7holycrap Holy Crap, Life Lessons

Pastors & Ministry Leaders: A Few Keys To Help Guard Your Heart and Life

Pastor Caution Sign
I just read an article about the pastor of a large church here in Denver and the apparent revelation of an affair. News like this always rocks me and makes me very sad for the body of Christ. Below are some of my thoughts for people in full time ministry or who consider themselves a ministry leader, especially those who are married. My wife and I have been in ministry over twenty years and feel like I have a few observations that could help a pastor/leader who will be tempted by the devil on a regular basis.

You are not above a moral failure
First and foremost, when a person in leadership hears about another leader who has had some kind of moral failing, the first thing to do is pray for them and realize that NO ONE is above falling to temptation. When you realize that you are as vulnerable as anyone else in the world then you begin to put the elements below in place to keep your eyes focused on Jesus.

Firewalls
My dad is a mechanic so I have been around cars my whole life. If you didn’t know, there is a very important part of every car that could save your life if your engine ever caught fire. It is called the “firewall” and separates the engine compartment from the rest of the vehicle. It is made of reinforced metal and fire retardant material to help shield passengers from fire and is an INTENTIONAL element of every vehicle. I have multiple firewalls in my life including my best friend and my wife who are allowed to randomly ask me how I am doing in my mind and actions. Not just sexually, but in financial dealings and just to help me stay on track in life, especially being in television ministry. Now, I can always lie and tell them everything is fine when it may not be, but if I do that I am endangering myself with relationships in my life. That would basically be the equivalent of taking a hacksaw to the protective element of a car and opening myself up to danger. Something important to realize is that accountability is only as good as the desire to WANT to be held accountable. That “want” comes from value we put on our marriages, our ministry and ourselves.

If you are married, wear your wedding ring
One of the easiest ways to help deter advances from anyone, if you are married, is to wear your dang wedding ring. This is not a hard and fast rule, because people can be so unhappy or broken in life that they wouldn’t care if you were wearing your wedding tux or dress and carrying around a crystal framed picture of your spouse, they would still make a pass at you. Wearing your ring shows intentionality in your relationship to your spouse. If for nothing else, it can be a reminder to the vow you made when you are being tempted in some way. If you don’t like wearing rings then get a tattoo of one on your ring finger or get a gel ring or use a twisty tie. Now there are times where you will not have a ring on. For me it is when I go shooting, hiking or running. The point is that when you make an effort to wear your ring, you don’t know how that can help deter someone from making advances. Again, it is not fool proof but everything helps.

If you are married, have a great, honest sex life
I truly believe that one of the main issues that trip up married people in ministry is their sex life. You also notice that I didn’t just say “great” sex life but added the word “honest” as far as communication with your spouse. Men, you need to let your wife know that sex is important (if it is) and come up with an agreement on how much sex you will have. Women, you need to be honest with your husbands about your sexual needs as well and if either of you feel like you have a low sex drive or are losing the desire for sex. When you are honest about things like this, you are making sure that your sexual needs are met in the context of marriage and not leaving a door open for someone else to fulfill that need that was only and always meant to be enjoyed in the context of marriage. I know that for Yolanda and me, just being busy in life can be a main factor in disrupting a healthy sex life. The key is COMMUNICATION, COMMUNICATION, COMMUNICATION!

Be Careful about Movies/Entertainment you Watch
I am always astounded at the number of church/ministry leaders who go to movies (that can be easily checked online for content) that have nudity in them. You need to evaluate the desire for entertainment in your life and at what cost. Everything you watch, even on television, needs to be evaluated and screened as far as where it encourages your mind to go. I am not saying that watching a movie with nudity will keep you out of heaven but actually something just as bad. It can cause your mind to wander and be tempted to do something with someone that will tear down what you are called to do on this earth to help people see Jesus in and through you. Essentially, becoming a stumbling block to someone else and standing in the way of them developing a relationship with Jesus. We need to do everything we can to mitigate entertainment that causes us to have a wandering mind sexually. The world we live in is not getting better with sexual content in movies and television and actually getting worse. The choices we make about entertainment is not trying to prove that we are more spiritual than anyone else, but protecting the things we see and hear that fully shape who we are and how we act.

Again, none of these are magical rules for life but just common sense suggestions to help secure a healthy and happy marriage in ministry. Because ministry is about people and dealing with vulnerable moments for them, it is important that we live an INTENTIONAL life in the area or moral purity. Temptation will ALWAYS be around us as long as we walk this earth, but we always have a choice to prioritize our lives and decide what we are willing to protect on a daily basis.

