If there is a common affliction in our culture, it is the affliction of business. We all like to be busy and moments of solitude can be uncomfortable to the point we try to avoid them at all costs. There is constant activity in our brain and what we don’t deal with during our waking hours is often transferred to our subconsciousness during sleep.
In our current series we are moving through the Lord’s Prayer and while it doesn’t explicitly tell us to slow down and listen to God, the context of Luke’s version is Jesus off in a quiet place praying when the disciples asked him to teach them to pray. The example of Jesus in prayer is to be quiet, slow down and listen to the father. This Sunday we will see that Christian meditation as an effective element of prayer. Christian meditation is vastly different from other forms of meditation as seen in the religion of yoga where meditation is the emptying of the mind. Christian meditation is replacing our troubling brain activity with the knowledge of God as revealed in His word. Christian meditation requires being informed with God’s Word first and as we mull over what we read, we can process our circumstances in a spiritually healthy way. Christian meditation requires some level of solitude to block out the noise of the world and to hear the voice of God. There is a place for praying as we move throughout the day, but there is a need to hit the pause button, slow down so we can listen to God in prayer. Prayer is a two-way conversation between us and God. Unfortunately, many times we dominate the conversation, not giving God a chance to speak and be heard. When you pray, slow down and listen to God.
A primary teaching in the Lord’s Prayer is that prayer is us connecting and communing with God. Its pretty amazing when you stop to think about it . . . we get to talk with and share life with the creator God of the Universe. The Old Testament, beginning with the fall of man in Genesis 3, reveals God’s plan of how sinful humans can have relationship with a Holy God. Humans could not come to God on our own, and because of His Holiness, God would not come to man as He did before sin entered humanity. During the life of Moses God provided a temporary way for this to happen through the temple. The temple is an earthly representation of what heaven is like, most notably as the place where God dwells. In a very tangible way, the temple was a place on earth where heavenly things were done, which centered around communion with the God of heaven.
In the Lord’s Prayer when Jesus said, “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” we hear language that draws our attention to what was temporarily accomplished in the Old Testament Temple: Sinful humans could have communion with the Holy God of the Universe. To pray for God’s will to be on earth as it is in heaven is to fully engage in communion with God so that His kingdom will be seen here on earth. Ultimately, the Kingdom of God will be fulfilled in the age to come. However, scripture is clear that we can experience elements of that Kingdom while we are here on earth. So, When You Pray, Seek Heaven on Earth.
Praying Over the News
During this church wide series on prayer, I have come to realize that most of us struggle with how to process and respond to troubling world events. Watching the news only makes the anxiety level grow. Have you ever thought about praying over the news? Let me introduce you to a great tool that helps us look at the news from a Biblical, Godly worldview, then to pray over those events for God’s glory through them. It’s called the Pour Over. It’s free, it comes out 3 times a week and you can either read it or listen to the podcast. There are versions to do with kids as well as other resources. If the news is troubling for you, give the Pour Over a try . . .
Announcement – We will never send you a request through a text message asking you to donate to the church. This week people from our church have received text messages that look like they are from Pastor Andrew, asking for gift cards. We will never do that.
Sunday, we continue our journey through the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6 and Luke 11. Our Community Groups are doing studies in conjunction with my message from “The Prayer Course”. You can watch those videos through our Right Now Media account – you can access that through the button in our church newsletter / bulletin.
This week we will look at “Give us each day our daily bread” – Petition. In our community groups this week we learned that our prayers need to be relational not transactional. Prayer primarily needs to be coming to God in relationship for the purpose of strengthening that relationship. But, just as in a parent child relationship, our relationship with the Father includes asking him to do things for us. We call that “petition.” It is clear from the Lord’s prayer that God wants us to come to him with any and all needs we have.
After the Lord’s Prayer in Luke 11:5-13 Jesus tells a parable about an impertinent man who shamelessly wakes his neighbor up in the middle of the night to ask for some bread. He doesn’t just ask once, he asks repeatedly until he gets what he needs. On Sunday we will look at that parable as an illustration of how he should think of coming to God with our petitions. Included in Jesus teaching with the parable is the famous admonition for us to ask, seek and knock as part of an effective prayer life. The tense of those verbs is present tense which makes them a continuous practice. Petitioning is something we are to do continuously as part of a healthy prayer life. Join me this Sunday as we continue through the Lord’s Prayer.
