Steer Your Fear

     I'm not a parent, and for the near future plan to keep it that way, but I was someone's child and I work with students and parents on a daily basis. It puts me in a great place to make some observations and I've noticed some cool things over the years. For instance, there are many levels of cleanliness when it comes to parents. Some people will always rinse off a dropped pacifier before getting it back to the child, some don't care. I had a friend once who used to hold the business end of the pacifier in his mouth while getting his daughter dressed and then give it right back to her. This phenomena seems to vary by child. If the first born drops their pacifier it's incinerated like medical waste and a new, hermetically sealed one is installed. By the third child the, "just blow it off" method seems more prominent.

     An important job of parents is to steer the fear of your kids. You don't want them to be afraid of the dark, but you do want them to be afraid of running into traffic. That fear makes them careful until they are old enough to understand and avoid the peril without fear. My wife has an irrational fear of dragonflies that developed from childhood. I'll be honest, not super helpful. My sister was afraid to flush the toilet for a while as a youngster because one of those automatic toilets at the mall flushed with her on it and scared her to death. I guess she thought she was going down with the ship. It's an important to steer the fears of your kids away from things that cripple them and towards things that protect them. It affords them the opportunity to grow to maturity.

     "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of
               wisdom;
          all who follow his precepts have good 
               understanding.
          To him belongs eternal praise."

-Psalm 111:10

     This thought is short and simple. We get caught up in that word "fear." We think, "That's only for the Old Testament God. The NT God is all about love man!" Never forget the OT God and the NT God are the same guy. 

     Also, ponder this. The God who created the universe, with all of it's nuanced greatness, had to squeeze the concept of our need to be awed, amazed, and a little afraid of the glory and power of his presence into our language. It's sort of like trying to play a Beethoven symphony on the triangle. There just aren't enough notes to describe it adequately.

     So when scripture talks about "fearing God." Think of it as the fear our parents steered into us. Just like a healthy fear of electricity helps you to mature from childhood to adulthood in a healthy way, a fear of the Lord allows you to mature from spiritual infancy to spiritual maturity. 

The Energizer

     I am a youth pastor. One of the privileges and dubious honors of youth ministry is over-nighters and lock-ins. A “more seasoned” minister than myself once told me that each lock-in takes one year of a youth pastor’s life. I’m beginning to come around to his point of view. Last weekend my students, some of my leaders, and myself played laser tag from 11:30pm to 7:00am with maybe 2 minute breaks between rounds. It was exhausting, but it was tons of fun and probably one of the best lock-ins ever.

Who do you depend on to give you more life?

     Over the course of the night we played a variety of games like Elimination, Capture the Flag, and Royal Rumble. The variety kept it fun and made the night go by super fast. One game we played was particularly interesting. It was called “Energizer.”

Here are the rules: 

1. Each player starts with 25 lives and 100 shots.

2. One player is the “Energizer.” This player shoots his own team
mates. Each time he hits a team mate they get +25 lives and +100
shots.

3. OBJECT: Stay alive, defend your energizer, and destroy the enemy’s energizer.

     I was the energizer. Let me just go ahead and say…it was stressful. “Pastor Justin I need more lives!” PJ, help I’m out of shots!” “Pastor, I need help!” It was like that scene from Bruce Almighty where a divine Jim Carey is overwhelmed by prayers and pleas for help. (Maybe I didn’t have the weight of the world on me, but at 3:00am it was certainly stressful).

      Students, one of the real blessings of life as a youth pastor is being there for students who have hit a spiritual stall or roadblock. We YP’s work very hard to cultivate real relationships with our students so that you will come to us in your times of spiritual need. People, parents and students, often say thank you after they have navigated through a difficult time and my frequent response is, “It’s what I do.” I promise I don’t say that flippantly! That is not my Schwarzenegger one liner; it’s my view on what God created me to do. So to the students who are reading this, from my church or not: Talk to your Youth Pastor. He or She wants to help you, to pray with you, and love you through the tough times of life. That said we have a second job as well.

