SEARCH RESULTS

On a recent hiking expedition with my son in West Virginia, we came across something unexpected on the trail to Seneca Rocks. The trail to Seneca Rocks is an ascent of about 1,000 feet to a jagged ridge overlooking valleys on both sides. It's a beautiful trail filled with wildlife. On our trip, we encountered a doe and her two fawns eating along the trail. They were obviously accustomed to humans because we were able to walk very close to them without disturbing them. About halfway up, we came across something we often see along the side of roads but very rarely on a trail. It was a white cross, memorializing the death of a young man. There wasn't much information about him except for the date he died or even if he died on the trail itself, but it did make us stop and wonder. These sorts of encounters make people think about a number of things, I suppose, but for me, because of my sab batical mindset, I began to think about what legacy I would leave if someone came across my cross someplace on a lonely mountain? When I speak of legacy in the Christian sense, I'm not talking about anything necessarily physical that remains to remind people how wonderful and kind I was or wasn't. What I am talking about is the type of legacy that Jesus alluded to in Matthew 6. “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.   For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6:19-21 Of course, I believe every Christian should strive to leave a godly legacy behind them. This would include being a good example in your community and living a life of faith so that your children and grandchildren can see Jesus in you. It would include using your spiritual gifts to their maximum capacity to glorify God in addition to finding a place to do ministry in every, and I mean every season of life. It would include working hard with your hands as the Bible instructs us because everything we do we do unto the Lord. It would include showing real, unashamed, Holy Spirit empowered love to everyone we meet. It would include these things and more. You probably have your list and if you don't, why not? Are we not supposed to live with purpose? For me, because my calling is in pastoral ministry, I have to think about another legacy that I leave. Paul instructs Timothy to do something unique as a pastor. And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also. 2 Timothy 2:2 Pastors today, wear so many hats. We are expected to be experts in the Scriptures, effective public speakers, extraordinary administrators, wise counselors, computer and internet wizards. We have to be perfect husbands and have trained our children to be completely obedient in every situation. Most pastors have some musical talents, even if it just means leading the hymns from behind the pulpit on any given Sunday. Yet, Paul's instructions here have little to do with those qualifications. Paul's instruction is simply pass on what you know (whether you are an expert or not) to the next generation. Make sure that they are faithful with the Word so they can pass it on next generation. As I contemplate jumping back into full-time ministry in the next few weeks, one thing that lays heavy on my mind is my time management. In my twilight years of ministry, I want to focus leaving a legacy like the one that Paul instructed Timothy to leave. I don't want to be known as the busy Pastor. I don't wanna leave a legacy (though it sounds good) of being a pastor that met People's needs. The legacy that I need to focus on, more so now than ever, is the legacy of the Word of God. I want to spend my time entrusting what God has given me to others who will pick up the ball and do the same. So if you are part of my congregation, will you help me? No Pastor is good enough, smart enough or blessed enough to leave this sort of legacy without a faithful church family. I guess the ultimate goal is to leave a legacy together – to add our names to the long list in Hebrews 11. There is no greater gift that we have been given than God's Word. There is no greater gift that we have been entrusted with to pass on to the next generation so they can see the glorious Works of our God and King . So I make this covenant with you. I will dabble in some administration and counseling. I will get my toes wet with polishing up my preaching in producing some cool graphics for the sermon series. But one thing I will not compromise on is passing God's Word to the next generation. I'm not looking for anything physical: a name on a building, piles of money in the bank, even a cross on a mountain side. I'm looking for God to grant me faithfulness so that my life not only impacts this generation but the next and the next and the... We will not hide them from their descendants; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD, his power and the wonders he has done." Psalm 78:4

One of the questions my congregation asked me before I left on sabbatical was, in essence, "What are you most looking forward to?" My answer was worship. As I explained to my congregation, it's difficult for a pastor to experience worship outside of his job. Of course, we are able to worship on Sundays, but we also have other responsibilities on our minds, like preparation and actually leading the service. So, we can worship, but it's different. Even when we go away for a vacation, it's difficult to get out of pastoral mode. As we sit in another congregation unnoticed, questions will go through our minds: "I would've preached that differently," "We should try that worship song in our services," or "I like this order of service better than our order of service." I was really looking forward to worshiping in church for an extended period of time as just a regular guy and not a pastor. It did take a number of weeks to fully get out of "pastoral mode," but what I experienced was no less than amazing. What I experienced was freedom from that which often held me back from truly expressing worship to God. All the questions that my mind goes through regarding preparation became secondary and