It's Your Time!

A few years ago, I hired a man to work for me who was from Africa. His family had brought him to the United States and he was in need of job skills. My small painting company was a great place for him to learn a trade. Frances was a pure joy to work with. He was happy every day. He would sing beautifully as he worked and often expressed his appreciation to me for giving him a job. He was fun and often told funny jokes. He was always ready for work on time. His attitude was perfect. However, I had to fire him.

Frances did not understand the value of time. One day he would paint 30 doors, the next day he would paint 2. After speaking to the family member who was his sponsor to the US, she told me that in Africa, time is of little value. She said, “people where he came from do not place a value on time. If something did not get done today, that’s ok, it can get done tomorrow.” Unfortunately, we in the US do not and cannot look at time this way. I knew how much Frances’s time was worth not only to him, but also to me. As his employer, I had to cause Frances to improve his time to show a profit or I would lose money on each job he did for me. Frances was unable to change his way of thinking regarding time and as a result I had to let him go.

The Bible itself begins with a reference of time, “In the beginning”. Time has always been important to God. A reading of the early chapters of Genesis shows God creating the world as sequential event. Christ Himself did not come to this world until His time was fulfilled and when it was time, he returned to glory. Time is important to God, and it should be important to His ministers.

Some people view time like Frances did. It simply did not matter. “Didn’t do it today? That’s ok, do it tomorrow.” The fact of the matter is, we only have one life. We are only allowed so many days, hours, minutes and seconds in this life. At some appointed second in time we will pass from this life.

100 Pounds Of Myrrh

"And after this Joseph of Arimathaea, being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, besought Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus: and Pilate gave him leave. He came therefore, and took the body of Jesus.

And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight.

Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury." (John 19:38- 40 KJV)

Upon His death, Nicodemus came to Jesus’ tomb and he and Joseph of Arimathaea, wound the body of Jesus with linen clothes and 100 pounds of myrrh and aloes. This amount of burial myrrh and aloes would have been an extreme amount even for a wealthy person. The usual custom was to use 20 pounds.

Think of this with me. If any of you have ever bailed hay on a farm, you know that a bail of hay weighs around 60-70 pounds. This bail being compacted and compressed into some sort of shape by a bailer. In Jesus’ day, there were no such machine. They would have had to carry this in a sack of sorts. Imagine the scene of Joseph carrying the roughly 175 pound body of Jesus and Nicodemus carrying the huge sack with 100 pounds of myrrh and aloes for the burial.

Putting myself into this text, I find two men who loved Jesus. Enough that they would risk their own life to see that the Lord would receive the very best burial they could give. So, Joseph donates his very expensive tomb and Nicodemos, not wanting anyone to smell the decomposing body of Jesus, brings 100 pounds of costly burial aloes. When people walked by the tomb, he wanted them to only notice the beautiful smell of the myrrh and not the rotting flesh of a dead God.

Making Changes Without Getting People Steamed

"The fiercest battles are seldom fought over theology. More often, they are fought over change; sometimes even the slightest change. Here's a process that can smooth the way for change."

Test the waters. The first thing to with a new idea is find out how people will react should the change take place. First, it lets you know if your dissatisfaction with the status quo is shared by others. Second, testing the waters will tell you what changes not to make. Finally, it lets you know what aspects of a proposed change will cause the most resistance and who the resisters are most likely to be.

Listen and respond to resisters. People who resist our ideas are sometimes labeled adversaries. We should prefer to see them as advisors. They can transform a good idea into a great idea!

4 Letters Every Pastor Should Remember

L. I. D. S.

Learn - The very first thing that a pastor or spiritual leader should know is that they must learn from the people around them; whether it be staff members, the congregation, or others.  We can learn valuable things from the children in the church all the way up to the assistant pastor. How well do you understand your people? Are you willing to learn from them? Successful leaders are constantly open to learning.   As leaders, we should always do this before pursuing any goal.  Otherwise,  we will only be hindering progress.  Always be a student.  Paul commanded Timothy in:

2 Timothy 2:15
"Study to shew thyself approved unto God..."

Innovate - Creativity should be promoted and never ignored.  In the Sunday School department, the youth department, church planning meetings, etc., we should encourage those department heads and staff members to be innovative. If their ideas are not what you would do, so what! Their idea may work better than yours. By using the ideas and the creativity of your entire leadership team, you will keep everyone involved and invested in your vision.  Don't be afraid of change.  Remember, one of the first things our God did was create.

