So Hudson is playing soccer for the second year in a row. It looks like this year is going to be a lot more exciting than the last. The games are twice as long. There are twice as many kids on the field. And they are still crazy enough to run each other over.

Psalm 29 “The Voice of the Lord”

I have not meditated on this passage since I was in Bible College. I remember that the last time I loved this passage was when I so desperately wanted to marry Melinda, but she had not heard God’s voice, leading her in this direction. We were stuck. I thought God had spoken to me; saying that she was going to be my wife. We had a close friendship and some romantic feelings towards one another. But she did not feel like God had given her a green light. God had not yet spoken to her about marrying me.

And so I was stuck; crying out to God that he would speak.

Eight years later we are married with three kids. God did speak. In the perfect time he spoke directly into Melinda’s life showing her His will. It was powerful. It was clear. It was just like the Psalmist says “God’s voice is powerful.”

And so here I am again, reading through Psalm 29, looking at the analogies to God’s voice.

He says that God’s voice breaks the cedars of Lebenon. To the Hebrew mind, the cedars were an excellent picture of strength. To our modern mind it would be the equivalent to steal or cement. The cedar trees were so strong that they were imported from Lebenon to be used in the construction of the Temple and the palace.

And yet God’s voice was strong enough to break a cedar tree. It reminds me of the Karate demonstrations I have seen in the past. Men chop through cement blocks with their hands. They pound a nail through wood with their fist. It is a display of human strength.

But God says, look at my strength. I can break a cedar tree with my voice. I have never seen a Karate demonstration where a guy broke the block with his voice. But God can do it. God can split a tree with his voice. But how useful is that. How useful is a cedar split in two?

The focus of the passage is not on broken cedar trees. No, the focus is on the ability of God’s voice. We may not need split cedars, but we do need God’s power.

I’m thinking of my kids character (or lack there of). I need God’s powerful voice to effect change in their hearts. I’m thinking of the Fall Bible College semester and the incredible neediness of the school. We need God’s voice to effect students lives and provide solutions for our lack. I’m thinking of the island of Kauai and the people walking down here by the beach. We need God’s powerful voice to work in an awesome way across the island.

In closing I am reminded of Jesus voice. He was able to “say the word” and powerful things took place. He healed people, calmed the storm, cast out demons just with His voice. He is the God who speaks. He has amazing power in just his voice.

Lord, speak into the world around me. I want to witness the powerful effects of your voice.

This last weekend we were incredibly blessed with a mini vacation in a condo on the South Shore of Kauai. We were in the town of Poipu which is about 40 minutes from our house. This is a dryer side of the island and usually where most people from the East Side retreat to when they need sun. We were blessed with amazing weather the entire time.

Here are a few pictures from our time in Poipu:

Backstage: Francis Chan from SBC Greater Things 2010 on Vimeo.

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As a pastor who leads others in worship through song and teaching, there is an overwhelming temptation to value what happens in public over what happens in private. It’s so easy to value public gifts over private faithfulness, and what happens on a stage more than what goes on in your closest relationships. This is true in many areas, but one of the most troubling is the neglect of fathers in leading their families in regular times of family worship.

Your Family: Your First Ministry

Before anyone can qualify to lead others through preaching, teaching, or song, they have to first be able to lead their family. This responsibility falls first and foremost on fathers, who are charged by God to bring their children “up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4). This is one of the foundational qualifications for leadership, “for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church?” (1 Tim. 3:4–5) We are called to diligently teach our children both as a lifestyle and in specific times as we gather (Deut. 6:6–7).

The sad truth is that for many Christians, leaders or otherwise, this foundational time of fellowship and instruction simply never happens.

I was deeply convicted of my inadequacy in this area when I heard Don Whitney lecture from his excellent book Family Worship a few years ago. I was on autopilot with my family. My schedule was full and I felt very important to be so busy. I got up every day, went right into work mode, and returned every evening tired, spent, and looking to turn my brain off. I had everything backwards as I neglected my first and most important congregation—my family. I had no idea the opportunity I was missing; an opportunity to speak into my daughters’ young lives—not to mention the unequaled joy of seeing my kids grow in faith in Jesus.

