The Power of Our Ammunition…

When I was a kid I tried to never miss an episode of “The Simpsons”, I loved Bart Simpson. I had a t-shirt with him on it that said “Underachiever”, my grandmother hated that shirt because she said I was NOT an underachiever! Part of Bart’s underachiever persona was that he seemed to always be packing a sling shot…

I had to have one!

So somehow I convinced my grandparents to let me have a slingshot… looking back I have no clue how that happened. One day I was over at a friends house and we were shooting our slingshots in the back yard. He had these really cool metal balls that were made specifically for sling shots… so we were shooting those, breaking stuff, hitting targets… you know good clean American boy fun. After a while we ran out of those cool metal balls and so we went searching in the house for some new ammunition… all we could find was Tums. We went back out side and started trying to shoot our new acid-fighting ammunition and quickly found that flat discs are not all that accurate with a slingshot… they were flying all over the place but never coming near anything I was aiming at.

Until…

Suddenly a bird flew down onto the fence about thirty feet away.

I figured… “No harm in shooting at it… there’s no way in the world I could possibly hit it!”

I figured wrong.

I pull back that slingshot loaded with a stomach-saving remedy and let it fly… It shot off with deadly accuracy and speed… hit that bird square in the side of his head… and he dropped… dead as a door knob. Assassination by antacid.

Now, you can imagine right here a scene right out of a TV sitcom where two kids are standing motionless over a dead bird trying to contemplate the ramifications of what just happened… and what the consequences might be… so we did what any other good upstanding young men would do. Buried the evidence!

I started thinking about that story awhile ago when I was thinking about the power that words can have in people’s lives. For me personally I started realizing the effect that my words have on my wife, my kids, friends, or people that I lead in ministry…

I have grown to firmly believe that the old saying about sticks and stones is an absolute lie… words can devastate, destroy, and damage people. I talk with people all the time that are struggling in life because of words that were spoken to them years, or even decades, ago. They can never seem to get past those labels that were slapped on them… those lies that were placed on them… those feelings that they could never measure up. I still remember vividly being told by a kid named Robbie in kindergarten that my ears looked big when I had a buzz cut… to this day 25 years later if I think about cutting off my hair in the summer, my first thought is… “but… my ears will look big!”

I think this is a lesson that we all need to learn, and I think that in the Church we especially need to learn that even words that were meant for good can be fired off in a dangerous way… like medicine from a slingshot, and end up causing even more damage. People can have all the right intentions as they share their feelings or thoughts on how things should be… but often, they leave a trail of destruction behind them. There is even a book called Well Intentioned Dragons: Ministering to Problem People in the Church. You know if someone wrote a book about it… it’s an issue!

These are lessons that I am still very much learning on a daily basis… I have, what I like to call, the spiritual gift of sarcasm… and unchecked, it can be just like that slingshot… I fire it off, never thinking that its going to come close to doing damage, but sometimes it smacks people right upside the head. I can’t tell you how many times I have had to backtrack and try to make right something I said in jest. I am (hopefully) growing in discernment.

One of the primary calls upon people in the Church is to encourage, exhort, and love on each other… but the truth is that many people feel that they have been far more wounded inside the community than anywhere else. We are people… we fail… we blow it… we say things we shouldn’t… but hopefully what sets us apart will be that we own our mistakes and make them right… that we will come together as the bride of Christ… and that we would learn day by day to be more edifying to one another.

Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise. Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.

Hebrews 10:23-25, NLT

Great for an upset stomach… or Murdering Birds.

How my 5 year-old made me a better father…

Every night at bedtime my daughter, Izzy, asks me… “What was your favorite part of today?” She didn’t get this idea from us, it is a question that has come right from her own little mind. I always answer by telling her that something we did as a family was my favorite part of that day. I tell her this because it is absolutely true, but also because I want her to know that she and her sister and mama are the most important thing in the world to me.

            There have been a few times that I have been so busy with work, school, etc… that I didn’t spend any time with my family until that moment of bedtime. So in those times, when she asks me that question, I began to answer… “Right now is my favorite part of today… cause I am with you.” Again… I was telling the absolute truth. However, it wasn’t good enough. So she began to ask another question.

“Daddy, what was your favorite part of today… not counting right now?”

            She called me out… my answer wasn’t good enough. From her little mouth, she was speaking wisdom into my life. We need time together, she needs to feel my love, she needs to know that I will make time to spend with her… all the time. She wants positive memories everyday of how her daddy displayed his love and proved that she really is important… not just in words… but in actions! She understands in some sort of subconscious way… that she desires community. And it’s our job… my wife and I… to give our daughters a healthy view of what it looks like to be apart of a healthy community in our family.

It will affect the relationships that she has for the rest of her life.

It will impact her choices of the people she chooses to surround herself with.

It will shape her view of what a husband should look like.

It will influence the kind of person she chooses to become.

            We live in a society where some studies have shown that most fathers spend less than 60 seconds of quality time with their children each day. 60 Seconds… 1 pathetic minute. I understand how this happens. Life is busy, so much to do, and when kids get a little older, they don’t exactly make themselves easily accessible. There are so many things that can get in the way.

However, I have to ask myself a question…

“Are my children worth fighting for?”

 

Thank you, Izzy, for asking the right questions… may God give you a gift to do this for the rest of your life!

What’s the most important thing about you?

A couple of years ago I read a book for a seminary class that I was taking written by A.W. Tozer called Knowledge of the Holy, I didn’t make it through the first chapter before something that he said stopped me dead in my tracks. I couldn’t even continue reading, I just read the one line over and over for awhile…

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”

I highlighted and underlined it… cause I’m hardcore like that. I started to really wrestle with whether this statement was true or not… Is my view of God more important than what kind of husband I am? Or what kind of father I am? Or what I do as a pastor? Are my thoughts about God really the most important thing about me?

