, ‘Take up your Cross’—in other words, it is like going to be beaten to death in a concentration camp. Next minute he says, ‘My yoke is easy and my burden light.’ He means both.” —C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity
T.M. Moore is beginning a new series of posts on the importance of the spiritual life for the Christian. He writes, “We may thus define the spiritual life in terms of Christ exalted as our focus, Christ indwelling as our sustaining power, Christ at work in and through us as the outcome of our discipleship, and Christ returning as the hope which sustains us through the tests we encounter every day. True spiritual life, in other words, is all about Jesus Christ.”
“The truths of eternity have an infinite power. They are often powerless because we do not give them time to reveal themselves. Taking time to be alone with God is the only remedy. … The Word that we get from the mouth of God brings the power to know it and to do it. Let us learn this lesson: personal fellowship with God alone in secret can make the Word alive and powerful.” —Andrew Murray
Dr. Thaddeus Williams unpacks what Charles Darwin meant when he wrote to a friend, “The horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy.” Check out Dr. Williams’ post, which he opens with, “If our minds came from a capital “M” Mind—God—gifted to us as truth-knowing mechanisms, we have a reason to reason. But if our minds came from a non-mind, a literally dumb process of random mutations and natural selection, then our minds are not fundamentally truth-knowing mechanisms, but mere survival mechanisms.”
“Our first birth brought us into sin and sorrow, but our second birth brings us into purity and joy. We were born to die; now are we born never to die, ‘begotten again’ unto a life that shall remain in us for evermore, a life which shall even penetrate these mortal bodies, and make them immortal, ‘by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.’” —Charles Spurgeon, commenting on 1 Peter 1:3-4
Patience is a leadership builder, just as surely as impatience is a leadership killer. When leaders repeatedly make poor choices because of their impatience, there is only one way to fix this leadership killer—lengthen the fuse.
“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” —Henry David Thoreau
“Christian sorrow leads to repentance; repentance leads to forgiveness; and forgiveness leads to true joy over one’s reconciliation with God.” —Henry Halley, commenting on James 4:9-10; c.f. Psalm 32:1
“People who were not Christians themselves helped me to Christianity. But usually it is those who know Him that bring Him to others. That is why the Church, the whole body of Christians showing Him to one another, is so important. You might say that when two Christians are following Christ together there is not twice as much Christianity as when they are apart, but sixteen times as much.” —C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity
“And so I labored hard to be a man of full integrity in all my dealings, being careful not to fall into temptation, lest the pagan should some pretext have to denigrate my good episcopate and to disparage me.” —Patrick of Ireland
With all the activity inside even the tiniest of cells, how do the cells keep their proper shape? Scientists have discovered a process called CorMR. “Researchers found that CorM, a protein inside the system, forms thin strands just under the inner cell membrane. CorR, another bacterial protein, helps place those strands in the right area. An additional system, MinC, helps keep them away from the cell ends and the division site.” This is just another example of the precise details our Creator superintends in all He has made!
Thomas S. Kidd writes, “Given the mixed personal record of the American Founders, what accounts for our nation’s impressive history of Christian devotion? The most important factor was the Lord’s providence working through thousands of churches to spread the gospel. A second essential factor in America’s robust religious history was the unusual freedom that churches and Christians enjoyed due to religious liberty.” Check out this thoughtful post about the story of Christianity in America.
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Recently, I read two wise authors who spoke the same message to my heart on the same day.
C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity wrote—
“And now we begin to see what it is that the New Testament is always talking about. It talks about Christians ‘being born again’; it talks about them ‘putting on Christ’; about Christ ‘being formed in us’; about our coming to ‘have the mind of Christ.’
