I read this article yesterday from Pastor Tim Bayly and it was convicting. The thing that sticks out to me is the burden of leadership that falls on pastors. We can't escape leading; the problem is how we lead and the direction in which we lead. I'm either leading my congregation to flowery beds of ease a.k.a. destruction or I'm leading them to take up the cross and follow Christ on the narrow way.
Earlier in the day I'd read Isaiah 58:1, "Cry aloud; do not hold back; lift up your voice like a trumpet; declare to my people their transgression, to the house of Jacob their sins." Pastors must not hold back in their preaching. This doesn't mean they should preach uncontrolled but they can't worry about repercussions or blow-back from calling out the sins of the people. God began His word to Isaiah in this chapter by warning him to cry aloud, to not withhold his voice, even though the things God would say through his prophet would be hard to hear. Pastors today must do that same.
We live in sinful times (nothing is new under the sun). If I fail to boldly proclaim the whole counsel of God, I fail as God's minister. I must not shirk back from applying the word to the people of God, especially when it's uncomfortable.
Scripture says if a man fails to provide for his children, his fundamental duty as head of the household, he's worse than an infidel. If a pastor fails to provide for and lead his flock, he's not much better.
Thursday, November 8, 2018
Monday, November 5, 2018
Learning the Joy of Contentment
In her book, Seeking God, Esther de Waal describes the problems with the excessive freedom of our lifestyle choices:
"Simply at the level of working out an acceptable life-style the choices have now become quite bewildering. Shall I support Mother Teresa in Calcutta or help leprous children in Tanzania...I may well end up flitting form one to the other until I have collected a tagbag for myself of well-intentioned but half-thought-out ideals based on a confused and superficial amalgam of some of the more attractive elements in each. The danger then of course that I become too confused and superficial.
Instead of this bewildering and exhausting rushing from one thing to another monastic stability means accepting this particular community, this place and these people, this and no other, as the way of God."
The book is on what we can learn from The Rule of Saint Benedict, so don't let the word "monastic" throw you off. Christians should be the most stable people in the world. We are built on the Rock, after all. This doesn't mean we will be born and die in the same place, the ideals of Wendell Berry notwithstanding. I am a transplant to the Northwest after six generations of living in northern Alabama, after all. But we should not easily flit from one place to another, from one church to another, or from one cause to another. God has called us wherever we are right now.
We are called to love our neighbors in front of us first, before giving to and thinking about our invisible neighbors across the world. When we discipline ourselves to give to our church, our neighbors, and our family, one of the by-products is the joy of contentment.
"Simply at the level of working out an acceptable life-style the choices have now become quite bewildering. Shall I support Mother Teresa in Calcutta or help leprous children in Tanzania...I may well end up flitting form one to the other until I have collected a tagbag for myself of well-intentioned but half-thought-out ideals based on a confused and superficial amalgam of some of the more attractive elements in each. The danger then of course that I become too confused and superficial.
Instead of this bewildering and exhausting rushing from one thing to another monastic stability means accepting this particular community, this place and these people, this and no other, as the way of God."
The book is on what we can learn from The Rule of Saint Benedict, so don't let the word "monastic" throw you off. Christians should be the most stable people in the world. We are built on the Rock, after all. This doesn't mean we will be born and die in the same place, the ideals of Wendell Berry notwithstanding. I am a transplant to the Northwest after six generations of living in northern Alabama, after all. But we should not easily flit from one place to another, from one church to another, or from one cause to another. God has called us wherever we are right now.
We are called to love our neighbors in front of us first, before giving to and thinking about our invisible neighbors across the world. When we discipline ourselves to give to our church, our neighbors, and our family, one of the by-products is the joy of contentment.
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