FEAR

I grew up in the church. Literally. I think that my Mother gave birth to me on a pew. And I’m not joking, I actually believe that. I have no proof, but I know it’s the truth. Anyways, I was in church a lot. And I listened to boring preaching. A lot. Most of which I tuned out as I drew pictures of Batman on the Hymnals. That said, I remember hearing multiple preachers deliver sermons about the fear of God. They would all talk about the same concept; how fearing God is not being afraid of Him, it is simply being in awe of His presence. Then I would read the Bible and see that in any narrative where someone directly encountered God, they did not seem to only have this awe - but they are were stricken with terror. If you look, almost any time that an angel of the Lord reveals themselves, they say the words “do not be afraid.” Why would they say this to the people if they weren’t truly afraid? I don’t think that they would. Therefore, I propose that there has to be an element of terror in having a healthy fear of the Lord. In fact, the Hebrew root word of fear is Yirah; which means - 1) Terror 2) Awe / reverence. So terror is not an element of fearing God, it’s the definition. 

Thinking the that fear of the Lord is not only awe/reverence, but also terror has been very eye opening for me. It has led me to the realization that the fear - terror - of the Lord should be the driving force in our lives (and ministries). A healthy fear of the Lord not only includes awe/reverence, but also terror. For clarity’s sake, I will refer to one as terror-fear, and the other as awe-fear. After processing through that I have realized that if I truly am terrified of God, then nothing on this earth should scare me. No trial, no temptation, no situation. God is bigger than them all, so if I fear Him, then I should not be afraid of anything else. 

That led me to think of the distinction and correlation between faith and fear. I propose that faith is the externalization of our internal fear of God. When it comes to the nature of God, faith and fear are not opposites, but allies. When we truly fear God we are not afraid of anything else. So taking steps of faith becomes natural and almost easy for us, but only as long as we keep this perspective. 

Therefore, when we face unexpected situations - or storms - in our lives, our battle is not against that situation, our battle is actually against perspective. When we lose perspective, we lose the battle. When we keep perspective, we win the battle. Situations are conquered by our ability to keep perspective, and that perspective is rooted in a healthy fear of the Lord.

That said, there is still another aspect in having a healthy fear of God. To be afraid of God is to be in awe of Him. If faith is the externalization of our internal terror-fear of God, then I propose that zeal is the externalization of our internal awe-fear of God. So to lack zeal for God is to lack awe-fear of Him. This is not as much a battle of perspective as it is a battle of consistence. If awe-fear of the driving force behind our zeal, then the more consistently we are in God’s presence, the more consistent our zeal for God will be. Think about it: the less that we seek the presence of God, the less consistent our zeal is for Him. Therefore, the opposite is true; the more we seek the presence of God, the more consistent our zeal is for Him. The externalization of our awe-fear is zeal. 

With this in mind, we should be able to answer the question; “do I have a healthy fear of the Lord?” All you have to do to answer the question is look at your life. Do you lack faith? Do you lack zeal? To lack either of these areas is to lack fear.  

PASSIONLESS PIT

I was stuck. 

I was in a passionless pit, and I couldn't get out. No matter how hard I clawed at the walls and attempted to climb, the end result was the same. I would fall back down, bloody knuckled and broken hearted. Now before we go any further, I want to lay down the context of my short, passionless stint. I was not passionless in my relationship with God, I was not passionless about my marriage, or friendships. I was passionless about my job, pastoring. And that begs the question:

How can a pastor operate without passion? 

How can a pastor help expand the kingdom of God - without any passion - when the essence of the gospel is passion? It was Christ's passionate love for humanity that gave Him the will to endure the burden of our sins and the pain of the cross. Therefore without Jesus's passion, there would be no gospel. Now I know what you are all thinking; that if I were truly passionate about my relationship with God, then this would not be an issue, and I would not feel passionless about ministry. But (as I already said) that was not the case, it was something much deeper. See, I've learned that you can at the same time be passionate about Jesus, and passionless about ministry. Which is a very difficult and confusing pit to be stuck in. 

So I stayed stuck. 

