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?

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.”

Signs.... Where do they Point to?

So I’m sitting here in the church coffee shop going over John 4:43-54. At the moment I’m really just trying to bash out my own thoughts on the selection.

Jesus just spent two days in a town ministering to people who believed first because of the simple testimony of a singular woman. They then believed because of they themselves have gone and heard him. This is a great illustration of the power of our testimony. Your testimony can and will change things.

So now here’s Jesus in Galilee, the place that He had stated that a prophet is not honored in his own country. We see this story in Matthew 13, Mark 6, & Luke 4. It is here that something interesting happens. In verse 45 the people receive him quite well. Not because of the word of a testimony or because of what he’s said directly to them, rather because they had seen the miracles he had done in Jerusalem.

Skip down to verse 46-54 we find the story of a nobleman who came to seek healing for his son. Jesus’ reply….

“Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will by no means believe”

Being what I believe to be in distress the man again pleads with Jesus to come with him and heal his son. Jesus told the man to go home because his son was healed. Then something amazing happened. The bible says in verse 50.

“So the man BELIEVED the WORD that Jesus spoke to him, and he went his way.”

He was begging Christ to come with him in person but believed simply on the spoken word of God. The man ran home to find his son had indeed been healed. Then, in an attempt to get rid of thoughts of coincidence, asked when the boy recovered. The servant told him that the boy recovered at the very hour that Jesus had told him that his son was healed.

So what does this mean to us? What can we learn from this passage?

First off I want to point out the people who greeted Christ. They received him because of what they saw. In today’s culture we see spiritual superstars rise and fall. Todd Bentley for example, he rose up a very controversial superstar in the charismatic/Pentecostal circles. Were people touched and healed at his crusades? Sure I can accept that. But I believe the fall of his ministry was due to a misunderstanding of the purposes of those miracles. People began to follow the signs and wonders. They were going to his events to see miracles, to see signs, to see demonstrations… not to see Jesus.

Christ did miracles and signs not just for entertainment or just to be nice but to point back to himself and His Father. So was Bentley wrong for doing miracles? No, but towards the end of his ministry in Florida if you noticed things seemed to become more and more about him and less about Christ. More and more his events turned into what people could get for themselves.

I believe that’s why Christ scolded the man in verse 48. The people in the area were starting to follow him for miracles. For what they could get out of Him instead of what they could do to serve Him. Christ was looking for commitment to the Father.

Notice verse 53, when the man had definite proof of the healing performed by Christ, the man and his entire family believed. The signs and miracles are not meant to build man or ministries, they are meant to build the Kingdom. They are called signs because they are signs that direct to the King of Kings.

Christmas Weekend Conclusion

Welp folks the Christmas weekend is almost to a close. Actually kind of came to a close for me today considering i work on Sundays haha.

That said it's been pretty nice. Got to spend some time with my family. We exchanged gifts, had some laughs, saw a few good movies. It was nice. Today was really cool though.

Pastor wanted to do something a little different so we did this great illustrated sermon using the book "A Tale of Three Trees" It's a really neat story about three trees that were originally planted on a mountain side.

The first tree wanted to be made into a treasure box and hold the most precious jewels of all.

The second wanted to become a might ship that carried kings!

The third tree simply wanted to sit there and point to God for all time.

Then a few lumberjacks showed up and cut them all down and the three trees fell into despair as they came to realize that they would not be made into what they had planned on.

The first tree had become a simple feed box for animals.

The second became a boat for fisher men.

The third was simply cut into pieces of lumber and throne into a pile.

Have you ever been there? You had all these great ideas and plans on what you wanted to do. They were fantastic and even glorifying to God! Yet something happens, your plans are shot and thrown to side. You're not doing at all what you had originally planned on doing. Like the trees in the story you find yourself asking,

Why!? Why God am i here? I've been faithful, all my plans were for you! Why am i here at this point in my life! why!

The three trees felt this way too, yet one by one they had something special happen to them. The first tree found it self one special starlit night in a simple stable. A new mother and father resting exhausted from the day's events. The mother rests her newborn son in the feed box, she looked up at her loving husband, "isn't he beautiful? isn't our son, Jesus, so beautiful?" It was then that the first tree realized that he didn't hold the riches of the world but rather the most precious jewel in all of Heaven and Earth.

The second tree was one day cast out in the waters of the simple sea. Suddenly a massive storm arose and begin to toss the boat and it's travelers back and forth. lighting striking the water right near the bow of the ship! The travelers turned to each other and one finally went over and woke one of their companions. This man stood and walked to the edge of the boat and simply said

Peace, Be Still

And the raging storm stopped. It was then that the second tree realized that while he was not carrying mighty kings of this world, he was carrying the King of Kings.

The third tree one day found itself being dragged out of the wood pile by some soldiers. It didn't understand why the soldiers formed it into the shape of a cross. It didn't understand why they made a simple carpenter who had been beaten beyond recognition carry it so far. It didn't understand why the crowds seemed to hate this man so much. Finally when it heard the man pleading to God to forgive the people it understood, that every time people looked to it's cross shaped form, it would be pointing them straight to God.

See God has a plan for you. He sees things in a entirely different light then we do. While we see things in one direction God is able to step back out of time and see the beginning and the end.

Perhaps you were like the first try and u had plans for holding great riches. But suddenly, be it due to poor economic times or poor financial judgment, you find yourself in place where you feel as low as you could be. You've gone from 5 star to Denny's breakfast bar.

Perhaps you were like the second tree and you had plans of part of that upper class. The guy who calls the shots. You thought for sure you were up for that big promotion but suddenly BAM!! You get pushed to the side and now you're a no body.

Then again maybe you were like the third tree who had great plans that were all meant to honor God and glorify him... but sadly for one reason or another all those dreams seemed to be cut down and thrown away. You feel as though you can't serve Him anymore. That you've wasted your time trying to honor God and serve him.

Doesn't matter the situation fact remains, GOD IS IN CONTROL.

He loves you has a plan for your life. You simply need to be willing to be used by him. If you're down have faith that he will take car of you in the end.

Didn't mean to go into all that. in all honesty i was just trying to tell you about my day.