There is nothing like walking in on my oldest daughter journaling her thoughts on the scripture we just read, or my youngest stating a profound observation when she appeared to only be dreaming of “My Little Ponies”—and I was missing it.

Lead Your Family

Leaders, make no mistake: if you neglect to lead your family in regular family worship, you have disqualified yourself to lead anyone else! If that is you, like it was me a few years ago, don’t throw in the towel. We serve a God of grace and new life. Repent of your neglect and start something new in your family today. Don’t wait! It’s not as hard as you might imagine, and even when it is hard, you are cultivating soil that will produce a harvest.

In my next post I will give you some practical ideas to get started.

One great resource to help you lead your family in worship is the music of The Rizers, the latest Re:Sound release. The Rizers have created an album of fun, original music that helps kids memorize Scripture. Check out the Rizers here.

The Rizers

A band that sings Scripture verses in the form of upbeat, kid-friendly music. Check out The Rizers.

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From the recent sermon John the Baptizer, Part 2.

Let me explain to you what repentance is and is not. For some of you, this will be completely new, you’ve never heard this. For others of you, this will be information that you’ve got bits and pieces of throughout the course of your life. For some of you, this will be revisiting things that I’ve taught you before, but maybe you still need to do. And for the rest of you, maybe you do know and practice repentance, and this will help clarify your ability to counsel others. I want you to pay attention, this is really important stuff. If you don’t know what to do with sin, you’ll ruin your life, and destroy anyone who is connected to you. It’s that big of a deal.

1. Religious Repentance

So, true repentance is not religious repentance. Religious repentance is this: “I see your sin, not my own. I confess your sin, not my own. I’m really unhappy with your sin, but I’m not really troubled by my own.” It’s because religious people tend to think that they are self-righteous, and pious, and holy, and better than everyone else. The result is that they think they are good, and everyone else is bad. And religious people like to busybody, and gossip, and neatnik, and nitpick, and just be a perennial pain in the Levi’s. That’s what religious people do. And the way this works is they’re always glad to talk about all the things you’ve done wrong, but they never say things like, “It was my fault. I’m sorry. I was wrong.” Some of you are married to that person; I apologize.

Jesus gives a story of two people going into the temple, the Old Testament equivalent of the church, and one prays with haughty eyes and head held high, full of pride. “God, thank you that I’m not like other men. Thank you that I’m better than they are. Thank you that I don’t do all these horrible things.” He’s confessing someone else’s sin.

A second man in the story goes in, and he’s not filled with pride, he’s filled with grief. And he looks to the ground. He can’t even raise his eyes, and he simply declares, “God, have mercy on me. I’m a sinner.” He’s dealing with his own sin, not anyone else’s sin. He’s filled with humility and not pride. And Jesus says, “I tell you the truth, this man, and not the other, left justified, declared righteous in the sight of God.” Religious people are notorious for overlooking their own sin, and talking about everyone else’s, sometimes couching it in the form of a prayer request, so that it looks particularly holy when it’s not.

2. Pagan Repentance

Real repentance is not pagan repentance, and I tell you these false forms because there are many counterfeits of repentance. One of the aspects that distinguishes paganism from Christianity is the Bible says that God is good, and we don’t need to make God be good. He just is.

Paganism assumes that God isn’t good, and we have to manipulate God, as if we could, to make God be good. And so paganism and pagan repentance is, “So if I tell God I’m sorry, then he has to do something for me.” Examples would be, “I know I shouldn’t be dating this person, but if I tell God I’m sorry, then he’s obligated to save them, and make it all better. I know that I’ve done a bad thing, but if I tell God I’m sorry, then he’s obligated to cover for me, and not let my sin get caught and found out. If I tell God I’m sorry, then he has to heal me. If I tell God I’m sorry, then he has to bless me. If I tell God I’m sorry, then he has to prosper me.” God is sovereign, and free, and good. God cannot be manipulated, and God is not obligated to anyone.

