A Good Word

From D.A. Carson:

People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.

From an article posted here.

CCP Blog

It's hard to believe, but we leave for South Africa in a little more than 2 months!  You can follow the team on our blog at: crossculturalproject2011.blogspot.com.

A Feast For All Peoples: Mexico and Italy

Between our weekly dinner/prayer and planning for the summer to South Africa, I find myself having a greater concern for all that God is doing in the world.  In light of this, I wanted to share a video we watched at our CCP Retreat this weekend from the Joshua Project... Check it out!



So I've gotten a little behind on our dinner updates - life has been crazy lately.  Two weeks ago, Kelsey volunteered to make tacos for us and we prayed for Mexico!  Again, our meals tend to be merely inspired by particular countries and not truly authentic.  One thing that stuck out to me about Mexico is that over 50% of the population is under 20.  Isn't that crazy?!  And it is a largely unreached people group because there a few ministries targeting that age group.  We've also noticed that in the countries we have read about, the college campuses are not being reached.  Though we have a particular interest in that age group because of their stage and my job, it really is a strategic place for ministry.  They are the future leaders who will be the ones to affect change in their countries and they naturally move out from the college campus to the world.  It has been affirming to me to continue to minister to college students in the states with these hopes in mind.

Then this past week, Snickets (aka Nikki) made her specialty spaghetti for us as we learned about Italy.  I learned that it is a largely spiritually dead place, despite it's rich history.  Most church goers are cynical toward the church and non-church goers are opposed to the things of God.  There is even a large population of Satan-worshipers and much corruption caused by the mafia.  If I were to think of the most dark and dead spiritual nations, I would never have thought of Italy.  But it is.  Sometimes when I read about these places, I wonder what I am still doing here!  But then I remember there is much need here, too.

Cultivating Faithfulness

"Trust in the Lord and do good; Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness." -Psalm 37:3

This verse has kept coming back to me over the past few weeks, and I am starting to take a hint that the Lord wants me to learn what it means to cultivate faithfulness.  Other translations say: befriend faithfulness, feed on faithfulness, find safe pasture, feed securely.  And I wonder what in the world these things have to do with each other!  I have found myself turning these phrase over and over again in my head trying to grasp their fullness and depth.  Though I never seem to get there, I think I'm learning! 

It starts to make more sense to me when I look at the Hebrew (a language, by the way, that I know nothing about... but thanks to blueletterbible.org and my Key Word Study Bible I can get away with pretending like I do).  To cultivate here means to shepherd, tend to, pasture, graze, feed, to guard, to care for.  The word for faithfulness has to do with steadiness, firmness, security, certainty.  It only takes me an instant to notice that I am none of these things!  Ugh...  rather I am unsteady, unstable, and uncertain.  And overwhelmingly so these days.  But not long after that I realize that God is ALL of these things.  And my first thought when I make that statement about God is... "Amen!"  And it is a beautiful thing that I am prompted to say that word, because that is the very word that faithfulness in this verse is derived from.  When I say, "Amen!"  I am saying I confirm that, it is solid, it is steady, it is a trustworthy statement.

I remember the first day after my surgery and the nurse told me it was time to get up and take a walk down the hall.  I was shocked.  In my mind that was impossible.  My core muscles (aka: my abs), which provide the stability for every thing else, had been sliced open not 12 hours earlier.  YOU MUST BE CRAZY!  And yet they got me out of the bed and I walked with my mom on one side and my friend Ginnie on the other.  By all means I felt unsteady, unstable, and uncertain in my ability to walk.  But with the security of my mom and my friend on either side I did it.  And I felt safe.  In that moment my trust was in their ability and not in my own.

So here I am now in my spiritual life and my daily life attempting to cultivate - tend to, care for, give attention to, feed on - such dependence on God.  "The Lord's lovingkindness indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail.  They are new every morning;  Great is Your faithfulness. 'The Lord is my portion,' says my soul, 'Therefore I have hope in Him.'  The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the person who seeks Him.  It is good that He waits silently for the salvation of the Lord."  -Lamentations 3: 22-26

Here are some things that I hope will help me along with these things this year:
- One Year Bible Reading Plan:  I have attempted this multiple times (usually every January) and never get through it!  I hope this year will be the year!  A woman from my church told me about an app available for my iPhone that reads it aloud to me.
- Memory Moleskin:  I tried to memorize the book of Philippians last year and only got through the first chapter.  I'm trying again this year with the help of this system.  I made mine with a bigger notebook than the one this guy uses.
- Systematic Theology:  Oh yes, I am trying to tackle this book this year!  My thoughts so far?  It is way more accessible and relevant than I expected a book like this to be.  It's been awesome.

Sweet Comfort

We read this at church on Sunday morning, from the Heidelberg Catechism, and it warmed my soul:

What is your only comfort in life and in death?