“Put right out of your head the idea that these are only fancy ways of saying that Christians are to read what Christ said and try to carry it out—as a man may read what Plato or Marx said and try to carry it out. They mean something much more than that. They mean that a real Person, Christ, here and now, in that very room where you are saying your prayers, is doing things to you. It is not a question of a good man who died two thousand years ago. It is a living Man, still as much a man as you, and still as much God as He was when He created the world, really coming and interfering with your very self; killing the old natural self in you and replacing it with the kind of self He has. At first, only for moments. Then for longer periods. Finally, if all goes well, turning you permanently into a different sort of thing; into a new little Christ, a being which, in its own small way, has the same kind of life as God; which shares in His power, joy, knowledge and eternity.”
And Andrew Murray wrote in The Inner Life—
“It is not the interest or success of my Bible study. It is not the increased insight or understanding I am obtaining that brings health and growth to my spiritual life. Rather, this often leaves me very unspiritual with little of the holiness or humility of Christ Jesus. Something else is necessary in order for spiritual growth to take place.
“Jesus said: ‘…My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me…’ (John 4:34). We must take a small portion of God’s Word, some definite command or duty of the new life, and quietly receive it into our will and our heart. We must yield our whole being to its rule and vow in the power of the Lord Jesus to perform it. Then, we must go and do it—this is eating the Word. We take it into our inmost being until it becomes part of our very life.”
Praying a prayer in which I ask God to forgive me of my sins because I believe what Jesus did for me on the Cross is the first step into a new life.
But, tragically, many people stop there.
They believe praying this prayer was both the means and the end. They think that now they have secured their place in heaven and they can simply resume their daily routine—with the exception of adding in some church attendance during their weekend—until “the end.”
They expect that this end will be a very long way off, and it will come to them peacefully, only after they have lived a full and pain-free life. In short, they love the idea of Jesus as their Savior, but they very much want to remain the lord and master of their own life. So they will express their gratitude to God when things are going as they have planned, and they will sulk and angrily, tearfully implore His help in prayer when their plans have gotten off track.
Jesus cannot be merely our Savior—He must be our Lord and Master as well.
The Holy Spirit wants to transform our lives. The Bible calls this process sanctification, but I like to call it saint-ification. This is the daily and ongoing process to bring increasingly more Christ-likeness to us. This is not a replacing of our personality, but a revealing of our real selves as God intended.
Our lives are to grow, expand, and glow with the presence of Christ in us. We are to become more and more satisfied in God as the Holy Spirit conforms us into the image of Christ. Our eternal abiding in God’s presence is to begin the moment we invite Him into our heart—and then continue uninterrupted even after we take our last breath on earth.
As our lives are transformed, we become living, breathing testimonies to others of the life-changing power of God’s love in us and through us.
Our daily transformation becomes our daily testimony. What joy and fulfillment there is in allowing this to happen!
Knowing Jesus as your Savior is amazing, but don’t miss out on the best part of all: Knowing Jesus as your Lord, allowing the Holy Spirit to transform you, and becoming a living testimony of God’s love!
It’s not possible for you to have experienced everything that those around you have experienced. But you can still empathize with them through an empathetic volley of statements and questions. This is what exemplary leaders do.
“The Christian way is different: harder, and easier. Christ says ‘Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don’t want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked—the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: My own will shall become yours.’” —C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity
There are so many resources today to help Christians defend their faith. Check out this post from John Stonestreet and the numerous books you might want to add to your library.
“If we are to influence the Church and the world around us, we must be full of God and His presence. Everything else must be secondary to this one question: How can we have the power of Christ resting on us all day long?” —Andrew Murray
Clinton Manley wants to know why Christians don’t play more. “The Hebrew word most often translated as ‘play’ (śāḥaq) comes from a verb meaning ‘to laugh.’ Intensify that verb, and you get ‘to sport, play, or celebrate.’ So we can say play is to action as laughter is to sound. At its best, laughter is a sound that both expresses and intensifies joy; similarly, play is an action that expresses and intensifies joy. Thus, play can involve almost any activity…as long as it is done from joy and for joy.”
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” —Goethe
J. Warner Wallace shares writings from ancient historians—in fact, those hostile to the claims of Christianity—that point to the historicity of Jesus.
