Longest Night Service

You keep track of all my sorrows.
You have collected all my tears in your bottle.
You have recorded each one in your book.
Psalm 56:8 NLT

I participated in our church’s Longest Night Service last night. This is an experiential service designed for those dealing acutely with grief, loss, and pain in this Christmas season. The atmosphere, lighting, song selection, and beauty of the violin were amazing. The theme of the night was, “Jesus is with you in the pain and grief. His presence is healing.” We took communion, lit candles, sat with Jesus, took home tassels, and released our pain. But more than that, the presence of Jesus was palpable in the room.

I went thinking I didn’t have anything to grieve. I was there to help lead the service and be there for others. But almost immediately, without warning, I began to weep. I was grieving something deep inside of my soul, but I couldn’t discern immediately what it was. So I asked Jesus about this.

He not only revealed what I was grieving, but He brought Isaiah 53:3 to mind. Jesus revealed to me that when He shows up in a room as the One who is “a man of suffering, and familiar with pain,” things that we didn’t even know we needed to grieve come to the surface.

When Jesus shows up as “a man of suffering, familiar with pain” and the Holy Spirit shows up as the Comforter, the things that have been trapped in the deep places of our soul feel safe to emerge. And I know of a few others who experienced the same thing. They came to the service to support others and ended up experiencing both unexpected grieving and unexpected healing.

Tears flowed last night but in a way that was healing and cleansing. Jesus kept his promise from Psalm 34:18, that He “is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”

This Will Be A Sign To You

“This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
Luke 2:12

At our church we have what we call “Stations of Advent.” We ask our artists to create paintings or images of ten different scenes of Jesus’s birth narrative. Each piece of art is connected to a passage of scripture and is accompanied by reflection questions. As I slowly went through each station, taking in both the artwork and the scripture passages, I was struck by a few things.

First, for Mary and Joseph, Bethlehem was not the plan. They lived in Nazareth. Their whole world was in Nazareth, including their home where they had been making preparations for the new baby. Jesus’s room was being set up in Nazareth. The place where the birth was likely to happen was being prepared in their Nazareth home. Bethlehem was not their plan.

In fact, going to Bethlehem was the result of an oppressive, pagan Caesar wanting to take a census so that he could tax the people even more. They took the 90 mile walk from Nazareth to Bethlehem because of the greed of a pagan, Roman ruler. This was not the plan. This was unexpected. And the timing of this journey couldn’t have been worse. This was not a convenient trip. This was the result of having to “do what you are told” when you are Jewish and those doing the “telling” are Roman.

When they got to Bethlehem, the guest rooms of their family who lived there were all filled because of the census. They likely waited until the last possible moment to leave Nazareth, hoping that the baby would come early so Mary wouldn’t have to make the journey pregnant.

They were likely getting to Bethlehem late compared to their relatives. And just when it couldn’t get worse, Mary goes into labor. All of their plans for Nazareth were out the window. This baby was going to arrive in Bethlehem.

But Bethlehem was not ready for a baby. There was no delivery room ready. There was no baby room ready. The only ounce of privacy they could muster was to go out and be with the animals. Laying baby Jesus in an animal feeding trough post-delivery was not the plan. The manger was not the plan. It was the result of their poverty and the Roman Emperor’s greed.

What the Lord showed me was that the manger in Bethlehem was not Mary and Joseph’s original plan. It wasn’t even their backup plan. It was the result of oppression. It was the result of poverty. The manger was not a sign of some glorious birth. It was a sign of a lack of resources.

That is the story that Mary and Joseph would have experienced on the surface. But there was this whole other thing happening behind-the-scenes that they couldn’t see, that we couldn’t see, and that had to be revealed. It had to be highlighted to us by angels and prophetic words from the Old Testament. What seemed like a mistake — what seemed like a messy, inconvenient, ruining of plans — was actually God’s plan all along.