That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.

He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven: in fact, all things must work together for my salvation.

Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.

Don't Waste Your Cancer

From John Piper:

I write this on the eve of prostate surgery. I believe in God’s power to heal—by miracle and by medicine. I believe it is right and good to pray for both kinds of healing. Cancer is not wasted when it is healed by God. He gets the glory and that is why cancer exists. So not to pray for healing may waste your cancer. But healing is not God’s plan for everyone. And there are many other ways to waste your cancer. I am praying for myself and for you that we will not waste this pain.

1. You will waste your cancer if you do not believe it is designed for you by God.

It will not do to say that God only uses our cancer but does not design it. What God permits, he permits for a reason. And that reason is his design. If God foresees molecular developments becoming cancer, he can stop it or not. If he does not, he has a purpose. Since he is infinitely wise, it is right to call this purpose a design. Satan is real and causes many pleasures and pains. But he is not ultimate. So when he strikes Job with boils (Job 2:7), Job attributes it ultimately to God (2:10) and the inspired writer agrees: “They . . . comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him” (Job 42:11). If you don’t believe your cancer is designed for you by God, you will waste it.

2. You will waste your cancer if you believe it is a curse and not a gift.

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13). “There is no enchantment against Jacob, no divination against Israel” (Numbers 23:23). “The Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly” (Psalm 84:11).

3. You will waste your cancer if you seek comfort from your odds rather than from God.

The design of God in your cancer is not to train you in the rationalistic, human calculation of odds. The world gets comfort from their odds. Not Christians. Some count their chariots (percentages of survival) and some count their horses (side effects of treatment), but we trust in the name of the Lord our God (Psalm 20:7). God’s design is clear from 2 Corinthians 1:9, “We felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.” The aim of God in your cancer (among a thousand other good things) is to knock props out from under our hearts so that we rely utterly on him.

4. You will waste your cancer if you refuse to think about death.

We will all die, if Jesus postpones his return. Not to think about what it will be like to leave this life and meet God is folly. Ecclesiastes 7:2 says, “It is better to go to the house of mourning [a funeral] than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart.” How can you lay it to heart if you won’t think about it? Psalm 90:12 says, “Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” Numbering your days means thinking about how few there are and that they will end. How will you get a heart of wisdom if you refuse to think about this? What a waste, if we do not think about death.

5. You will waste your cancer if you think that “beating” cancer means staying alive rather than cherishing Christ.

Satan’s and God’s designs in your cancer are not the same. Satan designs to destroy your love for Christ. God designs to deepen your love for Christ. Cancer does not win if you die. It wins if you fail to cherish Christ. God’s design is to wean you off the breast of the world and feast you on the sufficiency of Christ. It is meant to help you say and feel, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” And to know that therefore, “To live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 3:8; 1:21).

6. You will waste your cancer if you spend too much time reading about cancer and not enough time reading about God.

It is not wrong to know about cancer. Ignorance is not a virtue. But the lure to know more and more and the lack of zeal to know God more and more is symptomatic of unbelief. Cancer is meant to waken us to the reality of God. It is meant to put feeling and force behind the command, “Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord” (Hosea 6:3). It is meant to waken us to the truth of Daniel 11:32, “The people who know their God shall stand firm and take action.” It is meant to make unshakable, indestructible oak trees out of us: “His delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers” (Psalm 1:2). What a waste of cancer if we read day and night about cancer and not about God.

7. You will waste your cancer if you let it drive you into solitude instead of deepen your relationships with manifest affection.

When Epaphroditus brought the gifts to Paul sent by the Philippian church he became ill and almost died. Paul tells the Philippians, “He has been longing for you all and has been distressed because you heard that he was ill” (Philippians 2:26-27). What an amazing response! It does not say they were distressed that he was ill, but that he was distressed because they heard he was ill. That is the kind of heart God is aiming to create with cancer: a deeply affectionate, caring heart for people. Don’t waste your cancer by retreating into yourself.

8. You will waste your cancer if you grieve as those who have no hope.

Paul used this phrase in relation to those whose loved ones had died: “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). There is a grief at death. Even for the believer who dies, there is temporary loss—loss of body, and loss of loved ones here, and loss of earthly ministry. But the grief is different—it is permeated with hope. “We would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8). Don’t waste your cancer grieving as those who don’t have this hope.

9. You will waste your cancer if you treat sin as casually as before.

Are your besetting sins as attractive as they were before you had cancer? If so you are wasting your cancer. Cancer is designed to destroy the appetite for sin. Pride, greed, lust, hatred, unforgiveness, impatience, laziness, procrastination—all these are the adversaries that cancer is meant to attack. Don’t just think of battling against cancer. Also think of battling with cancer. All these things are worse enemies than cancer. Don’t waste the power of cancer to crush these foes. Let the presence of eternity make the sins of time look as futile as they really are. “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?” (Luke 9:25).