     Colossians is a book of the Bible that is really a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Colosse. He wrote them many things about how to live and he gave them many words of encouragement. Then he finishes his letter with this statement:

Epaphras, who is one of you and a servant of Christ Jesus, sends greetings. He is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured. (Col. 4:12)
     You see Epaphras was the man who had founded the Colossian church. He planted it and watched it grow and his prayer wasn’t that his church would grow, but that the believers created by it would be mature and fully assured. Another important task of the Youth Pastor is to get you ready to spiritually take care of yourself. Students, there is going to come a day when your Youth Pastor can’t be your Energizer for your dwindling faith. You will reach a point of no return where you can’t fall back on that person anymore or it won’t be enough. Ask yourself if you treat your Wednesday night youth service like life support for your faith. You come in dead and expect the worship band and your pastor to rub the paddles together, yell “Clear!”, and shock you back into faith in Jesus. That only works for so long before you flatline.

     Students, I want you to know that today, I’m pledging to renew my efforts for you in prayer. I will “wrestle” for you in prayer. I will pray that you will not need to fall back on someone else to give you a spiritual booster shot so that you can keep on living, but will, “stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured. I hope you will renew your efforts to grow up big and strong…in Jesus.

Fighting "Rock Middle" Part 3

          We've been talking for a week now about pulling out of the middle. It’s an important topic and I think one that’s rampant in our culture. Pushing yourself from middle to the front is important, but doesn’t carry much weight unless you finish it out by keeping yourself at that new high level. If you’re uncertain as to what I mean let me answer your question with a question: “How many times do you ‘spike’ with a particular behavior?” When I say spike I mean having a sudden jolt of a particular behavior in your life followed by an equally sudden decline. How many times have you said: I need to read my Bible more, or work out more, or eat right, or call my parents, or read, or get more sleep? And you do those things…for a time. You might read your Bible regularly for an entire week!...only to slack back again to where you where. The same can be said for eating right and working out or any other behavior that is healthy, but not easy. So if you can get yourself out of the middle, how do you stay there? The answer is short, but not so simple: Maintain.

          “Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap. For it will come upon all those who live on the face of the whole earth. Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.”
Luke 21:34-36


Step 3: Maintain

          We've already spoken of guarding our hearts from dissipation and other worldly struggles; the question is now, “How do I keep it up?” I think Jesus is pretty concise here. He essentially says it’s going to be work. He tells us some important tips:

Tip #1: It Happens Fast:
Jesus is talking about a time of intense struggle for the people of faith when he says it will come, “unexpectedly like a trap.” We would all do well to prepare ourselves for spiritual attack, when you operate at a high level (which is what pulling out of the middle is all about) you paint a target on you back. When you pull out of the middle be ready for the attack to come.

Tip #2: Be Vigilant:
When you reach a high point and are looking out for an attack you should set up some defenses. No one builds a watch tower before they have a position to defend right? You can be vigilant by finding a brother or sister in Christ to lovingly hold you accountable. Find yourself someone who will help keep you in check and encourage you to resist the enemy.

Tip #3: Pray:
Simple but crucial. I find that when I’m stuck in the middle I can find myself praying very often for God to get me out of a mess or a rut, but when God does help me to have a victory, I never seem to pray and ask Him to supernaturally help me to maintain the status quo, “God thank you for the place you’ve brought me, now help me to do the work to stay here!”


     I’ll leave you with Joshua. Remember that when the Israelites reached the Promised Land in Joshua chapter 5, they didn’t just settle there and relax. First they had to consecrate themselves to God and then they walked right into Jericho. Say it with me: Maintain, Maintain, Maintain…

Fighting "Rock Middle" Part 2

It Doesn't Matter What You Think!

          I've been talking recently about being stuck in the middle. So often we hear fantastic testimonies of people who are just scraped from the bottom and are used by God to do amazing things. I think there’s a trap in that. I think far more people, particularly Christians, are stuck in the middle. They are stuck somewhere between saved and free. Jesus addressed this in Luke and I talked about dissipation last time, now we’re moving on to “Drunkenness and the Anxieties of Life.”

