I Go

Recently I was challenged by the passing of a blessed saint. By the time I met this lovely woman of God she was well in age and was known simply as Ms. Inga. I’d seen her every so often in service and at different church functions. Always very kind and always speaking blessings in her German accented voice. 

Over the years her health had declined and she was not able to attend church as often as she like. It had been many year since I had seen her. In fact, a few months ago I had the opportunity to deliver a fruit basket to her, when I as her I realized just how many years it had been since I had seen her.  When I got back from that delivery I had the opportunity to talk to one of our leaders and they began to tell me several great stories of Ms Inga.

From these stories I have found Ms. Inga to have been one powerful woman of God. A woman who ‘s prayer life cause the foundations of hell to shake and the heavens to move.  She was a woman who did not hesitate to touch heaven not just for loved ones, but for the world.

One story stuck out to me though. Not some much a story but a habit of hers. Often people would call Ms. Inga up seeking nothing more than prayer. She’d answer the phone and people would just unload load after load of pressure placed upon their shoulders. In her lap people placed lives, hopes, and dreams asking her to lift it up to the Lord. Each time her reply was the same. It was simple it was direct. In her strong yet sweet German accented voice she’d say two words….

“I go.”

She’d then hang up the phone and go straight to her knees and pray. We aren’t talking a quick simple prayer; where you casually look for the TV remote while you mutter a generic stream of supposedly spiritual words. Rather, she would pray and seek the Lord until she felt the burden was lifted. She would do something that sadly many of my generation knows little of, she’d pray through.

This… challenges me. When I heard about this I had to check my heart and ask myself, when people come to me with their burdens….. do I say, “I go.”  Do I hit the floor and pray until the burden is lifted? Or do I half heartedly say, “yeah I’ll be praying,” and walk away thinking of it no more.

I’ve been to youth camps, conventions, pastoral meetings where people talk about the great exploits of God and requests for prayers are passed around like playing cards on a table, but how many of us have been challenged to say, “I go.” The implications, the heaviness of those two words have truly gripped my spirit.

When Ms. Inga would say, “I go,” she said so with the understanding that she was about to enter into battle field. She said so knowing that when she hit her knees that the sound would resonate in the caverns of Hell in such a way that Satan trembled. She said so knowing that God looked down on her with the pride that only a father could have for his child. She did so knowing the world would forever be changed by her following 

actions.

Adonai, I pray that when a burden is dropped into my spirit next, that I will have the strength, the stamina, that humility to say, “I go.”

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Master/Slave or Father/Sons & Daughters?

Father’s day is approaching quickly. With this celebration in the back of my head I've been thinking lately about the concept of raising sons and daughters. Not necessarily my own children, since I’m not married yet haha, but spiritual sons and daughters.

The concept to me seems like a very normal thing, something that should just naturally be happening.  However, my time away from my home church taught me very differently. When in college I had the opportunity to visit many different churches and talk to many different ministers. I was disheartened to see that the idea of raising up sons and daughters wasn't really one that was fully developed.

Some may had used language like ‘Yes, this is my son in the faith.’ Yet as I talked to them I found it to be more of a master/slave relationship rather than father/son(daughter) relationship.  Many of them there seemed to be lack of true honor for anyone who does not serve as a Sr. Pastor at a church.

I remember one time when myself a handful of Youth Ministry students & Pastoral Ministry students sat across from a blessed mature saint. I remember the rise of emotion and awkward expression that came over each one of us as we heard the following words.

 “I know some of you are going into Youth ministry, but at some point you’ll have to grow up and go into real ministry.”

I’m not going to lie to you, at that moment I felt incredibly hurt and angry at this gentleman.  He truly felt that there was no true ministry outside of Sr. Pastoral Ministry. I can’t necessarily blame him though. He was raised to believe this. He wasn’t the first minister I’d seen express this sentiment and he certainly wasn't the last.

What saddens me is the concept of master/slave as a way of raising up ministers is extremely non biblical. Paul’s own word to Timothy in 1 Timothy 1:2 says otherwise. 

“To Timothy, my own son in the faith…” 

That word son is “teknon” which means child.  The sentiment of a father  & son relationship is very clear. 

Recently I saw a Facebook post another minister. I want to make it clear that I do respect this man of God and the great ministry that he has.  In this post he talks about his early days as a minister and how he’d go to different meetings and would see different great men of God. He talked about how much respect he had for these men.  While I do agree there is a level respect that young men & women need to have for those who came before them, there was a couple of sentences that made my heart hurt for this man.

I would paste and copy the exact text so as not to exaggerate what was spoken, but sadly he has since taken his post down. But in essence he said that he would not dare to speak in front of these men or presume he had something to add to the conversation when in their presence. This thought is the master/slave mentality that will and is killing the church.

People are leaving churches hurt because of this mentality. Men and women are leaving the ministry because of this mentality.  In my own fellowship, Assemblies of God, as of March 9^th 2012, the average age of a minister was 54. Why is this? I believe it’s because the church is NOT raise up sons and daughters.

As a church ages it MUST learn to raise sons and daughters to take on the responsibilities of the church. If slaves/servants were enough to accomplish the plan and purposes of God then why would He send His Son? A son knows the heart of the father.  A son knows the mind of a father. A son knows the true wishes and intentions of a father.  Whereas, a slave/servant knows only that which he is commanded.

