Category Archives: Small Groups

Encouragement, Small Groups, Training

Matching Our Theology with Our Experience II

Last week we asked the question, “Do we match our theology to our life experience or do we match our life experience to our theology?“ Perhaps the answer is neither. If our theology is limited by our experience, we could literally leave God out of the equation. In other words, could not God do something for which we have no theology? Obviously the answer is yes. As pointed out last week, we have alternative options if we live by the belief that our experience must match our theology especially when our experiences disappoint us. For example, I am told from outside my body my blood looks blue in color due to visually observing blue veins. But, my blood in my body or outside my body is red and only red because hemoglobin is mainly made up of red blood cells and their literal color is red. If what I see or experience is the totality of what I believe, I will be missing a whole element of who God is and what He does. By this, I actually place God within my human framework, making Him just another human being. If I live by theology only and discount experiences, then I will never get to know the-outside-of-the-human-experience God and Savior.faith-and-reason

All of those heroes mentioned in Hebrews eleven acted by faith and yet did not see what God had promised (11:13). Further, the scriptures reveal that we live by faith; with a spirit of faith we believe and then speak; we fix our eyes on the unseen and, faith is hoping for what is going to happen even though we do not see it. Then we find this key in Hebrews two: “We do this (putting on faith and taking off that which slows or hinders faith) by keeping our eyes on Jesus, on whom our faith depends from start to finish.” (12:2 NLT) Faith never quits, never gives up and never gives in. Faith does not need experience to be reality. Faith is not hindered by theology because theology never saved or healed anyone. Faith keeps our eyes on Jesus from “start to finish.“ And faith is only found in the experience of encountering Jesus, the One who loves to confound the wise and, at times, act outside of our theology.

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Leadership, Prayer, Small Groups, Training

Matching Our Theology with Our Experience

Which is correct: Do we match our theology to our life experience or do we match our life experience to our theology? What do I mean? Let’s say you believe in miraculous healing.  As well, your theology backs up your belief in miraculous healing.  Then you go on to act upon that belief and theology by praying for the sick. You pray with all the gusto and faith you can possibly muster.  You do this repeatedly for a period of several years.  Over that same period no one is healed, not even a headache disappears miraculously.  You are left with disappointment after disappointment and not one single testimony of healing.  Now what do you do?

You have options. You can change your theology to one that says God no longer heals the sick.  You can get angry with God and declare He no longer hears your prayers and you refuse to be embarrassed by such prayers any longer. You can believe that you simply do not have the “gift of healing.”  Or you can back off, be discouraged and give up praying for those who need a miracle. In my lifetime, I have found myself somewhere within this list – mainly discouragement.  Today, because of the lack of experiencing miraculous healing, whole denominations are built on the belief that God no longer heals. It is how they justify their experience or lack thereof.  It’s dangerous to match your theology with your experience because God may have a different answer.  We’ll look at some of those answers next week.

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Encouragement, Leadership, Small Groups

Failure, the Pathway to Success

Thomas Watson, the founder of IBM once said, “The way to succeed is to double your failure rate.”  It is said that Thomas Edison worked on 10,000 different experiments to find the right filament for the light bulb.  He started in early 1878 and on October 21, 1879, almost two years later the first incandescent light bulb was born.  Edison understood that failure was the pathway to success. Edison believed that he needed to discover what did not work in order to get closer to what did work.  His theory believed in failure as a part of the process to success. For some reason we tend to see failure as a failing – I do not believe we should – mainly because I do not believe God does.  (Why do I believe this?  Because nowhere in His word did He hide the failures of His children.)

I like what Winston Churchill once said, “Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.”  And Solomon said it this way, “…for though a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again.”  (Proverbs 24:16a)  How does this apply to you and me as leaders today?  We can project ourselves as a leader, one who is the ideal.  Without always realizing it, we can become polished versions of the super Christian, the super pastor, or the super marketplace leader.  We then need to project always being happy, always being well-adjusted, always being in faith, always overcoming every temptation or failure.  We must feverishly protect our fragile esteem and our image of leader at all cost.  Whether trying it or not, owning up to it or not we are saying, “be perfect like me, have my faith – and if I am doing it, certainly I can expect you to.”  Take a deep breath and enjoy today along with the mistakes made by yourself and those around you.  Allow them to be lessons learned toward success.

