When Jesus says, “I need you,” will you be able to say, “I’m ready for You”? Here is a great example of a man who stayed ready year after year for that precise moment when Jesus said, “It’s time.” Please subscribe to my YouTube channel.
Pastors, I was challenged by the insight from T.M. Moore, and I hope you will take a couple of minutes to read the full post and even subscribe to his regular emails. “John Calvin explained that one of the marks of a true church is that the Word of God is faithfully proclaimed and heard. He did not consider a church to be fulfilling its mission simply by sound preaching. Sound preaching had to be coupled with sound hearing and obedience, for only as believers do the Word to they receive it as God intends.
“In this, Calvin and Columbanus are in agreement: ‘While we preach often we improve slowly; often are we offended, seldom patient, often conquered, seldom conquerors, often led astray, seldom wise. Then what will help us, like weak and unskilled fighters whose weapons turn and wound them, while it is no credit to hear these things, but to accomplish them? For the law does not make holy by hearing, but doubtless by performance; each should honour the Lord, not simply by words and bodily toil, but by ripeness of character and purity of heart’ (Sermon II).”
[1:47] What are some reasons people don’t set goals?
[3:10] The trap of comfort zones.
[5:14] Are you afraid of achievement?
[5:57] The balance of internal and external discipline.
[9:21] We would love to help you stretch to the next level!
[10:30] Why do people set goals?
[13:42] Why are goals hard to attain?
[14:31] Time is not manageable.
[15:30] Self-awareness and clarity are tools to help set goals.
[17:48] Be a goal-influencer by supporting others’ goals.
[19:20] Take time to celebrate reaching goals.
[22:40] Sharing goals with others lets them know what’s important to you.
[23:31] Celebrating steps toward a goal helps maintain motivation.
[25:00] I love this quote from Andrew Wood on incremental steps.
Check out this episode and subscribe on YouTube so you can watch all of the upcoming episodes. You can also listen to our podcast on Spotify and Apple.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
Are you a pastor who is feeling discouraged? Or do you know a pastor who has become frustrated by what isn’t happening in their church? If so, please read on because I have something special for you.
When I was interviewed on the 200churches podcast with Jeff Keady, I tried to speak an encouraging word to my fellow pastors, especially those who were discouraged to the point of wanting to throw in the towel. If that’s you, I hope that you will take two minutes to listen to this short clip (click the audio link above).
I’ve never seen the actual research, but I’ve heard the story enough to believe that it’s probably true that more pastors write their letters of resignation on Monday morning than on any other day.
That’s understandable.
All week, pastors prepare to deliver a message on Sunday, and then they pour out their hearts as they minister to those who have come to church. But when they look around for those who didn’t come to church, or when they see only apathy in those who did come to church, or (perhaps worst of all) when all they hear are complaints, it’s understandable how frustration and discouragement can creep in and even overwhelm.
So back in their office on Monday morning, facing the prospect of another week that seems to be shaping up to feel unsuccessful again, many pastors choose to resign.
My heart goes out to these pastors. In fact, I had these very pastors in mind as I wrote my book Shepherd Leadership.
As we are at the start of a new year, I would like to make a special offer for pastors. For just $12 I will send you an autographed copy of my book and a download link to get the audiobook of Shepherd Leadership free of charge.
All you need to do is complete this form and I’ll have the materials right out to you. I’m praying for you, my friend, that you will allow God to use the message in this book to encourage you to persevere and thrive despite the challenges you are facing.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
Jesus told us numerous times that we can come to God as our Father.
Have you ever played a word association game? For instance, if I said “winter” you might say “shoveling” (or kids might say “sledding”). If I said “summer” you might say “vacation.” But I think the word “father” may bring up a lot of very different feelings or images. Some may have fond memories of the word “father” while others may think:
playful but not a good provider
disciplinarian
hard to please
absent
unavailable
Even if our human fathers were good, they were still flawed. Jesus said this about us, “If you parents, that even know how to give good things to your kids are evil, how much more amazing is the goodness and love of God” (Matthew 7:11). But Jesus had something entirely different in mind for us when He told us we could come to God as our Father. And, sadly, it’s a level of intimacy that many have never known.
All of us could only experience limited intimacy with our earthly fathers, but with our Heavenly Father we can have unlimited and unimaginable intimacy!
When Jesus was teaching us to pray in Matthew 6:6-9, there are two thoughts that stand out to me about coming to God as our Father. First, Jesus tells us that we don’t have to use any special language. When He said some people babble in prayer, Jesus was saying they were using a language that was unnatural to them—they weren’t being themselves.
