Beware of Kilogram Christianity

scalesI have found a way to lose over 50% of my body weight immediately.  I don’t have to eat a special diet or engage in grueling exercise.  I don’t have to take pills, spend $500 on extremely small portioned meals mailed directly to my home, or spend hours in front of my TV working out to the latest exercise DVD.

All I have to do to reduce my body weight by 50% immediately is to stop weighing myself in pounds and instead weigh myself in kilograms.  There are 2.2 pounds in a kilogram.   A 200 lbs man weighs 90.7 kg.  No, I haven’t lost my mind, I know that 90.7 kg = 200 lbs, and I know that my weight in kg = my weight in lbs. Changing the standard of measurement does not change the reality of the weight.

How many times, however, do we think we are so much leaner spiritually because we measure ourselves with the wrong standard, when the reality is that we are spiritually out of shape?  We look around and see that we act better than most folks around us and think we are in good shape.  The problem with that measurement is that others are not the standard by which we are to measure ourselves, God’s Word is.

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.  – 2 Timothy 3:16-17

The devil has won a tremendous battle in believers’ lives by keeping us from the Bible.  Do you treat worship as though it is optional and escape the penetrating preaching of the Word.  Do you neglect small group Bible study and avoid the tenacious teaching of the Word.  Do you rarely pick up your Bible lest you stumble upon some convicting truth that forces you to deal with your unhealthy spiritual condition?

We are in desperate spiritual condition because we have grown comfortable with the comparison of ourselves to others who are not as “spiritual” as we think we are, when an honest look into God’s Word will perform spiritual surgery even in the heart of the best among us.  We easily and loudly lament our culture’s abandonment of the Biblical principles upon which our founders established our country, yet we are reluctant to let the Word of Christ pierce into the inner chambers of our heart.

What are you doing to measure yourself by God’s standard? Do you regularly read, study, and meditate on the Bible? Do you let God’s truth, revealed in the Bible provide both the framework and fabric for your life? All other standards of measurement leave us sorely lacking.

Does God Grieve?

We’ve all experienced grief. Grief may be the deepest and most painful of all emotions. We grieve loss – the loss of a loved one, a relationship, our health, a job, a possession, or anything else held dearly in our heart. The pain of grief is far more intense than anything else we may feel physically, emotionally or spiritually.

We experience emotions because we are created in God’s image, and He is an emotional God. He feels – even grieves. We find one such emotion described in Ephesians 4:29-30:

Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

Imagine that: God feeling a pain as intense as grief. Sadly, He does, and it comes as the result of those of us who are His. Sadly believers and churches regularly grieve God because we run our mouths needlessly.  Let’s look at how we can avoid grieving God with our words.

First, be careful WHAT you say. We are too quick to exonerate ourselves because we do not use foul language, but that is not exactly what the verse means. The word “corrupting” does not speak necessarily to the content of our words, but rather to their effect. We grieve God when our words have a destructive, discouraging effect on others.

Second, be careful WHY you say what you say. Do we use words to “build up”? The English alphabet has 26 letters that combine to form, so far, over 1 million words in the English vocabulary. We have plenty of words to use, let’s be more intentional about using words that are building blocks rather than injurious stones.

Third, be careful WHEN you say what you say. In the list of things for which God has appointed appropriate times and season we find there is a time to speak and a time to keep silence (Ecclesiastes 3:7). Do I need to say this? Do I need to say it now, or would things be better if I kept my mouth shut? Sometimes we grieve God because we speak “out of turn.”

Finally, be careful HOW you say what you say. May our words always impart grace to those who hear. May our words soothe the hurting, encourage the down, challenge the complacent, and bless those otherwise feeling cursed.

So many times the Bible encourages us to bless the Lord. May our words never cause Him to grieve, but always bless Him. THINK before you speak.

T – is what I am saying TRUE

H – is what I am saying HELPFUL

I – is what I am saying INSPIRING

N – is what I am saying NECESSARY

K – is what I am saying KIND

To the Tired, Weary, and Fed Up

Have you ever wanted to give up? Sure you have; in fact, we all have and will from time to time. When we grow weary and we are ready to give up, we do well to remember the encouraging words of Paul in Galatians 6:7-10, 

Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.

This passage reveals three very important principles about sowing and reaping.  You reap WHAT you sow, you reap AFTER you sow, and you reap MORE THAN you sow. In this context, sowing refers to how we use our time and resources, and reaping refers to the results of our use of time and resources.

The “WHAT” refers to what we put into life.  The best way to insure a great harvest is to invest positively in the lives of others. We all have 86,400 seconds per day, and we must choose whether to spend them or invest them. That decision determines the outcome. The “MORE THAN” refers to what we get out of life.  Positively or negatively, we get back from life exponentially what we put into it.

Of the three principles, the second principle – you reap AFTER you sow – is often them most challenging.  This principle requires us to exercise patience.  No gardener plants a seed one day and expects a harvest the next day.  Results take time, and often that time is a “silent” time when nothing appears to be happening. It is during these silent times we are most tempted to give up.  We have given it our best shot, but seemingly, no results are forthcoming.