 

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Encouragement, Small Groups, Training

The Law of Attribution II

Last week we gave a clear example of the law of attribution in someone’s life.  Did you think of any examples from your own life?  When we believe something to be stress producing, it will be.  I have been in many traffic jams and find it rather amusing as I look around at the different reactions among drivers.  One driver is visibly frustrated and on their phone, another on their GPS trying to find an alternative route, others are yelling at someone in the car or at no one and still another is just sitting there calmly reading a book.  What is the difference between the one yelling and the one reading?  It’s the same traffic jam.  No one is going anywhere and yet one is enjoying the moment and another is steaming with anger.  That which we attribute to be stress producing will be.

Is there an answer to this dilemma?  Romans 8:15 says, “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship.”  Jesus never feared the storm.  In fact, He even slept through one in the bottom of a boat.  I love Psalm 112:7 which says, “He will have no fear of bad news; his heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord.”  Why?  Verse eight tells us, “His heart is secure, he will have no fear…” We make the choice to be in fear, in anxiety or stress.  When we do so, we are saying that our issue is too big for God to handle or be concerned with.  And that thought, my friend, is full of pride.

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Encouragement, Marriage, Postmarital, Prayer, Premarital, Small Groups

The Most Intimate Thing a Couple Can Do

Is sexual intimacy the most intimate aspect of marriage?  Is sex the most intimate act between two human beings?  If the answer is “yes,” then social scientists are correct when they conclude that at our very core, we are primarily sexual beings.  But, Scripture tells us we are spirit, soul and body (I Thessalonians 5:23).  If we were just soul and body, I might be inclined to agree with social scientists.  God, however, in creating us in His image added the eternal part of us, the spirit.  Therefore, I would conclude that we are primarily spirit, having a soul (will, mind and emotions), all housed on this earth in our temporary vessel, the body.  If we are primarily spirit, then our first function, our most important function is to worship God.

What does all this have to do with sexual intimacy and marriage?  It is to conclude that sex is NOT the most intimate aspect of marriage.  What is then?  Seeking the face of God together.  Prayer between husband and wife, spirit to spirit, to Holy Spirit is the most intimate thing we can be involved in within the marriage covenant.  No wonder so many Christian couples do not pray together. For far too many, it’s way too intimate to fully disclose your heart, speak your deepest desires and blurt out your darkest brokenness.  The enemy knows that if we take a step of faith and enter into this closet of prayer intimacy with our life mate, nothing will stop us.  When two or three agree…  Agreement together in the Spirit is a place of unity, a place of oneness and that place, dear ones, is far more powerful than disagreement.

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Encouragement, Leadership, Small Groups, Training

God Has a Recession Proof Kingdom

Gravity is for real, no question, no argument.  I am always happy when my plane lands after a flight at 37,000 feet.  There is another fact that is just as real found in Galatians chapter six that says what we sow we reap.  It is as true as gravity.  In fact, that same scripture says that if we don’t believe this truth we “mock God.”  I’m pretty sure we do not want to be found doing that.  Recession makes one take a really close look at income and outgoing.  It calls for certain decisions of cut back for sure.  But does that mean we cut back in our tithe or our giving/sowing?  Only if we desire to stop reaping.  There is not a farmer on this earth that does not expect a crop from seed sown.  Should we expect any less as believers?

In my lifetime, I have discovered a direct connection between giving and sowing and my ability to trust God.  The more I trust Him, the more freedom I experience in giving.  And, the closer I come to the Source through trust, the greater the potential.  If you can be trusted with little, Luke 16: 10-12 says, then you can also be trusted with much more.  Be faithful with what God has given you to give away and watch as He then trusts you with more.  The problem comes in when we pull back, take our eyes off of His unseen world and prepare for the worst.  If we focus on fear and what we believe God hasn’t done, then we will live in discontent and thanklessness.  But, if we focus on what God has done and is doing, we will walk in contentment and thankfulness.  (Not sure who I first heard that from, but it is truth.)