Our Heavenly Father wants us to come to Him as children: full of innocence, and wonder, and expectation, and imagination!
Second, I notice that three times Jesus calls God “your Father,” but when He begins His model prayer He says, “Our Father.” Think of that: Jesus is saying we can approach God the same way He approached His Father!
In His intense prayer time just before His crucifixion, Jesus used the phrase “Abba Father” to express His intimacy. This phrase is used two other times in the New Testament. Both of these times it’s telling us that we can approach our Heavenly Father the same way Jesus did (see Mark 14:36; Galatians 4:6; Romans 8:15).
The Romans understood the weight that was associated with the practice of adoption. They knew that a father chose that child to be a part of his family, giving that child full acceptance into the family. Marvin Vincent noted,
“We have but a faint conception of the force with which such an illustration would speak to one familiar with the Roman practice; how it would serve to impress upon him the assurance that the adopted son of God becomes, in a peculiar and intimate sense, one with the heavenly Father.”
In writing to the Romans, Paul reminds them that for those who are in Christ Jesus, there is no condemnation—nothing holding them back from God’s presence. He also said that God has fully adopted us into His family, and that the Holy Spirit was now in us, encouraging us to call God “Abba Father” just as Jesus did (Romans 8:1, 14-16).
Check out these two final thoughts from Jesus: He encourages us to approach God as innocent children, and He praises Our Father for then intimately confiding in His children—
“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. … I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because You have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.” (Matthew 18:3, 11:25)
No matter what your relationship was with your earthly father, Jesus encourages us to approach our Heavenly Father in innocence, wonder, expectation, imagination, and intimacy. This is what God desires in His relationship with you!
God made you uniquely YOU on purpose. So you can ask Him to show you why He put you together as He did—with all of the gifts that make you YOU. Please subscribe to my YouTube channel.
“It is best not to be too dogmatic about the events surrounding [Christ’s] second coming. But if language is a vehicle of thought at all, it certainly takes a good deal of explaining and interpreting to make anything else out of Jesus’ words than that He Himself looked forward to His coming again as a definite historical event in which He will personally and literally appear to gather to Himself and to eternal glory those who have been redeemed by His blood.
“And it is best not to cloud the hope of His coming with too detailed a theory as to what is going to happen when He comes. Some people may be disappointed if Jesus does not follow the schedule they have mapped out for Him.”
“The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave.” —Ronald Reagan
“We are not called to punish the people for whom Jesus was already punished.” —Kevin Berry
Daniel B. Wallace, a New Testament professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, wrote, “If you could stack up all handwritten manuscripts of the New Testament—Greek, Syriac, Latin, Coptic, all languages—how tall would the stack be? … I have said in many lectures that it would be the equivalent of c. 4 & 1/2 Empire State Buildings stacked on top of each other. How did I come up with that number?” Check out his post to read how he calculated this astounding number. This is just another link in the chain of evidence for the historicity of the Bible.
I shared this commentary on YouVersion this week: We are made in God’s likeness. Ever since sin entered the world, man’s sinful nature is to flip this around—to make God in our likeness. Literally to say, “This is what I want God to be. I want Him to approve what I want.”
“Pure humor is the most difficult of all of comedy. Late night humor is funny because it is mean. It is relatively easy to be crude, cynical, and sarcastic. It comes naturally to our fallen natures to criticize, tease, mock, and scoff. It’s much harder to make people laugh by lifting others up.” —Dick Brogden, in his book Proverbs: Amplified and Applied, commenting on Proverbs 1:22
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
When Jesus said, “Let the reader understand,” He was saying He wants us to be able to understand and apply every Scripture we read. Check out this teaching video—
And although I didn’t mention it in the video, you can check out five different kinds of Bible studies I have shared here and here.
I’m excited to hear about your Bible study journey. If you have questions or other resources to share, please get in touch with me or leave a comment below.
Every Monday I share a 1-minute thought to get your week started. It’s my weekly Monday Motivation series of videos. Check out this week’s video that I posted the day after Christmas, and please subscribe on YouTube.
T.M. Moore wrote one of the endorsements for my book Shepherd Leadership. In an interview I then did on his Fellowship of Ailbe podcast, I shared my dismay over unbiblical ideas and practices that have crept into the church. Both T.M. and I share a passion to see our church leadership return to our secure biblical foundation.
