Proverbs 16:2 "All the ways of a man are clean in his own sight, But the LORD weighs the motives."


I think this is probably one of my biggest personal battles. Serving God with good motives and simply because I love Him. Like what I do on the outside looks great, teaching Sunday school, loving Janice and the kids, but what is behind it? What are my motives? I think we constantly have to be checking ourselves and constantly reminding ourselves of the Gospel. Who are we really? We are sinners who are desperately wicked and that wickedness flows from the inside out. Right? Matthew 15:18-19 tells us, 18“But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man. 19“For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders.” This is why behavior modification does not work because we are just changing the outside, but we are just covering up the symptoms we are not really dealing with the problem. So in the end those who try behavior modification instead of Gospel heart-change end up in one of two places. Either they accomplish what they are attempting to do and became self-righteous modern day Pharisees or they fail miserably and give up on God all together. In the end we need the Gospel and we need God Himself. God is our greatest good, He is our satisfaction in life.

All things work together

I went to The Summit Church this morning and pastor JD Greear preached on sin and its consequences from 2 Samuel. You see King David sinned just like all the rest of us and chapters 13-18 shows us the consequences that David's sin had on his family. There was murder, rape, revenge, conspiracies, and the list goes on. But pastor JD pointed out something that I have been thinking about all day and I cannot get it off my mind. He was talking about King David and his failure as a man and his failure to remember the Gospel. Then JD quoted Romans 8:28 which tells us that all things work together for the good of those who love God. Everything in David's life was working together for his ultimate good and that ultimate good is for David to see his need for Christ and the Gospel. You see I am a lot more like David than I care to admit but maybe unlike David who lived before the cross of Christ, I can look at the cross and know that ALL things are working together for the good of those who love Him. Every injustice that someone else does that effects me and every stupid decision I make. Sin has consequences and man do they make life uncomfortable and tough sometimes but God loves me and wants me to be constantly reminded and aware that my greatest need is not to be happy or comfortable. MY GREATEST NEED IS THE GOSPEL. That as sinful and wicked as I am, God still loved me enough to send His only son to Calvary so that I might be good, be righteous, be redeemed, and be reconciled to God who is the greatest good that anyone of us could ever hope for.

THIS IS THE GENERATION!!

According to the Durham Public School website, there are between 16,000 and 17,000 kids in 6th-12th grade. According to the Department of Education website, there is somewhere between 14 and 15 million students enrolled in high schools across the country. The International Mission Board website lists the Unreached People Groups at just over 6,000. Now my math skills are shaky at best but if I am right then if less than 1% of the students go to the nations then we will reach every people group in the world and that is why I get so excited to think about student ministry today. They are going to reach the world with the Gospel and they are going to bring God great glory in doing it. They are more outwardly focused and globally aware than any generation in history. Social justice initatives are at an all-time high. Probably 98% of students today have Facebook and the numbers for Twitter and Skype are growing rapidly. They have unlimited reach throughout the world because of the internet. They can also be anywhere in the world in within a day's travel because of airplanes. I believe in this generation and I see the potential within them, if I was an NBA GM then students would be my first round draft picks. They have so many talents and other resources that it is scary to think what they could do if they put their minds to it. Would you take a second today and pray for student pastors, that they would proclaim the Gospel clearly week in and week out? That they would live it out in front of students and that students would come to know Christ in a real and personal way? Pray for the students, that God would give them big faith and bold dreams to accomplish things for His glory. Pray that the give up on the American Dream for something bigger and something much better. THIS IS THE GENERATION AND THEY WILL CHANGE THE WORLD! We just better make sure they do it for the Gospel and not for something or somebody else.

God is Great, God is Good

We have all heard children recite that famous prayer but I never thought about how accurate it was in terms of theology. A.W. Tozer once said, "What comes to mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you." God is great but how often do we think about that? We are talking about the God who created the universe out of nothing and is big enough that no matter what you are going through in life, He can help you overcome it. God is awesome in power. He can provide whatever it is you need. So often I find myself lacking faith in God's greatness and I try to rely on myself or something else in my life to satisfy me or meet my current need instead of trusting in the greatness of God. God is much bigger than we can conceive in our little finite minds. I was recently reminded of how great God is on a mission trip to Ethiopia. What I saw there was very different from modern America and how we do church in the United States. I saw a beautiful country full of people that God has created and I worked with missionaries who are giving their lives to reach all those people. I was also reminded of what heaven will be like one day and that Revelation 5:9 is so true that we will be gather around God's glorious throne with people from every tribe, nation, and tongue. It will not be white people speaking English and singing Chris Tomlin songs. I saw God's greatness and how big He is. This great God can work in your life too. He can meet any need, He can bring to fruition any dream, and the best part is that God is not only great but He is also good.