Genesis 1:1
"In the beginning God created…"

Addicted To Anger?

Anyone can become angry.  That is easy.  But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose and in the right way, that is not easy. - Aristotle

Some of you will not appreciate us quoting from Aristotle, but you have to admit, the guy has a good point.  Anger can eat a person up.  Your true potential as a minister of God can be thwarted by un-harnessed anger.

People who explode and express anger easily can cause great harm to those they are called to encourage.  It’s important for us to understand anger and its potential to destroy.

Exploding because someone hurt you.  When most people get hurt they cry out.  This is natural.  But it is not healthy to express anger every time someone hurts your feelings. 

A good leader has the ability to harness his anger and even displace it toward healthy and more productive avenues.  Mistreating someone because they hurt you is not just.  It is bullying. 

It is entirely possible that the person who hurt you did it unintentionally and without malice.  You would be wise to forgive them quickly and swallow that anger before you create a fissure in a relationship that cannot be mended.

Being addicted to anger.  Some people love to be angry.  They enjoy the feeling of superiority they get when they have told someone off.   They actually look for opportunities to get after someone or give someone a hard time.  Certain hormones even create a strong physical sensation when they really get mad. 

These people are addicted to this hormone and the emotion of anger and have no place in church leadership.  It is important to be a person of peace.  If you find yourself constantly getting angry at others for little reasons, you might be addicted to anger.  Just like any other addict, you can actually build up a tolerance for this drug.  Once this happens, you will find it necessary to constantly become angrier in order to get the same euphoria.  This could end in a terrible way if you do not get deliverance from this addiction. 

Using anger to exploit.  Most people learn to exploit by anger at a very early age.  Babies learn quickly to cry out in anger when they are not getting what they want.  They will use anger tantrums to control their parents who simply want to appease them.

These same people grow up believing that they can use anger to get their way all the time.  On the job, they will use anger to cause others to cave into their demands.  These people may not stomp their feet in the workplace or church office, but you know when they are mad and they will use this to control others.

Thinking Big - For a Change

One definition of insanity is to believe that you can keep doing what you’ve been doing and get different results.  We want revival.  We want growth in our churches and we think that it is somehow going to miraculously happen by the methods and programs we have used unsuccessfully for the past 20 years.  We think that because we did have “some” growth using manmade antiquated methods, that we are definitely on the right track. 

Someone once said , “It takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.  If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that.”  I’m not so sure you have to run twice as fast to get somewhere else.  All you have to do is change the direction you are heading.  Many of us are “running as fast as we can and yet, we find ourselves stuck in the same place”.  Some of us are trying as hard as we can try.  We are working very very hard and yet at the end of the day, our efforts for the Kingdom are rewarded only minimally.  Why is that?

Peter and his co-workers had labored all night.  Using techniques and skills they had learned over a lifetime of working on fishing boats, they toiled fruitlessly in dangerous seas.    Their response to the Lord was, “We’ve caught nothing!”

Jesus who probably never spent a single day fishing on a boat tells them, “Cast your nets on the other side.”  Peter must have inwardly thought, “What does this carpenter know about fishing?”  “What can he tell me that I don’t already know?”  “I’ve been doing this all my life!” 

You know what happened. They caught a ton of fish, simply by changing the side of the boat they were casting their nets on.  Now you may also say, “Well, Jesus did a miracle for them”.  He may well have, however, notice that He did require them to do something they had never done before, to get the miracle.  Had Peter cast his net one more time from the same side of the boat he had been casting on, he would have again, pulled in empty nets.

Too many of us have worked all the night also and caught little or nothing.  We may brag that we’ve had a 10% or even 20% increase of growth to our church in the last year, but is that truthfully the kind of revival our Lord would want to give?  Considering the tens of thousands of people in your city, is 10% growth in our church really what He would want to give. 

The early Apostolics turned all of Asia upside-down in just 2 years.  What have we honestly accomplished in our city in the last 20 years?  Too many of us have only held onto the status quo.  While many churches have folded up (We don’t like to talk about these.) and others have barely grown at all.  

