Why Mourn a Victory?

Ezra3:10-13

When the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests in their vestments and with trumpets, and the Levites (the sons of Asaph) with cymbals, took their places to praise the Lord, as prescribed by David king of Israel. With praise and thanksgiving they sang to the Lord:

“He is good;
    his love to Israel endures forever.”

And all the people gave a great shout of praise to the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. But many of the older priests and Levites and family heads, who had seen the former temple, wept aloud when they saw the foundation of this temple being laid, while many others shouted for joy. No one could distinguish the sound of the shouts of joy from the sound of weeping, because the people made so much noise. And the sound was heard far away.

         

            The book of Ezra co-chronicles Israel’s return from exile with Nehemiah. There is some debate as to which story began first, but historical clues tell us that they were concurrent for at least some portion of the story. This passage leaves me with a simple question: “Why mourn an apparent victory?”  In this passage Israel is being restored! Ezra is leading the rebuilding of The Temple of Jerusalem. Nehemiah is rebuilding the great walls of the city. Why mourn? I wonder if only the older generation mourned while the younger generation shouted for joy because the older crowd recognized their part in the exile. Even though Israel had been lost to Babylon for 70 years, this passage says that many of them remembered the original temple. It is certainly feasible that they were part of the sinful generation of Israel that caused God to pour out judgment on them via Babylon.

            I minister to middle-schoolers, high school students, and college/young adult aged students. I see in them such potential for greatness. I see in them such determination that I never saw in myself or my peers. I truly believe that the coming generation of Christ-Followers will see greater things than any of us have ever seen or could dream of. I believe a revival of Spirit and of the Church is coming for them and for us.

            I hope that my generation of ministers can rejoice when we see the young people we work with have great victories and not mourn over the “would-a, could-a, should-a’s” of ministry. If the next generation is to take the Church of Jesus Christ to new heights it is my prayer that my generation of ministers will stand beside them in victory feeling as though we poured everything that we could into them and connected them with Father as much as we possibly could.

            It is my prayer today that I will leave nothing on the table. It leaves me dreaming I will waste no opportunity to reach a young person for Christ for they might be the one to change the world.

            Where does it leave you?

Will You Fight For It?

I well remember them [my afflictions],
    and my soul is downcast within me.
²¹ Yet this I call to mind
    and therefore I have hope:

²² Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
    for his compassions never fail.
²³ They are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.

Lamentations 3:20-23

            If you read the first 19 verses of Lamentations chapter three you will find a laundry list of similes describing Jeremiah’s feelings of loss about the destruction of Jerusalem. They detail how he feels forsaken by God. He says, “…like a lion in hiding, he dragged me from the path and mangled me” (v. 10-11). And then there’s my personal favorite, “He has broken my teeth with gravel” (v. 16a). So how do we get from that utter sadness and despair to these verses talking about the love and faithfulness of God?

            Jeremiah says when he remembers all of his problems he is saddened to his very soul. (Let’s pause here to say that spending your time recounting to yourself all of your difficulties is a recipe for depression anyway.) Then he “calls to mind” three aspects of God that give him hope: Love, Mercy (compassion), and Faithfulness. It’s no accident that he had to intentionally call those qualities of God to mind. Sometimes you just have to fight for it.

            I challenge you today to take a quick mental examination of what your focus is drawn towards. If it is drawn towards your problems and difficulties, it’s time to fight to call to mind the Love, Mercy, and Faithfulness of God. Will you fight for it?

Top Ten Reasons Students Should Go to Summer Camp

10. Outrageous Competitions
     The games we play at Summer Camp are just ridiculous. Epic on a scale that is impossible at home...therefore, you should go to camp!


9. Hone Your Paddling Skills...
     C'mon, who doesn't like canoeing! 


8. "Luxury" Dormitories
     We do summer camp in style in scenic Forsyth, GA. Seated in a former cow pasture, Camp Timberlake is resplendent with wildlife and nature and all the comforts of home. (If 40 people sleep in your bedroom that is.)


7. Sanctioned Stupidity
     Let's be honest, some of the things we do at camp are stupid. Mud Fights, Grits Wrestling, Bobbing For Apples in Baked Beans, Fishing Baby Ruth's out of Mountain Dew, etc. The great part about summer camp is that it's supervised by competent leaders at all times who know just when to call it off. (BONUS FOR PARENTS, your students don't have to do crazy messy things on your property!)


6. "Gourmet Food"
     The discerning palate will be treated to a culinary master class that features a light dough topped with a tomato based sauce and a sausage-like meat topping (pizza) as well as French classics such as chien de maïs. (Copy and Paste that into freetranslation.com to get the answer)


5. Disconnection from the Outside World
     The world of kids and students is packed with distractions: media and entertainment that are constantly begging for our attention. One of the greatest parts of Summer Camp is pulling the plug on those things for a week and resetting your brain.


4. (Non-Romantic) Relationships that Last a Lifetime
     I know that some of my most meaningful friendships were forged at Summer Camp. And the advent of social media like Twitter and Facebook only makes it easier to stay connected and keep up with your new buddies!


3. Awesome Worship!
     The worship is excellent at camp every year and this year will be no different. The great thing about worship at camp is that there is no schedule or agenda. If service gets over at 11, 12, or 1 doesn't matter as long as we've had as much time as we need to seek the face of God.


2. Intense Encounters With God
     I can't quantify it, but there is something special about that patch of red dirt we go to every year for camp. Maybe it's the disconnection from concerns and distractions at home, maybe it's the camaraderie, maybe it's the atmosphere of worship over the whole campus, but God shows up at summer camp. I can tell you the names of numerous ministers and missionaries (myself included) who were called into ministry at the altar in summer camp. The numbers of those who have received salvation and have been filled with the Holy Spirit are off the charts. It will change your life.


1. What Happens at Camp DOESN'T Stay at Camp
     The change that the Holy Spirit stirs in your life at summer camp doesn't (or at least shouldn't) evaporate when you catch the bus ride home. It lingers. It stays with you. It empowers you to continue to reach lost people in your local community and around the world.




Like I said, you should go to camp!


     If you're part of UpRising at Evangel Community Church we're going to camp the week of June 11th-15th. You can get an application at the information center or on Wednesday nights. The cost is $145 and is due on May 28th. If you're reading this and you aren't part of our ministry in Georgia, check here for info on GA Summer Camps! Can't wait to see you there!

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 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! 

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