I had some GREAT advice today from a friend about diffusing gossip with someone. When people bring you some juicy morsel of information you can stop that person and say, “Wow. You really care a lot about that person. Have you tried to call them yet and pray with them?” I thought that was a great way to keep in context why people are sharing information that can only be construed as destructive and not constructive.

Praying for you all and the great work you do to help people walk this life to reflect Jesus. Keep fighting the good fight and make sure that you value the right things in life and guard them with all your heart.

7holycrap God is Love, Holy Crap

The Shack; Helpful or Hurtful?

the-shack-main
The Shack. Probably one of the most polarizing Christian movies to come out in a long time. I have read many blogs and opinion pieces based on the movie and wanted to check it out for myself to see what the hubbub was about. The primary reason was because of opinions from people I respect and admire on both sides of the issue. I had to find out who was “right” and who was “wrong”…right? Haha (By the way, there are a lot of spoilers in here so you if you have not read the book or seen the movie, just skip to the last “summary”paragraph of the blog).

All kidding aside, I truly enjoyed the movie but could see how people who are against the movie could interpret what they wanted with it. This blog, and my opinion for that matter, is only from my worldview, what I have experienced in life and how the movie affected me in my journey with God.

I have never read the book so I had no point of reference for what I was going to see only the opinion of my wife, who had read it a long time ago, and a gentleman who lived in our town home complex who had suggested I read it. He came from a very poor understanding of God’s love and forgiveness and had been abused in the church by a priest and was very far and distant from God. When he had read the book he said that it helped him reconcile with God and even work towards forgiving the man who abused him. I thought that was amazing since my interaction with him was when I was going through my eye situation and he was someone that God had laid on my heart many times. When I saw the movie was coming out I instantly thought of him and his journey with God and all the ups and downs.

I want to say something VERY important before I get into a couple of points about the book and my opinion on what I saw. If you are a follower of Christ and have people who don’t have a relationship with Jesus yet around you (if you don’t, then go find some) and think that ANY single movie is going to cause people to turn to Jesus then you are wrong. When Christian’s think of movies like this as a DESTINATION and not a part of the JOURNEY with God then they will get into error. What I mean is that you cannot build theology on a movie like this and neither can you throw out all the wonderful references to God and his redemptive, patient and overwhelming love for his creation. We cannot be LAZY in our discipleship of people who don’t know Jesus yet or who are just starting a walk with him. Movies like this can be an amazing PART of helping people walk through pain in life. To help them forgive themselves from their past, forgive others who have hurt them and help people see that bad things will happen all through life with no respecter of person.

Of course, everyone needs to evaluate the movie for himself or herself and I respect people on both sides. I will say this though, for those of you who do not support the movie, I pray you are finding ways to talk to people about forgiveness of themselves or hurt from the church or from God and recovering from devastating life events. This movie is not the only vehicle for that kind of thing but we should always be looking for ways to bridge the gap to where people exist in their pain. The main vehicle for me is also my book and why I titled it “Holy Crap” and not “Eye of the Storm” for example. It was intentional and probably cost me a lot of money from publishers that loved the book but not the title. It was more important for me to be edgy with the title than to be known as a famous published author.

There are a lot of points I could bring up but I wanted to address a couple of the big ones that people have brought up.

God as a woman
There is a very important line in the movie where God basically says to Mac, “From what you have been through, I didn’t think that you needed to have a man/father in your life right now.” Mac had poisoned his abusive father when he was a child and had a VERY twisted thought of men in authority. For me, I did not take that as a dig at removing the “man” or “father” aspect of God as much as it was God meeting Mac where he was. I remember when I was in my darkest days and wanting to end it all because I didn’t see value in life. God met me where I was whether it was through people interacting with me, praying for me or just doing what they could to love on me. That is the God I saw exhibited in this movie. The other proof that it was not a feminizing of God was that after Mac sees his dead father in the movie and gets some healing/closure, God shows up as a man. Disputing the idea that the movie was only trying to remove the masculinity from God and a greater emphasis put on God meeting us at the point of our need.

Mac and God talking about God’s wrath and God’s comment about sin being its own punishment
When I heard this in the movie I had to think about what it meant to me. Some have said that it was only telling “half the story” of God and his relationship to man but I want to bring up something else to think about. God’s righteous anger at man is not based on his hate for us but for the things we would do in life to not accept his love. That is different than saying that God punishes because we are “being bad” in life. God’s anger is based on disappointment not on hate. I know this sounds like I am splitting hairs here, but I think it is important that people who don’t know Jesus yet in life understand that God doesn’t come from a place of “do this or else because I inherently hate you” but from a place of “do this because it will be good for you, I love you and it will keep you from hell.” Those are very different aspects of judgment and it is not the place for a movie to educate people on things like that but OUR responsibility to share with people we are or SHOULD BE discipling. There is also a line in the movie when God appears to Mac as a man and asks him to forgive the man who murdered his daughter. He essentially says that every evil action has a consequence. That doesn’t sound like a God that says, “It’s ok to just live how you want and I will forgive you and you are guaranteed to make it to heaven.” Again, my opinion, but I think it was an appropriate balance to the former comment about sin being it’s own punishment.