We call ourselves Apostolic.  We identify ourselves and our movement with the people of the book of acts.  We speak as if we have arrived at the same conclusions and understanding as those who turned Asia upside down in two years, but this preacher believes we have sadly fooled only ourselves. 

Let's be honest …  20 years ago, didn’t God give you a much greater vision than what you’ve realized.  Didn’t you step into this boat thinking, “I’m going to win my city!”.  “I’m going to have a great drought.”  “We’re going to have a great revival!”

Living on the Edge of Disaster.

Are you about to crash and burn because your personal life doesn't measure up to the expectations of the ministry? Here are three warning signals to watch for.

1. Anger. Anger usually results when we feel that we have lost control of a situation or circumstance. Many times we instinctively know that some area of our lives is out of control. That is when we become less tolerant of those around us.
Outward bursts of wrath are easy to detect. Another expression of anger is harder to recognize, but it needs to be viewed as a "red flag" of a troubled heart: sarcasm.

Anger turned inward often comes out in the form of sarcasm. This form of anger is veiled in humor and it may seem harmless, but it has a detectable "edge" to it. It subtly fires darts of hidden criticism.

In Ephesians 4:26-27 we read, "Be angry, and do not sin: do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil" (NKJV). This scripture is not giving us a license to entertain the emotion of anger. Rather, it is saying that we must deal with this damaging emotion before the day ends. If we don't, we will give place to Satan.

2. The Elijah Syndrome. A second symptom of spiritual bankruptcy is what I call the "Elijah Syndrome". We first see it demonstrated in the life of Elijah himself. The syndrome is displayed in the infamous church service described in I Kings 18:21-40.

But in I Kings 19:9, we see that in not time at all, Elijah went from basking in the blinding light of God's glory to cowering in the corner of a dark cave. He became imprisoned by despair. When we are facing any kind of difficulty, one of the most effective lies Satan feeds us is that no one can understand what we are going through. "No one else has it as bad as I do," we think.

As a result, we begin to cut ourselves off from those who can offer us wise counsel. We are then left to our own distorted reasonings and perceptions.

I Hate Being Head Beagle!

One Snoopy cartoon depicts the famous beagle of Charley Brown lying on the roof of his dog house and complaining that everyone is constantly demanding something from him.  He has so much more to do that he can possibly get accomplished.  In the final frame of the cartoon, Snoopy sighs, “I hate being head beagle!”

Being head beagle is not always as glamorous as it appears to be.  Amazingly, people struggle to become the top dog.  There is some kind of allure to the top position in any given profession and the ministry is no different.  An intoxication to be the one at the top of the ladder oftentimes blurs the true calling and divine purpose of too many people.

Few however, know the true cost of being the one with the title before his/her name.  At the same time, those who are the One at the Top, overestimate their own true value.  Any organization that only thrives because of the charisma of its sole leader is in trouble.   In the day that the person whom the whole organization is revolving around falls away or steps aside, that organization is going to struggle to find direction for its immediate and future direction.  Few churches/organizations who follow this pattern can survive completely with the loss of their fearless leader.

What If Everyone Tithed

The following was a excerpt from chapter 2 of the EBook intitled Where Your Treasure Is...

You can find out more about this incredible tool and related resources to help your church increase it's tithe and giving at http://www.pastoralhelps.com/training/where-your-treasure-is-teaching-set-edownload-w/cd

What are the possibilities if every Christian in America tithed ten percent of their increase to the Kingdom?

We can imagine those possibilities through a recent CNN article about tithing....

The churches of the U.S. last year received about $4 billion in donations. If the 112 million Americans who claim a religious affiliation had given one tenth— the traditional tithe—of their personal income to churches, that total could have topped $25 billion.

It takes money to advance the Kingdom of God in this world yet, according to this article, the average Christian in America gives only $35.71 to God’s work each year. And we wonder why America is straying so far from God.

Jesus said in...

Matthew 6:21 KJV

21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Notice this verse reads the opposite of the way we think. We think that wherever our heart is, our treasure will be also. Or whatever our passion is, that is what we will support.

That is not what Jesus said...and His ways are above our ways.

Jesus said that our heart is the follower, not the leader.

For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Our heart will follow our treasure...What a revelation!

This is what commitment is all about…