Angels showed up to shepherds and said that the sign that this little baby was in fact the long awaited Messiah and Savior of Israel was that he would be in a manger. On the surface, the manger was a sign of ruined plans, an overcrowded city, and economic hardship. But the angels showed us something different. God transformed this manger into a different kind of sign. It became a sign that Jesus was, in fact, the Messiah. (Luke 2:8-20)

God does the same with Bethlehem. While Bethlehem wasn’t Mary and Joseph’s original plan (and it seemed like just the bad idea of a greedy Roman Emperor), Bethlehem was God’s plan all along. When the Magi showed up and asked where the Jewish Messiah was supposed to be born (Matthew 2:1-12), the chief priests and teachers of the law all pointed to Bethlehem. The city of Bethlehem was transformed from “inconvenient, ruined plan” to the prophesied plan of God reaching hundreds of years back to the prophet Micah.

And God would continue to do this throughout Jesus’s life. The ultimate example of this is how God transformed the cross, a sign of Roman oppression and torture, into a sign of forgiveness, salvation, love and grace.

God has a way of taking our ruined plans and saying, “No, this was My plan all along.” God has a way of taking our signs of darkness and despair and saying, “No, this is a sign that points back to Me.”

In the New Testament, “signs and wonders” is a nickname for miracles. Miraculous events performed by Jesus and the disciples became signs pointing people to the reality that God’s Kingdom was breaking into the world and breaking out among us. But in the story of Jesus’s birth (though His birth itself was a miracle), we also see God use other things, ordinary things, even ruined things as signs pointing to the in-breaking of His Kingdom.

God uses all kinds of signs pointing to and revealing His Kingdom on earth. Whether it be a manger or a miraculous birth, a miracle or messed-up plans, all of these signs are used to point us back to Jesus and His Kingdom.

Can you see them in your own life? What signs are appearing right now in your life to point you back to Jesus? It could be something wondrous and miraculous. It also could be your ruined plans and less-than-perfect situation.

Can you see the signs? During this Advent season, these signs are all around us if we have eyes to see.

The Pattern that Brings Division

But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and useless.
Titus 3:9

As a pastor and a shepherd to a church community, there is an unhealthy pattern I see (both in the church and in the world) that has the accent of the enemy all over it. The pattern repeats itself so much that I am left to conclude that it is a tactic of the enemy to cause confusion and division. Here’s the pattern:

A “watchdog” group uses a term that people have heard of but few people know the actual, scholarly definition of (often it’s a meaningless neologism with no specific definition).
The purpose is to keep the term broad enough to use vague characterizations that can’t be proven in order to lump a bunch of unrelated people together under this new umbrella category.
Then, to support the claim, “guilt by association” is leveraged to create a paranoid conspiracy theory.
Once enough people or groups are all lumped together under this vague and poorly defined word using vague and poorly defined characterizations, and once enough fear is stoked, the hope is to create a siege mentality where people circle the wagons to protect themselves from this awful “movement” whatever it might be.

Here’s an example of how this works:

(1) Label everyone to the right of you on the political spectrum a “Christian Nationalist” who believes in “dominionism.” (2) Keep those two terms broad enough and the definitions vague enough to lump lots of people into it. (3) Once you’ve accused enough groups of falling under these categories, vehemently condemn anyone in the category for trying to take over America. (4) Encourage “everyone else” to guard themselves against this dangerous movement.

See how that works?

Here’s another way I’ve seen it play out in the church:

Imagine a church member coming up to their pastor and saying, “Pastor, there is this group out there call the New Presbyterians (NewPrez for short). I researched them online. I heard they were satan worshipers and Tim Keller was a part of them. You quoted from Tim Keller the other day in your sermon. Are you leading our church into the NewPrez movement?”

Can you see how it works?

New term (NewPrez) that is vaguely and poorly defined? Check. Vague characterizations that can’t be proven (satan worshipers)? Check. Lumping in people that are unrelated (Tim Keller)? Check. Guilt by association (using a quote)? Check. Fear? Check. The always reliable “online research”? Check. Siege mentality (we have to protect ourselves from this danger!)? Check.

And how does one answer this question?

If the pastor tells them that there are such things as Presbyterians but that this franken-monster conspiracy known as “NewPrez” isn’t a thing, then the pastor will be accused of being a card-carrying member of NewPrez evidenced by his denial.