then eventually went away. This worship that I experienced wasn't just enjoying the singing and a well-crafted sermon. It was something deeper. It was a connection to God where it was just me experiencing Him as Phil, not as Pastor Phil. This is not to say that this experience of worship was better than when I worship with my own congregation, but it was different. I only have four more weeks left until I return to my congregation, and I am a bit torn. In some ways, I cannot wait to get back to my people to worship with them again, but in other ways, I cherish these last four weeks of worship as just Phil. Let me drop back into pastoral mode for a moment and ask a question because, given my recent experience, I am perplexed. Here's the question, and forgive me if it sounds harsh, but it is something I cannot understand or reconcile in my mind: If you claim to be a follower of Jesus, why do you choose not to come to worship on a regular basis? Or to put it another way: What things distract or take priority over worshiping with God's people? It's a valid question because I've seen it over 45 years of ministry where people who love the Lord don't seem to prioritize worship on a regular basis. To be honest, I see the toll on their lives and families when a regular discipline of worship is ignored. So what exactly is it? I don't profess to be the most faithful Christian that ever lived, but I cannot imagine myself not making every effort to worship the one who died for me. Given my recent experience of worship, I believe that all the more. And given the state of the church in America, I believe this is one of the greatest problems that we face because God created us to worship. So if we are not worshiping Him with God's people on a regular basis, I can almost guarantee that we are spending that time worshiping something else. Jesus put it this way: For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:21) Where is your heart? What is more important than worship? Do you long to worship Him? If not, we need to check our relationship with Him. We need to examine if we are idolaters, giving our hearts over to something else. David said in Psalm 63 that his soul thirsts for God, but what I see too often is a soul that accommodates God—we just fit Him in after the "other stuff" is taken care of. Is the following your experience? O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you,as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory.Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. So I will bless you as long as I live;in your name I will lift up my hands. (Psalm 63:1-4) We live in a dry and weary land where there is no water. We struggle as our flesh faints, telling us we should draw near to God, but rather than looking to His sanctuary for what we need, we look to things that bring no satisfaction and then turn around and blame God. On any given Sunday, many Christians will wake up and bow to the god of "I just needed to sleep in," the god of "I stayed up too late last night," the god of "Let's go out to breakfast or the golf course," and a myriad of others. We then wonder why no one sees Jesus consistently in our lives when the answer is simple. We don't thirst for Him because of these other strange gods we worship. Let me give you a list of suggestions that I plan on implementing in my life as well because there is a danger that I have a god on Sunday that I worship rather than the true God. I've alluded to it. It is the god of professionalism, also known as the god of control everything. The danger for me is to focus so much on my pastoral mode that I miss the opportunity to connect with God as Phil. Of course, I need to perform in the calling that God has given me, but one need not exclude the other. STEP ONE:  Stop making excuses. When you choose to (and it is a choice) worship another god on Sunday, then call it what it is: idolatry. Experience the forgiveness of Jesus, and move on to choose obedience. STEP TWO:  Take the Scriptures at face value. Stop believing the lie that it is an option to go to worship and be part of the body of Christ. As I have said many times before, the Bible is not a book of suggestions. God commands us to do certain things most often because those things are good for us to aid in our growth. When we choose disobedience, we should not be surprised when things don't go well for us. When we feel that the Lord is not near to us, when we feel our faith falter, when we have no desire to read the Scriptures, when we see our wives, husbands, or children slip away from Jesus—these things are connected. If you don't believe me, here is the command to obey: Do not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching. (Hebrews 10:25) STEP THREE:  Discern the reason why you don't attend regularly or why you can't focus while you are at worship. Are you going to bed too late? Is your life so busy and complicated that you cannot control your thought life? Just go through all the reasons why you don't and ask why you do. STEP FOUR:  Get up and go. If you can't accomplish that on your own, find a brother or sister who can hold you accountable and call you every Sunday to wake you up and get you off your tush. The final question to ask if you can't do that is this: Do I really love Jesus, or is there another? Jesus clearly said that if we love Him, we will do what He commands (John 14:15). You can't love both Jesus and those other Sunday gods, and neither can I (Matthew 6:24). STEP FIVE:  Encourage others to worship with you. Maybe even commit Psalm 95 to memory. It is an awesome song calling worshipers to gather together to glorify God. Oh come, let us sing to the LORD; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker! For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. My brothers and sisters, children of the risen King, let's not make the mistake of missing the main purpose of why we exist: to worship. I cannot wait till this Sunday. I cannot wait to worship with my congregation again. I pray that you too will thirst for Him.