3. Worldly Sorrow

Additionally, true repentance is not worldly sorrow. Paul tells this to the Corinthians. He says, “I perceive that you have worldly sorrow,” or some of your translations will say, “worldly grief,” and that is because non-Christians can feel bad. I talked to a guy not long ago. He said, “I feel bad. Why is that?” Answer: you’re bad. You feel bad because you’re bad.

Now it all makes sense, doesn’t it? Don’t need to dig for some deep psychological investigation. You feel bad because you’re bad. God gave you a conscience. We’re his image bearers. It’s a moral rudder. We can grieve, quench, and resist the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit works through our conscience, as Jesus promised he would, to convict us of sin. We also know of our sin from the Bible, and Bible teaching, and godly friends.

And what happens in worldly sorrow, or grief, is we feel bad, but we don’t change. You just feel bad. And what can even happen in culture is that we set up this false religion, with false prophets, and pastors, and priests, and priestesses, and what happens then is we present a false gospel.

Not to pick on him, but to pick on him, I’ll give you an example from Tiger Woods. What happened in the Tiger Woods scenario is something that happens fairly frequently. First of all, someone doesn’t repent, and they get caught. The opposite of repenting is getting caught, and that is that you didn’t come forward and say, “I’ve said or done a bad thing, or failed to say or do a good thing, I got caught,” which means “I wasn’t gonna stop unless you made me.” You get caught. And then you have to present worldly sorrow. You have to say, “I am really sorry. I did a horrible thing. I feel really bad.” “Ideally,” your PR rep will tell you, “you should probably cry, because that will help. It shows that you’re really, really sad about what you’ve done.”

And then we get basically a cultural equivalent of pagan Catholicism. Let me unpack all of this. I grew up as a Catholic boy, went to Catholic school, and was an altar boy for some years. And the way it would work in Catholicism is you would go into the confessional with the priest. You would say, “Bless me, father, for I have sinned. It’s been so long since my last confession.” And then you would tell the priest what you did, and then the priest would say, “I declare you forgiven. I forgive you. Go say this many ‘Hail Marys,’ or ‘Acts of Contrition,’ or ‘Our Fathers’, or go do these good deeds, and then you’ll make it up to God, and everything will be okay,” something like that.

So what happens in culture is someone has worldly sorrow. They know they’ve done wrong, so they need to find someone who’s in the cultural position of a priest. And just so you know, I don’t believe in any of this. Jesus is my great high priest. A priest can’t forgive me. The psalmist says, “Against you only, Lord God, have I sinned.” So I don’t go to a priest, I go to the great high priest, Jesus.

But what happens in our culture then, we’ve gotta find someone to play that morally superior role, so we get Barbara Walters, or Larry King, or Oprah, or Dr. Phil. We go get somebody to set up their stage for their show, their set, like a confessional. And the person who has sinned walks in looking very sad, and very scared, and says, “I’m really sorry for what I’ve done.” And then the person in the position of moral, spiritual authority, the priest of culture says, “Tell us about what you’ve done, and how you feel.” And then you cry, and you say the things that your PR rep told you to say.

But your sins are not yet forgiven, because you need to go to purgatory and pay back, and so you go to rehab. Rehab is our cultural version of purgatory. Everybody has to go to rehab. If you’ve done something bad, you’ve gotta go to rehab, drug rehab, sex rehab, alcohol rehab, “My dad didn’t hug me” rehab, gambling rehab, whatever rehab it is. And you go to rehab for a while. It’s like purgatory, you go there and you pay your dues.

And then later you get out, and you go back, and you meet with the high priest or priestess. You say, “You know what? I’m really, really sad, and I did a very bad thing, but I feel like I paid it off, and I went to rehab. And now I’ve kind of been born-again. I’m a whole new person, and I’m going to give lots of money to women, children, or animals. Anything cute, I will give money to, to show that I have sorrow.”

And then all of this is told to the population, the public, the culture, and they decide whether or not you’re forgiven. They’re in the position of God. “Oh, you said you were sorry, you went to rehab, you wrote a big check for people in need. We forgive you. You can golf again. Go and sin no more.”

