Accelerate your life by following God’s priority plan

Priorities

Back in my years as a pastor I used to love introducing people to the content of John Maxwell. Even though we were a small church with not a big budget I bought a video series called Priorities to share at a leadership day. I find that it is easy in life to get off track in our priorities and miss out on all that is possible with God.

There is a story found in a small little book in the Old Testament that reminds us of this important lesson. Although Haggai is only two chapters it contains a powerful punch and could have been written to an audience today.

The story is pretty simple. The people of Israel had left captivity and gone to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple. But as can happen with any project that takes a while they got discouraged and stopped working on the temple. God sends a couple of prophets to get them back on track. Haggai asks them to think about their priorities.

His message went like this:  “Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins?  Now, therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways. You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes.” (1:4-6 ESV) He encouraged them to get back to work and that is what they did.

He gives three principles that I can use for my own life and you can use for yours.

  1. Take time to consider your priorities. It is easy in our world to get so busy that we don’t even take time to think about what is most important. We run with a frenzy pace that doesn’t allow for us to hear from God or even hear ourselves think. Haggai encourages them and us to take the time to think.
  2. Evaluate how things are working. Haggai points out that although they are working hard on things they are not getting the result they want because God’s work has gone down the list. This is not about guilt this is about being effective. When we put God’s plan first He helps us with our work.
  3. Make the adjustments that need to be made. This story has a great ending because they actually made the change that needed to be made. It is one thing to take time and think about having the right priorities and to evaluate what is working and what is not, but it is another thing to actually do something about it. They did something about it. Will you and I?

This is not the most complicated thought but it is important to remind ourselves what is important. It is easy for drift to happen in our priorities if we are not careful. Jesus put it this way: “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” Matthew 6:33

Encouragement for my faith that I got from a kids book.

prince

My wife, daughter and I were at one of our daughter’s 5th grade conferences for school and the teacher told us about this 40 book challenge that they would be doing for the rest of the school year. The challenge was to read a certain amount from different genres to help expand the student’s reading. In order to have fun with our only daughter my wife and I decided to do the challenge as well.

This is going to be interesting for me since I so rarely read any fiction. I got a recommendation of an audio book that I am now in the middle of listening. The premise of the book is about a medieval regent who takes some orphan boys and attempts to teach them to act like a missing prince in order to steal the throne. I haven’t finished the book yet but it got me thinking about a challenge they had. It was hard for them to act like a prince when they were orphans in their mind.

This reminded me of one of my favorite verses. 1 John 3:1 –See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. (ESV) Thinking about this story there is an important truth for us: we are not pretending to be children of God if we have given ourselves to Jesus. We really are children of God. This truth has some powerful impacts for us.

We don’t have to live bound by sin.

It is too easy to get in the mindset of orphans and feel like our identity is to be captive to wherever sin holds us back. One of the big lies of our day the devil is using is by questioning people’s identity. It is also true that Christians fall to the lies of identity as well. “Well that is a sin I am just not able to overcome.” “That is just the way that I have always been.” As a follower of Jesus that no longer needs to be your identity because you are a child of God.

We are free to love.

After John challenges them to leave their sin because of who they are he also reminds them of the command to love each other.  He even challenges them to be loving with their material possessions. Expressing your love to others in actions and truth comes as we understand that we are children of God and orphans no longer.

Remain in your source of power.

These two things can feel challenging. But there is hope. For David in the Old Testament he was anointed king but had years before he was seated on the throne. He still acted kingly because he remembered his anointing. In 1 John 2:27 he reminds his readers of the anointing that Jesus gave us (the power of the Holy Spirit.) If we are to truly live in freedom from sin and in the power of love we are encouraged to remain in that anointing.

Will you live today as a child of God and not as an orphan any longer?

Not Just For Super Christians “Kickstarter” Style Event

Spiderman

I am excited because in the next few months we will be launching my third book-Not Just For Super Christians: A 30 day adventure with Jesus. It is designed to help people take their faith to a whole new level in 30 days with a very practical plan. We believe this also has the potential to help whole churches as they work through this book together.

As I travel around to churches of all shapes and sizes to many people are too intimidated to live out their faith and so they do not do simple things that all of us can do. This book was written from my heart to help people know the exhilaration of saying “yes” to following Jesus like never before.

What would it be like if individuals felt a new level of confidence to live out their faith in practical ways? How exiting could it be to have a church experience heart pounding adventure as they take a jump together into all that God has for them?

This book is not designed to be a run of the mill devotional but as an interactive experience to change your life. And yes, we have a time machine!