There were three other important elements in the move that were great and need to be highlighted.

Even when life seems like a mess, it still has beauty and a grand design
There is a point where Mac is ready to walk away from the Shack and the Holy Spirit connects with him and asks for his help in the garden. As he is walking into the garden he says, “this looks like a mess” because there are plants, flowers, vines and leaves all over the place. The Holy Spirit asks Mac to help remove an area of the garden that eventually will be the place that he finally has closure with his dead daughter. The Holy Spirit tells Mac, “The ground needs to be dug up so that other things can grow.” The illustration is that the garden represents Mac’s life. As the camera pulls away from the garden, which looked like a mess from the ground, it has perfect symmetry and intentional beauty from God’s perspective. How many times in life do we not see the perfect work that God is doing in us when our lives just look and feel like a mess. God is always creating beauty from EVERYTHING we go through whether it is digging up weeds or planting new greenery.

Discipleship is important and so is church
The character played by Tim McGraw plays a simple yet important role in the life of Mac in the movie. He is a friend from church who lives across the street and is invested in his life. He mentions that he has history with Mac’s family and he does a good job, as an example, of giving Mac space and being there when Mac is ready to respond. This is probably one of the best examples I have seen in a movie like this with people going through a painful season of life, and someone wanting to help but not overwhelming people with lots of “religious talk” when all they need is for someone to be there to walk with them. I thought this was powerful and reminded me of many times people who I know and love were there at just the right time to lend just the right amount of support, Spiritual or otherwise.

I also liked how the movie depicted church as not just a place where everyone is a hypocrite but just people dealing with all kinds of things under the surface and human. I was reminded again of the fact that without the church and the support of other believers that were praying for me through my pain I would not be on this earth to help people. There was a scene where Mac is an older man in church with his family and was not able to worship or sing any songs and was distracted by the turmoil inside. Then at the end of the movie you see him in church again worshipping with his family and enjoying his mental and emotional freedom he found. I loved the illustration that the church was as much a part of his healing as it was a place he felt fear because of his father.

That pain from the past leaves a mark in people’s life when it is not dealt with
This is probably the most important lesson of the movie for me that unresolved pain in life will always catch up with you no matter how well you try to hide it. In the movie, you see Mac being able to cover the pain of the his past with his family and the guilt of poisoning his abusive dad fairly well until tragedy strikes and his daughter is kidnapped and killed. It is so much like life and the things that people deal with; it takes everything for people to cover up the pain from past scars but when they reach a tipping point it all comes out and no one is left untouched by the hurt. If there is a lesson to learn from the movie it is that God WANTS to take that pain of past hurts away but we need to be willing to GIVE those things to him. There is a line in the movie where Jesus says that he doesn’t want robots but people willing to follow him. Such a great reminder for us all that our free will is a powerful gift that we give to those we follow.

So what did I think about the movie? I thought it was very entertaining and an important reminder of the love of God and how deep and wide it goes in EVERYONE’S life. When we think of the love of God it is not just restricted to followers of Christ but EVERYONE. For God so loved THE WORLD that he gave Jesus. It helped me think about forgiveness issues in my own life and making sure that I am not harboring bitterness at God or others. Also that God is operating from a place of wanting me to win and not waiting to punish me for my failures. He is still sad that my choices bring consequences but is cheering me on to greatness.

Did the movie make me want to read my Bible more? Yes. Did it help reinforce my feelings that God saved me from wanting to kill myself because of his love for me? Absolutely. Is the movie a good building block for your theology? No, and I don’t think ANY movie is for that matter. I really believe that this movie is going to help a lot of people through some very difficult issues and it is going to start some GREAT conversations about who God is in people’s lives. So believers need to be ready to minister to people who watch the movie and want more information. What those people need is not for someone to try and help them understand hell. Those people are already on their way there if they don’t know Jesus so why not use an opportunity like this movie to help steer someone towards God?

All just my opinion, but I am always thinking of how to go get the obscure lost person who doesn’t know up from slant about God and will probably go see a movie like this with or without my approval. I really believe that even the people who are boycotting the film love Jesus and want the best for those who don’t know God and want them to operate and not be led astray. I also think it is important that we realize movies like this can be great opportunities for people to talk about who God is in their life and maybe make necessary changes that will determine their destiny with Christ. I can tell you that no one will be asking me about who God is to them if they go see Deadpool 2 when it comes out. But just maybe The Shack will give me an opportunity to be a part of a changed destiny.