If the pastor distances himself and says, “We don’t have anything to do with NewPrez and we don’t plan on ever joining that group,” then he is essentially affirming that this group is real and that everything you’ve heard about the group is real, and that Tim Keller must have been a satan worshiper. But if that’s true, why did you quote from him on Sunday morning?

It’s a catch-22. It’s somewhat similar to when the Pharisees asked Jesus if they should pay taxes to Caesar. If he said “Yes,” he was trapped, and if he said “No,” he was trapped. Jesus found a third way out. (Matthew 22:15-22)

People are ruining friendships, hurting families, and leaving churches over this kind of thing. This is not the work of “truth.” This is the work of the enemy. If you see this pattern, recognize it. Detect the accent of the enemy in it. Don’t be fooled by it. It’s the same tactic over and over again. The enemy isn’t creative. Instead of giving into fear and false accusations, seek the truth and find the third way as Jesus did.

What We See

The sins of some are obvious, reaching the place of judgment ahead of them; the sins of others trail behind them. In the same way, good deeds are obvious, and even those that are not obvious cannot remain hidden forever.
1 Timothy 5:24-25

The apostle Paul writes to Timothy and reminds him that some kinds of sin are super obvious. These are the sins that are all too easy to judge. If someone has an addiction to nicotine or marijuana or food, these sins become very external and obvious. If someone is engaging in an openly gay relationship or embraces gender dysphoria, they often wear their sin on the outside. Their sins are obvious and seem to go “ahead of them” as they walk into a place, especially a church environment.

But we need to be careful not to judge those whose sins are external and obvious. First, judging others for their sin has a boomerang effect on our own life according to Jesus:

“Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”
Luke 6:37-38

If we judge others for their sin, that judgment boomerangs back upon us. Yet, if we show grace, love and generosity toward others, that too boomerangs back upon us.

But another reason we shouldn’t judge others for their obvious sin is because most sin is more like an iceberg. The hidden sins in people’s lives are often the sins that are most damaging.

Anyone who has worked in ministry any length of time knows that there are deep, dark sins that many people hide. A person can look great on the outside, all put together and healthy, and yet be full of darkness and death behind-the-scenes. This was the case for the Pharisees in Jesus’s day. These sins “trail behind” people and aren’t immediately obvious. These sins seem to receive less overt judgment from others in the church community yet are just as deadly and damaging to a person and to the church.

As a pastor who has the honor and responsibility of being on the front row seats of many people’s lives, and as a minister who regularly does inner healing and deliverance ministry, I can assure you that the person most church-goers thinks is the “biggest sinner” in the room isn’t.

If we could see what God sees, we’d stop thinking there was such a thing as a “biggest sinner.” God sees the beauty and the ugliness in us all. And as someone who gets to partner with the Holy Spirit to see people get set free from demonic oppression in their life, there are many people sitting next to us at church who are dealing with darkness that we can’t see on Sunday mornings.

Paul tries to remind Timothy that these hidden sins will eventually be exposed and cleansed by the Light of Christ. We get to decide if that happens in private now or in public later (1 John 1:6-9). He also reminds Timothy that our behind-the-scenes good deeds will operate the same way. If we’ve been faithfully serving Christ in obscurity, that too will eventually come to light for all to see. Jesus said as much in Luke 8:

For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.
Luke 8:17

Paul’s point to Timothy is that this principle applies both to sin and to service. Things won’t stay hidden for long, whether good or evil.

So next time we see someone with obvious sin that goes “ahead of them,” let’s check ourselves and guard our hearts against judgment. For most of us church people, we have more sin that “trails behind” us and is hidden than we do obvious sin. Is it possible that we escape other people’s harsh judgment simply because we’re better at hiding our sin? But God sees it all.

Let’s be people of grace and purity. Let’s be people who are better at hiding our good works than our sin. And let’s be full of generosity and compassion toward those whose sin is external and obvious.

Meat Church

When your words came, I ate them;
they were my joy and my heart’s delight…
Jeremiah 15:16

How sweet are your words to my taste,
sweeter than honey to my mouth!
Psalm 119:103

What does it mean to be “Spirit-led” in our Sunday morning worship services?