The world is not as it should be, and neither am I. The past few weeks have been pretty tough on many people. On a national level, the church has felt the weight of a martyr with the shocking assassination of Charlie Kirk. Even in my church a young man passed away this week. This was sudden and I know that many in my church are stuggling with this, not to mention his family who lost a son. The events of the past week shook us. I noticed I began to cry uncontrollably. Maybe you have felt like this too? This lack of composure wasn't only because of the events this week, but it was cumulative. It was the emotional stress of 45 years of ministry that I have, admittedly, buried in a very unhealthy way to appear more “professional.” I wonder how often we bury the hurt and pain so we won't feel it or to keep a false smile on our faces. For me, all the pain that I have taken on, the pain others have felt, my own personal sufferings and betrayals, the anger that I pushed down that should have been expressed in a healthy way, the times that I simply wanted to burst out and cry with someone but had to push it down deep so I could function in a way that would serve them. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that any of these things I did are good, nor are they healthy at all. What I am trying to say is that time away from ministry has opened my eyes to a burden that pastors have that we are not even aware of ourselves. We run on adrenaline 24/7 to keep doing ministry, convincing ourselves we are serving God with our whole lives and with excellence. And while that may be our heart, it's not what God desires. This is the whole point of a sabbatical: to develop a rhythm in life so we don't burn ourselves out or run on adrenaline until we eventually have a heart attack. This is not just speculation. Just do a little research on illnesses that are stress-related to pastoral ministry. We are not a healthy section of society, and we make excuses that sound spiritual when, in reality, they are far from what Jesus wants for us. I suspect that this problem is not unique to pastors though it may manifest in different ways. How many of us run on adrenaline at work pushing ourselves for that extra buck or promotion? Maybe we convince ourselves that this is what our family needs or what will make me successful in the eyes of the world. The result is not different if we are doing these things because we say we love God, our family or want to be the best we can be. That life is not wnat Jesus wants for us. He promised abundant life, not a busy life. Sometimes we need others to tell us that our sprituality is not very spiritual ay all. I was reminded of a previous time in ministry when I was under so much stress that I ended up spending a week in the hospital. Technically, I had diverticulitis, but they couldn't find any specific causes for it outside of the stress I was under. Since then, over 10 years ago, I have not had diverticulitis. I certainly don't want to experience that again, and I really want to serve the Lord in a way that is healthy and filled with His power, rather than my ability. So, I took the advice that I often give to others when they feel overwhelmed by life or confused by the circumstances they are going through: Go get some counseling. I am one counseling session in. There were no great epiphanies. There was no greater understanding or information that I didn't already know. Yet, the very process of talking out these things with a person who has gone through some of the same stuff is liberating. Every human being is broken and wounded. We are broken and wounded by the stuff that happens to us because of the brokenness in our world. We are broken when we choose to sin against God by not applying the principles He has given us for our lives and thus become part and parcel of an increasingly broken life. We are all broken and wounded, and though I have been called to serve God full-time, I still sometimes choose to embrace my brokenness rather than the abundant life that Jesus offers us. Pray for me and I will pray for you. Yet, this truism doesn't get us off the hook as leaders in the church. It doesn't mean that we don't serve people with everything that we have. It doesn't mean that we ignore our pain, suffering, and hurt. It doesn’t mean that we don’t strive to love and sacrifice, treating others over self (Philippians 2:3-4). It means that we recognize that we are both wounded and called to heal. It means that we have to be balanced in our lives. Serving God with all that we have AS HE LEADS US. This is the key: To discern When God is leading me from when I am taking on things on my own. One leads to burnout the other to fruitfulness. One leads to dispair the other to life. These past weeks have been bad for so many. We see the brokenness in the world. We see the havoc sin brings to the world. Maybe we’ve seen the ugliness in our own hearts that has been brought to the surface because of these recent events. The world is not as it should be, and neither am I. So, I will continue with the counseling because I need to learn more about myself through the eyes of another who is broken, just like me. I want to be who God wants me to be. I want to be the most effective wounded healer that I can be, pointing others to the Great Healer who was wounded for me. He was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds, we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:5-6)