 

7holycrap Holy Crap, Life Lessons

The Power in Submission To God and His Will

Submission To God
This week I was thinking about the times I saw the most growth with God in my life and felt like I really learned important life lessons. There were all kinds of seasons and circumstances that surrounded times of growth for me but one thing was always constant with every single one of them and it was submission. Submitting of my will in accordance with God’s will or even leadership that I was under. Submission is, by definition, all about accepting and yielding to an opposing thought or position.

Let me give you an example of submission to leadership. I can remember when I first came on staff at Orchard Road with Pastor Sarah as my leader in the youth department. We were talking about her doing a review for me to help with my public speaking ability. I told her that I thought I was pretty good at public speaking and didn’t really need a review. She then asked me, “So you think how you speak now is as good as you will ever get?” I had to really evaluate what she was asking me, not realizing that she had her own experience earlier in life with an even higher profile pastor/leader who had asked her the exact same thing. I thought about it for a minute and decided that I wanted to get better as a public speaker and we began to do reviews for each other and it has become a very important element of my current role with television and helping people to excel at presenting to audiences. I am still not the best public speaker I know, but those moments of pushing have really helped shape me as a leader and speaker myself.

I shared that story to help illustrate my natural bend when it comes to correction and making changes in my life. I understand that growth, whatever area it is in, is important but it takes me having a revelation about it’s importance until I actually make a change.

Looking back now, I can see that my sickness with my eye brought a very important lesson to me about submitting to God’s will. Some people will read that comment and think that I considered what I went through in sickness with almost losing my eye as God’s will but it is MUCH bigger than that. I want to say something very important that you MUST get if and when pain hits in life. If we always think that God’s power in life is about keeping us OUT of painful situations instead of keeping us safe IN painful situations then we will be in a perpetual state of questioning based on outward circumstances instead of inward convictions.

Today, learn to submit QUICKLY to God and his will for your life. Reading the Bible is important as well as learning to just sit and LISTEN to what God is saying to you and not just TELLING him what you need. It will take you from a reactionary relationship with God to an inward conviction of power and strength that is stronger and will last longer than any painful season in this life we live on earth.

7holycrap Holy Crap

Don’t Be “Nearsighted” or “Farsighted” In Pain

glasses-blog

Below is a quick paragraph from my book, Holy Crap; Finding God’s Presence In Your Pain. You can click here for more information about how to pick up your own copy.

From Chapter 3: The Definition of C.R.A.P.
“We allow the devil victory in our lives when we let him keep us farsighted on the PAIN in life (making us think painful crap will never end) and nearsighted on the PLAN that God has for our lives (making us think God doesn’t have a plan to teach us something greater than the things we know at present).”

There were MANY times I thought that my pain, trouble and sickness would never end during the four years I was sick. Usually, the lowest times for me was when the doctor would have me try a new medication to pair with the prednisone I would be on and it would fail and I would have to be on up 120 mg doses of prednisone again. Those low points were coupled with a fact I had constructed in my mind that what I was going through could NOT be something beneficial for my development as a person and follower of Christ. These two firm impressions in life sent me on a downward spiral that affected my attitude, my focus in what I was going through and almost had me end my life.

I don’t say these things to make people feel bad for me or that what I dealt with was anything worse than anyone else but to bring up a very important point when dealing with any kind of pain; the determinations in your mind will direct your life.

1 Peter 5:8-9 says, “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings.” 

A couple of things to point out that can help us and give us direction about dealing with the devil in painful situations. The very first sentence references a “sober mind” and then a definition of what the devil is always trying to relentlessly do; devour. Notice that it does not say, “Don’t worry about the devil because he knows he is defeated and won’t mess with you and try to take you out when you follow Christ. It is actually the opposite with a warning about the state of mind we need to be in at all times.

A sober mind leads to the last verse mentioning the importance of knowing that you are not the only one dealing with pain! Pain is very selfish and can make us think that no one else can even begin to understand what is happening which links itself to thinking that even God doesn’t understand or care for us. Just the opposite is true in God’s love and plan for us.

There will always be pain in life but how we handle it will be primarily based on our trust and belief in God’s greater plan for us. I cannot say why pain and sickness happen in life, but I can say that what you learn from those situations will either make you a better person or break you down. When you have a relationship with Jesus, you have the advantage of leaning on Him in those times of struggle and walking through the valleys of life.

God wants us to have perfect emotional and Spiritual “vision” as we go through life and focus that is not contingent on our circumstances but firmly rooted in his purposes and plan for our lives.

Praying for you tonight and have a great rest of the week!