A leader does not like clutter. He likes to know where and when things are for quick access and use. His favorite shape is the straight line, not the circle. He groans in meetings that do not move from premises to conclusions but rather go in irrelevant circles. When something must be done he sees a three-step plan for getting it done and lays it out. A leader sees the links between a board decision and its implementation. He sees ways to use time to the full and shapes his schedule to maximize his usefulness. He saves himself large blocks of time for his major productive activities. He uses little pieces of time lest they go to waste. (For example, what do you do while you are brushing your teeth? Could you set a magazine on the towel rack and read an article?) A leader takes time to plan his days and weeks and months and years. Even though it is God who ultimately directs the steps of the leader, he should plan his path. A leader is not a jellyfish that gets tossed around by the waves, nor is he an oyster that is immovable. The leader is the dolphin of the sea and can swim against the stream or with the stream as he plans.
We just bought an HD Video Camera for the church and started uploading our sermon videos to the internet. If you’re interested you can check out the video below or take a look at our channel on vimeo.
One of the last things that I did before leaving Mount Vernon was to visit one of the sweetest women that I have ever met with my good friend Caryl. We pulled up to her apartment, walked in and enjoyed talking to her about her many decades ministering at EBC, where her favorite plants were from, and what it was like to be diagnosed with caner. It was a very special afternoon.
As I drove back to the church I noticed a group of college girls running on the side of the road conditioning for some kind of sport and then it hit me. It wasn’t that long ago that this dear woman who I’d just visited was able to run and play with her own friends. It wasn’t that long ago that the entire world seemed to be full of possibilities for her and adventure waited around every corner. It wasn’t that long ago that cancer was the furthest thing from her mind and yet today, just a few short decades later it’s probably one of the only things on her mind.
I guess what I’m saying is that this experience was a powerful reminder that “life is short!” It won’t be long before I begin to slow down myself, and it probably won’t be very long after that when God will call me home. And in a few short years there will be very few people who even remember my name. The Psalmist talks about this in Psalm 90:12, “Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” The point is that we only get so many days and before we know it life has passed us by, so the question is how am I going to spend these few days that the Lord has given me? The best place to start is probably in asking yourself, “How am I going to spend today in light of how short my life really is?”
Martyn Lloyd-Jones once spoke with a group of medical students who complained that in the midst of their training and the ferocious work hours they really didn’t even have time to read the Bible and have their devotions and so on. He bristled and said, “I am a doctor. I have been where you are. You have time for what you want to do.” After a long pause he said, “I make only one exception: the mother of preschool-aged children does not have time and emotional resources.”
It is important to recognize, too, that there are stages of life where you really don’t have time to do much, and you shouldn’t feel guilty about it. Children will sap you. If you have three children under the age of six, forget serious reading unless you have the money for a nanny. When our youngest finally went off to kindergarten, we celebrated that day—I took my wife out for lunch. Only then could she get back into reading again. It’s the way life is. You have to be realistic.
One of the hard realities about Biblical Counseling is the realization that you cannot change someone. If a drunk is determined to drink, all of the talk in the world isn’t going to change the fact that he is going to go to the bar tonight and get drunk. The good news is that while I cannot change anyone, God can and he seems to use two primary means of doing so. 1) By using a faithful counselor to confront sin and encourage the process of change. 2) By using painful circumstances in life to bring a person to a sense of his need for personal change.
2 Chronicles 33:1-13 is an intriguing account of a king named Manasseh who sinned greatly against God and who God had to chasten in order to bring about repentance.
Verses 1-9 record the atrocities that Manasseh committed:
He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to the abominations of the nations…he burned his sons as an offering in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, and used fortune-telling and omens and sorcery, and dealt with mediums and with necromancers. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger…
Verse 10 records God’s first response to Manasseh’s rebellion, “The Lord spoke to Manasseh and to his people, but they paid no attention.” Since Manasseh refused to listen to God’s counsel verse 11 says, “Therefore the Lord brought upon them the commanders of the army of the king of Assyria, who captured Manasseh with hooks and bound him with chains of bronze and brought him to Babylon.” Finally, verse 12 records Manasseh’s repentance, “And when he was in distress, he entreated the favor of the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers…and God was moved by his entreaty…and brought him again to Jerusalem…Then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God.” It took the hooks and chains of Assyria to finally bring Manasseh to his senses and realize that the Lord is God.
The fact of the matter is that God is very jealous for His people and He will use any means necessary to bring his people to the place where they will listen to Him, even if that requires using hooks and chains to get our attention.
Here are interesting and tragic stats on internet pornography. I found the one about Utah’s online porn subscription rate to be especially interesting. Via: Online MBA
I’m convinced that one of the reasons God gives us family is to teach us that we are not nearly as sanctified as we think. As I recall, before I married my wife I was almost completely sanctified. Then God gave me this wonderful gift called marriage and I suddenly realized that I was not nearly as holy as I once thought myself to be. It’s one thing to be sanctified when everyone in your family agrees with you (because you’re a family of one), but once you add another person to the mix it’s another story. After a few years of marriage Amy and I kind of figured each other out and resumed our positions of nearly perfect sanctification (or so we thought), until God gave us children…and life has never been the same.
The other day I was at home trying to get some work done when Micah completely lost it. We’ve always had a hard time with Micah when it comes to eating, but it seems that lately things have been especially difficult. He threw himself on the ground in a fit of rage and tears over the prospect of having to eat a bite of pizza (we have pretty low expectations of Micah right now when it comes to food, but pizza is where I draw the line). As I surveyed the situation I was honestly enraged. I immediately took Micah up to his room, disciplined him and slammed the door while he sat and thought about what he had just done to us.
One of the things that parenting has shown me is that I had no idea that I could become so angry over such small things. It’s not that Micah didn’t need to be disciplined, because he certainly did. But there is a big difference between disciplining out of anger over what’s been done and disciplining out of love and concern for the well being of your child. A few minutes later I went back into Micah’s room, apologized for my sin and asked his forgiveness for my anger.
James1:19-20 says, “Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness that God requires.” At the heart of sinful anger is a demand to be right and a demand for other people to meet your standards of righteousness. That’s why James reminds us that “the anger of man does not produce the righteousness that God requires.” You see in the end it doesn’t matter if Micah lives up to my standards or not, what matters is that he lives up to God’s standards which have already been met in Christ who took upon Himself the just wrath of His Father for sin. My job in parenting is not to hold Micah accountable to my standards, but rather to point him to his need of a Savior who has already satisfied the Father’s standards of perfect righteousness and then to rest in that righteousness which comes by faith.
