When Jesus tells us to “seek first the kingdom of God,” the very word seek implies a strong-minded pursuit (see Matthew 6:33). J. B. Phillips paraphrases the idea with “set your heart on.”
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The Amplified Bible says, “Aim at and strive after.”
The Greek text of Matthew’s gospel states a continual command: “Keep on continually seeking.” The dominating thought is determination, which I define as “deciding to hang tough, regardless.”
All of this urges us to keep in mind the difference between natural sight and supernatural vision.
We dare not miss an important dimension to hanging tough. It is the thing that keeps you going. I call it a dream. I don’t mean those things we experience at night while we’re asleep.
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No, by dream, I mean a God-given idea, plan, agenda, or goal that leads to God-honoring results.
Most pastors I know don’t dream enough. If someone were to ask you,
What are your dreams for this year? What are your hopes . . . your agenda? What are you trusting God for?
Could you give a specific answer? I don’t have in mind just ministry objectives or goals, although there’s everything right with those. But what about the kind of dreaming that results in character building, the kind that cultivates God’s righteousness and God’s rule in your life?
My love affair with Thanksgiving takes me all the way back to my boyhood days. I had just turned 10 years of age and was in fifth grade at Southmayd Elementary School in East Houston.
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As I recall, I was still going barefoot to school—and I combed my hair, maybe three times a week. Girls didn’t matter a lot to me when I was 10! It was on a Wednesday, the day before our Thanksgiving holidays began.
The year was 1944. Our nation was at war across the Atlantic into Europe as well as in the Pacific and far beyond.
Times were simple back then but they were also rugged. Everything was rationed. Framed stars hung proudly in neighborhood windows—and sometimes they were quietly changed to crosses.
Everyone I knew was patriotic to the core. Without television, we relied on “newsreels” that were shown at the movies, bold newspaper headlines, and LIFE magazine, which carried photos and moving stories of courage in battle and deaths at sea. Signs were posted inside most stores and on street corners, all of them with the same four words:
Just before Moses died, he spoke these words to God. Read them carefully:
‘May the LORD, the God of the spirits of all flesh, appoint a man over the congregation, who will go out and come in before them, and who will lead them out and bring them in, so that the congregation of the LORD will not be like sheep which have no shepherd.’ So the LORD said to Moses, ‘Take Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom is the Spirit, and lay your hand on him; and have him stand before Eleazar the priest and before all the congregation, and commission him in their sight.’ (Numbers 27:16–19)
I don’t know your circumstances today. I cannot be certain how God intends to use this episode from the life of Moses in your own life.
But I do know what it’s like to be a shepherd . . . and so I can imagine some possible scenarios.
A church as God intends it is not a gathering of people who sit back and listen to one person preach. Instead, one life touches the life of another, who then touches the lives of people in his or her sphere of influence—those whom the originator would never have known.
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To make it even more exciting, those recipients, in turn, touch the lives of others also. That is a contagious ministry.
The medical profession models the idea of multiplication very well.
May I get very personal? The pressures of our times have many of us pastors caught in the web of the most acceptable yet energy-draining sin in the Christian family: worry.
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Hey . . . don’t look so pious!
Chances are good you awoke this morning, stepped out of bed, and before doing anything strapped on your well-worn backpack of anxiety. You started the day, not with a prayer on your mind but loaded down by worry. What a dreadful habit!
(It happens to me far too often.)
A church that is strong in grace is attractive for many reasons, not the least of which is the absence of legalism.
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Just as most non-Christians don’t understand the good news of Christ, most Christians do not understand the remarkable reality of grace. I know of no activities more exhausting and less rewarding than those of Christians attempting to please the people around them by maintaining impossible legalistic demands. What a tragic trap, and the majority of believers are caught in it.
When will we ever learn? Grace has set us free!
That message streams throughout the sermons and personal testimonies of the apostle Paul.
When considering church growth, we must think strategically . . . we must preach creatively . . . and our worship must connect. Absolutely. But we must also be careful.
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A marketing mentality and a consumer mind-set have no business in the church of Jesus Christ. By that I mean, Jesus is NOT a brand . . . human thinking does NOT guide God’s work . . . and the church is NOT a corporation. The church of Jesus Christ is a spiritual entity, guided by the Lord through the precepts of His Word.
If we sacrifice the essentials of teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayer on the altar of strategy, creativity, entertainment, and “relevancy,” we have abandoned the main reasons the church exists.
We should build on those essentials, not attempt to replace them.
It’s simplistic to say that the only kind of battle going on today is the war against terrorism, though that is what the Enemy of our souls would love for us to believe. He would love to preoccupy us with the physical struggles and have us miss the spiritual conflict that rages every day of our lives.
As a pastor, you know more than most that we fight on the frontlines of an invisible war. But our flock may not realize that. They may have been taken hostage and not know it. They could be wounded, but nobody notices because they don’t bleed. The most spiritually bloodthirsty, wicked creature on earth, our adversary the Devil, wages a bloodless, invisible war against you, your family, your flock, and every other person who has been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb.
Initially, Joshua expected the battle of Jericho to be his war, but then he came face-to-face with his Commander in Chief and learned that the battle belonged to the Lord. Joshua’s part was not to win the war but simply to make himself available to the true Commander in Chief. Joshua first surrendered to God—only then could Joshua have victory.
We can learn a great deal from Joshua’s response that can help us in our own seemingly impossible battles.
I see several strategies emerge from Joshua’s experience. We need them in the pastorate.