          “Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap. For it will come upon all those who live on the face of the whole earth. Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.”
Luke 21:34-36

Step 2: Avoid Drunkenness and the Anxieties of Life

          Please don’t think, “Here we go, another Jesus Juicer’ talking about drinking…zzzzzzz” and turn your brain off. There is some debate over this issue so I’ll just keep it simple. Paul wrote that we should, “Abstain from all appearance of evil” (1 Thess. 5:22, KJV). That means we should stay away from stuff that someone might consider bad, or ungodly, or unfitting for a follower of Jesus. You might be thinking to yourself, “That’s not fair!” or “I have intellectual arguments that make it ok!” You’re right and you might but here’s the deal….it… doesn’t… matter what you think! (Where are my old school WWF fan’s at?!?) If something in your life whether it’s drinking, or drug use, or the way you talk, or how you dress, or they way you part your hair makes someone reconsider Jesus as their savior you have just made a poor decision. Jesus said, “It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin” (Luke 17:2).

          The second part of this phrase is, “anxieties of this life.” I think this means more than just being worried about your bills. Yes, many Christians will trust Jesus with their eternal salvation and not to meet their day to day needs, but I don’t see that as the full meaning of this phrase. Paul wrote to his spiritual son Timothy, “Do your best to come to me quickly, for Demas, because he loved this world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica…” (2 Tim. 4:9-10). For some of us our anxiety is not our worldly cares and needs but our care for what the world has. How many people have walked away from a call of God because the craved what the world offers. I almost did. Their anxiety derived from the belief that they were missing out on something. Are you really afraid you’re missing out on sin…which leads to death?

         I think these worldly behaviors are what keep us stuck in the middle. So in order to get out of the middle and move forward remember that it doesn’t always matter what you think. Be careful to not be a distraction to others and don’t be a Demas and be too concerned for the things of this world. 

Be on the lookout for Part 3 coming soon! 

Fighting "Rock Middle"

          I heard a missionary speak at the MovementConference this weekend. A great guy who I’ve seen before and is doing great work for the Kingdom of God in India and Laos. His testimony is great too. Not only did he get lost in a world of drugs, sex, and the party lifestyle, he literally brought an entire youth group (leader and all) into his world. God saved him in a mighty way, called him into ministry, and he’s changing the world.

          Those prodigal son, hog pen deliverance stories are inspiring aren't they? It’s amazing to see God do things in someone’s life to grab hold of them when they are at the brink. As I was listening to him I looked around the room and thought about the hundreds of the students in the room who just thought it was a cool story. Those who had a life that was pretty good, and because of that they are content with their station in Christ. They might have “Survival Jesus”, meaning just enough of a relationship to squeak into heaven, but not nearly enough of a relationship to have any joy, peace, or impact when life gets real for them (and it eventually does).  What is the message for these students? How do you save yourself from hitting “Rock Middle” and more importantly how do you move from happily stuck in the middle to getting back in the mix? This issue is pretty large so rather than tackle it in one mammoth post I’m going to break it into three parts. Check back tomorrow for the second installment:

            “Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap. For it will come upon all those who live on the face of the whole earth. Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.”

Luke 21:34-36

           

Step 1: Avoid Dissipation

Dissipation in this sense means, “an act of self-indulgence, especially one that is not-harmful: amusement.” This is huge for American Christians. We are fueled by what moves us and what makes up happy. It’s a cultural movement that is staggering in its ramifications. It creates a relativism that makes all things acceptable to those with “itching ears” (2Tim. 2:3). The CEO of the Oprah Winfrey Network, forebodingly abbreviated OWN, states the OWN mission statement as, “How do I get the most fulfillment, what makes me happy, how do I leave a mark on the world?” God called us to more than a life that makes us happy, but many of us, often myself included, are more concerned with whether or not our DVR recorded the new Walking Dead, than moving forward in our walk with Christ. We’re content, happy, and stagnant. We’re happy with the middle. We don’t have that rock bottom experience because we’re stuck in the place we are.

I’ll leave you with this. I had an opportunity through Mercer University to do some mission work in Liberia in Western Africa. I watched a church service one day in the capital of Monrovia. The people worshiped God with a reckless desperation that I was envious of. I asked my teacher, Rev. Olu Menjay,

“How can I get this desperation to live in the American church, we need this.”