So faithful ministers of the word of God, I implore you, raise up sons and daughters in the faith. Raise up the next Timothy. Love them, train them, and release them into their destiny & their callings.

Elseworlds

Earlier tonight I finished reading a comic I had purchased some time ago but never finished. It was a Superboy Annual from 1994.  This particular year all the Annuals were part of what DC Comics calls Elseworlds. I personally love the Elseworlds series because it does one simple thing. It asks, “what if?” The end result is sometimes awesome, sometimes stupid, but somehow always though provoking. 

In one such Elseworlds book they asked the question, “what if baby superman’s ship was knocked slightly off course and he landed in the out skirts of Gotham City instead Smallville?” In this book the Waynes find this celestial orphan and adopt him thus never having Bruce. End result is instead of Clark becoming Superman, he becomes Batman.

Another series of Elseworlds called “Batman: Brotherhood of the  Bat” and its sequel “Batman: The League of the Batmen” takes a look into the future. Here it asks a few questions, what if Talia & Bruce had a son named Tallant (concept of a son came about in 1987 but the child was unnamed, later in 96 they decided settle with the name Damian). Then they ask what if Talia’s father, Ra’ al Ghul, had killed Bruce and succefully destroyed much of the world and created a league of assassins who wear rejected designs for Batman’s costume. Later in the second book Tallant creates the League of Batmen to combat his grandfather’s evil desire to destroy the world.

Rather intense stuff.  But back to what happened tonight, as I was reading the Superboy comic I begin to think about the fact that one small change in the history of these characters and their lives become dramatically different. A shift in the wind and a  Superman becomes a Batman.  A change of location and a Batman becomes a secret agent.  One simple aspect and the entire world is different for them.

Then I begin to think about how different my life would have been had I not accepted Christ. The path I could had taken had a 14 year old boy not walked to the front of small church in Ash Grove, Missouri and accepted Christ as his Lord & savior… well who knows where I could had ended up. I suppose statistically I could had ended up in a life of drugs and alcoholism. I could had become a womanizer. Today I could be shacked up with some woman with kids by 2 and 3 other women… I could be dead.

So many crazy possibilities had I not done one simple thing. I am so thankful for Christ. I am thankful for the salvation He has given me and the sanctification that the Holy Spirit brings me through. Truly without Him, I’d be lost.  I want to encourage you, take a moment and ponder what your life would be like if you had not truly accepted Christ as your Lord.  I know for me that thought has brought me to thankfulness, how about you?

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Just some thoughts on an aggravating subject

So a couple of weeks ago I was doing some research on a project. While in the midst of my research I happened upon a series of blogs and articles that really aggravated me. There is an ignorant war going on right now. I say now, but really it’s been going on for many years just recently it’s been getting on my nerves. What is this war? Should Christian parents homes school or send their children to some form of private/public school?

As soon as you read that line, immediately something began to swell up in you. Some of you sarcastically and arrogantly went “Of course Christian parents should ….” Right now your own defenses are rising up, preparing the usual arguments you present or have been trained to present. But before you lose your dignity please read on.

You see I’m really sick and tired of this debate. Both sides I hear people say “It’s the only Godly thing to do!” However, if I may, I’d like to share with you a secret. The only Godly thing is as follows… if the Lord has placed on your spirit the idea of either sending your child to public school or to home school, then you should do that. Plain and simple people.

I get sick and tired of the anti-home schoolers using arguments like “Your child won’t have adequate education,” or, “Your child will be socially inept.” It’s simply not true. Are there cases where it’s true? YES! Trust me I met plenty of those type of home schoolers when I went to bible college. I saw plenty of kids who had absolutely no concept of what life in the real world was like. However, I have come to know far many who are perfectly normal people with an IQ far surpassing mine. Not to mention the benefits of not have the massive class sizes that public school systems have. You also have the fact that when home schooling you don’t teach to the test, you test to the child’s needs.

I get sick and tired of the anti-public schoolers making claims about how public school will turn their children in to atheistic degenerates. I have known MANY kids who have grown up in strict Christian homes who have turned so far away from God it’s not funny. Many of which have gone on to have had gotten knocked up before marriage and are not with their baby’s daddy. The argument of “You don’t know what they are teaching your kids” is flat out ignorant. If you don’t know what your child’s teacher is teaching your child then that means you are not involved with the process or your child’s life.

So please people, both sides have their upsides and their down sides. So stop acting all pompous and putting “the other side” down. If the Lord has placed in your spirit to home school, then please by all means home school, and do it with the excellence our Lord demands! If the Lord has placed in your spirit to send your child to public school, then please by all means do so and be as involved in your child’s school with the excellence our Lord demands!

As for me, I honestly feel that my children will be public school. I learned to own my faith because while at public school I had people who would ask me the hard questions and that made me think. Even in elementary I was asked, and I asked, hard questions about faith and God. I thank God I had a mother who took time to answer question when she could, I thank God for a youth pastor who didn’t mind being called up on his off day to answer questions when he could. Thanks to them I learned to own my faith.

Then because I owned my faith I was able to reach out to people around me and bring God’s life change presence into their own lives. Every so often I’ll get a message or I’ll run into someone from high school and from BPCC and they’ll tell me, “hey man thanks for being there for me, for showing me what God is like.” I will do my best to raise up Godly children, and I look forward to the day when they get a phone call from friends who say , “thanks for being there, for showing me who God is.”