One way to answer this question is to compare it to the beautiful art of cooking red meat. Preparing steak and brisket can teach us a great deal about how the Spirit moves in a worship service.

There are certain traditions within the church that virtually equate being “Spirit-led” with being “spontaneous.” You often find this kind of thinking in charismatic and Pentecostal churches. If a worship song or sermon is planned, then it’s not very Spirit-led. To be Spirit-led in these churches means to follow the spontaneous promptings of the Spirit in the moment. So a Spirit-led song is one that doesn’t follow the words on the screen but instead spontaneously flows from the heart. A Spirit-led worship service isn’t scripted.

This view of what it means to be Spirit-led is often a reaction against the hyper-scripted liturgical traditions. Sometimes it’s a reaction against the new form of hyper-scripted worship service — the multi-site, hyper-produced, mega-church service that is timed down to the millisecond.

It’s probably important to mention that not all things that are “spontaneous” in a worship service are from the Holy Spirit. This is why it is often unhelpful to always equate “Spirit-led” with “spontaneous.” Sometimes spontaneous worship moments by musicians or off-the-cuff stories that are unplanned by the preacher are not coming from the Holy Spirit but simply from their human spirit. As a worse-case scenario, some spontaneous things in worship could be coming from an evil spirit. So “Spirit-led” can’t always be equated with “spontaneous.”

While I agree that the Spirit does move through spontaneous moments in the worship service, I also believe that the Spirit moves through plans that are made by the pastors as they listen to the Spirit all week long. These two ways of being Spirit-led (the Spirit-led spontaneous and the Spirt-led planning) go together really well and remind me of two beautiful ways to prepare red meat.

The Spirit-led spontaneous reminds me of throwing steaks on the grill. The Holy Spirit in scripture is often depicted as a fire. The fire heats up and the flame creates an awesome char on the meat. Steaks cook fast. These quick, spontaneous moments of being Spirit-led can and do happen in a worship service where people are willing to follow the Spirit’s lead.

But there’s another way to make meat taste amazing. Smoking meat produces an incredible result if done correctly, but the rule of smoking meat is “low and slow.” With smoking meat, it’s not the flame that imparts flavor to the meat (as is the case with grilling), it’s the smoke. This is how Spirit-led worship planning should happen throughout the week. As the worship leaders and pastors sit in God’s presence allowing the Spirit to speak to them all week long, the deep aroma of Christ is imparted to the service (2 Corinthians 2:14-15). It’s not spontaneous. It’s planned. It’s low and slow. It’s following the lead of the Spirit days in advance, but it’s still “Spirit-led.”

With grilling, the meat needs to already be tender for it to work. You don’t grill tough meats, you smoke them. This is often true of a worship service as well. When things are spontaneous, they work best with truths that are already obvious, already tender, already able to be readily consumed.

But if you are dealing with passages of scripture or truths that are hard to understand, that are tough, then you need more than a quick, spontaneous Spirit-led moment. You need a low and slow studying of scripture. You need a low and slow process of listening to the Spirit speak the deep truths of God’s word to your heart. You need time. You need patience. It’s a lot like smoking tough cuts of meat until they are fall-apart tender. It takes the “low and slow” of planning and studying to unpack the deeper truths of scripture.

My favorite kind of worship service, and favorite way to prepare steak, is to combine both of these methods. When it comes to meat, it’s called a reverse sear. My brother-in-law did this for me on my birthday. He took a ribeye steak and first smoked it for a few hours. Then right at the end, when the temperature was almost medium-rare, he threw it on the grill to get that sear and that char. This steak was amazing because it had the smoke favor imparted to it from the low and slow, and it had the charred sear on the outside imparted from the grill. This is also what we need in our worship services.

We need the Spirit-led spontaneous moments in our worship, in our sermons, and in our prayer times. And we also need the Spirit-led planning the week before the worship service, so that we can consume difficult truths that have been tenderized with forethought, study, and Spirit-inspired wisdom. Our worship services need both. One without the other can fall short of the fullness that is available to us.