When Queen Esther went into the king’s throne room, she was unsure if the king’s favor would be extended toward her. But because of what Jesus did for us on the Cross, we can be assured that God’s favor is extended toward us before we even approach His throne.
“Christian, there is a terrible danger to which you stand exposed in your inner chamber of prayer. You are in danger of substituting prayer and Bible study for living fellowship with God. … Your Bible study may so interest you that the very Word of God may become a substitute for God Himself. The greatest hindrance to fellowship is anything that keeps the soul occupied instead of leading it to God Himself. … Separation from others, in solitude with God—this is the sure, the only way to live in harmony with people in the power of God’s blessing.” —Andrew Murray
John Stonestreet writes, “In light of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, much ink is being spilled over the document’s significance…[and] one way to understand the Declaration is through the lens of science.”
“If we are slandered and evil spoken of, let us not be quick to reply, or to grow angry. Let us be slow—very slow—to wrath; it will be our wisdom, for no good comes of human wrath.” —Charles Spurgeon
“A Christian society is not going to arrive until most of us really want it: and we are not going to want it until we become fully Christian. I may repeat ‘Do as you would be done by’ till I am black in the face, but I cannot really carry it out till I love my neighbor as myself: and I cannot learn to love my neighbor as myself till I learn to love God: and I cannot learn to love God except by learning to obey Him.” —C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity
In looking at 1 Corinthians 7:2–5, Tilly Dillehay writes, “Paul does not deal here with sex as procreation—though we know from the whole testimony of Scripture that sex and procreation are blessedly intertwined. Instead, this passage highlights other purposes of sex.” Here are three biblical ways to view marital sexual activity.
J. Warner Wallace notes, “Yes, Matthew emphasizes things Luke doesn’t. John includes moments Mark skips. But that’s exactly what you’d expect if independent witnesses were describing the most significant events in human history. If the Gospel writers had colluded to fabricate a story, the accounts would have matched perfectly—and then I’d be suspicious. But they didn’t.”
T.M. Moore writes, “The power of God’s Kingdom is His Holy Spirit. The Spirit Who brooded over the entire creation. The Spirit Who roams and pervades the world. The Spirit Who inspired the prophets, raised Jesus from the dead, birthed the Church on the first Christian Pentecost, gave words to the apostles, and has given us a new heart and resides within our soul, that Spirit, that Light and Power, is at work within us, that we should be willing and able to do that which leads to the pleasure of God (Philippians 2:12-13).” Check out his post Plug Into the Power.
If leaders want to get the best ideas and implement the best strategies, they must invite everyone on their team to share from their unique perspective. This is the only way to get the whole picture. Check out this full conversation from The Craig and Greg Show.
T.M. Moore writes, “We can know that we love our neighbors when, like Jesus, we go seeking them, in order to touch them with His love.”
This last week marked the 187th anniversary of the first time “O.K.” was first published as an abbreviation. The word’s origin is an interesting story, with some calling it “one of the most ubiquitous terms in the world, and certainly one of America’s greatest lingual exports.”