This Sunday we start a 4-week church wide emphasis on prayer based on the Lord’s Prayer as found in Matthew 6:5-13. We are breaking the Lord’s Prayer into eight small sections where I will preach on one section on Sunday, followed by our Community Group Studies that week. We will repeat that pattern for 4 weeks. In our Community Groups we will use the Video based material “The Prayer Course” on Right Now Media. If you don’t have Right Now Media, you create an account for free through a link in our church newsletter every week. If you are not in a Community Group this is a good time to join one, even if it’s just for these 4 weeks. Jesus begins his teaching in the Lord’s Prayer with the phrase, “When you pray . . .” Jesus assumes all people will pray at some time and in some way. But do they pray as God intended for them to pray? Join us for this important series on prayer as we discover what it means to pray the way God intended us to pray.
What is the most significant event that has happened during your lifetime? You could look at it from just your personal experience but maybe try to think of something that has happened on a bigger scale that has affected many people, including you. For me that would be the events of 911 on September 11th, 2001. I knew the moment I saw the second plane hit the World Trade Center our world would never be the same; and I was correct. Throughout the course of human history there have been events, for the better or for the worse, that have changed the course of humanity. Time is the only way to know if the changes we are experiencing right now will be for the good or for the worse. However, there is one event that is tied to one person that stands out as the pivotal moment of all history. Easter and the resurrection of Jesus Christ is that event. The life of Jesus stands above every other life ever lived as the most important life. People the world over see this as the year 2026, which really means, “This is the year, In the Year of Our Lord, 2026.” The resurrection of Jesus is the most important and amazing event of all history: A person died and came back to life! If God can do that, God can do anything. Easter Changes Everything! Some of the major events of history will not have a direct effect on our lives at this time. But the resurrection of Jesus still affects people’s lives today. We may think our lives are inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, but that is not how God sees it. Through the resurrection of Jesus God offers us that same amazing gift of resurrection: life after death. That is an event that affects our lives here and now as well as in the future. Easter does change everything. Join me this Sunday as we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus and how that one event changes everything.
The last two weeks we have looked at a biblical identity of manhood. We know that identity has been tarnished from the sinfulness of humanity that began in Genesis 3. We also know men today are searching for meaning and purpose in the false male identities Satan offers them as easy and poor substitutes for the identity God has called them to, a biblical identity that will provide true meaning and purpose to their lives.
I Corinthians 16:13 challenges men with this statement: “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.” Act like men! What does that mean? The worship of female deities in ancient Corinth was a significant aspect of the city’s religious life, which was quite different from most Greco-Roman cities. One of the prominent goddesses was Aphrodite, the goddess of love, beauty, and fertility. Aphrodite was worshipped in various temples and shrines throughout Corinth, and the prominence of this female statue skewed the relationship between men and women. Like today, they tried to blur the genders, resulting in women seeking to be like men and men thinking they could be like women. As a result, men in turn shrunk to the shadows and everyone was hurting because of it. It is evident from even a casual reading of 1 Corinthians that this dynamic had penetrated the church, and Paul was writing to correct that problem. I suppose that, to address the issue, Paul could have cast a large blanket of blame on the government of the day or he could have rebuked the women, but he did not do that. Paul spoke directly to the men of the church to accept the responsibility God had given them by re-engaging the biblical male identity: “Act like men.”
Calling men to act like men does nothing to diminish the significance and purpose of women. But what it does is challenges men to re-engage in their biblical identity, with the unique responsibility God has given to them. When men act like biblical men they will be fulfilled in their purpose, women will blossom, children will be nurtured and society will be a blessing to all the citizens of the community. Join me this Sunday as we conclude this series on The Male Identity.
Earlier in my ministry when I pastored a church that wasn’t able to offer a children’s church like we do I included a children’s message during the worship service. I tried to take a biblical truth from my message that day and relate it to children by doing an object lesson. One I remember doing was on the security we have as God’s children. I would take a quarter and hold it in my hand tightly and challenge any of the kids to try to get the coin free from my hand. When a few of them would try and fail they could understand the scripture that says of our relationship with God “No one can pluck us from the father’s hand.” We all like good object lesson because they can bring abstract concepts down to reality. God likes using object lessons to amplify and illuminate spiritual truth. You may not have thought this before but our lives as Christians are to be an object lesson for the people around us and the angels in heaven. It’s safe to see that people and angels are watching us. One of the ways our lives are object lessons is through the created order of men and women and the way our relationships reflect that our origins are from God, reflecting His power, creativity and love. This Sunday we will take a dive into 1 Corinthians 11 and the headship principle. This passage and doctrine are often misunderstood and wrongly applied in Christendom. As we continue our search for the Male Identity, we will look at the object lesson of headship as it is taught in this passage and throughout the Bible. I invite you to come to church this Sunday, being willing to set aside whatever preconceived ideas you may have about this passage and doctrine. Then open your mind and heart to looking with me into scripture to see this amazing object lesson, then, by God’s grace look to be a living object lesson that reflects the creative order of God.