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Encouragement, Leadership, Singles, Small Groups

God Knows Where You Live

God knows where you live.  Do you know how I know that?  He placed you there.  Look at Acts 17: 26 with me, “From one man he [God] made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.”  Not only does He know where you live, He chose the time within the course of all time when you should live.  Why did He do this?  “God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.”  (Acts 17:27)

Inescapable how God is after mankind to love and serve Him.  If God cares about where you live and when you exist on the earth, then He cares about all the details of your life.  He cares about where you work, who you marry, when you have children and what you name them.  He cares about your finances, what local church you attend and how you care for your neighbors.  He cares about what you think through the day, how much time you spend with Him in devotions and whether or not you obey the traffic laws.  And He cares about what you care about because He created you to live in these days, in the town, state and nation you reside in.  Fully and without compromise live for Him today…”For in him we live and move and have our being.”  (Acts 17: 28)

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Encouragement, Leadership, Small Groups

It Has Been An Interesting Year

It has been an interesting year with earthquakes, floods, early snow storms and extended power outages.  We have seen very little recovery in the USA economic situation and the same in most other nations of the world.  As the Berlin wall fell, we are seeing Middle Eastern long-term leaders fall and witnessing an unprecedented prophetic call to the Muslim world for salvation.  Twice the Lord’s return was predicted and twice faithful followers of this false prophet were left wondering, losing confidence in their leader.  We have weathered the “no hell” storm and the “universal salvation” debate.  It’s been a wild and unpredictable year.

But, you know what?  Jesus is still Lord and we are still saved, that we know for sure.  Perhaps you have weathered storms of your own.  Jesus is still Lord and you are still saved.  In fact, as you persevered, your faith was strengthened and your resolve was one of spiritual tenacity.  As you now look back over 2011, it is time to evaluate.  Where did you see direct answers to prayer?  What testimony do you carry in your heart due to God’s faithfulness?  Where did you struggle?  What seemed impossible to you at the time and how has God worked in you through this “impossibility?”  As you take a critical look backwards, what life lessons have you learned?  Can you now see why you had to go through certain challenging situations?  Do you realize a present benefit of perseverance and patience?  What scriptures carried you through the year?  What words spoken by God’s messengers became life-giving seeds of hope?  Hold these in your heart as you press forward.

Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.  And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.  (Matthew 24: 13, 14)

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Encouragement, Small Groups

Remember

I love God’s word and the many principles we can derive from it.  I could not live life without this book, the Bible.  It is an amazing, wonderful, up to date and, as well, revealing the future kind of book.  There is no other earthly volume like it.  To have the privilege and freedom to take time with this book on a daily basis is so life-giving and life-altering.  Such was the case from a passage I read recently.  It was actually, of all things, Levitical guidelines that were so striking to me and answered a long-term question concerning enabling the poor among us.

God told Israel that when they were harvesting a field and they “overlook a sheaf,” they were not to go back to harvest it.  When they beat the olives from their trees, they were told to not go back over the tree a second time.  They were to do the same with the grape harvest. Why?  God said to, “…leave what remains for the alien, the fatherless and the widow.”  (Deuteronomy 24: 19-22)  Again, why?  Was it a welfare program?  Weren’t they enabling the poor and needy to continue to be poor and needy?  Actually, quite the opposite was true.  It was done as a reminder that they were once slaves in Egypt.

Why help the immigrant, the fatherless or the widow in your community?  Don’t some of them choose not to work?  God desires to remind us that we were once a “slave” to foreign beliefs and systems.  We once walked in darkness, were also poor and needy (at least spiritually) and resided as foreigners outside God’s kingdom.  As the Lord calls us to serve someone or give money to help them, remember this verse so that we are reminded of where we came from.

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Encouragement, Leadership, Singles, Small Groups

True Success

Some years ago I wrote the words “True success” in my Bible beside Jeremiah 9: 23 & 24 which reads, “Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight, declares the Lord.”  Does God give us wisdom, strength and riches?  Yes He does, but He does not delight in them and neither does He desires us to boast in them.  What then does our heavenly Father “delight” in?

He delights in the one who knows and understands Him.  He delights in the one who knows that their Father is the One who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on the earth today.  Success is not found in a higher degree of education, in business or profession, in money, in the number of Facebook friends we have amassed or in how we perceive others perceive us.  Success is knowing and obeying God.  Mother Teresa once commented to the American press that she was never trying to be successful by this worlds standards, only obedient to her Savior’s call.  Powerful words from someone who impacted thousands; someone who was truly “successful.”

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