“Meekness and gentleness are two of the ornaments of our faith. I would that some professed Christians would understand that unholy contentiousness is not after the mind of Christ, it is not according to that gracious command, ‘Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart and ye shall find rest unto your souls.’ No, the Christian must be willing to suffer wrongfully, and to bear it in patience; he is never to be one who renders evil for evil, or railing for railing.” —Charles Spurgeon, commenting on Titus 3:2
“Then, since according to the Lord’s warnings the blood of so many will be sought for at the hands of their shepherds, careful watch must be kept, that is, the Word of the Lord must be often preached, and preached by the shepherds, by the Church’s bishops and teachers, that none may perish through ignorance; for he perishes through lack of heed, his blood will be on his own head.” —Columbanus, Letter to Pope Boniface
“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance.” —James Madison
“A good friend is like a four-leaf clover, hard to find and lucky to have.” —Irish proverb
“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. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right. This is common sense, really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not while you are sleeping. You can see mistakes in arithmetic when your mind is working properly: while you are making them you cannot see them. You can understand the nature of drunkenness when you are sober, not when you are drunk. Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.” —C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
“If you want to win the day, you’ve got to flip the script. How? The Bible is a good starting point. Scripture is more than our script; it’s our script-cure. And that’s more than a play on words. Scripture confronts the false identities and false narratives perpetrated by the Father of Lies. It reveals the heavenly Father’s metanarrative and the unique role that each one of us plays in it.” —Mark Batterson, Win The Day
“We have two bits of evidence about the Somebody. One is the universe He has made. If we used that as our only clue, then I think we should have to conclude that He was a great artist (for the universe is a very beautiful place), but also that He is quite merciless and no friend to man (for the universe is a very dangerous and terrifying place). The other bit of evidence is that Moral Law which He has put into our minds.
“And this is a better bit of evidence than the other because it is inside information. You find out more about God from the Moral Law than from the universe in general just as you find out more about a man by listening to his conversation than by looking at a house he has built. Now, from this second bit of evidence, we conclude that the Being behind the universe is intensely interested in right conduct—in fair play, unselfishness, courage, good faith, honesty, and truthfulness.” —C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity
“One of the greatest mercies God bestows upon us is His not permitting our inclinations and opportunities to meet. Have you not sometimes noticed that when you had the inclination to a sin there has been no opportunity, and when the opportunity has presented itself you have had no inclination towards it? satan’s principal aim with believers is to bring their appetites and his temptations together….” —Charles Spurgeon
“In a very real sense, we are what we love. … What we treasure in our heart will be what we seek in life and what we become in fact. … What we most love, therefore, tells us something about the condition of our hearts. If the best part of our spiritual and physical energies are invested in making a good living—if being materially well-off is the treasure we seek—then this will be evidence of a heart which believes it can only be satisfied by the enjoyment of things and the realization of every whim.” —T.M. Moore
“Let us make war, not with other people, but with our own unbelief. It is the root of anxiety, which, in turn, is the root of so many other sins. So let us turn our eyes fixed on the precious and very great promises of God. Take up the Bible, ask the Holy Spirit for help, lay the promises up in your heart, and fight the good fight—to live by faith in future grace.” —John Piper
“This third Person is called, in technical language, the Holy Ghost or the ‘spirit’ of God. Do not be worried or surprised if you find it (or Him) rather vaguer or more shadowy in your mind than the other two [Father and Son]. I think there is a reason why that must be so. In the Christian life you are not usually looking at Him: He is always acting through you. If you think of the Father as something ‘out there,’ in front of you, and of the Son as someone standing at your side, helping you to pray, trying to turn you into another son, then you have to think of the third Person as something inside you, or behind you. Perhaps some people might find it easier to begin with the third Person and work backwards. God is love, and that love works through men—especially through the whole community of Christians. But this spirit of love is, from all eternity, a love going on between the Father and Son.” —C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
“There is only one basic reason why we disobey the commands of Jesus: it’s because we don’t have confidence that obeying will bring more blessing than disobeying. We do not hope fully in God’s promise.” —John Piper
“The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbour; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less. There is, indeed, one exception. If you do him a good turn, not to please God and obey the law of charity, but to show him what a fine forgiving chap you are, and to put him in your debt, and then sit down to wait for his ‘gratitude’, you will probably be disappointed.” —C.S. Lewis
Cedar Springs has annual worship service for all of the churches in the area to come together. We call it UNITED. Check out this post on loving as Christians.
“Hitler was successful not because of the righteousness of his cause, but because of the way it was packaged and sold to the public. Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry are successful for very similar reasons.” Read more about Planned Parenthood’s Big Lie.
Greg and I both have confessions to make about areas we fell short in our earlier careers. But we have learned that those stumbling points can be launching points for greater growth.
Craig T. Owens 