Our goal for every Sunday service should be a Spirit-led reverse sear – spontaneous moments with the Lord combined with tenderized, deep truth of scripture. Amen.

Understanding True Love: Why Jesus Challenged Sin

Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.”
John 5:14

“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
John 8:11

Jesus wasn’t afraid to tell people to leave their life of sin!

So why are we?

Jesus was the most loving person who ever existed. He was perfect love incarnate. Everything he did was pure love. And on more than one occasion he told the people that he had just rescued to stop sinning. What are we to make of this?

Imagine a young child swinging a razor blade around. Is it loving to let them continue? They are cutting themselves and harming the other kids around them. We don’t just let it continue. Even if they don’t harm the people around them, they are harming themselves and the very least. This is the nature of all sin. Anything that is outside of God’s design for our life is a razor blade in the hands of a child. The most loving thing we can do is to call them to stop. Jesus knew this. When Jesus calls people to stop sinning, it’s actually the most loving thing he could say.

Our culture struggles with a healthy understanding of what love really is. Too often, our culture conflates “acceptance” with love and in doing so ends up enabling sin. We learn from the addiction community that enabling addiction is the opposite of love even though it “feels” very loving. When we cover for a spouse who is addicted and we think we’re showing love and grace, we’re actually enabling the very things that are destroying the person’s life. The addiction community helps us see clearly that enabling sin is not loving. Affirming sin is not loving. Covering for sin is not loving.

And while our culture has finally learned this after decades of research on addiction, it struggles to apply this lesson to all forms of sin. We see this with many forms of modern parenting. Three year old kids are being “reasoned” with as if they are adults. Over and over again these young parents were wrongly taught that setting healthy boundaries of discipline could somehow harm their kids. So, instead, the kid ends up running the house and becomes filled with anxiety as he subconsciously realizes that he’s in charge.

We also see this same thing in church scandals. The enablement of sin and the covering of sin was mistaken for what it means to be “loving.” So church leaders across the country in various denominations were never called out for their sexual sin and abuse. And as they continued in their lifestyle of sin, more and more people were harmed. Again, enabling sin is not loving. Covering for sin is not loving. Challenging sin is the most loving thing that could have happened.

We also see this with the affirmation of all kinds of different sexual expressions and gender identities in the LGBTQ community. The affirmation of sin is confused with what it means to be loving. But enabling sin isn’t loving. And we’re starting to see the harmful ramifications of young children being mutilated with puberty blockers and horrifying surgeries. This is what happens when people confuse affirmation with love. But enabling sin isn’t loving. Affirming sin isn’t loving. Covering for sin isn’t loving.

And these are just three obvious examples in our culture, but there are hundreds more. I think the enemy takes people’s deep desire to be loving and compassionate and manipulates it into something harmful. The desire to love is good. Compassion is good. Accepting people in all their weaknesses is good. But true love sets boundaries. True love calls out sin. True love holds people accountable to the damage their lifestyles of sin cause. Jesus was true love in action, and this is why he called people out on their sin. Sin always hurts the person sinning, and when left unchecked, ends up hurting the people closest to them.

Wrong Words

Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good,reject every kind of evil.
1 Thessalonians 5:20-22

The Bible is clear that we should not treat prophecies and prophetic gifts with contempt. Healthy church cultures should make room for every follower of Jesus to hear from the Lord for themselves. The priesthood of the believers means that we don’t wait for the super-gifted to tell us what God is saying. Instead, we each cultivate an intimacy with Jesus, and that includes hearing from the Holy Spirit ourselves.

When each person is hearing the Lord in their own lives, this creates a prophetic culture where we can “test” whether what someone is saying is from the Lord. Just as our own personal study of scripture helps us to know if the preacher is preaching a sermon that is biblically sound, hearing from the Lord in our own lives helps us to test whether someone is giving a prophetic word that is actually from the Lord.

So while we don’t want to stifle prophetic gifts in the church, we also don’t want them to be used without checks and balances. Accountability and feedback are important tools that help a prophetic community stay healthy. Untested prophetic words are not biblical. If there are going to be people hearing from God and operating in prophetic gifts, then there also needs to be a community of those who are discerning and testing those words.