God is good and the good news is He has displayed His goodness for all to see. God is so good that He gave His Son so that sinful people like you and I could have a relationship with Him. God is good and He has a plan for your life that is beyond your wildest dreams if you will trust Him entirely with everything in your life. He desires what is best for you and knows what is best for you way better than you know what is best for you. Today I just wanted to remind you of that simple prayer that God is indeed great as we see in Scripture and as we look at life but also that it goes a step further because God is good. I hope that you believe that God is both really great and really good. I hope you pray with bold faith for whatever you are asking God for and that you trust your entire life to His goodness. What do you think about God? It is the most important thing about you!!!

Preaching Theology pt.2

Preaching Christ: The Gospel as Hermeneutical Key

The first important factor in reaching the modern American culture is to make Christ the central focus of every sermon. No matter what text the pastor is preaching from in the Bible, whether it is from the Old Testament or the New, the preacher must show how the text relates to the person or work of Jesus Christ. The Gospel is the hermeneutical key. Dennis Johnson said it like this, “By referring to the Gospel as the hermeneutical key I mean that proper interpretation of any part of the Bible requires us to relate it to the person and work of Jesus. ” Everything in the Old Testaments shows the need for a Savior and points forward to the coming of Christ. Everything in the New Testament is looking at the life of Christ or looking back at it. Unbelievers need to be shown their need for the Gospel and how the Gospel answers that need while Christians need to continually be shown how to live life in light of the Gospel. Sidney Greidanus echos this idea in his book, “what both the unbeliever and the believer need to hear in preaching is the Gospel, with its implications for a life lived in confident gratitude in response to amazing grace. ” The unbeliever needs to hear of the mercy and grace of God even though they deserve wrath for sin. They deserve an eternity separated from a holy God because they are sinners but God motivated by His love but mainly for His glory gave us grace in sending His Son who died for our sins and rose from the grave on the third day. Unbelievers need to hear about God's love but do not give them only one side of the coin because you are cheating them out of the relationship with God that is filled with wonder, amazement, and gratitude towards God.

Christians need to be reminded that God calls them to be holy like Him and even though they stumble and fail along the way we should press into God and remember our position in Christ because of the Gospel. I love the illustration that Matt Chandler uses for Christians and sanctification. He says it is like a baby learning to walk and nobody tells the baby that just because it only took two steps and fail down that it failed in learning how to walk. No, we cheer and take pictures and tell all our friends that the baby walked. So why can't we celebrate that like babies learning how to walk, we as Christians are continually learning how to be like Christ in all things.

The Old Testament is full of God's law that pertain from dietary laws to how the ancient Israelites would have a relationship to Him. We find wonderful stories about how God made the world and everything in it. In the Old Testament, we see how sin entered the world and it destroys man's relationship to God. The New Testament is how God answers man's sin problem and still gets the glory due His name. “Nevertheless just as the chief teaching of the New Testament is really the proclamation of grace and peace through the forgiveness of sins in Christ, so the chief teaching of the Old Testament is really the teaching of laws, the showing up of sin, and the demanding of good. ” This is what people need to hear be proclaimed from the pulpits in America, not sermons on how to be healthy, wealthy and happy.

Another thing I believe preachers have failed to do is show people that the Bible and more specifically the Gospel, always require a response. Unbelievers and Christians should be playing tug-a-war in their minds with the sermon the entire service. The prophets in the Old Testament and Jesus in the New Testament always required response from whoever they were engaging. I think about the rich young ruler as an example. He comes to Jesus with a question and Jesus answers him with what is required. The man faces a decision, a crossroads in his life. Is he willing to do what Jesus requires from him? Ultimately as we find out, he was not but Jesus still required a response one way or another from him.“A sermon may initially appeal to the intellect by giving statistics, then move to the deeper level of emotion by telling a story, and aim its conclusion at the spirit or will by direct appeal, pleading for a response to the Gospel. ” So the Gospel is the hermeneutical key to every text that a pastor preaches. The question that every pastor should be answering when examine any text in the Bible is how does this text relate to the person and work of Jesus Christ in either the redemption or sanctification of humanity for God's glory.