I was afraid, yet I was confident. I was afraid because I felt alone. I was confident because I knew that God called me to be a pastor. And at that moment, pastoring meant figuring a way out of the pit. So finally, I did the first thing that I thought to do when I realized I was stuck, but the last thing that I wanted to do to get unstuck. I cried out to God. For weeks. (I wonder how many people are passionlessly pastoring because they are too afraid to walk away and to proud to call out to God for help?) Finally, I felt God speak to my soul and He revealed to me a subtle mistake that I had made which caused me to lose my passion for ministry. 

I shifted my focus, 

which caused me to be internally out of balance. I shifted my focus from operating out of my passions to operating out of one of my mentor's passions. I tried to imitate his passion instead of being inspired by it. So I shifted my main focus from preaching to leadership. I thought this would help me because my mentor and I have similar giftings, but the problem is that we have different passions. So although leadership is one of my gifts, it is not what I am most passionate about. Your passions will always outweigh your gifts. And more importantly, your passions will always outweigh someone else's passions. The quickest way to burn yourself out is to focus less on your passions and more on someone else's. Or even more subtly, to shift your focus from what you are most passionate about, to something that you are less passionate about. When you do that, you dishonor the passion that God has given you and disrupt your internally balance, which will ultimately lead you into a pit. A passionless pit. 

So learn from my mistakes before you find yourself in a pit. Don't try to imitate those who are successful in ministry, instead let their success inspire you. Let them inspire you to be you. Do what you are good at and God will bless it. If you love preaching, preach. If you love leading, lead. If you love building relationships, build relationships. God created you, called you, and equipped you. So focus on the gifts and passions that He has given you. I'm not saying to ignore the others, there are many components to a successful ministry. I'm saying, let what you're most passionate about be what drives your ministry. Thus, you will be honoring God by using what He has equipped you with.

Yet if you find yourself in a pit, drop your pride and cry out to God until He answers. He called you, so He will sustain you. 

THE SUBTLETIES OF SATAN

Satan is subtle. 

He has the attitude of a lion, but the shrewdness of a snake. Satan is so much more intellectual than we give him credit for, yet he is a lot less powerful than we have made him out to be. He knows that the powers of darkness are no match for power of God. But do we? Somehow Satan has twisted the minds of Christians to be on full alert for a viscous attack, while he is carefully and quietly gnawing away at our faith without us even knowing. He has us glued to the hull of the ship, searching for storms off in the distance, while there are icebergs a few feet under the surface of the water right in front of us. We are on the lookout for the wrong kind of disaster. See, Satan doesn't do obvious attacks, because if we see him coming, we can call on Jesus and He will immediately protect us. But what if he is manipulating our thoughts so that we walk away from the will of God without even knowing it? 

Satan is a manipulator.

When I was nineteen years old God called me to someday plant a church. After that happened, I immediately began to look up to power preaching, church planters. Most of which have had wild success at a very young age. I then assumed that since they planted at such a young age, and I seem to have similar giftings as the pastors that I looked up to, that I was supposed to plant a church at a young age. Therefore, I was consumed with the idea of planting a church at the age of twenty-five. I became obsessed with how cool the story would be of me planting a successful church at a young age, just like all the preachers I extolled. But my perspective was completely off. I let God determine my plan, but Satan determine my perspective. See, I wanted to plant a church because God told me to, but I wanted to do it when I was twenty-five because I thought it would be a cool story.

Satan is a distorter.

I was more concerned with my story than God’s glory. When our ultimate goal, and perspective in everything we do should be to glorify God. One of Satan’s greatest tactics is to get us to switch our motivation from glorifying God, to glorifying ourselves. And I nearly fell victim to it. He is constantly, yet subtly manipulating our thoughts, our motivations, and our perspective, so that we will begin to live for our story instead of God’s glory. He gets us to do all the right things for all the wrong reasons. Now, I may still plant a church when I am in my twenties, but if I do it will be to expand the kingdom of God and glory His name. Not so that I have a cool Instagram bio.

Satan is a philosopher.