If someone has the gift of prophecy, why do they give wrong words sometimes?

First, we need to understand that every prophetic word has three parts to it. There’s 1) the word, 2) the interpretation of the word, and 3) the application of the word. The core revelation from the Holy Spirit is the word. It could be an actual word, a sentence, a mental picture, a mental movie, an external vision or a dream. And that word can never contradict the Bible because scripture has ultimate authority.

After the word comes, it has to be interpreted. Interpretation answers the question, “What does this mean?” Finally, it must be applied. Application answers the question, “What do I do?”

Sometimes a prophetic person gets the word right but the interpretation wrong. Sometimes they get the word right and the interpretation right but the application wrong (most of the time the application should be left to the person the word is for). Because there is a lot of room to have the flesh of the prophetic person get in the way (even if they get the word right), there needs to be discernment and testing of every word.

There are also times that it isn’t about the interpretation or the application. Sometimes the prophetic person simply gets the actual word wrong. The core revelation isn’t from the Lord. How does this happen?

In the new covenant, prophecy is different than it was in the old covenant. The Holy Spirit isn’t just resting upon us (like Old Testament prophets) but is now dwelling within us. That means, in the new covenant, God has chosen to use us, His Church, as conduits of ushering in the Kingdom of God on the earth.

What this means for prophecy is that when we get a word from the Lord, it is flowing through us. Most of the time, we aren’t hearing the audible voice of God and then simply repeating what we heard (like Old Testament prophets). One way to put it is that we aren’t “receiving” the word in a simple form, but instead we are “perceiving” a word from the Lord. God’s communication isn’t hitting our ears, but instead it is flowing through our spirit and through our soul (our mind, will, and emotions).

Because God’s communication is coming through our mind, will and emotions, it is coming through our personality. It’s like light pouring through a lens. Those lenses are often colored with our thoughts and our emotions. And, sometimes, those lenses are cracked. If we’ve been hurt and haven’t totally healed emotionally from that hurt, it creates little cracks in the lenses of our heart and mind.

Now, as the light of God’s revelation comes pouring through our cracked lenses, sometimes it will come through clean with maybe just a little coloring of our personality and vocabulary. Other times it will hit one of those cracks and skew the direction and content of the word. That means the same person could sometimes have a word that is actually from the Lord and other times they could be totally off. This is why discernment is so important in the church community.

Here are some things that skew words that the Lord gives us:

hurtful experiences
prejudices toward particular kinds of people
emotional pain, especially a perpetual feeling of rejection
strong political opinions (notice this in election years)
unbiblical theological views, especially of end-times
chronic sin (unrepentant)

It’s one thing to realize that God is okay with our personality slightly coloring the words that He gives us (metaphorically giving the light a tint of blue or yellow or green). God actually designed the gifts of the Holy Spirit to be like that, to have a little bit of our personality mixed in. He wants the gifts of the Spirit to be incarnated in us and through us.

But it’s a different thing to operate in the prophetic with a cracked lens. With cracks in our heart and our mind, some of the words that come through end up being entirely wrong. And it’s not just the interpretation or the application that end up being wrong but the core word itself.

So, if a prophetic person gives a wrong word, does that make them a false prophet?

Well, if we were in the old covenant, that is what that would mean. But in the new covenant, we all have the Holy Spirit and are called to test and discern the words. They didn’t have this ability in the Old Testament so the accountability had to be more severe.

But, no, if a person gives a wrong word it doesn’t make them a false prophet. What makes a person a false prophet in the new covenant is if they reject Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God, God-incarnate, the Lord and Savior of the world. Those who deny that Jesus is who He said He is are false prophets. But a prophetic person who gives a wrong word is simply a “wrong prophet” not a false prophet.

There needs to be accountability for wrong words, but we don’t need to stone the person to death or throw them out of the church (like in the old covenant). We need, instead, to pastor them. If a person consistently gets wrong words from the Lord, it means they’re operating with cracked lenses. Most often it’s a sign of a broken heart born out of continual rejection, biased political views, unhealthy end-times theology, or chronic sin in their life. They need pastoring and accountability. They also need to put a pause on the use of their prophetic gifts to ensure the enemy doesn’t continue to hijack the gifts and use them for his purposes.