That’s worldly sorrow. The whole culture we live in is built on that, and people don’t change, not at the heart level. There’s no atonement, there’s no penalty paid for sin. There’s no Jesus, there’s no Savior. There’s no new life in Christ, there’s none of that, just a bunch of counterfeits—worldly sorrow. But I tell you that, not just to pick on a man, but to say that we’re all prone toward that, and our culture has this desire for something like a high priest, who forgives our sins and gives us new life. But without Jesus, we end up with a lot of impotent counterfeits.

4. Mere Confession

True repentance is also not mere confession. Mere confession is very confusing, particularly for Christians, because it is when someone sins, and you confront, or rebuke them, call them to repentance as John does. You say, “That was really wrong.” And they say, “You know what? You’re right, that was terrible.” You say, “Oh good, I’m glad you recognized that. Let me hug you, and we’re all better now.”

And then they do it again. You say, “I thought you were sorry.” “Oh, I was. I’m sorry again, and I’ll be sorry next week, and the week after that. I’m sorry a lot. And every time I do it, at least I’m not a hypocrite, I’m authentic, I’m honest, I’m real, I’m true. And I’ll just tell you how bad I am, and I’m gonna keep being bad.” Some of you are dating that person. Run, run, run, run Forrest run, run for your life. And they confuse you, because you’ll say, “Hey, you shouldn’t have said or done that.” “You’re right, that was wrong,” and they keep doing it. Mere confession is an acknowledgment of sin, without a repentance of sin.

5. Blame Shifting

Additionally, real repentance is not blame-shifting, which is, “Yeah, something bad happened, but it’s their fault.” This goes all the way back to the garden. Adam sins, says, “God, you made a woman. She’s defective. The two of you need to sort this out.” Eve says, “Oh, don’t look at me, the devil made me do it.” She was charismatic. And the truth is that they both were morally responsible for their own transgression.

We can do this. “Yes, I lost my temper, but they made me very angry.” Oh well, it’s obviously their fault. “Yes, I stole from my boss, but after all, they weren’t paying me enough.” “I did cheat on my spouse, but they weren’t meeting my needs.” Oh, you poor victim. Blame someone else.

6. Minimizing

Real repentance is also not minimizing. What happens is you sin, someone calls you to repent, and the first thing you do is you find someone who’s done something worse. “At least I didn’t kill someone.” Oh, duckie for you, we’ll put a gold star on your “No Murder” chart, another whole day. You find someone worse than you. “You’re a terrible spouse.” “Well, at least you’re not married to so and so.”

And if all else fails, hit the Hitler button, that’s what you do. Just hit the Hitler button, which is, “At least I’m not a Nazi.” Oh, that’s true. And you put yourself next to Hitler, and you’re like, “See, I look pretty good.” Yeah, compared to Hitler, everyone does. That’s not really moral high ground, but that’s what people do. It’s minimizing. “Oh, it’s not a big deal. You’re freaking out. You’re overreacting. Why do you have to get so emotional?”

7. Excuse Making

Additionally, real repentance is not excuse making. “Yeah, I did it, but I had a rough upbringing. You know, I didn’t get a good education. My dad didn’t hug me. I’m genetically predisposed. My personality type is J-E-R-K. You know, there’s just— P-E-R-V, you know, my personality type is that way.”

From the recent sermon John the Baptizer, Part 2.

The Rizers

A band that sings Scripture verses in the form of upbeat, kid-friendly music. Check out The Rizers.

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How do you support your friends in ministry when you are practically broke? I’ve been asking that question recently; not because I’m broke, but because I want to do more to encourage my friends that are in full time ministry. I want to be involved, but I’m not sure my check for $10 is  going to do much for the cause.

Once upon a time there were two apparent options for supporting your friends:

1. Send your friend a small financial gift (maybe enough for a Starbucks visit).
2. Ask to be added to the “Prayer Support” team.

But with the rise of the internet and social networking there are endless ways to be a supporter. I spent some time thinking about this and came up with a list of five alternative ways to support my friends in ministry. Before I go through the list, there is an important factor to understand about social networking. It is the compounding factor. Facebook recently said that the average user has at least 150 friends. Other studies suggest that an individual has on average 300 friends that they know well.