In a recent blog post, T.M wrote, “From the days of the apostles onward, a tendency has existed among church leaders to drift from the plain teaching of the Word of God into forms of Christian life and ministry that derive from sources other than Scripture. Or that stretch the meaning of Scripture to fit the shape of certain cultural forms.” Please check out T.M.’s post “Do not go beyond.”
In a fascinating post from Rabbi Benjamin Blech, I read these thoughts about the power of a name: “The Hebrew word for soul is neshamah. Central to that word, the middle two letters, shin and mem, make the word shem, Hebrew for ‘name.’ Your name is the key to your soul. … When the Torah says, ‘God created,’ it doesn’t suggest that He worked with what He fashioned by labor, but merely that He spoke—and the very words describing the object came into being. God said, ‘Let there be light and there was light.’ The Almighty merely gave it a name, and the very letters defined its atomic structure.” Check out the full post here.
“Success” doesn’t always mean bigger numbers. King David got into trouble with God when he wanted to measure his success by how many fighting men he had under his command. Consistently throughout the Bible God’s measure of success is our trust in Him. This thought was a key part of the sub-title of my book Shepherd Leadership: The Metrics That Really Matter.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
An interesting comment that Jesus made that should catch the attention of every leader is this: “I know My sheep and My sheep know Me” (John 10:14). Jesus is telling us that He knows the uniqueness of every person.
Combine this with David’s encouraging words about Jesus as our Good Shepherd in the opening words of Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd; I have all that I need” (Psalm 23:1 NLT).
This tells me that quality shepherd leaders…
…are around their teammates enough to know them personally.
…can quickly ascertain when their teammates are feeling stress or anxiety.
…know how to give their teammates what they need to destress in a healthy way.
My friend Greg and I discussed how leaders can use playtime as an effective tool to keep their teammates at their healthiest. Check out this short clip—
If you would like to watch this full episode from The Craig And Greg Show, please click here.
I also talk about how wise leaders take care of those under their care in my book Shepherd Leadership: The Metrics That Really Matter. It’s available in print or ebook, and in audiobook through either Audible or Apple.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
Have you ever noticed how many of our Christmas carols celebrate the dark night giving way to the bright light? For instance, the hymn O Holy Night contains the line, “long lay the world in sin and error pining until He appeared.”
English historian and theologian Thomas Fuller was the first to put into print what has now become a cliché that so many people use: “It is always darkest just before the Day dawneth.” Indeed, Micah paints a very dark scene just before the Messiah makes His First Advent (Micah 5:1).
The Light of Jesus that burst onto planet Earth in a Bethlehem stable revealed Him as our Great Shepherd, our Prince of Peace, and our Mighty Deliverer. And there is also one more title that Micah foretells: our Triumphant King!
What does our Triumphant King do? He confronts and defeats the darkest foes. Check out the words in Micah 5:9-15: destroy (5x), demolish (2x), tear down, uproot, take vengeance.
Christ’s birth in Bethlehem is our proof that God’s plan prevails. God always gets the final word, the decisive word, and the best word!
Most of the Old Testament prophets foresaw both the first and second advents of Jesus simultaneously. The mountains of prophecy look like they are on top of each other, so it’s very common for the prophets to see events of both advents happening simultaneously. So Micah sees both the coming of Jesus in Bethlehem and His coming at the end of time as King.
There is a spiritual battle that has been raging since before Time began (Ephesians 6:12). It started when Lucifer became satan by his rebellion against God, and then he began his agenda of the destruction of God’s people (Ezekiel 28:12-17; Revelation 12:7-9, 13, 17).
Into this dark battle, Jesus enters the scene. The reason the Son of God was made manifest (visible) was to undo—destroy, loosen, and dissolve—the works the devil has done (1 John 3:8 AMP).
I already talked about how the death of Jesus on the Cross meant the death of Death, and Jesus became our Mighty Deliverer! The resurrection of Jesus means satan’s time is nearing an end. It may be dark now, but the darkness has to give way to the Light of the King of kings (check out these verses in Revelation).
“It is always darkest just before the Day dawneth” should assure us of the victory of the King of kings! Jesus assured us that darkness is only afforded an hour, and then the Light will completely overwhelm it. The Light dawned in Bethlehem and is returning soon to completely vanquish every last bit of darkness!
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
Merry Christmas!
When the Magi came to Jesus at His first advent they brought gifts. Isaiah also prophesies all peoples bringing gifts at the second advent of Jesus. Have you ever wondered what gift is appropriate for the King of kings? Fortunately, the Bible tells us the gift He is happy to receive from you!
Craig T. Owens 