10. You will waste your cancer if you fail to use it as a means of witness to the truth and glory of Christ.

Christians are never anywhere by divine accident. There are reasons for why we wind up where we do. Consider what Jesus said about painful, unplanned circumstances: “They will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name’s sake. This will be your opportunity to bear witness” (Luke 21:12 -13). So it is with cancer. This will be an opportunity to bear witness. Christ is infinitely worthy. Here is a golden opportunity to show that he is worth more than life. Don’t waste it.

Remember you are not left alone. You will have the help you need. “My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19).

The Effort to Act

"If men will not act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of their effort is for all?" From A Message to Garcia

As I've been struggling to get things done in my personal life - the mundane things, returning emails, scheduling appointments, completing tasks, preparing for meetings, etc. - this quote has really challenged me in the importance of managing my life well. If I can't manage my own life, how will I possibly manage the things that affect the lives of others?

Free Theology Workbook

Theological Clarity and Application: Equipping Leaders in Biblical Doctrine
"With this resource, church leaders, pastors, small group leaders, bible study facilitators and student ministers can hopefully equip people in Biblical doctrine in an interactive manner. The twenty lessons correspond chapter by chapter to twenty basics beliefs every Christian should know summarized in Grudem’s Christian Beliefs."

Download for free at the Acts 29 website.

Leading Yourself

This is an article from TheResurgence that I worked through with my accountability partner this week. It helped us have a great conversation about what was going on in our lives. We added another area: My relationship with God... which included things like time in the Word, prayer, scripture memory, and daily surrender. You can find the original post at: http://theresurgence.com/leading-yourself.

Leaders Lead Themselves. Leaders should spend 50% of their time leading themselves. So suggests Dee Hock, author of Birth of the Chaordic Age. When most leaders think of leadership, they think of downwardly leading those for whom they’re responsible. But you really lead upwardly (with those to whom you are responsible), horizontally (with those who are your peers), and, perhaps most importantly, inwardly (you lead yourself). If I am not able to lead myself, how can I lead others? Leadership has a great deal to do with modeling. So what is involved with leading yourself?

When I began to consider self-leadership, my mind raced back to a verse I memorized long ago from Song of Solomon 1:6, which says: “…they made me the keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard I have not kept!” A modern rendering of that might be: “They made me responsible for taking care of what belongs to others, but I have not taken care of what belongs to me.” I have not done a good job of managing, stewarding, and leading myself, yet I am tasked with trying to lead others.

Self-Management. The two key passages on leadership in the New Testament (1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1) deal primarily with self-management or self-leadership as a prerequisite for leading others. Could it be that the reason so many leaders fail in upward, downward, or horizontal leadership is that they have not done a very good job of inward leading?

A Checklist For Self-Leading. Here are a few areas to consider that are consistent with 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 as you reflect on leading yourself.

1. My gifts. How am I doing at leading myself to know my gifts, stay within my limits, and develop those gifts to their highest, God-pleasing potential?
2. My character. How am I doing at leading myself to be a person of integrity who follows through on promises made and is a person that others can trust?
3. My purity. How am I doing at being careful of what my eyes see, my ears hear, and my mind thinks about? How are my relationships with members of the opposite sex? Do I have guidelines, safeguards, and appropriate and honest accountability?
4. My pride. How am I doing at keeping Christ at the center? Am I the hero of my own stories? Do the words I speak communicate an attitude of arrogance and superiority, or am I characterized by humility and teachability?
5. My pace. How am I doing at leading myself in the use of my time? Is my schedule writing checks my body can’t cash? Am I going at an unbalanced pace that is digging myself, and those whom I lead, an early grave? Do I have a biblical view of work and leisure, or am I a workaholic who gets a sense of self-worth based on my work?
6. My finances. How am I doing at leading myself in the money arena? Do I have healthy protection and checks and balances built-in regarding organizational funds that don’t belong to me? Are there healthy audits over all financial dealing with which I am associated? Do I resist the lusting and grabbing lifestyle of my culture, choosing instead to be content and satisfied with God’s provision? Or is my happiness at the door of the next purchase?
7. My anger. How am I doing at leading myself emotionally? Do I have a reputation for being a hothead and having a short fuse? Do I keep score regarding perceived slights, insults, and put-downs? Do resentment, bitterness, and lack of forgiveness characterize me? One survey I came across revealed that bitterness is the major cause of burnout for men between 38 and 50 years of age.

These are my key areas of “self-leadership.” What areas of self-leadership do you need to focus on?

Dave Kraft - Leadership Development Pastor at Mars Hill Church