Social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and MySpace help us stay connected with our “300 friends”. These networks make it easy to share the things we are interested in. If you are like me, you are careful with what stories, pictures, and videos you share. Your reputation is tied to the items broadcast across these platforms. When I put an article on my facebook wall, I’m recommending it to my friends. I’m asking my friends to take an interest in something.

I want to suggest that using your social network to point your list of “300 friends” to a ministry update from your missionary friend is a excellent stewardship decision.

Five Ways To Support Your Missionary Friend

1. Share, Re-post, Retweet, and suggest everything your ministry friend puts on facebook, twitter,  and youtube. Obviously this would relate primarily to ministry content, but not exclusively. If they share a funny picture of their kids it still is worth passing onto your friends. Your friends may take an interest in the missionary because their attention was peaked by the silly picture. You might want to put it all on the line and ask your friends to follow (befriend) the ministry friend your trying to support.

2. Write about them, or record an interview with them on Skype. I recently did this for the Henderson family in Australia, and I’m planning on doing it with other friends in the future. Recording a Skype conversation may be technical for you, so you might just start with a facebook note, or simple blog post. Share about your friends ministry, how they got to this point in their life, and what others can do to support them.

3. Organize a prayer team for their ministry. Take ownership of the prayer requests made by your ministry friend. Besides praying for them on your own, you can bring the prayer request to your small group or church prayer meeting.

4. Give them that $10 a month. I said above that $10 a month seems like a drop in the bucket compared to the amount your friend is trying to raise. But when you recognize that you are only one of the “300 friends” you realize that a bunch of small gifts can add up fast. If all 300 friends gave $10 a month the missionary would have more than enough to cover their monthly expenses. Also, it is good to start somewhere. $10 a month is an awesome start, and the amount can increase as God provides more resources.

5. Dedicate a week, or day to ask your friends to financially support you missionary friend. You might be surprised to see how God uses these requests. And talk about blessing your missionary friend. It is hard enough to ask for financial support every year. If one of your friends is joining in the asking, it is a huge encouragement.

In order to use these five ideas you will need to identify which friends you want to support. I would recommend that you let those individuals know that they are on your list. They will, no doubt, appreciate it. But will also be more strategic in what information they broadcast.

In closing let me say, I’ve been raising support for our family for the last four years. I’ve noticed that the financial support comes in exclusively from people over the age of 35. Young adults are not prone to support their piers in ministry. Some might say this is because of the financial status of most individuals in the twenties and early thirties, others might say that everyone under 35 is just selfish. Whatever the case may be, God is enlarging my heart to be a better supporter, and to be a younger supporter. If your under 35 I challenge you to grow in these ways as well.

Missio Christi – Prayer – Luke 11:1a – Part 4

If God be near a church, it must pray. And if He be not there, one of the first tokens of His absence will be a slothfulness in prayer. ~ Charles Spurgeon [1]

When God is near to a people, the people want to talk to God. When there isn’t the tangible, manifest presence of God, there will be no desire abounding in our midst to pray.

This quote, applied to the individual Christian, says: if God is present in your life in a profound way, not merely salvifically but practically and intimately, the result will be prayer. Prayer becomes a gauge. If you find yourself burdened to pray, God is near you! You are experiencing the pursuit of Christ. If you are not clinging to Christ in a practical and tangible way, the first sign of that apathy will be slothfulness in prayer – the lack of desire to talk to Him.

The Christian who lives life on mission is experiencing the promise of Matthew 28:20: Lo, I am with you always, and they are moved to prayer.

The nominal “Sunday Christian” who doesn’t live after the glory and purpose of God doesn’t know what we are talking about. They lack the intimate, profound experience of the person of Christ in us and with us. He or she is lacking the missional presence of Christ and the Holy Spirit because they have not created a need for the promise of Matthew 28 to be fulfilled. They are missing mission and there is no need for the unique presence and aroma of Christ in their life.

How are you on the front lines taking Christ to people? Or, to say it another way, how do you seek to expose and explain Him?

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