Why obey?

Not to us, Lord, not to us
    but to your name be the glory,
    because of your love and faithfulness.

Why do the nations say,
    “Where is their God?”
Our God is in heaven;
    he does whatever pleases him.
But their idols are silver and gold,
    made by human hands.
They have mouths, but cannot speak,
    eyes, but cannot see.
They have ears, but cannot hear,
    noses, but cannot smell.
They have hands, but cannot feel,
    feet, but cannot walk,
    nor can they utter a sound with their throats.
Those who make them will be like them,
    and so will all who trust in them.
Psalm 115:1-8

Sometimes sermons are framed like, “Obey God in this way because it is the best thing for your life and happiness.” But that reasoning starts to feel self-focused and selfish after a while. Other sermons are framed like, “Obey God because God said so and He is worthy.” But that reasoning starts to feel like God is a glory hog who just wants servants and not sons and daughters.

So which is it? Do we obey God because of how it benefits us or simply because God commanded it?

This, of course, is a false dichotomy. If we find ourselves reasoning this way we’ve fallen for a kind of Judo that the enemy likes to do with truth. Judo uses the momentum of an opponent against them to take them to the ground. The enemy likes to use the momentum of a truth as a way to lead us into falsehood. So rather than the reasoning above, allow me to offer a series of truths that may help us to see more clearly.

Truth #1: God is perfectly kind, perfectly gracious, perfectly compassionate, perfectly wise and His love is endless. To be like Him is to be the best possible version of humanity (i.e. Jesus).

Truth #2: We become like whatever we worship. (Read Psalm 115:1-8 above). We not only see this truth in scripture but we see it play out in our society.

By combining Truth #1 with Truth #2 we arrive at an illuminating conclusion: The greatest possible thing God could invite us into is to worship Him with every part of our life and every part of our being. In other words, the invitation to obedience is one of God’s greatest gifts to us and it’s exactly what He deserves as the only One who is worthy.

What brings Him the most glory also happens to be what is the absolute best for us.

Elevated

What do you see when you see the pastor elevated on the platform? Do you wonder if he is up there for his own self-glorification? Do you wonder if he’s gotten there through self-promotion? Do you wonder if he’s only there to feed the insatiable needs of his own ego?

Perhaps.

What I wish you could see is all the things you can’t see. It only looks like he is elevated on a platform. He’s actually standing on the shoulders of his grandmothers who spent countless hours on their aching knees praying for their grandson. He’s standing on the prayers and praises of his parents who hold him up still. He’s standing on the pastors who have gone before him, mentored him, poured into him, and shared their wisdom with him. He’s standing on the prophetic words given to him by a few saints so many years ago that are just now starting to blossom. His elevation is more about all of their faithfulness than it is about his own.

But that’s not all. Can you see what’s behind him?

If it seems like there is a kind of confidence about him, don’t mistake that for self-confidence. What you are seeing is the wind at his back created by friends who would take a bullet for him. That wind at his back is his sister and brother-in-law’s unwavering support, encouragement, and prayer. That wind is the many members of his last church who still cheer him on today. That wind is his wife, willing to sacrifice so much, so often.

But don’t blink or you’ll miss what’s right beside him.

Can you see them? The ones to his right and left. He has angels assigned to him, without which he couldn’t do half of what he does. He also has incredible co-ministers of the gospel who have partnered with him. They watch his flank so that he can take the lead. Their friendship and partnership in ministry are what allows him to focus on his own assignment.

And those in front of him? Can you see them?

They are why he was elevated in the first place. The Lord didn’t elevate him to that platform for his own ego. The Lord has people who need healed, people who need freedom, people who need salvation, all laid out before this pastor. Jesus needed someone to partner with. The pastor’s elevation is more about them than it is about him. He’s simply someone God could trust to do what it takes to serve them. Up is down in the Kingdom of God.

And the One you really want to see, the One that really counts, is the One that stands above the pastor, the One who resides within him.