In order for us to get this book out into the world to make a difference in lives I wanted to launch a “kickstarter” style event. This will help us get copies of books into the hands of key leaders among other parts of our strategic plan. To make this a fun we have created levels and different “thank you”s to go with them. What level will you do?

Iron Man Level: $25 donation. At this level I will mail you an autographed copy of the book when it is released. Fly to this level (*)

Spiderman Level: $50 donation. At this level I will mail you autographed copies of each of my first three books the the newest one is released. Swing up to this level (*)

Batman Level: $250 donation. At this level you get everything in the Spiderman level plus a thank you on social media. (This would be a great way for a company to get in front of our 200,000 in social media.) To the Batmobile to help

Superman Level: $500 donation. At this level you get everything in the Batman level and a thank you in the credits of the book. Up up and away

Thanks for being a part of this fun event.

(*) Please considering adding $10 for postage if you live outside the United States. Thanks

What is behind door number 2? An invitation to a whole new world.

Door

Are you looking for a new door to be opened for you? We use the ideas of doors to help us think about possibilities. Maybe you trying to encourage a friend to take a chance on a new job so you say, “You never know what will be behind that door!” There can be an excitement of what is next as we go through the “door” for the next season of our life.

The Bible puts together two pictures of doors that have even greater potential. To set this up, think about one of the modern expressions of the digital doorway: the phone number. Although my daughter doesn’t have her own phone yet we keep our home phone for now so that she has a phone to use. In the last few weeks there has been a lot of talk among her friends about phone numbers. She even had a short conversation on the phone with one of them.

Even as an adult when we meet new people we make choices about allowing them into our world. Is the door open or closed for further relationship? I was at a conference in Florida and at the end there are conversations about connecting whether on social media or elsewhere.

The book of Revelation has two doors that together provide amazing connection. Although I have taught on both of these doors separately it wasn’t till this morning that I saw the connection between them.

The first is in Jesus’ letter to the church in Laodicea where he says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” (3:20) This is often used about people who are not Christians, but the actual context is a letter to the church. Jesus would like us to invite Him into our world so that we can build the relationship.

The other picture of a door comes in chapter 4. It is one of my favorite passages to speak on because it gives us a glimpse into heaven right now. We get this amazing visual of the center of the universe. But what I missed was the connection between the two.

Jesus talking about our door is in the last few verses of chapter 3. Chapter 4 starts out this way, “After this I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven!” (4:1) It is mind-blowing to think that Jesus would like to spend time in our world and gives us His contact information as well.

But as we are reminded by the church in Laodicea we get a choice of how we will respond to this invitation. It is one thing for my daughter to have her friend’s phone number, but it is another thing for her to use it. Jesus would like to have friendship with us, but will we open the door to that experience? This is not to give you guilt but to encourage you with this amazing opportunity.

A command to joy

Joy

Sometimes the word of God is so practical. As I am writing this I am about to have a few days of vacation. Over the years I have not been the best at relaxing. It is a discipline that I am learning to get better at recently. There is a time and place for things and relaxing and enjoying is part of our journey with God.

The story of Nehemiah’s command to the people of Israel in chapter 8 of his book might be a little surprising to you. The people have gathered and are listening to the teaching of God’s word. They began to be grieved as they hear what is being taught.

But Nehemiah gives them this command: “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”(Verse 10)

When was the last time you came to the end of church and the pastor told you, “Go and enjoy choice food.” But I am learning that there is a time for enjoyment. Actually we experience joy because God is joyful. Nehemiah is showing them that in experiencing the joy of the Lord they find strength.

This is a theme of the Bible elsewhere as well. Paul encourages people to “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again rejoice.” (Philippians 4:4) Elsewhere Paul makes it even simpler, “Always be joyful.” (1 Thessalonians 5:16) I am not sure it can be plainer than that.

The Westminister Shorter Catachism says that man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Now this is not some sort of denial of sad emotions. Jesus even says that, “blessed are those who mourn.” (Matthew 5:4) For me personally and I believe for many in the church today it is an invitation to experience the full range of emotions that God has made us with when we were created.

I am still learning about the practice of this for me but some thoughts to get you started.

  1. Ask God for more joy. Joy is a fruit of the Spirit. We are told that we can ask for more of the Spirit. Ask God to guide you into the full range of emotion that God has given.
  2. Take yourself less serious. There are serious things in life and not serious things in life. I am learning that knowing the difference is a power path to joy.
  3. Laugh. I recently read the Humor of Christ. Although I don’t know that I agree with everything in the book, I love the premise that we miss something of the teaching of Jesus if we don’t realize his humor. Richard Foster says something like, “Holy people are funny people.”
  4. Smile!