He responded,

“You can’t. It’s too easy there. These people know how desperate their situation is and they see that God is the only way that they will live day to day. He’s the only way they will eat, drink, and survive.”

I think maybe he’s right. We’re happy, safe, and content. We don’t always need God to miraculously provide us a meal or clean water. Don’t take me wrong, I praise God for my successes and my wins and my apartment that does not have ten foot poisonous snakes in it (my apartment in Africa did), but I hope I won’t grow satisfied. I hope I will continue to push and fight the middle! I don’t want to be stuck in the middle.

If this particular issue resonates with you please leave comments below so that we can all continue discussion.

Click here for Part Two of Fighting "Rock Middle"!

Victory is in Fact an Option

         After years of being an Apple hater I have an iPhone…and I love it. I use it all the time. It is all at once an extraordinary tool for getting my work done and the largest agent of distraction that exists. You have to take the good with the bad. I have several apps that I use to kill time in the doctor’s office waiting room, while I’m getting my car washed, or sitting in deadlock traffic. It’s great for that.

I was using an app the other day and, like so many of them do, it popped up an advertisement for another app offered by the same company. This is not unusual. I make a game out of it: “How Fast Can I Close this Ad?” Only this one was different. It had two options “Try It Free!” and “Dismiss.” The problem was “Dismiss” was grayed out as in you couldn’t select it. It was disabled and I was doomed to stare at this app and not get back to my “Temple Run” marathon. (Try it out, awesome game). I honestly stared at it for a minute…”What do I do? I guess I’m just stuck with this ad…no more app for me.” In frustration I tapped the “Dismiss” button any way…and the app went away.

THOSE DIRTY (brilliant) LIARS! I could dismiss the app all along, but because I knew that grayed out buttons in the computer world are just a giant tease to taunt you and tell you that the computer COULD do what you want it to, but it WON’T just to stick it to the man…I just stared at the screen. I thought I was stuck with it. This was brilliant by the developers of this advertisement. They preyed on my perception that there are just certain things that aren’t an option. In this case grayed out buttons.

            Sometimes, as we walk out our faith in Christ we sin. It happens. We are sinners saved by grace. We will slip up. I don’t want to talk about slip ups today. I want to talk about things that are habitual. What I really want to talk about is iniquity, but that’s another blog. To boil this down to its most concentrated we need to talk about the sins that you just can’t seem to get away from. For some of us this means something we struggled with when we became new believers. Something from our old life followed us into our new one and it took hours of praying, repenting, and seeking God’s face to turn a corner on it. For some of us it’s something that we slipped into after we met Jesus because we have an affinity for worldly things. This familiarity led to comfort which led to us being slaves to something of our earthly nature.

            In both of these cases we have addressed this sin, either on our own between us and God or we’ve sought outside help from a stronger believer. Yet, we find this thing creeping up on us again. We feel like we just can’t slip it. It’s like a bad scene from a horror movie, every corner we turn, “Its right behind you! Understand that the Enemy wants you to feel this way. Check out what Paul writes about sin and its control on us:

For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
Romans 6:14-18

Feel Like Victory's Not an Option?

            You see, we are free from sin. God has delivered us and his matchless grace covers everything we repent of and seek forgiveness for, but the Enemy has us convinced that victory is just not an option. He wants us to be a pessimistic University of Georgia fan watching the Georgia/Florida game. He wants us to believe that even if we aren’t losing right now that we will find a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. He wants you to feel like you’re stuck with that sin in your life just like I felt like I was stuck with that advertisement. Satan is a DIRTY (brilliant) LIAR. Jesus said in John chapter 8 that when Satan lies he, “Speaks his native language.” From the very beginning he has been a liar. Check him out in the garden. His first recorded words are lies! It’s what he does best.

            If you’re in a place where you feel like your only choices are “Defeat” or “Eventual Defeat” I hope you will remember that the Devil is a liar. That you have another option: Victory.

“…we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,  neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:37b-39