“Thank you for your sermon on doubt,” the hand-written card read. “I have struggled with this my whole life, and it is especially hard now that my husband is gone. I’m glad to know I’m not alone.”
I am convinced the experience of this elderly widow and long-standing believer in my congregation is more typical that we know. While we generally hide it, especially around other believers, many, perhaps most, Christians experience doubt. Continue Reading …
There are two ways to measure success in ministry—or anything, for that matter. The first is how others respond to you. The second is how you respond to others.
For years I relied on the first paradigm, thinking it was the only way to judge my impact. If people complimented my preaching, followed my leadership, or even accepted Christ at my invitation, I figured it was evidence that I was doing something right.
Read the Bible and you’ll see that people who follow God with their whole heart live passionate, adventurous, satisfying lives. They lead armies and perform miracles and confront great evils. They don’t sit on their hands and organize tea parties—they change the world. As a pastor, I look at our lives and I wonder—why aren’t we more like that?
Many people believe in God but have difficulty feeling close to him on a daily basis. They don’t doubt God’s existence. It’s his presence that seems to elude them.
Frankly, that was often my experience, especially as a younger Christian. I wondered why some people seemed to have such a tight relationship with God while he felt a bit distant to me. I never felt that God was “talking” to me, and I more or less played along when others talked about their daily conversations with God. Continue Reading …
Most Christians never read the Bible outside of church. So when you have an opportunity to read Scripture aloud during a worship service, you are providing all the Scripture most people will hear that week. That makes Scripture reading a critically important part of any worship experience.
Too often we think of the public reading of Scripture as a perfunctory part of the service or as a fill-in between the offering and the sermon. That’s tragic, because Scripture reading has always been a cornerstone of worship among Christians, and it is always an opportunity for God to speak.
Where did the world come from? Everybody seems to have a theory. Some people believe that matter always existed and found its way into its present form by a random series of events. Even life itself is the product of chance. Continue Reading …
Most of the things that sap my time and energy as a pastor—or in any aspect of life—are things I can’t do by try anyway.
I don’t mean dreams that are too big or goals that are too challenging. Those represent things I might accomplish if I work diligently and God blesses the effort.
I’m referring to things that nobody can do—they simply cannot be done. Continue Reading …