A few weeks later, I traveled down to Redding and spent a week in the class that had assigned this book, the very first day of class we spent well over two hours talking about this one line of this one small book…

I grew to believe that this statement is absolutely true… My understanding of the nature of God affects every thought and action in my life. It’s not that it’s more important than all those other things… it is the very basis of all those other things.

If I believe that Jesus is a loving husband to His bride, the Church, and loves His bride completely and totally, even unto sacrificing His very life for her… then I should live as a husband that loves my wife completely and totally, who is willing to love and care for her completely… and put her well being ahead of even my own.

If I believe that God is a loving Father who stopped at nothing to pursue His children and loves them unconditionally, who tenderly guides His children to the right path… then I should be a father who deeply longs to love my children in the same amazing way.

If I believe that He is a High Priest that can sympathize with my weaknesses and patiently leads me towards growth, without condemnation or guilt… then I should be a pastor that treats people with the same care and love, who can empathize with the pain and struggles that people endure… and constantly point them back to the Truth that can bring strength to their lives.

Unfortunately, I think that this truth can negatively affect us as well…

If I viewed God as a malevolent dictator who views the Church as His property… What kind of husband would I be?

If I viewed God as a distant patriarch who set the world in motion then took off… What kind of father would I be?

If I viewed God as an angry wrathful deity, just waiting to rain down judgment… What kind of pastor would I be?

I am continually realizing how true Tozer’s statement is, and how it impacts every part of my life. I long to know God and His heart for my wife, my children, and the people he has entrusted into my care. I long for these things because I do believe that God is a loving groom, a faithful father, and a compassionate high priest…

And those beliefs shape everything about who I am, and who I want to become…

What comes into your mind when you think about God?

And how does that shape how you think, act, live, pray, and love?

Bedtime Stories…

A couple of nights ago my wife and I were putting our two little girls to bed, part of our nightly routine is to read them a story. On this particular night my five-year-old, Izzy, wanted me to read from her new pink bible that she had gotten for Christmas. I asked her what she wanted me to read, of course she had no idea, so my wife just randomly said I should read the story of God calling Samuel…

1 Samuel 3

The Lord Speaks to Samuel

¹ Meanwhile, the boy Samuel served the Lord by assisting Eli. Now in those days messages from the Lord were very rare, and visions were quite uncommon. ² One night Eli, who was almost blind by now, had gone to bed. ³ The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was sleeping in the Tabernacle near the Ark of God. ⁴ Suddenly the Lord called out, “Samuel!” “Yes?” Samuel replied. “What is it?” ⁵ He got up and ran to Eli. “Here I am. Did you call me?” “I didn’t call you,” Eli replied. “Go back to bed.” So he did. ⁶ Then the Lord called out again, “Samuel!” Again Samuel got up and went to Eli. “Here I am. Did you call me?” “I didn’t call you, my son,” Eli said. “Go back to bed.” ⁷ Samuel did not yet know the Lord because he had never had a message from the Lord before. ⁸ So the Lord called a third time, and once more Samuel got up and went to Eli. “Here I am. Did you call me?” Then Eli realized it was the Lord who was calling the boy. ⁹ So he said to Samuel, “Go and lie down again, and if someone calls again, say, ‘Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.’” So Samuel went back to bed. ¹⁰ And the Lord came and called as before, “Samuel! Samuel!”And Samuel replied, “Speak, your servant is listening.”

As I read this story to my family, I had one of those “when you have read something a dozen times before, but suddenly a whole new meaning jumps off of the pages of scripture and smacks you in the face” moments…

“Samuel did not yet know the Lord…”

What do you mean, Samuel didn’t know the Lord?! This guy lived in the tabernacle… he sleeps next to the Ark of God! This guy “served the Lord” as an assistant to Eli! He was dedicated to God both before and after his birth by his mother Hannah! He literally grew up his entire life in the presence of God!!!

And yet… “Samuel did not yet know the Lord…”

Simply being in Church did not lead to Samuel knowing the Lord. Constantly being around God’s people did not make Samuel know the Lord. His mothers desire for him to serve God did not mean that Samuel would know God. Not even a daily regiment of doing all the right religious things meant that Samuel would know the Lord.

And yet… all too often these are the exact benchmarks we look to as evidence of a persons relationship with God. Do they go to Church regularly? Do they hang out with “the right kind of people”? Were they raised in the Church? What kind of spiritual things to they do? We may not ask these questions outright… but, we think them.

Don’t get me wrong… I think most of these things are very important. I believe that we must engage in a community of believers to grow in our relationship with God. I think we should be wise about the people and things that we invest our time into, and I believe that spiritual disciplines can lead us to a deeper relationship with God.

However… None of those things led Samuel, or us, to “Know the Lord”.

Samuel had an encounter with God. God spoke… God spoke again… and God spoke again… and finally Samuel realized he was having a moment with the Lord! Nothing that we can do on this earth can ever replace that… nothing changes in our lives, nothing that can shape eternity in our hearts… until we have an encounter with The Lord.

Not Church. Not People. Not Family. Not Good Deeds.

Samuel did not know the Lord, until the Lord made himself known! So do all those great things that are apart of the Christian life… go to Church, hang with great friends, read the Word, serve the Lord…

But always remember… it’s all only because God pursued us first!

God speaks… and speaks again… and speaks again… and hopefully we are smart enough to answer back as Samuel did…

“Speak, your servant is listening.”