When the silence tempts you to give up, let me encourage you to hold on just a little while longer and to keep doing good, keep investing positively in the lives of others.  Every word of Scripture is true, including and especially the promise in verse 9 that assures us that we WILL receive a harvest for the good investments in life.  The promise comes with two caveats, however.

The harvest comes in “due season,” or literally “in its own appointed time.”  We may wish to experience the blessing sooner, but it will come at just the right time as determined by God. The second caveat is that we will receive the harvest if we do not give up.  The word translated give up, in first century secular usage, referred loosening the string on a bow, abandoning the hunt, giving up.  Don’t unstring your bow.  Hang in there.

What Do You Do When Your Dream Takes a Detour?

God planned an incredible work in and through Joseph, and communicated that plan to him at an early age. Lacking the maturity to handle the vision of such a glorious dream, Joseph shared it with anyone and everyone who would listen…and even a few who didn’t want to listen?

His brothers didn’t take too kindly to hearing Joseph boast of God’s plan to exalt him over his brothers and to make Joseph a ruler over even his own family. They took matters into their own hands, at first plotting to kill him, but eventually satisfied to sell him off as a common slave to a caravan headed for Egypt. They thought distance would derail Joseph’s dream, and it almost did.

Joseph began at his father’s house, the favored child of his father, and a future brimming with promise. He eventually ascended to second in command to the most powerful ruler of his time – the Egyptian Pharaoh. The road from daddy’s house to Pharaoh’s palace took some disappointing and odd twists and turns, but he eventually wound up in exactly the same position God had promised him.

Joseph probably never would have chosen to leave his father’s house. He would have been pleased to inherit Jacob’s extensive holdings and to take over for his father – one of the wealthiest men of his time. God’s plan for Joseph however was not to preside over a family business but to administer the most powerful empire of his time.

Consider this, however. Joseph could not have made it to Pharaoh’s palace without a pit, Potiphar’s house, and prison. God led Joseph through some really dark times before fulfilling His promise.

Things did not end at my previous church the way I would have chosen, but God necessarily allowed it to happen to prepare me for what is next. Without my present circumstances, I may not be as open to whatever God may choose to do with me next.

As for you, do not be quick to despise unexpected and unwelcome circumstances in your life. God may have you in your pit or your prison to prepare you for His version of your Pharaoh’s palace. Let God reveal Himself to you in your present circumstances. Let God prepare you for what He has in store next. Know that the “various trials” James writes about make us complete and ready for what God already has planned for us.

Letting Go and Pressing On

2015 promises to be a year of newness for the Duggan family. We do not yet know WHERE God will lead us, only that He WILL, and of that we are certain. As the New Year rolled in, my meditation was (and still is) on the truth of this verse:

Brothers, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead, I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus. – Philippians 3:13-14

I will not let my past – especially the immediate past – ruin the future.  I recently read a powerful quote from Andy Andrews, “Don’t let the last few moments affect the next few moments.” I can learn from my past, but I cannot live in my past.

So many times we allow our past – good and bad – to cripple us. We look back fondly at “the good ol’ days” and miss out on the new and fresh God wants to bring to our lives. We fail to recognize that everything has a season and every season has a reason (Ecclesiastes 3:1). While the past season may have brought us much joy, God has even greater glory to reveal in us as we grow in our walk with Him. I can learn from and give thanks for the good past, but I can’t stay there.

Sometimes we let our painful past obscure our view of the promising future we have in Christ. We hold the hurt, harbor the bitterness, and hang on to the offenses. We should rather give thanks for the difficult circumstances and people in our past, knowing the God uses them to refine us and develop our faith (James 1:2-4).

So as 2014 closes and 2015 dawns, I face the New Year with a thankful and expectant heart. I thank God for His sustaining grace that I have experienced over the last two months in ways I never knew were possible. I would not have experienced God in this way without the hurt.

I am putting the past in the past and I am pressing on. I am excited about what the coming year will hold. God has used the events of the latter part of 2014 to put my family and me in a position to go somewhere or do something that we might have never considered otherwise. Yes. 2015 is going to be a great year.

What about you? What do you need to release from 2014 so you can receive in 2015? How has God positioned you so that He can work in and through your life? Worthy consideration for all of us as we begin this year.

What Is Your Plan for a Better 2015?

A plan is a wonderful thing.  We plan events and trips.  Ball teams execute a game plan.  Builders meticulously follow a building plan.  If you want to lose weight, you follow a dietary plan and most likely an exercise plan.  We do not expect important things to happen by accident, so we develop and carry out what we believe to be an effective plan to reach our goals.  Why do we not apply the same fervor to our spiritual growth?  Why do we expect spiritual growth to happen by accident? The Bible definitely doesn’t.

Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness… – 1 Timothy 4:7

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. – Hebrews 5:12-14

“Train yourself.”  “Constant practice.”  These are not words that indicate something happening by accident.  Spiritual maturity takes place over time as a person intentionally seeks God in the pages of His Word, then faithfully practices the lessons learned.

What is your plan for Bible reading?  What verses are you planning to memorize? What topic are you planning to investigate?  What Bible character do you plan to analyze and whose example you plan to follow?

How much time do you plan to spend in prayer each day this week?  When will you pray?  Where?  How?

In what ways do you plan to stretch your faith and serve outside of your comfort zone this year?   What about a new ministry, mission trip or a service project?

How do you plan to grow in your financial stewardship?

If you want to grow, don’t expect it to happen automatically or accidentally.  Develop and follow a plan to grow.

Click here for some great Bible reading plans.

Reduce Your Stress in 2015

Medical science has tried to teach us for years about the connection between stress – especially the self-induced variety – and health. Those who seem to meddle in affairs of which they have no business often experience heart disease, blood pressure disorder, anxiety, gastrointestinal problems, and/or neurological complications. Go figure. Their minds will not allow their bodies to fully rest.

The Bible has this to say about reducing our stress level:

Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you. – 1 Thessalonians 4:11

Three very simple practices help reduce stress in our lives, or at least free us from concerns that are not ours to own. First, lead a quiet life. Paul is not referring to verbal quietness, but instead the absence of non-verbal “noise” in our lives. In today’s lingo we could paraphrase him by saying, “Chill Out!” Some people seem to thrive on strife; they look for it and if they cannot find it, they produce it. If your life is like mine, you have enough on your plate without taking on extra-curricular issues. I have a saying I try to use to help me not get my plate too full: “It’s not mine to own.”

A second helpful practice is to mind our own business. I am learning to divide things into three categories: (1) things I cannot control, (2) things I can control but shouldn’t, and (3) things I need to control. We do ourselves harm when we concern ourselves with things that God did not assign to us. Nosey. That’s what the old folks used to call it. I have observed that people who put their nose where it doesn’t belong usually go around with said nose out of joint quite a bit.

Then finally we can unburden ourselves when we work with our hands. A little contextual background is helpful here. In the first century Greek culture to which Paul wrote, only slaves did manual labor. Greeks considered it beneath their dignity to do “grunt” work and hired people to do it for them. Paul’s encouragement then was for folks to humble themselves and actively involve themselves in serving others. When we serve others rather than meddle in their business we gain a more healthy perspective on them . . . and ourselves.

One final note: Paul encourages us to “make it your ambition” to put these practices into play in our lives. Maybe this little reminder will help you:

“Don’t sweat the petty stuff . . . and don’t pet the sweaty stuff!”

Then? There? Them? – A Lesson in Christmas Abnormalties

Why then? The timing seemed odd, after all, since Augustus ruled most of the known world with an iron fist. Why did Mary and Joseph have to travel when she was pregnant? Couldn’t this have waited a few months?

Why there? Bethlehem…seriously? A Podunk town that no one outside of the “house and lineage” of David even knew existed. Wouldn’t a metropolitan area, a crossroads of culture like Jerusalem have been a much more appropriate and effective setting? And a manger? The King of Kings was coming to earth not in a palace but in a slobbery feed trough?

Why them? Joseph? He was a mere blue-collar, calloused carpenter. Why would God choose to use him in such a plan? And Mary? Such a young girl that no one would notice her, or even believe her story. Shepherds? The lowest of the low. Foul-mouthed. Dirty. Smelly. Ostracized. In many cases, criminal. They were the first to hear the good news?

If there is one truth demonstrated in the Christmas story, it is the sovereignty of God. He knew what He was doing, through whom He was doing, and where it was all taking place. In fact, in Galatians 4:4 Paul refers to God’s timing in bringing Jesus into the world as “the fullness of time.” When the chronology was just right, when earth’s clock hit the exactly perfect beat, with impeccable timing God acted with a perfect when, where, and whom.

Augustus thought he was in charged when he called for the tax registration, but God was using him to bring Mary and Joseph to the little town the prophet had indicated years before would bring forth the Messiah. Bethlehem was the perfect setting, a town too small to handle the large crowd who would come so that the Jesus would lay in a manger, making Him easily identifiable to short-witted shepherds who may not have found Him otherwise. Speaking of shepherds, can you think of a group who needed more to hear a message of hope than they? They were the perfect testimony to the redeeming work God was doing through His Son.

Yes, God was sovereignly at work in the when, where, and whom that first Christmas night. The Christmas story also reminds me that God is sovereignly at work in the whens, wheres, and whoms, of my life. I do not experience accidental circumstances, blind luck, or strange coincidences.

My life is part of a bigger story. God is working His plan for His creation. This is all HIS stage, I am just a small part and He will accomplish what He has begun in me. Friend, if things aren’t going the way you think they should in your life, remember that our all-wise, all-knowing, all-powerful God will never fail in His purposes. In the fullness of time for you, He will come through and make His glory known. Celebrate the Sovereign Lord this Christmas season.