Unfinished Projects

Ladies, if a man says he will fix it, he will. There's no need to remind him every 6 months about it.If you’re like me, you have several unfinished projects around your house. Things you started awhile back, but just never got around to finishing.

At our house right now, the backdoor needs a new screen. I’ve bought the materials and torn out the old screen, just haven’t put the new screen in yet. I also need to weatherize the house a bit more. I started going around the house a while back to see where I needed to insulate it a little better, and I think I got to one or two areas, but I know of several more that I should work on. And I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever get around to finishing some of these things.

But aren’t you thankful that God will finish what He started?

Paul wrote in Philippians, “I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” God’s going to finish what He started in you. And God’s going to finish what He started in the world.

God’s mission will be fully accomplished.

From the sermon, “Mission: Fully Accomplished!”, delivered April 28, 2013.

Pastors are Pigs!

CIMG1816While on vacation last week with my family in Mexico, we were eating at a restaurant and I noticed several of the items on the menu were marked as “Pastor.” For example, one item was “Pastor Nachos” and another was “Pastor Tacos.” Needless to say, I was intrigued. What about these nachos and tacos distinguished them as being “Pastor”? I don’t speak much Spanish, but fortunately my wife and kids have been learning some Spanish over the last year or so. So I asked them, and I was surprised to learn that “Pastor” means “Pork.”

I thought this was hilarious! I’m a pastor, so I guess you could say I’m a pig! Pastors are pigs! I’m sure this would never actually get understood this way in translation, but I thought it was pretty funny anyway.

When I got home from vacation, I wondered why “pastor” meant something contained pork. In every language I’m familiar with, a pastor is a shepherd, not of pigs, but typically of sheep. So how did it refer to pork in the Spanish language?

It turns out that “pastor” used to refer to a Lebanese method of cooking lamb on a rotisserie. When Lebanese immigrants moved to Mexico, they and their neighbors adapted this recipe and used the kind of meat that was more readily available in their new home: pork. But since they were preparing the meat basically the same way, they kept calling it “pastor.”

What does all this have to do with ministry? I have no idea. But it does make me think about the compromises we sometimes make. Am I substituting something important for whatever’s easy or popular, and then trying to pass it off as the real deal? I think many pastors and churches even do this unintentionally, when they seek to attract people into the church using anything other than the gospel.

I’m not saying it’s wrong to call pork nachos “Pastor Nachos” even though they don’t contain lamb. I actually thought they tasted pretty good! But let’s not make the same move in life and ministry. Strive to be faithful to God, and never be satisfied with doing what’s easy.

Not everything is on the Internet.

I’ve been saying for years that you can find anything online. Any bit of information that you’ve been wondering about. Any opinion on just about any subject. Any fact to prove your point in an argument.

And it’s pretty much true. There are so many resources on the internet that it’s rightly the first place to research just about anything. But not everything is on the internet.

Just now I was reading through a paper that I wrote while in seminary. As I read it, I remembered how much fun I had while doing research for the paper. I had to really dig deep to find the most relevant sources. I had to find the most respected voices on the subject and just the right quotes from their works to use in my paper. I had to find people who agreed with my point of view and others who disagreed with me. And when I got to the end of the paper, I noticed that not one of the sources I cited was on the internet.

Now, I had no doubt used the internet to find some of the sources for my research paper. There’s no question about that. But my point is that there’s a wealth of information that can’t be found online that we’d be foolish to forget about.

I think our desire to do all our research online today isn’t because all the information is there, but rather because we’re often too lazy to dig deeper. It’s not hard to go to a library and find more authoritative sources, but often we’re just too lazy to do it.

And I think this is much like the reason we often become complacent in our faith. We know we should read the Bible for ourselves, dig deep to understand its meaning for us today, and practice what we read, but we’d rather just do what’s easy. We’d rather just turn on a radio preacher, or just go to church, or just read a verse in a devotional.

But God blesses us when we seek not to do what’s easy, but what’s good and wholesome. When we intentionally turn to His Word to learn from Him and grow in our faith. Because we might be able to grow a little just by going to church and hearing the Word there, but we will grow leaps and bounds when we give attention to what God would speak to us each day through the Bible.

What’s the Bible really all about?

There are a lot of misconceptions about the Bible. Most who are critical of the Bible argue against it treating it as something that it was never meant to be in the first place. They argue that it makes scientific mistakes. They argue that it’s not accurate historically. They argue that it’s not internally consistent.

But the Bible isn’t a science manual. And the Bible isn’t meant to be read like a typical history textbook. And it’s not a philosophical handbook in which arguments are always laid out in a certain way.

The Bible certainly says a lot about science, history, and philosophy, and when it speaks to such things, is accurate, but we can’t force the Bible into a mold of how it should speak to each of these things, because speaking to things isn’t it’s primary purpose.

But the Bible is also not primarily about morality. The Bible is not primarily about how we should and shouldn’t live. It’s not primarily a guide to how to do what’s right and therefore please God.

The Bible is primarily about what God did and does. It’s not about what we should do, it’s about what God has done. It’s not about what we need to do to please God, it’s about what God has done because we couldn’t please Him.

Another way to put this: the Bible isn’t about our works, it’s about God’s grace.

Daily Bible Devotions

I’m starting a thing on YouTube in which I will post a brief video devotional from the Bible every day.  I think there’s a need for this sort of thing.  There are millions of teenagers in the world who basically live online. This is where they hang out with friends, watch TV, get their news, buy stuff, sell stuff, get influenced, and influence others.

I’m not doing something extraordinarily new.  There are other video devotionals on YouTube already.  But they are few and far between, and there is certainly room for more.

I’m praying that through these video devotionals I’ll be able to encourage people all over the world to dig into God’s Word and grow in their relationship with Christ.

Check out the first one and maybe pass it along to a friend who could use some daily encouragement in the Word.