Can you see Him? He is the source of this pastor’s everything — his strength, his wisdom, his hope, his gifts, his love, his ministry. They all come from the One who stands above him, the One who will never leave him nor forsake him, the One who lives within him. His name is Jesus, the Name that is above all names. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end of why the pastor is up there in the first place.

So, what do you see when you see the pastor elevated on the platform? I wish you could see all of those who stand under him, behind him, beside him, and in front of him. If you could see all of them (and maybe one day you will) it would be hard to see him. He would rightly disappear into the cloud of witnesses, and all that would be left to see is the only One worthy to be seen.

Your Breath in Our Lungs

Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’” So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.
Ezekiel 37:9-10

The worship group All Sons & Daughters has a song called Great Are You Lord. It was released in 2013 and I’ve always really loved this song. There is a line in the song that says, “It’s your breath in our lungs, so we pour out our praise.” This specific line, and the whole song in general, took on new meaning in 2016 after I had a profound encounter with the Lord in a worship service.

It was March, 4, 2016 and I was at a Cultivate Revival conference put on by Global Awakening. It was hosted by a Methodist church in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania. Bill Johnson, Dr. Randy Clark and Dr. Tom Jones were the main speakers. I drove up and stayed at an AirBnB by myself for the first few days of the conference. By Friday, some other friends had joined me.

Friday night Randy Clark did his impartation service. This is when he invites the Holy Spirit to come and radically touch everyone in the room. After some worship and teaching, Randy invited the Holy Spirit to move. We were instructed to wait on the Lord as worship played and, if we felt anything, we were to come to the front for someone to lay hands on us and pray for us.

As I waited, I asked the Spirit to fill me to overflow. Nothing much happened…at first. But then I noticed that my right hand started to shake involuntarily. This had never happened to me before so I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t think it was significant enough to go down front so I stayed in my seat near the back of the sanctuary.

After a while, the prayer team that was down front started to move out into the congregation and pray for people standing at their seats. A number of other things happened to me in that service as the prayer team began to come out to the people in the congregation. I started trembling and shaking involuntarily. I felt tingling in my hands. I felt the heavy weight of the glory of God resting on me. It felt like someone put a 20 lb. lead vest on me, like the kind you wear before getting X-rays on your teeth at the dentist.

One by one a prayer team member would come and pray for me and as they did God continued to do more. As one man began praying, something different began to happen to my breathing.

I was standing with my hands by my side and suddenly my lungs didn’t seem to work. They weren’t getting enough oxygen and I felt like I had to heave just to get any air. It was like my trachea had closed and very little air was getting in my lungs. It was so hard to breath that I asked the Lord what was happening to me. I heard him speak to my heart and say, “You’re okay. It’s going to be okay.” Then I got the distinct impression that I was breathing in the Holy Spirit.

Fast forward nearly 8 years to today. I have seen many times now that when someone is getting free from a demonic spirit, they sometimes experience this phenomenon where they can’t breathe. This happened to one lady in my church when a spirit of death left her. This happened to another person when a spirit of fear left. I am now convinced this same thing was happening to me.

After a few moments of trying to trust God in the midst of struggling to breathe (it probably lasted only a minute but felt much longer), a man on the prayer team came and gave me this huge bear hug. Now I really couldn’t breathe. I have no idea why he did that except that he felt compelled by the Lord to do it. After he let go, I slumped down into my seat, and I could breathe again without issue.

I don’t know what left, but I believe some demonic spirit that had been attached to my life couldn’t stay while the Holy Spirit was getting poured out on me. And as it was on the way out, I couldn’t breathe. But after it left, the Father breathed His breath into me. He filled my lungs with His Spirit.

And this is why, from that moment on, I could never again sing that line in the worship song the same way.

“It’s your breath in our lungs

So we pour out our praise,

we pour out our praise”

Great Are You Lord, All Sons & Daughters

While I’m sure All Sons & Daughters meant this line to be metaphorical, I experienced this in a very literal, physical way. When I sing this song, I remember that God literally put His breath in my lungs, set me free from whatever was holding me back, and filled me with His Spirit.