We’ve all heard the age-old, philosophical question on perspective, is the glass half empty or half full? I propose that the whole debate on pessimism vs. optimism that surrounds this question is a subtle scheme of Satan. See, I always thought that we can only look at the glass in two different ways: being half empty, or half full. When we look at it being half empty, that’s to say that we are looking at a situation from our earthly perspective and through our human eyes. When we look at the glass half full, we are looking at it from God’s Heavenly perspective, but through our human eyes. The problem with this is that Satan, with his subtle lies, has gotten us to look at everything in our lives at face value. And we have put limitations on a limitless God. When if we looked at the glass from God’s Heavenly perspective and God’s eyes, (instead of our eyes) we would see that the cup doesn’t have to be just half empty or half full, it can be overflowing. See we don’t serve a God of half full. We serve a God that fills our cup to overflowing. But Satan has subtly, yet successfully gotten us to think that it is okay to settle for a half full view of life, as long as we have an optimistic attitude.

Satan is subtle.

So here’s to not taking things at face value anymore. Here’s to living life for God’s glory instead of our story. Here’s no longer looking at life as half anything. Here’s to no longer putting limitations on a limitless God. Here’s to no longer letting the subtleties of Satan creep in and rule our minds.   

Cheers. 

SEASICK

Nobody may read this.

Yet I decided to start blogging. Not so that I could platform my innermost thoughts in order to receive some sort of validation from the public. I decided to start blogging because my mind was on overload. So many thoughts were swimming through my brain at once that I wasn't able to focus and meditate on anything. Therefore I am doing this as a release, a way of focusing on one thing and learning how to articulate the concepts that are running through my brain faster than Usain Bolt. (Okay maybe not quite as fast as Usain.) So if you choose to continue reading, I pray that God will speak to you through my thoughts and struggles.

I have been very discontent lately.

It hasn't been a contextual discontentment, which I have felt many times before. This is much different. I love Jesus. I love my wife. I love being a youth pastor at River Valley Church. I love doing ministry in Faribault, Minn. I have been getting poured into more than ever before, and have been pouring into more people than ever before. Yet I'm haunted by this feeling of discontentment. A feeling that I'm missing out on something. A longing for more. More Jesus. More joy in my marriage. More joy in my own heart. More students to reach. I just want more. As I have been combating this feeling of discontent in my mind - trying to fight it off while simultaneously trying to understand it - I feel that I have arrived at a small breakthrough.

I'm homesick.

As I've gotten closer to Jesus I've been thinking more and more about Heaven and the comfort that His eternal presence will bring. It's ironic, but it seems that the closer I get to Jesus, the more I recognize the gap between Heaven and Earth. It brings into context what the Apostle Paul means in 2 Corinthians when he says that we are only ambassadors on Earth. He's simply saying that this is not our home. We are only here for a short time, representing the God of Heaven, which is our true home. Therefore, I've arrived at the conclusion that I caused the feeling of discontentment that has been gnawing at my mind. I tried to force myself to feel at home on this Earth, when we are meant to feel at home only when we are in Heaven. The feeling of true contentment is not found in God's presence on this Earth, it's found in the fullness of His presence in Heaven. He gives us glimpses of peace and comfort here on Earth, but that's just so that we will stay focused on the hope of Heaven. The hope found in being completely surrounded and submerged in His presence.

So what I've been truly longing for is not more joy in my heart, or more students in my youth ministry. What I've been longing for is Heaven. I've been longing for something that I have absolutely no control over, going to Heaven. So ultimately, God is teaching me submission. I can't do anything to get to Heaven any sooner. So for now I will submit to God's will for my life here on Earth, even if that means fighting through this feeling of discontentment for the rest of my Earthly life.

I'm homesick for a Heaven that I've never been to. I'm hopeful for the comfort that I'll feel when I arrive on that distant shore. But I'm not there yet, I'm still out at sea. I'm seasick for the feeling of the eternal sand underneath my feet. I'm seasick for the feeling of solid ground. I'm seasick. But submitted to God's will. So I'll stay seasick as long as my captain leads me out on these dreadful seas. I'll stay seasick, holding on the mast as the wind and waves toss me back and forth. I'll stay seasick even though it's not always ideal, or enjoyable. I'll stay seasick because I am submitting my life to God, and living in His perfect will.

I'm seasick. But Hopeful.