As a Baptist preacher, I not only have been trained to interpret and preach the Bible literally, but I also preach that way by conviction. When you teach the Bible to be literally true there are bound to be things that will run counter to the culture we live in. In the recent years of my ministry, I cannot think of anything else that has been a tougher issue to teach from scripture than the role of men in the church, society as a whole and in the family. To espouse that a man is the “head” of a home is not a popular notion in the mainstream of our culture. There has been a huge cultural shift since the end of WWII for the demotion of men as the “head” of the family unit and to neutralize the sexes so there is no difference between men and women. Society emasculates men, makes them the butt of jokes, or calls them toxic as though they are a poison in the rest of culture. Mature men struggle with finding a safe identity not to mention the struggle boys and teenagers are facing with a myriad of voices telling them a hundred things they should be and should not be.
As a Preacher of the Gospel, I have had a great concern about that trend for the effect it is having on men, but also on women and in society as a whole. Preachers are not the only ones to have this concern. Scott Galloway, a professor of marketing at NYU’s Stern School of Business in NYC, has recently written a # 1 NYT bestselling book titled “Notes on Being a Man”. The introduction to the book sets the tone of the book: “Boys and men are in crisis. Rarely has a cohort fallen further and faster than young men living in Western democracies. Boys are less likely to graduate from high school or college than girls. One in seven men reports having no friends, and men account for three of every four deaths of despair in America. Even worse, the lack of attention to these problems has created a vacuum filled by voices espousing misogyny, the demonization of others, and a toxic vision of masculinity. But this is not just a male issue: Women and children cannot flourish if men aren’t doing well. And as we know from spates of violence, there is nothing more dangerous than a lonely, broke young man.”
Scott Galloway is not a believer, but his book rings true with a biblical worldview about men and the need for the right kind of man in our society. Last year I was asked by a woman in our church if I would give some biblical teaching on the role of men and help answer some of the questions we face when we make a literal application of scripture to the role of men in the home, the church and in society. Starting this Sunday, I am doing a three-part sermon series titled “The MALE Identity”. The three messages are:
Men: Created to Serve and Care
Understanding Headship – it is not what you think.
The Dominion of Men
You likely have caught on by now that I am not a typical Southern Baptist Preacher so I can guarantee you I will not approach this like most SBC preachers do. Because I think the role of men in our homes, churches and society is crucial for the health of those entities, what I want to do is challenge our thinking about this topic and by the Spirit of God with the Word of God pray that we will have a biblical view of the male identity. I am excited and nervous at the same time to preach these messages. I am excited because scripture has the answers to address this crisis in our society. I am nervous because I’m guessing that while I never try to do this on purpose, these messages are likely to be offensive to some of you either because you’ll think I’m too hard or I’m too soft on the subject. What I hope to be is biblical and edifying to you my sheep who are so susceptible to the devices of this evil world we live in.
I don’t know about you, but I really do not like to wait. When I am driving in traffic, I’m usually assessing the traffic in front of me to see which lane will be the fastest getting through a stop light. I do the same thing at the grocery store checkout. If I am expecting an important delivery, I will check my doors several times before it comes. And we all know there are much more serious things people wait for; health results, the reconciliation of a relationship or for someone to genuinely say the words I love you. Waiting can often feel weighty. This Sunday is our One Church Service, and I am between sermon series, so I felt God direct me to share this message from Psalm 130 where the Psalmist says, “I wait for the LORD, my soul waits.” Have you ever been, or are you in a place where you feel you are waiting for the Lord to do something in your life? It does not take long for our waiting to feel weighty, making us feel spent. On the journey of faith, the concept of movement is implied. When on a journey you move from one place to another. Sue and I have done a fair bit of hiking throughout our lives, and I can tell you any hike will include times of movement and times of waiting before the destination is reached. If movement were all we did on a hike we would miss the chance for hydration, nutrition, communication with others and the opportunity to see the beauty of the environment we are hiking. Times of waiting are needed both in the physical realm and in the spiritual realm. Psalm 130 is an ascent Psalm the Israelites would sing on their way up to Jerusalem, from the depth of the valley to the heights of worshiping God. Join me this Sunday as this amazing text illuminates how The Weight of Waiting is something God wants to use in your journey of faith.
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